a Scotchman came to London with scarcely a penny in his pocket, but with strong hope in his heart. He had not money enough to buy himself a pair of shoes, but he had written a poem called 'Winter,' and this poem was not only destined to make the poet's fortune, but to effect a revolution in English poetry. We are apt to forget how much we owe to Thomson, whose landscape, as Mr. Palgrave has well observed, seems conventional to us, "although it startled his contemporaries like a heresy." He led our poets back to the nature which they had long deserted, and in spite of his affectation may be regarded as the poetical ancestor of Cowper. Thomson, who flourished on his genius, and became "more fat than bard beseems," was a near neighbour of the Twickenham poet, who honoured his tragedy of Agamemnon by witnessing its representation on the first night, and had, to quote Dr. Johnson's words, "much regard for Thomson." Thomson's hairdresser relates that when Pope called on his brother bard he usually wore a light-coloured great-coat, which he kept on in the house. "He was (we quote the barber's opinion)" a strange, ill-formed, little figure of a man, but I have heard him and Quin and Patterson talk so together at Thomson's that I could have listened. to them for ever." One of the most interesting

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points in connection with the intimacy that existed between Pope and Thomson is the fact that the elder poet revised the Seasons,' and that his alterations were adopted by the author. In this instance alone did Pope try his hand at blank verse, and certainly, in the passage quoted by Mr. Carruthers, in which Lavinia is compared to a myrtle blooming in the hollow breast of the mountains, "beneath the shelter of encircling hills," Pope has not only produced a beautiful simile, but has proved that he might have been occasionally successful without the aid of rhyme. We say occasionally, for Pope's poetical instrument was as indubitably the heroic couplet, as Paganini's musical instrument was the fiddle.

One of Pope's latest and sincerest friendships was with Spence, "a good-natured harmless little soul," according to Walpole, " but more like a silver penny than a genius." Pope visited the honest clergyman and anecdote-monger at Oxford, and the pleasant letter in which Spence describes the interview to his mother is worth recording. It was written in 1735, nine years before the death of the poet.

"Monday last after dinner, according to the good sauntering custom that I use here every day, I was lolling at a coffeehouse half asleep, and half reading something about Prince Eugene and the armies on the Rhine, when a ragged boy of an ostler came in to me with a little scrap of paper not half an inch

broad, which contained the following words, 'Mr. Pope would be very glad to see Mr. Spence at the Cross Inn just now.' You may imagine how pleased I was; and that I hobbled thither as fast as my spindle-shanks would carry me. There I found him quite fatigued to death, with a thin face lengthened at least two inches beyond its usual appearance. He had been to take his last leave of Lord Peterborough; and came away in a chariot of his lordship's, that holds but one person for quick travelling. When he was got within about three miles of Oxford, coming down a hill in Bagly wood, he saw two gentlemen and a lady sitting in distress by the wayside. Near them lay a chaise overturned, and half broken to pieces; in the fall of which the poor lady had her arm broke. Mr. Pope had the goodness to stop and offer her his chariot to carry her to Oxford for help; and so walked the three miles in the very midst of a close sultry day, and came in dreadfully fatigued. An inn, though designed for a place of rest, is but ill-suited to a man that's really tired; so I prevailed on him to go to my room, where I got him a little dinner, and where he enjoyed himself for two or three hours."

Pope was on terms of familiarity with many persons of noble birth, but he knew his own value too well to be guilty of sycophancy. Sometimes, indeed, there are expressions in his letters which savour of this vice, as when, shortly before his death, he tells the Earl of Marchmont that he desires chiefly to live for his sake; but complimentary phrases such as these were current in polite society, and meant little. Pope," says Dr. Johnson, "never set genius to sale, he never flattered those whom he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem." Mr.

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Carruthers repeats the story that Pope declined the honour of a visit from Queen Caroline, but adds to it this comment :

"Had Pope been ambitious of courtly distinction, he could have had little difficulty in obtaining access to the queen, who was fond of being considered the patroness of learning and genius. He did not affect such honours, but he could never have refused a proffered visit from her Majesty; he would rather have exulted, dressed in his best suit of black velvet, his tie-wig, and small sword, to lead the gracious Caroline round his laurel circus, and through his grotto."

For the sake of friendship he declined another honour more acceptable to a man of letters than a visit from royalty. In 1741, Pope and Warburton visited Oxford together, and it was proposed to confer upon the poet the degree of D.C.L., and upon the divine the title of D.D. Intrigue and envy," according to Bishop Hurd, defeated this scheme for doing honour to Warburton, and Pope resolved to share the fortune of his friend. "I will be doctored with you," he said, "or not at all." He died three years after this, on May 30, 1744, leaving the principal part of his property to Martha Blount for her life. There is a horrible story told in Dr. Johnson's biography, which is not only highly improbable, but appears to lack all evidence. "While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as

he was one day sitting in the air with Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Marchmont, he saw his favourite. Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked Lord Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not liking his errand, crossed his legs and sat still; but Lord Marchmont, who was younger and less captious, waited on the lady, who when he came to her asked, What, is he not dead yet?'"

The unlikelihood of this anecdote is obvious. If Martha had been cold-hearted enough to forget in Pope's last hours the friendship of a lifetime, it is scarcely possible she would have given vent to her feelings before a friend of the poet, at the very moment too in which he was leading her towards him. Mr. Ward does not record this anecdote, and we may therefore conclude does not accept it as genuine. Only a month or two before, Pope had expressed for Martha Blount the most affectionate interest, and we would not willingly believe that his friendship received so ungrateful a return. Where Johnson heard the story we are not told, but it receives no corroboration from Spence, who quotes, as Mr. Carruthers observes, a remark of Warburton's, that it "was very observable during Pope's last illness that Mrs. Blount's coming in gave a new turn of spirits or a temporary strength to him."