for my entertainment, insinuating to me, 'that this was the worst time of the year for provisions; that they were at a great distance from any market; that they were afraid I should be starved; and that they knew they kept me to my loss,' the lady went and left me to her husband-for they took special care I should never be alone. As soon as her back was turned, the little misses ran backwards and forwards every moment; and constantly as they came in or went out, made a courtesy directly at me, which in good manners I was forced to return with a bow, and, Your humble servant, pretty miss.' Exactly at eight the mother came up, and discovered by the redness of her face that supper was not far off. It was twice as large as the dinner, and my persecution doubled in proportion. I desired at my usual hour to go to my repose, and was conducted to my chamber by the gentleman, his lady, and the whole train of children. They importuned me to drink something before I went to bed; and upon my refusing, at last left a bottle of stingo, as they called it, for fear I should wake and be thirsty in the night. I was forced in the morning to rise and dress myself in the dark, because they would not suffer my kinsman's servant to disturb me at the hour I desired to be called. I was now resolved to break through all measures to get away; and after sitting down to a monstrous breakfast of cold beef, mutton, neats'-tongues, venison-pasty, and stale beer, took leave of the family. But the gentleman would needs see me part of my way, and carry me a short-cut through his own grounds, which he told me would save half a mile's riding. This last piece of civility had like to have cost me dear, being once or twice in danger of my neck, by leaping over his ditches, and at last forced to alight in the dirt; when my horse, having slipped his bridle, ran away, and took us up more than an hour to recover him again. It is evident, that none of the absurdities I met with in this visit proceeded from an ill intention, but from a wrong judgment of complaisance, and a misapplication in the rules of it. ALEXANDER POPE. His Johnson, had an open field; he had no English [On Sickness and Death.] In 1737, Pope published, by subscription, a volume of letters between himself and his literary friends. Part of the collection had been previously issued by Curl, a notorious publisher of that day, to whom Pope had, by the agency of other parties, conveyed an edition privately printed. Having, in TO SIR RICHARD STEELE.-July 15, 1712. his assumed character of purveyor of the letters, You formerly observed to me that nothing made a induced Curl to advertise the collection as con- more ridiculous figure in a man's life than the disparity taining letters of certain noblemen, the publisher we often find in him sick and well; thus, one of an was summoned to the House of Lords for breach unfortunate constitution is perpetually exhibiting a of privilege. The volume, however, being examined, miserable example of the weakness of his mind, and of it was found that there was not a single letter from his body, in their turns. I have had frequent opporany nobleman in the collection, and Curll was dis-tunities of late to consider myself in these different missed. Pope had thus secured publicity to the views, and, I hope, have received some advantage by it, publication, and as the letters, he said, had not only if what Waller says be true, that been surreptitiously printed-stolen from private repositories-but altered and interpolated, he appeared justified in issuing a prospectus for a genuine edition. In reality, there was little or no difference between the editions, Pope having prepared both, and neither can be regarded as containing actual correspondence. Swift, however, had retained the letters addressed to himself; the original letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu also existed, and the early correspondence of Pope with Henry Cromwell had previously come into the possession of Curll, and was published. Additions were afterwards made to the collection from other sources, and thus we have a large body of the actual letters written by the wits of the Anne and first Georgian periods. The experiment was new to the public. Pope's epistolary excellence,' says The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made. Then surely sickness, contributing no less than old age to the shaking down this scaffolding of the body, may discover the inward structure more plainly. Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state, and inspires us with the thoughts of a future, better than a thousand volumes of philosophers and divines. It gives so warning a concussion to those props of our vanity, our strength and youth, that we think of fortifying ourselves within, when there is so little dependence upon our outworks. Youth at the very best is but a betrayer of human life in a gentler and smoother manner than age: it is like a stream that nourishes a plant upon a bank, and causes it to flourish and blossom to the sight, but at the same time is undermining it at the root in secret. My youth has dealt more fairly and openly with me; it has afforded several prospects of my danger, and given me an advantage not very common to young men, that the attractions of the world have not dazzled me very much; and I begin, where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures. When a smart fit of sickness tells me this scurvy tenement of my body will fall in a little time, I am even as unconcerned as was that honest Hibernian, who, being in bed in the great storm some years ago, and told the house would tumble over his head, made answer: 'What care I for the house? I am only a lodger.' I fancy it is the best time to die when one is in the best humour; and so excessively weak as I now am, I may say with conscience, that I am not at all uneasy at the thought that many men, whom I never had any esteem for, are likely to enjoy this world after me. When I reflect what an inconsiderable little atom every single man is, with respect to the whole creation, methinks it is a shame to be concerned at the removal of such a trivial animal as I am. The morning after my exit, the sun will rise as bright as ever, the flowers smell as sweet, the plants spring as green, the world will proceed in its old course, people will laugh as heartily, and marry as fast as they were used to do. The memory of man-as it is elegantly expressed in the Book of Wisdom-passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but one day. There are reasons enough, in the fourth chapter of the same book, to make any young man contented with the prospect of death. 'For honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, or is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the gray hair to man, and an unspotted life is old age. He was taken away speedily, lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul,' &c.-I am your, &c. [Pope to Swift-On his Retirement.] January 18, 1714. Whatever apologies it might become me to make at any other time for writing to you, I shall use none now, to a man who has owned himself as splenetic as a cat in the country. In that circumstance, I know by experience a letter is a very useful as well as an amusing thing: if you are too busied in state affairs to read it, yet you may find entertainment in folding it into divers figures, either doubling it into a pyramidical, or twisting it into a serpentine form or if your disposition should not be so mathematical, in taking it with you to that place where men of studious minds are apt to sit longer than ordinary; where, after an abrupt division of the paper, it may not be unpleasant to try to fit and rejoin the broken lines together. All these amusements I am no stranger to in the country, and doubt not, by this time, you begin to relish them in your present contemplative situation. I remember, a man who was thought to have some knowledge in the world used to affirm, that no people in town ever complained they were forgotten by their friends in the country; but my increasing experience convinces me he was mistaken, for I find a great many here grievously complaining of you upon this score. I am told further, that you treat the few you correspond with in a very arrogant style, and tell them you admire at their insolence in disturbing your meditations, or even inquiring of your retreat; but this I will not positively assert, because I never received any such insulting epistle from you. My Lord Oxford says you *It is important to remember that Pope, when he wrote in this manner, was only twenty-four-that is, if we assume the letter to have been actually sent to Steele, which we very much doubt. It seems to be merely a literary essay-part of the fabricated correspondence. 650 have not written to him once since you went; but this perhaps may be only policy in him or you! and I, who am half a Whig, must not entirely credit anything he affirms. At Button's, it is reported you are gone to Hanover, and that Gay goes only on an embassy to you. Others apprehend some dangerous state treatise from your retirement; and a wit, who affects to imitate Balzac, says, that the ministry now are like those heathens of old, who received their oracles from the woods. The gentlemen of the Roman Catholic persuasion are not unwilling to credit me when I whisper, that you are gone to meet some Jesuits commissioned from the court of Rome, in order to settle the most convenient methods to be taken for the coming of the Pretender. Dr Arbuthnot is singular in his opinion, and imagines your only design is to attend at full leisure to the life and adventures of Scriblerus. This, indeed, must be granted of greater importance than all the rest; and I wish I could promise so well of you. The top of my own ambition is to contribute to that great work; and I shall translate Homer by the by. Mr Gay has acquainted you what progress I have made in it. I cannot name Mr Gay without all the acknowledgments which I shall ever owe you on his account. If I writ this in verse, I would tell you, you are like the sun, and, while men imagine you to be retired or absent, are hourly exerting your influence, and bringing things to maturity for their advantage. Of all the world, you are the man-without flattery-who serve your friends with the least ostentation; it is almost ingratitude to thank you, considering your temper; and this is the period of all my letter which, I fear, you will think the most impertinent. I am, with the truest affection, yours, &c. [Pope in Oxford.] To MRS MARTHA BLOUNT.-1716.-A genuine letter slightly altered. Nothing could have more of that melancholy which once used to please me, than my last day's journey; for, after having passed through my favourite woods in the forest, with a thousand reveries of past pleasures, I rid over hanging hills, whose tops were edged with groves, and whose feet watered with winding rivers, listening to the falls of cataracts below, and the murmuring of the winds above; the gloomy verdure of Stonor succeeded to these, and then the shades of the evening overtook me. The moon rose in the clearest sky I ever saw, by whose solemn light I paced on slowly, without company, or any interruption to the range of my thoughts. About a mile before I reached Oxford, all the bells tolled in different notes; the clocks of every college answered one another, and sounded forth-some in deeper, some a softer tone-that it was eleven at night. All this was no ill preparation to the life I have led since among those old walls, venerable galleries, stone porticos, studious walks, and solitary scenes of the university. I wanted nothing but a black gown and a salary, to be as mere a book-worm as any there. I conformed myself to the college-hours, was rolled up in books, lay in one of the most ancient, dusky parts of the university, and was as dead to the world as any hermit of the desert. If anything was alive or awake in me, it ! was a little vanity, such as even those good men used to entertain, when the monks of their own order extolled their piety and abstraction. For I found myself received with a sort of respect, which this idle part of mankind, the learned, pay to their own species; who are as considerable here, as the busy, the gay, and the ambitious are in your world. [Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on the Continent.] [1717.] MADAM-I no more think I can have too many of your letters, than that I could have too many writings to # # [Death of Two Lovers by Lightning.] entitle me to the greatest estate in the world; which to be almost the only innocent man whom he has made I think so valuable a friendship as yours is equal to. to suffer, both by his government at home and his I am angry at every scrap of paper lost, as at something negotiations abroad. that interrupts the history of my title; and though it is but an odd compliment to compare a fine lady to Sibyl, your leaves, methinks, like hers, are too good to be committed to the winds; though I have no other way of receiving them but by those unfaithful messengers. I have had but three, and I reckon in that short one from Dort, which was rather a dying ejaculation than a letter. But I have so great an opinion of your goodness, that had I received none, I should not have accused you of neglect or insensibility. I am not so wrong-headed as to quarrel with my friends the moment they don't write; I'd as soon quarrel at the sun the minute he did not shine, which he is hindered from by accidental causes, and is in reality all that time performing the same course, and doing the same good offices as ever. You have contrived to say in your last the two most pleasing things to me in nature: the first is, that whatever be the fate of your letters, you will continue to write in the discharge of your conscience. This is generous to the last degree, and a virtue you ought to enjoy. Be assured, in return, my heart shall be as ready to think you have done every good thing, as yours can be to do it; so that you shall never be able to favour your absent friend, before he has thought himself obliged to you for the very favour you are then conferring. The other is, the justice you do me in taking what I write to you in the serious manner it was meant; it is the point upon which I can bear no suspicion, and in which, above all, I desire to be thought serious: it would be the most vexatious of all tyranny, if you should pretend to take for raillery what is the mere disguise of a discontented heart, that is unwilling to make you as melancholy as itself; and for wit, what is really only the natural overflowing and warmth of the same heart, as it is improved and awakened by an esteem for you: but since you tell me you believe me, I fancy my expressions have not at least been entirely unfaithful to those thoughts, to which I am sure they can never be equal. May God increase your faith in all truths that are as great as this! and depend upon it, to whatever degree your belief may extend, you can never be a bigot. If you could see the heart I talk of, you would really think it a foolish good kind of thing, with some qualities as well deserving to be half laughed at, and half esteemed, as any in the world: its grand foible, in regard to you, is the most like reason of any foible in nature. Upon my faith, this heart is not, like a great warehouse, stored only with my own goods, with vast empty spaces to be supplied as fast as interest or ambition can fill them up; but it is every inch of it let out into lodgings for its friends, and shall never want a corner at your service; where I dare affirm, madam, your idea lies as warm and as close as any idea in Christendom. * If this distance, as you are so kind as to say, enlarges your belief of my friendship, I assure you it has so extended my notion of your value, that I begin to be impious on your account, and to wish that even slaughter, ruin, and desolation, might interpose between you and Turkey; I wish you restored to us at the expense of a whole people. I barely hope you will forgive me for saying this, but I fear God will scarce forgive me for desiring it. Make me less wicked, then. Is there no other expedient to return you and your infant in peace to the bosom of your country? I hear you are going to Hanover; can there be no favourable planet at this conjuncture, or do you only come back so far to die twice? Is Eurydice once more snatched to the shades? If ever mortal had reason to hate the king, it is I; for it is my misfortune It TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.-September 1 [1717]. I have a mind to fill the rest of this paper with an accident that happened just under my eyes, and has made a great impression upon me. I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt's, which he lent_me.* overlooks a common field, where, under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers, as constant as ever were found in romance, beneath a spreading beech. The name of the one-let it sound as it will-was John Hewet; of the other, Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about five-and-twenty; Sarah, a brown woman of eighteen. John had for several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with Sarah; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighbourhood; for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parents' consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding-clothes; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and fieldflowers to her complexion, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus employed-it was on the last of July-a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, sunk on a haycock, and John-who never separated from her-sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together to secure her. Immediately there was heard so loud a crack as if heaven had burst asunder. The labourers, all solicitous for each other's safety, called to one another: those that were nearest our lovers hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay: they first saw a little smoke, and after, this faithful pair-John with one arm about his Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their bodies, only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed, and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave, where my Lord Harcourt, at my request, has erected a monument over them. Of the following epitaphs which I made, the critics have chosen the godly one: I like neither, but wish you had been in England to have done this office better: I think it was what you could not have refused me on so moving an occasion. When Eastern lovers feed the funeral fire, Think not, by rigorous judgment seized, The house of Stanton Harcourt, in Oxfordshire. Here Pope translated part of the Iliad. He describes the house (though with many fanciful additions) in the subsequent letter, in a style which recalls the grave humour of Addison, and foreshadows the Bracebridge Hall of Washington Irving. A view of the house and of the church beside which were buried the rustic lovers, is on the next page. Live well, and fear no sudden fate : When God calls virtue to the grave, Alike 'tis justice, soon or late, Mercy alike to kill or save. Virtue unmoved can hear the call, And face the flash that melts the ball. Upon the whole, I cannot think these people unhappy. The greatest happiness, next to living as they would have done, was to die as they did. The greatest honour people of this low degree could have, was to be remembered on a little monument; unless you will give them another-that of being honoured with a tear from the finest eyes in the world. I know you have tenderness; you must have it; it is the very emanation of good sense and virtue: the finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the easiest. [Description of an Ancient English Country-seat.] TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. DEAR MADAM-It is not possible to express the least part of the joy your return gives me; time only and experience will convince you how very sincere it is. I excessively long to meet you, to say so much, so very much to you, that I believe I shall say nothing. I have given orders to be sent for, the first minute of your arrival-which I beg you will let them know at Mr Jervas's. I am fourscore miles from London, a short journey compared to that I so often thought at least of undertaking, rather than die without seeing you again. Though the place I am in is such as I would not quit for the town, if I did not value you more than any, nay, everybody else there; and you will be convinced how little the town has engaged my affections in your absence from it, when you know what a place this is which I prefer to it; I shall therefore describe it to you at large, as the true picture of a genuine ancient country-seat. You must expect nothing regular in my description of a house that seems to be built before rules were in fashion the whole is so disjointed, and the parts so detached from each other, and yet so joining again, one cannot tell how, that-in a poetical fit-you would imagine it had been a village in Amphion's time, where twenty cottages had taken a dance together, were all out, and stood still in amazement ever since. A stranger would be grievously disappointed who should ever think to get into this house the right way. One would expect, after entering through the porch, to be let into the hall; alas! nothing less, you find yourself in a brewhouse. From the parlour you think to step into the drawing-room; but, upon opening the iron-nailed door, you are convinced, by a flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of dust in your eyes, that it is the pigeonhouse. On each side our porch are two chimneys, that wear their greens on the outside, which would do as well within, for whenever we make a fire, we let the smoke out of the windows. Over the parlour window hangs a sloping balcony, which time has turned to a very 652 convenient penthouse. The top is crowned with a very venerable tower, so like that of the church just by, that the jackdaws build in it as if it were the true steeple. The great hall is high and spacious, flanked with long tables, images of ancient hospitality; ornamented with monstrous horns, about twenty broken pikes, and a matchlock musket or two, which they say were used in the civil wars. Here is one vast arched window, beautifully darkened with divers scutcheons of painted glass. There seems to be great propriety in this old manner of blazoning upon glass, ancient families being like ancient windows, in the course of generations seldom free from cracks. One shining pane bears date 1286. The youthful face of Dame Elinor owes more to this single piece than to all the glasses she ever consulted in her life. Who can say after this that glass is frail, when it is not half so perishable as human beauty or glory? For in another pane you see the memory of a knight preserved, whose marble nose is mouldered from his monument in the church adjoining. And yet, must not one sigh to reflect that the most authentic record of so ancient a family should lie at the mercy of every boy that throws a stone? In this hall, in former days, have dined gartered knights and courtly dames, with ushers, sewers, and seneschals; and yet it was but the other night that an owl flew in hither and mistook it for a barn. This hall lets you up (and down) over a very high threshold, into the parlour. It is furnished with historical tapestry, whose marginal fringes do confess the moisture of the air. The other contents of this room are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet chairs, with two or three mildewed pictures of mouldy ancestors. These are carefully set at the further corner; for the windows being everywhere broken, make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and mustardseed in, that the room is appropriated to that use. Next this parlour lies, as I said before, the pigeonhouse, by the side of which runs an entry that leads, on one hand and the other, into a bed-chamber, a buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study. Then follow a brew-house, a little green and gilt parlour, and the great stairs, under which is the dairy. A little further on the right, the servants' hall; and by the side of it, up six steps, the old lady's closet, which has a lattice into the said hall, that, while she said her prayers, she might cast an eye on the men and maids. There are upon this ground floor in all twenty-four apartments, hard to be distinguished by particular names; among which I must not forget a chamber that has in it a large antiquity of timber, which seems to have been either a bedstead or a cider-press. Our best room above is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a bandbox; it has hangings of the finest work in the world; those, I mean, which Arachne spins out of her own bowels: indeed, the roof is so decayed, that after a favourable shower of rain, we may, with God's blessing, expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of the floors. All this upper story has for many years had no other inhabitants than certain rats, whose very age renders them worthy of this venerable mansion, for the very rats of this ancient seat are gray. Since these had not quitted it, we hope at least this house may stand during the small remainder of days these poor animals have to live, who are now too infirm to remove to another they have still a small subsistence left them in the few remaining books of the library. ་ I had never seen half what I have described, but for an old starched gray-headed steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in the place, and looks like an old family picture walked out of its frame. He failed not, as we passed from room to room, to relate several memoirs of the family; but his observations were particularly curious in the cellar: he shewed where stood the triple rows of butts of sack, and where were ranged the bottles of tent for toasts in the morning: he pointed to the stands that supported the iron-hooped hogsheads of strong beer; then stepping to a corner, he lugged out the tattered fragment of an unframed picture: 'This,' says he, with tears in his eyes, was poor Sir Thomas, once master of the drink I told you of: he had two sons (poor young masters!) that never arrived to the age of this beer; they both fell ill in this very cellar, and never went out upon their own legs.' He could not pass by a broken bottle without taking it up to shew us the arms of the family on it. He then led me up the tower, by dark winding stone-steps, which landed us into several little rooms, one above another; one of these was nailed up, and my guide whispered to me the occasion of it. It seems the course of this noble blood was a little interrupted about two centuries ago by a freak of the Lady Frances, who was here taken with a neighbouring prior; ever since which the room has been made up. The ghost of Lady Frances is supposed to walk here: some prying maids of the family formerly reported that they saw a lady in a fardingale through the keyhole; but this matter was hushed up, and the servants forbid to talk of it. I must needs have tired you with this long letter; but what engaged me in the description was, a generous principle to preserve the memory of a thing that must itself soon fall to ruin; nay, perhaps, some part of it before this reaches your hands. Indeed, I owe this old house the same gratitude that we do to an old friend that harbours us in his declining condition, nay, even in his last extremities. I have found this an excellent place for retirement and study, where no one who passes by can dream there is an inhabitant, and even anybody that would visit me dares not venture under my roof. You will not wonder I have translated a great deal of Homer in this retreat; any one that sees it will own I could not have chosen a fitter or more likely place to converse with the dead. As soon as I return to the living, it shall be to converse with the best of them. I hope, therefore, very speedily to tell you in person how sincerely and unalterably I am, madam, your, &c. I beg Mr Wortley to believe me his most humble servant. [Pope to Gay-On his Recovery.] 1722. I faithfully assure you, in the midst of that melancholy with which I have been so long encompassed, in an hourly expectation almost of my mother's death, there was no circumstance that rendered it more unsupportable to me than that I could not leave her to see you. Your own present escape from so imminent danger I pray God may prove less precarious than my poor mother's can be, whose life at best can be but a short reprieve, or a longer dying. But I fear even that is more than God will please to grant me; for these two days past, her most dangerous symptoms are returned upon her; and unless there be a sudden change, I must in a few days, if not in a few hours, be deprived of her. In the afflicting prospect before me, I know nothing that can so much alleviate it as the view now given me (Heaven grant it may increase!) of your recovery. In the sincerity of my heart, I am excessively concerned not to be able to pay you, dear Gay, any part of the debt, I very gratefully remember, I owe you on a like sad occasion, when you was here comforting me in her last great illness. May your health augment as fast as, I fear, hers must decline! I believe that would be very fast. May the life that is added to you be passed in good-fortune and tranquillity, rather of your own giving to yourself, than from any expectations or trust in others! May you and I live together, without wishing more felicity or acquisitions than friendship can give God and receive without obligations to greatness! keep you, and three or four more of those I have known as long, that I may have something worth the surviving my mother! Adieu, dear Gay, and believe me (while you live and while I live), your, &c. [Sketch of Autumn Scenery.] TO MR DIGBY.-October 10, 1723. Do not talk of the decay of the year; the season is good when the people are so. It is the best time in the year for a painter; there is more variety of colours in the leaves; the prospects begin to open, through the thinner woods over the valleys, and through the high canopies of trees to the higher arch of heaven; the dews of the morning impearl every thorn, and scatter diamonds on the verdant mantle of the earth; the forests are fresh and wholesome. What would you have? The moon shines too, though not for lovers, these cold nights, but for astronomers. [Pope to Bishop Atterbury, in the Tower.] May 17, 1723. Once more I write to you, as I promised, and this once, I fear, will be the last! The curtain will soon be drawn between my friend and me, and nothing left but to wish you a long good-night. May you enjoy a state 1 The bishop went into exile the following month. |