XVI. Arbuthnot there I see, in physic's art Who could (were mankind lost) anew create; XVII. Thee Jervas hails, robust and debonair,' 'Now have we conquered Homer, friends!' he cries; Dartneuf, gay joker, joyous Ford' is there, And wondering Maine, so fat with laughing eyes, XVIII. O, Wanley, whence com'st thou with shortened hair, But hither me hath my meeke lady sent :- 1 Dr. Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope and Gay. Sir Godfrey Kneller. The praise of Kneller as a divine is ironical, as he is said to have been somewhat free in his religious opinions. Charles Jervas, the portrait painter, Pope's friend and master in painting. 4 Charles Darteneuf or Dartiquenave, for whom see 'Imitation of Horace,' Sat. i. 46, and 'Moral Essay,' i. 77 and note. Charles Ford, Swift's frequent correspondent, and appointed Gazet teer by his influence in 1712. No doubt Dr. George Cheyne of Bath, for whom and for his vast weight see letter to Lyttelton, Dec. 4th, 1736, Vol. IX., p. 170, noto 1. 7 John Dennis and Charles Gildon, Pope's enemies. Henry Cromwell, Pope's former friend. There had been a coldness between him and Pope since 1712, and as he was not a subscriber to the 'Translation,' it is difficult to see why he should be mentioned here. Humphrey Wanley, Lord Harley's Librarian. See Vol. X., p 115. ΧΙΧ. Yonder I see among th' expecting crowd Evans with laugh jocose and tragic Young; 3 High buskined Booth, grave Mawbert, wandering Frowde, Yea Steele and Tickell mingle in the throng," Lo, the two Doncastles in Berkshire known! 10- But who can count the leaves, the stars, the sand? Dr. Abel Evans, of St. John's College, Oxford. He is mentioned as an epigrammatist in company with Young in 'Dunciad,' ii. 116. 2 Edward Young, the poet, called 'tragic,' on account of his play 'Busiris,' acted at Drury Lane in 1719. 3 Barton Booth-well-mouthed Booth-the famous tragic actor. See Epistle to Augustus,' v. 123 and note. Pope had no love for him. 4 James Francis Mawbert, the portrait painter. According to Dallaway, he copied all the portraits of English poets which he could discover. He died in 1746. Philip Frowde, son of Ashburnham Frowde, Comptroller of the Foreign Office in the Post Office. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was pupil to Addison, and was the author of two tragedies, Philotas' and 'The Fall of Saguntum.' Compare the Farewell to London.' Compare letter to Cromwell, The Hon. Robert Digby, Pope's correspondent, who was very delicate and had to take asses' milk; and Southerne the dramatist, for whom see Vol. IV., p. 496. 8 Sir Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell. 9 Alluding to Tickell's Transla tion of the first book of the Iliad, supposed to have been produced with the help of Addison. 10 For the two Dancastles of Binfield see Vol. IX., p. 484. "William Fortescue, Pope's friend, afterwards Master of the Rolls, and his neighbour in Devonshire, called in Pope's letter to Fortescue of Sept. 10, 1724, Esquire Bickford,' who seems to have been a country gentleman, with a taste for natural philosophy. 12 There was a Martin Tucker, who was a subscriber for the 'Translation.' For James Eckershall, see Vol. X, p. 228, and for William Rollinson, Vol. X., p. 230. 13 John Morley, brother-in-law of Sir George Brown ('Sir Plume"), for whom see Vol. X., p. 247. 14 It is impossible to identify cer XXI. How loved, how honoured thou! Yet be not vain! And what rewards his grateful country pay? tainly all the persons alluded to in the last four verses of this stanza. There were two Thomas Stonors among Pope's acquaintances, one of Twickenham (alluded to in Pope's letter to Digby of Sept. 1, 1722), and The latter the other of Oxfordshire. CHAPTER IX. LIFE AT TWICKENHAM. Lo:d Bathurst-Villa at Twickenham-The South Sea Bubble-Atteroury's Plot-Edition of Shakespeare-Translation of the Odyssey. 1720-1726. THROUGH the translation of Homer Pope had become, relatively speaking, a rich man, and his thoughts appear to have been much occupied with the manner in which he could invest to the best advantage a portion of the large sum he had earned. Mawson's Buildings' was no longer a residence suitable to his ideas. In June, 1718, he tells Caryll that he had been brought to London on business, "of which building a house in town was not the greatest," and a letter addressed to him by James Gibbs, the well-known architect, shows that the plans had been actually prepared.' From this design he was diverted in a very characteristic fashion by the advice of one of his friends. 1 Allen, Lord Bathurst, was among the twelve peers created by Harley in 1711 to form a Tory majority in the House of Lords. Though keenly interested in politics, as in every form of human activity, he played no prominent part in them, and was far more distinguished for his love of gallantry and for his vigorous enjoyment of country life. Burke describes him towards the end of his life-he lived till ninety-four-as possessing "virtues which made him one of the most amiable men of his age." Lord Lansdown writes of him to Mrs. Pendarves: "Lord Bathurst can best describe to you the ineffable joys of that country where happiness only reigns; he is a native of it, but it has always been a terra incognita Letter from Gibbs to Pope, Vol. IX., 510. 1 Vol. VI., p. 263. to me." Every line of his letters to Pope breathes the gaiety and high animal spirits which lasted down to the day when his son, the somewhat precise Lord Chancellor, having retired from the dinner-table with some moral reflections on the advantages of early hours, he proposed to his guests, 'now that the old gentleman had gone to bed, to crack another bottle.' Few compliments, in fact, paid by the poet, seem to have been better deserved than the fine lines addressed to Bathurst in the Third Moral Essay: "The sense to value Riches, with the art Oakley, near Cirencester, Lord Bathurst's seat, was at no great distance from Oxford, and thither Pope came in June, 1718, either just before or soon after he settled down to work at Stanton Harcourt. He had a genuine taste for landscape gardening, which was also one of Lord Bathurst's accomplishments,' and he took especial delight in the woods at Oakley, where he had a 'bower' which he called his own, and which in Bowles's time was still in existence. The opening of his first preserved letter to Bathurst expresses the pleasure he found in his company: "To say a word in praise either of your wood or you would be alike impertinent, each being in its kind the finest thing I know and the most agreeable. I can only tell you very honestly, without a word of the high timber of one, or the high qualities of the other, that I thought it the best company I ever knew and the best place to enjoy it in." 1.Autobiography of Mrs. Delany,' vol. i., p. 419. 2 Compare Moral Essay, 178: iv. "Who plants like Bathurst or who builds like Boyle?" Letter from Pope to Bathurst of July 5, 1718. |