But his face was not displeasing, and his eyes were animated and vivid '. By natural deformity or accidental distortion his vital func- 256 tions were so much disordered that his life w › a 'long disease?.' His most frequent assailant was the headach, which he used to relieve by inhaling the steam of coffee, which he very frequently required 3. Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities 257 was communicated by a female domestick of the Earl of Oxford, who knew him perhaps after the middle of life. He was then so weak as to stand in perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of cold, so that he wore a kind of fur doublet under a shirt of very coarse warm linen with fine sleeves. When he rose he was invested in boddice 5 made of stiff canvass, being scarce able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean 7. brown bedight, As is his sister of the copses green, 'His sister' was the nightingale. See ante, POPE, 3. " His eye,' writes Warburton, 'was fine, sharp and piercing.' Warburton, iv. 17. Reynolds, who saw him about 1740, described him as 'about four feet six high; very humpbacked and deformed; he wore a black coat, and had on a little sword. He had a large and very fine eye, and a long handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which always are found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which run across the cheek were so strongly marked as to appear like small cords. His Roubiliac, who made a bust of him Pope wrote to Aaron Hill on 3 Gent. Mag. 1775, P. 435. It is published in ib. Sept. 1775, p.435. Johnson had, however, further sources of information. 5 ['A variant of bodies, the original phrase being a pair of bodies; even with the spelling bodice the word was treated as a plural.' N. E. D.] 6 Ante, POPE, 3n. 7 Pope, in his Letter to a Noble 258 259 260 His hair had fallen almost all away, and he used to dine sometimes with Lord Oxford, privately, in a velvet cap. His dress of ceremony was black, with a tye-wig and a little sword. The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness required had taught him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary man. He expected that every thing should give way to his ease or humour, as a child whose parents will not hear her cry has an unresisted dominion in the nursery. 'C'est que l'enfant toujours est homme, C'est que l'homme est toujours enfant 3.' When he wanted to sleep he 'nodded in company"; and once slumbered at his own table while the Prince of Wales was talking of poetry. The reputation which his friendship gave procured him many invitations; but he was a very troublesome inmate 5. He brought no servant, and had so many wants that a numerous attendance Lord [Hervey], says :-'It is true, 'Poor Pope was so weak and in- Broome thus describes him:- Through av'rice ill-clad, maliciously Johnson, iii. 152. See also ib. p. 1, and Spence's Anec. p. 332. 3 Johnson quotes these lines in a letter to Mrs. Thrale written while he was writing the Life of Pope. John. Lett. ii. 183. 'I nod in company, I wake at night, Fools rush into my head, and so I write.' Imit. Hor., Sat. ii. 1. 13. Lord Marchmont said 'that if the conversation did not take something of a lively or epigrammatic turn he fell asleep, or perhaps pretended to do so.' John. Misc. ii. 4. The old Duchess of Marlborough mentions in 1742 'the disappointment when he falls asleep.' Marchmont Papers, ii. 269. See also Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 12, ix. 508. Warburton (Pope's Works, 1757, ix. 6 n.) speaks of 'his constant custom of sleeping after dinner.' 5 He thanks the second Earl of Oxford for 'the great indulgence you gave me in my variety of negotiations at your house, in my irregular entrances and exits, in my unseasonable suppers and separate breakfasts, and in all my ways.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 316. was scarcely able to supply them. Wherever he was he left no room for another, because he exacted the attention and employed the activity of the whole family. His errands were so frequent and frivolous that the footmen in time avoided and neglected him, and the Earl of Oxford discharged some of the servants for their resolute refusal of his messages. The maids, when they had neglected their business, alleged that they had been employed by Mr. Pope. One of his constant demands was of coffee in the night, and to the woman that waited on him in his chamber he was very burthensome'; but he was careful to recompense her want of sleep, and Lord Oxford's servant declared that in a house where her business was to answer his call she would not ask for wages. He had another fault, easily incident to those who suffering 261 much pain think themselves entitled to whatever pleasures they can snatch. He was too indulgent to his appetite: he loved meat highly seasoned and of strong taste, and, at the intervals of the table, amused himself with biscuits and dry conserves. If he sat down to a variety of dishes he would oppress his stomach with repletion, and though he seemed angry when a dram was offered him, did not forbear to drink it. His friends, who knew Mrs. Fermor, niece to Belinda of The Rape of the Lock, told Mrs. Piozzi that she believed there was but little comfort to be found in a house that harboured poets; ... Mr. Pope's numberless caprices would have employed ten servants to wait on him; and he gave one no amends by his talk neither; for he only sate, dozing all day, when the sweet wine was out, and made his verses chiefly in the night; during which season he kept himself awake by drinking coffee, which it was one of the maids' business to make for him, and they took it by turns.' Piozzi's Journey, &c., i. 20; ante, POPE, 54. 2 Dr. King describes a dinner at Lord Burlington's where' Pope grew sick and left the room.' On his return 'my Lord asked him if he would have some wine, which Pope refused. I told my Lord that he wanted a dram. Upon which the little man expressed some resentment against me. However I persisted. My Lord ordered a large glass of cherry brandy to be set before him. Pope Arbuthnot wrote of him in 1733:- [See also two letters written in 1738 by W. Kent (most likely the artist). June 27; Pope... last night came to me about 8 o'clock in liquor and would have more wine. Nov. 28; My service to Mr. Bethell and tell him his friend Pope is the greatest glutton I know. He now talks of the many good things he can make; he told me of a soup that must be seven hours a making; he dined with Mr. Murray and Lady Betty, and was very drunk last Sunday night.' Hist. MSS. Com. ii. App. p. 19.] 262 263 the avenues to his heart, pampered him with presents of luxury, which he did not suffer to stand neglected. The death of great men is not always proportioned to the lustre of their lives. Hannibal, says Juvenal, did not perish by a javelin or a sword; the slaughters of Cannæ were revenged by a ring'. The death of Pope was imputed by some of his friends to a silver saucepan, in which it was his delight to heat potted lampreys 2. That he loved too well to eat is certain; but that his sensuality shortened his life will not be hastily concluded when it is remembered that a conformation so irregular lasted six and fifty years 3, notwithstanding such pertinacious diligence of study and meditation. In all his intercourse with mankind he had great delight in artifice, and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected methods. 'He hardly drank tea without a stratagem. If at the house of his friends he wanted any accommodation he was not willing to ask for it in plain terms, but would mention it remotely as something convenient; though, when it was procured, he soon made it appear for whose sake it had been recommended. Thus he teized Lord Orrery till he obtained a screen. He practised his arts on such small occasions that Lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that 'he plaid the politician about cabbages and turnips". His unjustifiable impression of The Patriot King, as it can be imputed I Satires, x. 163. 2 Lord Bathurst in 1734 wrote to Mrs. Howard of Pope :- He makes himself sick every meal at your most moderate and plain table in England.' [Letters of Henrietta Countess of Suffolk, 1712-1767, ed. 1824, vol. ii. p. 81.] 'He certainly hastened his death by feeding much on high-seasoned dishes and drinking spirits.' DR. KING, Anec. p. 13. 3 He came of a long-lived stock. His father died at seventy-five and his mother in her ninety-first year. Spence's Anec. p. 289 n.; ante, POPE, 161 n. scription of Pope; that "he was un Addison, writing of the project 1 to no particular motive, must have proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning: he caught an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought of outwitting Bolingbroke'. In familiar or convivial conversation it does not appear that he 264 excelled 2. He may be said to have resembled Dryden3, as being not one that was distinguished by vivacity in company. It is remarkable that, so near his time, so much should be known of what he has written, and so little of what he has said: traditional memory retains no sallies of raillery nor sentences of observation; nothing either pointed or solid, either wise or merry. One apophthegm only stands upon record. When an objection raised against his inscription for Shakespeare was defended by the authority of Patrick, he replied,-'horresco referens "'—that 'he would allow the publisher of a Dictionary to know the meaning of a single word, but not of two words put together". 'Ante, POPE, 252; post, 287. 2 Swift wrote to Gay in 1732:'Your inattention I cannot pardon. Yet Mr. Pope has the same defect, and it is of all others the most mortal to conversation. Neither is my Lord Bolingbroke untinged with it; all for want of my rule, Vive la bagatelle. But the doctor [Arbuthnot] is the king of inattention.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 276. See ante, Swift, 90 n., for the lines beginning: Pope has the talent well to speak.' 'Pope in conversation was below himself; he was seldom easy and natural, and seemed afraid that the man should degrade the poet, which made him always attempt wit and humour, often unsuccessfully, and too often unseasonably.' CHESTERFIELD, Misc. Works, iv. App. 15. 'Lord Somerville told me, that he had dined in company with Pope, and that after dinner the little man, as he called him, drank his bottle of Burgundy, and was exceedingly gay and entertaining.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 50. 'Lord Bathurst, Lord Lyttelton, and Mr. Spence have assured me that among intimates Pope had an admirable talent for telling a story. In great companies he avoided speak 7 'Dr. Mead objected to the Latinity of amor publicus, on the authority of Patrick, the dictionarymaker; to which Pope well replied, "that he would allow a dictionarymaker to understand a single word, but not two words put together."' Ruffhead's Pope, p. 205. 'Mead, who was a judge of pure Latinity, ended the controversy by giving up his opinion, and saying to Pope: "Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus [VIRGIL, Ecl. x. 69.] In a public inscription at Rheims Racine used amor publicus in the very same sense. I believe both poets were wrong.' WARTON, Essay, ii. 389. Pope's inscription ran:-'Guliel- Johnson writes in the Plan of an |