by this Concern, who was the true Mother of the Child! When he was almost choked with the foam of his Passion, I was enough recover'd from my Amazement to make him (as near as I can remember) this Reply, viz. 'Mr. Pope You are so particular a Man, that I must be asham'd to return your Language as I ought to do: but since you have attacked me in so monstrous a Manner, This you may depend upon, that as long as the Play continues to be acted, I will never fail to repeat the same Words over and over again.' Now, as he accordingly found I kept my Word, for several Days following, I am afraid he has since thought that his Pen was a sharper Weapon than his Tongue to trust his Revenge with. And however just Cause this may be for his so doing, it is at least, the only Cause my Conscience can charge me with."1 In this gossiping pamphlet Cibber also tells us that, many years before, Lord Wharton, himself, and "another gentleman still in being," "slily seduced the celebrated Mr. Pope" to a certain house of bad character near the Haymarket, and relates, with the most provoking circumstantiality, a ludicrous adventure which there befell our poet.2

Pope now inflicted on the unblushing Colley the severest chastisement that his angry muse I could devise. He removed Theobald from the

1 A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, &c. p. 17.
2 Ibid. p. 46.

"bad eminence" which he had so long held in The Dunciad, and elevated Cibber to the throne. In 1743, was published The Dunciad, in four Books, printed according to the complete copy found in the year 1742, with the Prolegomena of Scriblerus and Notes Variorum. To which are added several Notes now first published, the Hypercritics of Aristarchus, and his Dissertation on the Hero of the Poem: the long Discourse of Aristarchus and many of the notes were from the pen of Warburton. The change of heroes was not made without injury to the poem: lines which gave a just description of the character and pursuits of Theobald, were altogether inapplicable to those of Cibber. There was propriety in painting the former as

"Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound;"

but the author of The Careless Husband was subject to no such fits of cogitation. Theobald was a book collector, and fond of antiquarian literature; but the library of Colley certainly contained nothing1

"Imprinted at the antique dome

Of Caxton or De Worde."

Another occasional letter from Mr. Cibber to

1 Pope was obliged to say, that Bays "furnished his shelves only for ornament, and read these books no more than the dry bodies of divinity, which, no doubt, were purchased by his father, when he designed him for the gown."-Note on B. I. v. 147.

Mr. Pope, wherein the new hero's preferment to his throne seems not to be accepted, and the author of that poem his more rightful claim to it asserted. With an expostulatory address to the Rev. M. W. W- -n, author of the new preface, and adviser in the curious improvements of that Satire, appeared in 1744.

A misunderstanding which, towards the end of Pope's life, took place between him and Mr. Allen, at the mansion of the latter, is said by Ruff head and others to have originated in the arrogant behaviour of Martha Blount, who formed one of the party, towards Mrs. Allen. But in a letter to Martha, on the subject of this quarrel, (dated 1742), Pope completely exculpates her; "I was," he observes, "wholly the unhappy cause of it;" a declaration which agrees with the account of the affair given by the lady to Spence. The friendly intercourse of Pope and Allen was only for a while interrupted.2

1"I have heard Mr. Richardson relate, that he attended his father the painter on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the hands of Pope, who said, 'These things are my diversion.' They sat by him while he perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope."-Johnson's Life of Pope.

2 In Pope's Will (appended to this Memoir) is what Johnson calls "the petulant and contemptuous mention of Mr. Allen, and the affected repayment of his benefactions;' and according to him and most of Pope's biographers, it

The kindness of our author towards Savage, who terminated his wild career in 1743, ought not to be passed over in silence: when the other friends of that unprincipled man had deserted him in disgust, the bounty of Pope was not withheld from him.

In

The health of the illustrious subject of this memoir had been for some time declining. addition to the headaches with which he had been more or less afflicted during his whole life, he had of late years laboured under an asthma, occasioned by dropsy in the breast. He now felt unequal to any new poetical attempts, and chiefly occupied himself in preparing, with the assistance of Warburton, a corrected edition of his works. In a letter to that faithful friend (printed without date, but written in 1744) he says: "Whatever little respites I have had from the daily care of my malady, have been employed in revising the papers On the use of Riches, which I would have ready your last revise against you come to town, that they may be begun with while you are here. I own the late encroachments upon my constitution make me willing to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest for the

for

arose from the refusal of Martha Blount to accept "any legacy from Pope unless he left the world with a disavowal of obligation to Allen." She, however, expressly told Spence; "I had never read his will; but he mentioned to me the part relating to Mr. Allen, and I advised him to omit it, but could not prevail on him to do so.”—Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 357.

one, in a full resignation of my being, to be disposed of by the Father of all mercy; and for the other (though indeed a trifle, yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted and malevolent critic, or inadvertent and censorious reader. And no hand can set them in so good a light, or so well turn their best side to the day, as your own. This obliges me to confess, I have for some months thought myself going, and that not slowly, down the hill. The rather, as every attempt of the physicians, and still the last medicines, more forcible in their nature, have utterly failed to serve me. I was at last, about seven days ago, taken with so violent a fit at Battersea, that my friends Lord M. [Marchmont] and Lord B. [Bolingbroke] sent for present help to the surgeon, whose bleeding me, I am persuaded, saved my life, by the instantaneous effect it had; and which has continued so much to amend me, that I have passed five days without oppression, and recovered, what I have three months wanted, some degree of expectoration, and some hours together of sleep."

Apprehensions of the invasion of the Pretender caused government about this time to issue a proclamation, forbidding Roman Catholic subjects to approach within ten miles of the metropolis. To this Pope alludes in a letter to Mr. Allen, March 6, 1744: "I thank you very kindly for