leave you to your wine. Yet he tells his friends; ff that he has a heart for all, a houfe for all, and, whatever they may think, a fortune for all." "He fometimes, however, made a fplendid, "dinner, and is faid to have wanted no part of the fkill or elegance which fuch performances require. That this magnificence fhould be often difplayed, that obftinate prudence with which he conducted his affairs would not permit; for his revenue, certain and cafual, amounted only to about eight hundred pounds a year, of which however he declares himself able to affign one "hundred to charity. his "Of this fortune, which, as it arose from publis "approbation, was very honourably obtained, his imagination feems to have been too full : it would be hard d be hard to find a man, fo well entitled "to notice by his wit, that ever delighted fo much "in talking of his money. In his letters, and in ༣༥མ་ poems, his garden and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, or fome hints of his opu lence, are always to be found. The great topic of his ridicule is poverty; the crimes with which he reproaches his antagonifts are their « debts, their habitation in th in the Mint, and their want of a dinner. He feems to be of an opinion "not very uncommon in the world, that to want money is to want every thing. Next to the pleasure of contemplating his poffeffions, feems to be that of enumerating the men true, men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and whofe notice he loudly proclaims not to have been obtained by any practices of meannefs or fervility; a boaft which was never denied to be and to which very ry few poets have ever afpired. Pope never fet his genius to fale; he never flattered thofe whom he did not love, or "praise those whom he did not esteem. Savage however remarked, that he began a little to relax his dignity when he wrote a diftich for his Highness's dog. "His admiration of the great, seems to have increased in the advance of life. He paffedover peers and flatefmen to infcribe his Iliad to "Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been complete, had his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. **for fo great an honour, it Why he was chofen is not now poffible << to know; there is no trace, in literary history, of any particular intimacy between them; nor does "the name of Congreve appear in the letters. To his latter works, however, he took care to an nex names dignified with titles; but was not very happy in his choice; for, except Lord Bathurst, none of his noble friends were fuck as that a good man would wish to h have his intimacy with them configned to pofterity: he can derive little honour from the notice of Cobham, "Burlington, or Bolingbroke." CON |