but so very groundless and silly that I do not yet know the effect it will have on my conductwhether so great a stupidity in the point of comprehending a poet's manner, being the ignorance of the very principles of that sort of writing, and so great malignity in the point of applying it in the worse sense, should give me such a pique to the world's malice as never to publish anything, or such a contempt of its judgment as to publish everything which I think right myself, without the least concern about what they think or

Pope had already finished the Epistle to Lord Bathurst, "Of the Use of Riches," but, in consequence of the Timon scandal, he held it back till the following year. He was hard at work on the "Essay on Man," with Bolingbroke for "consulting philosopher," and he was also preparing another volume of Miscellanies.

"I think it a merit," he remarks, "if I can take off any man from grating or satirical subjects, merely on the score of party; and it is the greatest vanity of my life that I have contributed to turn my Lord Bolingbroke to subjects moral and useful, and more worthy his pen."

Pope applied to Swift for the skits and fugitive papers that he had written during the past four or five years, for insertion in the fourth volume of the "Miscellanies." The dean replied that these were but little accidental things written in the country, family amusements, and strictures on public grievances, which would have no meaning out of Ireland. Pope, however, thought otherwise, and

published the volume, which brought little credit or profit either to himself or his friend.

Swift was talking of another visit to England this year, but his health prevented him carrying out his plans. "I tell you,' "I tell you," he wrote to Gay (July 10), "that I fear my Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Pope, a couple of philosophers, would starve me; for even of port wine I should require half a pint a day, and as much at night and you were growing as bad, unless the duke and duchess have mended you. You have not forgot, Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine'? which was but the remainder of a pint when four glasses were drunk. I tell that story to everybody in commendation of Mr. Pope's abstemiousness. Your colic is owing to intemperance of the philosophical kind. You eat without care, and if you drink less than I you drink too little. But your inattention I cannot pardon, for I thought it lay in your forty millions of schemes by court hopes and court fears. Yet Mr. Pope has the same defect, and it is of all others the most mortal to conversation. Neither is my Lord Bolingbroke untinged with it; all for want of my rule-Vive la bagatelle! But the doctor is the king of inattention. What a vexatious life should I lead among you

In a letter to Mrs. Cæsar Swift says that Bolingbroke and Pope have pressed him to come to England: "But the former is too much a philosopher; he dines at six in the evening, after studying all the morning till afternoon; and, when he hath dined, to his studies again. Mr. Pope can neither eat nor drink; loves to be alone, and hath always some poetical scheme in his head. Thus the two best friends and companions I ever had, have utterly disqualified themselves for my conversation and my way of living."

It does not appear that Pope went far afield this summer, though he offered to drag his "crazy carcase to Riskins, if Lord Bathurst would meet him there. He dreads the long journey to Cirencester, and hopes to be happier when he is a separated spirit, and finds at last a "vehicle" active enough to allow of his soul keeping pace with the fiery spirit of Lord Bathurst. He assures his lordship that he is taking pains to arrive at such a vehicle by such methods as would speedily destroy his present crust. Bathurst, secure in a splendid constitution, had little patience with the constant headaches and sickness of his poetical friend, more especially as these were too often the result of an imprudent diet.

You say you are me, there is no

You were suffi

"What method you are in to hasten the demolition of that little tenement of yours," he writes on July 20, "which was not designed by nature to bear any proportion of duration with the works of its partner, I am at a loss to guess. taking pains about it. Believe occasion to try any new method. ciently irregular before, and you need be under no apprehension of exceeding the age of your mother. But, admitting that long life is not so desirable as the generality of mankind reckon, is health to be despised? and, for God's sake, what are you doing to make yours worse than it was? I am provoked at you to the last degree. I positively insist on your coming down to me, that I may put you into a new regimen."

Pope was constantly receiving advice and lectures from well-meaning friends on the subject of his

health, and Bethel, himself an invalid, was one of the most zealous. In an undated letter belonging to this period, Pope tells his Yorkshire friend:

"I shall want you to preach to me for my own good, and keep me (if you can) in that health I'm now endeavouring to lay up. I begin to think of you and your sisters, a warm fireside, two or three friends in a room, a party at quadrille, and no door open at my neck. . . I never see you but in the worst season-winter, and when I am the worst to be seen; for if I have any life, it is with the butterfly. . I am going in haste to plant Jamaica strawberries, which are to be almost as good as pineapples they say they resemble them in flavour..

"1

Pope refused a pressing invitation from Caryll on the plea that he was in constant attendance on the last days of his mother, who was now entirely confined to her bed. That he was much tied at home at this period may also be gathered from a letter to his old friend Mrs. Cæsar (November 15), though the state of things herein described is certainly exaggerated.

of

"MADAM,

"I assure you no dean nor lord can think you more than I do. I have been but thrice in town the whole summer, and as constantly inquired

of

you by Lord Oxford and Dr. Mead. The former I desired to make our usual party with you and my lady, the little time they were here, and was truly sorry they did not. My poor old woman,

1 From the unpublished MS.

whom you so kindly ask after, is indeed the cause I seem to forget many of my friends, my attendance being now constantly necessary to her. It is now near two years since I have been able to snatch a day even to dine with Dr. Mead, whom I've sometimes met (as I was in a hurry always) and been ashamed so often to repeat both an excuse and a promise. Your letter, madam, is what I take as a particular mark of kindness, considering how little I must appear to you to deserve it. And I beg you to tell me when you are in town, and where, that I may show you (as I will the first day I can) you can never be forgotten while there is any grace or goodness left in

In the course of the autumn the queen built a hermitage at Richmond, which was to be decorated with the busts of her favourite philosophers. The sensation caused in Court and literary circles by this trivial incident is almost incredible. Pope explains the excitement (in a letter to Gay) by the fact that it was a particularly dead vacation, with no politics at Court, no trade in town, and nothing doing except poetry.

"Every man and every boy is writing verses on the royal hermitage," he reports. "You would oblige my Lady Suffolk if you tried your muse on

1 The previous summer Pope had spent nearly two months away from home.

2 From the unpublished MS.