lost that would have helped to draw you hither. He ordered, on his death-bed, his watch to be given me (that which had accompanied him in all his travels) with this reason, that I might have something to put me every day in mind of him.'"

CHAPTER XLIX

1736

Illness-Proposals for Printing the "Correspondence"-Ralph Allen-Bevis MountMelancholy Letters from Swift-Friendship with Lyttelton

POPE

PE was seriously ill in the early part of this year, and was obliged to stay for a time with. the famous surgeon, Cheselden, in order to be under regular treatment. Lord Orrery had read alarming reports about the poet's health, and on January 20 he wrote to Mrs. Cæsar :

"I am under great anxiety about Mr. Pope. The newspapers declare him dangerously ill. Pray Heaven they lie as usual, and have no better authority than they had for burying me in Westminster Abbey. Yet I cannot help being extremely uneasy. There are a thousand reasons why he should be sick, nay, why he should die, and therefore I tremble for him. If it is possible, be so good as to ease my fears, and send me with joy to see the Dean of St. Patrick's. Spell the good news never so ill, I promise you I shall find it.

out." 1

1 From the unpublished MS.

Swift, too, had heard the rumours, and wrote an anxious letter of inquiry, begging to be put out of suspense as soon as possible. The dean gave a melancholy account of his own health. His giddiness was more or less constant, and he had not an ounce of flesh between skin and bone. He was sleeping ill, moreover, and had a poor appetite.

"I can as easily as easily write a poem in the Chinese language as my own," he complains. "I am as fit for matrimony as for invention; and yet I have daily schemes for innumerable essays in prose, and proceed sometimes to no less than half a dozen lines, which the next morning become paper."

waste

The "Epistle to Augustus," which was not to be published till the following year, had been sent to Swift in manuscript. He was delighted with the allusion to himself, which, he said, would do him the greatest honour he would ever receive from posterity, and outweigh the malignity of ten thousand enemies. These are the lines in question, which very nearly brought a prosecution upon the poet :

Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause,
Her trade supported,1 and supplied her laws;
And leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved,
The rights a Court attacked, a poet saved.2

1 Swift advocated the use by the Irish of their own manufactures.

2 The reference is to the "Drapier Letters," in which the dean attacked the granting of a patent to William Wood for coining halfpence. He aroused so much popular feeling by means of these pamphlets that the scheme had to be dropped.

Behold the hand that wrought a nation's cure,
Stretched to relieve the idiot and the poor,1
Proud vice to brand, or injured worth adorn,
And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.

In addition to this splendid compliment, Pope promised that, if he ever finished another epistle in verse, it should be addressed to Swift. He had long concerted it, and even begun it, "but I would make what bears your name as finished as my last work ought to be; that is to say, more finished than any of the rest." His understanding, he feels, is extended rather than diminished, and he sees things more consistently, more as a whole. "But what I gain on the side of philosophy I lose on the side of poetry: the flowers are gone when the fruits begin to ripen, and the fruits perhaps will never ripen perfectly. The climate, under our heaven of a court, is cold and uncertain."

With a magnificent hospitality, he invited Swift to resign his deanery and pass his declining years at Twickenham. The offer was more prudent than it sounds, since Pope must have been perfectly well aware that it would never be accepted.

"I could keep you," boasts the poet, "for I am rich; that is, I have more than I want. I can afford room for yourself and two servants; I have indeed room enough, nothing but myself at home. The kind and hearty housewife is dead! the agreeable and instructive neighbour gone! 2 Yet my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend and

1 Swift helped to found an institution for the maintenance of idiots. He also tried to organise the numerous beggars of Dublin by making them wear a badge.

2 Bolingbroke.

flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost. I have more fruit-trees and kitchengarden than you have any thought of; nay, I have good melons and pine-apples of my own growth. I am as much a better gardener as I am a worse poet, than when you saw me; but gardening is near akin to philosophy. . . . For God's sake, why should not you (that are a step higher than a philosopher a divine, yet have too much grace and wit to be a bishop1) e'en give all you have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have already done everything else), so quit the place, and live and die with me?"

The proposals for printing by subscription an authorised edition of the famous "Correspondence " were issued in the course of the spring. Pope pretends, in a letter to Fortescue, that he is forced to publish this edition because "people have misunderstood an advertisement I printed some time ago, merely to put some stop to that rascal's books, as a promise that I would publish such a book. It is therefore offered in this manner; but I shall be just as well satisfied (if the public will) without performing the offer."

Pope could not yet bring himself to admit that he was voluntarily publishing his own letters, and he declared that he heartily wished the subscriptions would fall short. There seemed to be a good prospect that this wish would be fulfilled. The

Swift, in the days of his power, did not think that he had too much grace and wit for a bishop. He was eager for promotion to the episcopal bench, but it was Queen Anne's prejudice against him on account of his unclerical writings that stood between him and advancement.