Part 4 (1/2)

We have had many vain men to encounter in these talks of ours--men a.s.sured of their own judgment and taste; but not one, I think, as yet, so thoroughly and highly conscious that his cleverness and scholars.h.i.+p and deftness and wit were as sure of their reward as the sun was sure to s.h.i.+ne.

I can fancy him pausing after having wrought {48} some splendid score of Homeric lines, which blaze and palpitate with new Greek fire: I can fancy him humming them over to himself--growing heated with the flames that flash and play in them--his slight, frail figure trembling with the rhythmic outburst, and he smiling serenely at a mastery which his will and wit have brought to such supreme pitch of excellence that no handling of English will go beyond it.

_His Last Days._

[Sidenote: Last days of Pope.]

I have spoken of one face--I mean Lady Mary Montagu's--which used sometimes to light up the grotto of Mr. Pope, and have told you how that badly managed friends.h.i.+p went out in a great muddle of sootiness and rage; nor were the mud and the filth, which he used in that direction with such cruel vigor, weapons which he was unused to handling: poor John Dennis, a poet and critic of that day, had been put in a rage over and over. Lord Hervey had been scarified. Blackmore and Phillips and Bentley had caught his stiletto thrusts; even Daniel Defoe had been subject of his sneers; and {49} so had the bland, courteous Addison. This sensitive, weak-limbed man saw offence where other men saw none; and straightway drew out that flas.h.i.+ng sword of his and made the blood spurt. Of course there were counter-thrusts, and heavy ones, that caused that poor decrepid figure of his to writhe again--all the more because he pretended a stoicism that felt no such attack. To say that he often made his thrusts without reason, and that much of his satire was dastardly, is saying what all the world knows, and what every admirer of his fine powers must lament. But he had his steady friends.h.i.+ps, too, and his tendernesses. Nothing could exceed the kindly consideration and affectionate watchfulness which belonged to his protection and shelter of his old mother, lingering in that poet's faery home of Twickenham till over ninety. A strange, close friends.h.i.+p knit him to Dean Swift, who had seemed incapable of rallying this sensitive man's--or, indeed, any man's--affections. Pope, and Bolingbroke--the brilliant and the courted--were long bound together in very close and friendly communion; the tears of this latter were among the honestest which {50} fell when the poet died. Bishop Warburton, too, was most kindly treated by Pope in all his later years, and to this gentleman most of his books were left. There can be no doubt, also, that the poet felt the tenderest regard for that neighbor of his, Miss Patty Blount, who had grown old beside him, and who used at times to bring her quiet face into the parlors of Twickenham. Pope in his last days would, I think, have seen her oftener--did covertly wish for a sight of that kindly smile, which he had known so long and perhaps had valued more than he had dared to confess. But in those final days she had gone her ways; maybe was grown tired of waiting upon the peevish humors of the poet; certainly was not seen by him more often than a fair neighborly regard would dictate. Yet he left her all his rights there at Twickenham, and much money beside.

[Sidenote: Death of Pope.]

They say that at the last he complained of seeing things dimly--seeing things, too, which others did not see (as the bystanders told him).

”Then, 'twas a vision,” he said. Two days thereafter he entered very quietly upon the visions all men see after death; leaving that poor, scathed, {51} misshapen body--I should think gladly--leaving the pleasant home shaded by the willows he had planted; and leaving a few wonderful poems which I am sure will live in literature as long as books are printed.

[1] Narcisse Luttrel: _A brief historical Relation of State affairs_ from September, 1678, to April, 1714.

[2] George Berkeley, b. 1685; d. 1753. His works (3 vols.) and Life and Letters (1 vol.); edited by Fraser, in 1871. See also very interesting monograph on Berkeley, in Professor Tyler's _Three Men of Letters_, Putnam, 1895.

[3] _An essay toward preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_, 1721.

[4] Dr. Samuel Johnson, afterward, 1754, first President of King's (now Columbia) College, New York; he was a graduate of Yale; life by Dr.

Beardsley.

[5] In 1730, he writes to Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, Ct.: ”Pray let me know whether they [the college authorities] would admit the writings of Hooker and Chillingworth to the Library of the College of New Haven?”

[6] One of his last publications was, ”_Siris: a chain of Philosophical Reflections and inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-water._” And it is remarkable that its arguments and teeming ill.u.s.trations have not been laid hold of by our modern venders of Tar-soap.

[7] Richard Bentley, b. 1662; d. 1742. Native of Oulton, Yorks.h.i.+re.

Was first Boyle Lecturer, 1692; Master of Trinity, 1700; _Works_, edited by Dyce, London, 1836 (only 3 vols. issued of a proposed 8 vol.

edition). _Life_, by Jacob Mahly, Leipsic, 1868.

[8] B. 1732; d. 1811. Best known by his _Memoirs_, 1806; among his plays is _False Impressions_, in which appears Scud, the forerunner of d.i.c.kens's _Alfred Jingle_.

[9] All along the foot-notes in a great Quarto of the _Paradise Lost_ (London, 1732) Bentley's critical pyrotechnics flame, and flare; and he closes a bristling preface with this droll caveat;--”I made [these]

notes _extempore_, and put them to the Press as soon as made; without any Apprehension of growing leaner by Censures, or plumper by Commendations.”

[10] Isaac Watts, b. 1674; d. 1748. _Horae Lyricae_: Memoir by Southey (vol. ix., _Sacred Cla.s.sics_: London, 1834). Lowndes (_Bib. Manual_) says, that up to 1864, there were sold annually 50,000 copies of Watts's Hymns.

[11] B. 1681; d. 1765. Works, with memoir, by J. Mitford. 2 vols., 12mo. London, 1834.

[12] Only _staying_; since the play (of _The Brothers_) was brought out in 1753, some twenty years after his establishment in the rectory of Welwyn.

[13] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, b. 1690 (or 1689?); d. 1762. Works (3 vols.), edited by her great grandson, Lord Wharncliffe: Later edition (1861), with life by Moy Thomas.

[14] Wife of Lord Mar, who was exiled for his engagement in the abortive rebellion of 1715.