Where the author on poverty throws his reflection,
And thinks that alone a sufficient objection.

Have not many great men, in all arts and all ages,
Complained that Dame Fortune had stinted their wages?

But it was reserved to Edward Ward to wound the poet in his tenderest part. In a versified satire called "Durgen," Ward reproves Pope for attacking women as well as men :

Nor can some loose flagitious Wits forbear
T'unman their wit in torturing the fair.
Exposing to our weak, unguarded youth
Too little of their worth, or too much truth.
Both tending to subvert that happy state
Which to each man confirms a pleasing mate;
Forgetting that perhaps he makes a jest
Of his own mother's failings with the rest.
And thus, by early prejudice o'ercome,
Directs by chance the unlucky satire home.

Pope seems to have attributed this cruel stab to Moore-Smythe, whom he pursued thereafter with unrelenting malignity. But Moore-Smythe and Welsted were sharpening their weapons for a blow which was to fall two years later. In consequence of the hubbub raised by the first appearance of "The Dunciad," five editions of the poem at least were sold in the course of the year, and Pope worked up the "boom" by means of such little mystifications as occurred to his ingenious mind. The author's friends were anxious that he should put forth a complete version of his poem, in which the blanks and initials should be filled up with names of his victims. Lord Oxford wrote, as early as May 27, to say that he was longing

for an authoritative key to "The Dunciad," and Pope replied:

"I am so busy about a thing to gratify you with, which I assure you is a more pleasing end than any other I propose, though I have received a command for the same thing from the highest and most powerful person in the kingdom, that I can but just tell you I thank you for yours, and Dr. Stratford for his kind concern about my person, which has hitherto remained as unhurt, I thank God, as my temper by those scoundrels."

Swift was even more eager for the new edition that should dot the i's and cross the t's of satire. Pope sent him the good news news on June 28 that "The Dunciad" was going to be printed in all pomp, with the inscription to Swift. "It will be attended with Proeme, Prolegomena, Testimonia Scriptorum, Index Authorum, and Notes Variorum. As to the latter, I desire you to read over the text, and make a few in the way you like best, whether dry raillery upon the style and way of commenting of trivial critics; or humorous, upon the authors in the poem; or historical, on persons, places and times; or explanatory; or collecting the parallel passages from the ancients."

But the work lingered, and the dean grew impatient. He writes to urge that the notes should be very full, in so far as they related to persons and places, "for I have long observed that, twenty miles from London nobody understands hints, initial letters, or town facts and passages; and, in a few years, not even those who live in London. I would have the names of those scribblers printed indexically

at the beginning or end of the poem, with an account of their works for the reader to refer to. I would have all the parodies, as they are called, referred to the author they imitate. . . . After twenty times. reading the whole, I never in my life saw so much good satire or more good sense in so many lines.” Swift had evidently changed his opinion since he advised Pope to leave the obscure writers alone, and not confer immortality on a set of grubs.

In spite of the sensational success of "The Dunciad," Pope was more than usually out of spirits and out of health in the summer of 1728. He complains to Swift that his various ties are dropping from him : some worn off, some torn off, and others relaxed daily. 'My greatest, both to duty, gratitude, humanity, time is shaking every moment, and it now hangs but by a thread. I am many years the older for being so much with one so old; much the more helpless for having been so long helped and tended by her; much the more considerate and tender for a daily commerce with one who required me justly to be both to her; and, consequently, the more melancholy and thoughtful, and the less fit for others, who want only, in a companion or a friend, to be amused or entertained. My constitution, too, has had its share of decay, as well as my spirits, and I am as much in the decline at forty as you at sixty. . . ."

The dean, from his eleven years' seniority, declared that for Pope to talk of decay at his time. of life was absurd, and adds: "You are the most temperate man Godward, and the most intemperate yourself-ward of most I have known." Swift did

not believe that Pope's discomfort was due to his living with his old mother. He thought it was the result of over-indulgence in the society of persons

of superior rank.

"I reckon," he remarks, "that a man subject, like us, to bodily infirmities, should only occasionally converse with great people, notwithstanding all their good qualities, easiness, and kindnesses. There is another race which I prefer before them, as beef and mutton for constant diet before partridges : I mean a middle kind both for understanding and fortune, who are perfectly easy, never impertinent, complying in everything, ready to do a hundred little offices that you and I may often want, who dine and sit with me five times for once that I go to them, and whom I can tell, without offence, that I am otherwise engaged at present."

Pope spent a good deal of time this summer at Dawley with Lord Bolingbroke, who, being foiled in his political ambitions, was playing at being a good honest farmer. Writing to Swift on June 28, Pope says that he is holding the pen for my Lord Bolingbroke, who is reading the dean's letter between two haycocks, though his attention is sometimes diverted by his casting his eyes on the clouds, not in admiration of his friend's eloquence, but for fear of a shower. "Now his lordship is run after his cart, I have a moment left to myself to tell you that I overheard him yesterday agree with a painter, for £200, to paint his country hall with trophies of rakes, spades, prongs, and other ornaments, merely to countenance his calling this place a farm,"

Early in September Pope was obliged to undergo a six weeks' cure at Bath, in the hope of patching up his broken constitution. Gay had preceded him thither, and, in the society of wits and duchesses, was rapidly dissipating a part of the little fortune brought him by The Beggar's Opera. Swift, who could never convince Gay that "a shilling was a serious thing," prophesied that "Johnny "would return from the Baths with twenty pounds more in flesh, but two hundred less in money. "Providence," he exclaims, "never designed him to be above two-and-twenty by his thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age, sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of

fifteen."

Pope left home most reluctantly, for his mother was in so precarious a state of health that he feared her death might take place during his absence. He also keenly felt the parting from Martha Blount, upon whom he depended more every year for sympathy and companionship. In an undated letter from Cirencester, the poet expresses his distaste for this journey in search of health. Never since he had first known Patty had he been separated from her for so long a period. "Methinks we live to be more and more strangers," he complains, "and every year teaches you to live without me. This absence may, I fear, make my return less welcome and less wanted to you than once it seemed, even after but a fortnight."

Lord Bathurst, he declares, is too much for him,

1 Gay had gone to Bath in May with the young Duchess of Marlborough and Congreve,