LAST ILLNESS OF THE POET.

295

£1000 in behalf of a lady of their acquaintance, undoubtedly Martha Blount. On the whole, therefore, we may assume that a story so inconsistent with the tenderness which had so long subsisted between the parties, and so foreign to the female character at any time of suffering or distress, is destitute of any real or solid foundation. Of the same nature, we suspect, is a memorandum quoted by Steevens, from Dr. Farmer's papers, that Pope offered, in articulo mortis, to marry Miss Blount. The only allusion in the Maple-Durham MSS. to the subject of marriage occurs in a letter from one of Martha's friends, Mr. L. Schrader, Hanover. In reply to a suspicion thrown out by his female correspondent, this gentleman says, "I did not hear a word of a match between you and Mr. Pope. You once told me that no such thing could ever happen." And apparently it never did.

On Sunday, the 6th of May, Pope appears to have been delirious, and four days afterwards he said to Spence (in what we may call the old vein), "One of the things that I have always most wondered at is, that there should be any such thing as human vanity. If I had any, I had enough to mortify it a few days ago, for I lost my mind for a whole day."

He afterwards complained of that odd phenomenon, as he called it, of seeing everything in the room as through a curtain, and of seeing false colours on objects. "He said to me," continues Spence, "What's that?' pointing into the air with a very steady regard, and then looked down on me and said with a smile of great pleasure, and with the greatest softness, ""Twas a vision."" Lyttelton visited him on the 15th, and as the doctor had previously been congratulating his patient on some improvement in his case, Pope observed to his friend, "Here am I dying of a hundred good symptoms." He suffered most, he said, from finding that he could not think. Bolingbroke wept over his dying friend, exclaiming several times, interrupted by sobs, “O great God, what is man!" Spence says that when he was

telling his lordship that Pope, on every recovery of his mind, was always saying something kindly either of his present or his absent friends, as if his humanity outlasted his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, "It has so! I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than-" sinking his head and losing himself in tears. A short time before his death, Pope said, "I am so certain of the soul's being immortal, that I seem

to feel it within me as it were by tuition; and Ruffhead mentions that one morning, at the early hour of four o'clock, he rose from his bed and went into his library, where he was discovered by a friend (Warburton) very busily writing.

HIS FIRM BELIEF IN THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 297

He was persuaded to desist, and the paper on which he had been engaged was found to be an Essay on the Immortality of the Soul, according to a theory of his own, in which he spoke of those material things which tend to strengthen and support the soul's immortality, and of those which weaken and destroy it.8 Bolingbroke was of a different stamp-all his views were material; and when Cheselden, the surgeon, remarked, "There is no hope for him (Pope) here; our only hope for him must be" Bolingbroke broke in with "Pshaw !—we can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities." He was a stranger to the "still small voice" which had at length reached the dying ear of Pope.

On the 27th the poet quoted two of his own verses on his whole life having been divided between carelessness and care; the passage occurring in his Imitation of Horace, addressed to Colonel Cotterell ::

I, who at some times spend, at others spare,
Divided between carelessness and care.

'Tis one thing madly to dispense my store;
Another, not to heed to treasure more.

The same day he requested to be brought to the table where his friends were sitting at dinner. His dying appearance was remarked by all present, and Miss Anne Arbuthnot (with a touch of her father's spirit) exclaimed, "Lord have mercy upon us! this is quite an Egyptian feast!" Next day Pope sat in his garden in a sedan chair for three hours. This was his last survey of a scene in which he had taken so much interest and delight—a scene then in the flush of

9 It appears from Spence that in this Essay, or rather memorandum, Pope said something about generous wines helping the immortality of the soul; whereas spirituous liquors served only to mortalize it. This extraordinary idea must be ascribed to temporary delirium-the wandering of the mind; but it probably glances at the poet's habit of dram-drinking, which seems to have grown upon him, and the ill effects of which he must have been conscious of.