the Lock; and fays that his Temple of Fame will always ftand open for himself. He loved the Muses, and was loved by them. He commended and recommended Pope in the strongeft manner. His advice to him, upon his coming up to town, was fatherly and affectionate; to abstain from all the intemperance of clubs, and to take especial care of his health, was his earnest folicitation. Pope's paffions were high, but his conftitution checked indulgence. I do not find that he was a water-drinker, nor that it can be faid of him, in the praises of Horace, abftinuit vino et venere. It is reported that Pope would not have refused the toast at the club; but that Addison turned his glafs up-fide-down, and told him, Pope, you "know you can't drink wine." No man was

66

more beholden to the bottle than Addifon. It was then," when his pulfe, was made to beat quicker;" as Steele drfcribes him, he shone with the wit of Terence, when in company with Scipio and Lælius. Burnet obferves of Lord Dorset, "till his fpirits were elevated "with wine, he was but an ordinary man, but that drinking diffolved his oppreffion of

phlegm," and enabled him to "fet the table in a roar." Three very small glaffes of wine we hear of Pope's drinking before he left his guests under his own roof at Twickenham, on his going to bed. Waller, the poet, drank no liquor but water; and this is a peculiarity of our great English Philologer. The fun of Trumbull began to fet, before Pope's was appearing in the horizon. He died before Pope left Binfield, who wrote his epitaph, which ftands the firft in his collection. Anecdote mentions the fingularity of Trumbull's walking on foot to Conftantinople, where he was our embaffador. But what was that to the rambles of Coryat, Lithgow, or even of walking Webbe? This great walker was also a wit, if he compofed the following epigram afcribed to him. It does not coft the reader, nor the transcriber, much. The fubject of it is, his pulling off his coat after his arrival at Rome, from England,

"Lie there, thou coat, thro' various regions toft, And take that nap which thou fo long haft loft!" May all great men who are worn out in the fervice of the state, or who are too good for

the

the times they live in, retire and enjoy otium cum dignitate, with or without a pension, like Sir William Trumbull !

Perhaps it would have been better, if this compofition had been in the third perfon. For, I, the little bero of each tale, may offend the otherwise good-natured reader. Chance, more than vanity (" that paffion of a little mind and a cold heart," as Dr. Gregory stigmatises it) fell on this mode of narration. On reciting, in my younger days, the Univerfal Prayer before Tacitus Gordon (a perfon formerly much known and much talked of, but whose name will be hardly revived, till it appears alphabetically in the new edition of the Biographia), I remember I made a pause after these lines, "That mercy I to others fhow, that mercy fhow to me!" It would have been well, fays he, if Pope had obferved that conduct to others. Can he lay his hand upon his heart, and fay, that he has? He used to fay of Pope, that he was a great poet, but a week reafoner. He alluded to fome late converfation that had paffed, at Lord Radnor's, on the intolerance of fpe

culative

culative opinions. He remarked, what fince makes a figure in print, that to read Pope's epiftolary correfpondence, you would think that he and his friends poffeffed all the wit, and wisdom, and honesty in the nation. The public applied the character in the last book of the Dunciad to that gentleman,

"Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus fnores." If Gordon took this to himself, it accounted for what he said of Pope; for no man can talk of a foe as he does of a friend. Pope's fubfcription to Homer was fo great (for he fays, that "he found more friends than Homer ever wanted") that it made his future life independent, and helped " to gild the evening of his day." He purchased fome annuities out of the eftate of John of Bucks, with his profits from the Grecian Rhapfodift, who was obliged to ftroll to the halls of the great, to recite hist verfes, according to Dr. Blackwell, to get his bread, and to obtain a goblet of wine.

Having before me Mr. Wood's Effay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, I find a period for tranfcription. The reader, if he is not too learned, will be pleased to be

2

told,

told, that the author of it read the Iliad and Odyffey, in the countries where Achilles fought, where Ulyffes travelled, and where Homer fung. On his return to England, he was put into parliament, and was employed as Secretary to Lord Chatham, and was fo much taken up with public bufinefs, that he could not find leifure to compleat Homer's Travels. This manly piece of criticism was pofthumous, and published by the most learned Mr. Bryant. "Now though it must be acknowledged, that Mr. Pope is the only tranflator, who has, in a certain degree, kept alive that divine spirit of the poet, which has almost expired in other hands; yet I cannot help thinking, that thofe, who wish to be thoroughly acquainted, either with the manners and characters of Homer's age, or the landscape and geography of his country, will be disappointed, if they expect to find them in this tranflation." He accounts for this, by faying, that "Pope endeavoured to accommodate his author to the ideas of those for whom he tranflates."-If Homer is to talk English again, let him do it in profe.-