for him, and to enable him to enjoy the accom modation of a carriage; for a chariot was as neceffary for him as for Ericthonius. But he found he could live without their help, and he felt the importance of being his own mafter. He was intimate, fays the Chevalier Ramfay (writing to France in defence of Pope's character) with feveral fucceffive minifters, and often with many at the fame time. Thus circumftanced, it would have been eafy for him to create a large fortune, had he availed himself of the disgrace of one party, in order to recommend himself to the other. He was determined to live and die, (imitate him who can !)

"Unplaced, unpenfioned, no man's heir or flave." Swift judiciously praises Pope for this fpirit, in the followinng couplet,

"None loves his king or country better, Yet none was ever lefs their debtor."

His income, in the last flourishing years of his life, amounted to about eight hundred pounds a year; a part of which he appropriated to charity. Res parta labore, non relicta. For his father, a zealous papist and Jacobite, would

H

would not affift or trust the new govern ment, at the Revolution in eighty-eight; but locked up his money in his cheft, like Don Barnard de Caftel Blazo, in Gil Blas, and lived upon the principal, which was almost exhausted by the time he left Binfield, and arrived with his fon at Twickenham, where he died two years after. Before the nation was overwhelmed with taxes, and before life was made fo expensive as it is at prefent, it was fufficient for the moderate purposes of a temperate Bard. "His manners, fays Lord Orrery, were delicate, eafy, and engaging; and he treated his friends with a politenefs that charmed, and a generofity that was much to his honour. Every gueft was made happy within his doors. Pleasure dwelt under his roof, and elegance prefided at his table.”

Pope, as well as his friend Swift, was a Whig in ftate: for he explodes

"Th' enormous faith of many made for one." He was undoubtedly no ftranger to the language of mafier Hooker, that, "to live by one man's will, becomes all mens mifery ;"

nor

hor to this difference, which Ariftotle, as quoted by his commentator Warburton, places between a king and a tyrant," that the first fuppofes himself made for the people, the other, that the people are made for him:" notions, not preached in the courts of Alexander or of the family of Tudor! He was as hearty against defpotifm (at this democratic feafon, furely, according to one of the earliest phrases of Warburton, the mormo of an affrighted imagination) as against corruption. "In moderation placing all my glory,

While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory." But, when the law of Solon, that obliges all men at last to take a decided part, feemed requifite to be put into execution, he continued no longer filent. He thought he was called upon to draw his pen in the fervice of liberty,

"Free as young Lyttelton; her caufe purfue," by cooperating with the oppofition, that confifted of Whigs and Tories, against Sir Robert Walpole, who was deferted at laft by his friends, and preferved by his fovereign. Pope's principles, as delineated in his poems, H 2

are

are almoft republican. Perhaps like Dr. King our Oxford Cicero, he came over to the fide of the people at last, thus characterised in a certain ode, thrice facred multitude!

Notwithstanding the applause in the theatre (excufe, reader, this short ramble!) on the cum venerit ipfe, canemus; the Doctor told a high-church friend, that, when they found the young man was not to be trufted, he forfook the party, for which, through more than half a century, he had pleaded with his pen, his purfe, and his perfon, and became a republican. In what fenfe of the word? Probably, in that of Sir Thomas Smith, of Locke, and of Sydney. He went up with the University address (credite pofteri !) on the acceffion of his prefent Majefty: and thus gave up a jure divino, for an act-of-parliament chief magiftrate. If Pope had been living, and one whom "Ifis or Cam made Doctor of her Laws," he might have been perfuaded to have done the like. Pope never was molested on account of the form of that religion in which he was born, bred, and died. Every man lives and dies his own way in this

land

land of liberty. Two pious and not unpoetical lines faftened on my memory very early; and shew the refignation of their author to his Creator:

"Safe in the hands of God's difpofing pow'r,
Or in the natal or the mortal hour."

An intelligent reader of these sheets gave it me as his opinion, that he had no doubt Pope was fo fenfible a man (and there is a cant expreffion, "that all men of sense are of the fame religion,") that, if he had lived in the times of old Rome, he would, in conformity to the religion of the state, have sacrificed a cock to Efculapius. Religion, with Voltaire, is a matter of Geography. The Author of the Spleen feems to be very easy on this point; for he says,

"But, to avoid religious jars,

The laws are my expofitors,

Which in my doubting mind create
Conformity to church and state.

I go, pursuant to my plan,

To Mecca, with the caravan.'