The lines are here appended: Thou who shalt stop where Thames' translucent wave Approach; but awful! Lo! th' Egerian grot,1 And the bright flame was shot thro' Marchmont's soul. Who dare to love their country, and be poor. 1 Warburton says that Pope is alluding to Numa's system of politics in this grot, assisted, as he gave out, by the nymph Egeria. Pope's Egeria was presumably the Princess of Wales, who was generally present at the Conferences. CHAPTER LVI 1740 The Grotto-Proposed Publication of Correspondence with Swift-Visit to Prior Park THE HE patching up of his Grotto was, as Pope told Bolingbroke, the chief amusement of his declining years, and numerous contributions of rock and spar were sent him by his friends in the West of England. Ralph Allen was a generous donor, and Pope's letters to Widcombe are full of thanks for favours received, or suggestions that the great work is at a stand-still for want of more material.1 On April 18, having received gifts of cider, Bristol water, and stone, the poet writes to Allen: "For these little things, little in comparison of the other evidences of your goodwill to me (and little in comparison to those they would be if you sent me diamonds), for these, I say, I catch myself at the folly of thanking you. The arrival of the Happy Couple, loaded with what I am now fond of, makes me reflect on another, constantly charged with all that I love and value, all whose voyages 1 Allen was the owner of stone quarries near Bath. He had invented a method of conveying large blocks of stone to the canal. 'The ship that brought the minerals. VOL. II 621 17 I wish may be as prosperous! The ship thus named ought to be your own, but whether it be or not, no man will ever hear of it without thinking of you. Is "It would be almost a sin in me to conclude without a word of Mrs. Allen, and yet I have been thinking of her throughout this letter. there any need of naming her just over against the Happy Couple? Can I forget her a single day when I am always directed by her Almanack? Or can I help, when I see but one bottle on my table, to think what a number stood before us at hers? But pray let her not fancy, from my mention of these, that they are all I remember her for, any more than suffer yourself to think that when I thank you for the water, wine, alabaster, spars and snakestones, they were the best things I ever had from you. " 1 Pope was anxious to finish the work in the course of the spring, but feared that a collection of Cornish mundics and other minerals would not arrive in time. However, on May 15 he had just received a fine cargo of spars from Penzance, and his subterranean work was to begin in good earnest as soon as "Mr. Omer " arrived. Mr. Omer was apparently a rock-work expert in the employ of Allen, who was lending him to start the improvements at Twickenham. In return for all these favours Pope gave the Allens 1 From the unpublished MS. 2 Sent by Dr. Borlase, the Cornish antiquary, who had the living of St. Just, near Penzance. He published an essay on Cornish diamonds. |