tioned him afterwards contemptuously in one of his satires, and again in his Epistle to Arbuthnot; and in the fourth book of the "Dunciad," attacked him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable. Perhaps he imagined that, in ridiculing the laureat, he satirised those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious petulance with which he affected to insult the great.

The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. He had confidence enough in his own powers to believe that he could disturb the quiet of his adversary, and doubtless did not want instigators, who, without any care about the victory, desired to amuse themselves by looking on the contest. He therefore gave the town a pamphlet, in which he declares his resolution from that time never to bear another blow without returning it, and to tire out his adversary by perseverance, if he cannot conquer him by strength.

The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a very distant cause. After the "Three "Hours after Marriage" had been driven off the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the audience, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened that Cibber played Bayes in the Rehearsal; and, as it had been usual to enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatri

cal transactions, he said, that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in a mummy and a crocodile. "This," says he, "was received with loud

claps, which indicated contempt of the play." Pope, who was behind the scenes, meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the virulence of a "wit out of his senses;" to which he replied, "that he would take no other notice of what was said "by so particular a man than to declare, that, as of"ten as he played that part, he would repeat the "same provocation."

Of all our poet's writings none were read with more general approbation than his Ethic Epistles, or multiplied into more editions. Mr. Pope, who was a perfect economist, secured to himself the profits arising from his own works; he was never subjected to necessity, and therefore was not to be imposed upon by the art or fraud of publishers.

But now approaches the period in which, as he himself expressed it, he stood in need of the generous tear he paid:

Poets themselves must fall like those they sung;
Deaf the prais'd ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.
Ev'n he whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays.

Mr. Pope, who had been always subjected to a variety of bodily infirmities, finding his strength give way, began to think that his days, which had been prolonged past his expectation, were drawing towards a conclusion. However, he visited the Hot-Wells at Bristol, where, for some time, there were small hopes of his recovery; but making too free with purges, he grew worse, and seemed desirous to draw nearer home. A dropsy in the breast at last put a period to his life at the age of fifty-six, on the 30th of May, 1744, at his house at Twickenham, where he was interred in the same grave with his father and mother.

Mr. Pope's behaviour in his last illness has been variously represented to the world; some have affirmed that it was timid and peevish; that, having been fixed in no particular system of faith, his mind was wavering, and his temper broken and disturbed. Others have asserted that he was all cheerfulness and resignation to the Divine will. Which of these opinions is true we cannot now determine; but if the former, it must be regretted that he who had taught philosophy to others, should himself be destitute of its assistance in the most critical moments of his life.

The bulk of his fortune he bequeathed to Mrs. Blount, with whom he lived in the strictest friendship, and for whom he is said to have entertained the warmest affection. His works, which are in the hands

of every person of true taste, and will last as long as our language will be understood, render unnecessary all further remarks on his writings. He was equally admired for the dignity and sublimity of his moral and philosophical works, the vivacity of his satirical, the clearness and propriety of his didactic, the richness and variety of his descriptive, and the elegance of all, added to a harmony of versification, and correctness of sentiment and language, unknown to our former poets, and of which he has set an example, which will be an example or a reproach to his successors. His prose style is as perfect in its kind as his poetic, and has all the beauties proper for it, joined to an uncommon force and perspicuity.

Under the profession of the Roman catholic religion, to which he adhered to the last, he maintained all the moderation and charity becoming the most thorough and consistent protestant. His conversation was natural, easy, and agreeable, without any affectation of displaying his wit, or obtruding his own judgment, even upon subjects of which he was so eminently a master.

The moral character of our author, as it did not escape the lash of his calumniators in his life, so have there been attempts since his death to diminish his reputation. Lord Bolingbroke, whom Mr. Pope esteemed to almost an enthusiastic degree of admira

tion, was the first to make this attack. Not many years ago the public were entertained with this controversy, immediately upon the publication of his lordship's Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, and the Idea of a Patriot King. Different opinions have been offered; some to extenuate the fault of Mr. Pope for printing and mutilating these letters without his lordship's knowledge; others to blame him for it as the highest breach of friendship, and the greatest mark of dishonour; but it would exceed our proposed bounds to enter into the merits of this controversy.

This great man is allowed to have been one of the first rank amongst the poets of our nation, and to acknowledge the superiority of none but Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden. With the two former it is unnatural to compare him, as their province in writing is so very different. Pope has never attempted the drama, nor published an epic poem, in which these two distinguished geniuses have so wonderfully succeeded. Though Pope's genius was great, it was yet of so different a cast from Shakespeare's and Milton's, that no comparison can be justly formed. But if this may be said of the former two, it will by no means hold with respect to the latter; for between him and Dryden there is a great similarity of writing, and a very striking coincidence of genius. It will not, perhaps, be unpleasing to our readers if we pur