"Telum imbelle fine i&tu." From this time, notwithstanding all his former profeffions, Pope waged unceafing war with his firft antagonist, till he lay in decrepitude and forrow, vanquished at his feet.

He now fat down, apparently in lofty tranquillity, under his poetic laurels. At this time, if ever, he might truly say,

"All the din the diftant world can keep,

"Rolls o'er my grotto, and but fooths my fleep."

But there were other feelings ftill rankling at his heart, that neither time nor fuccefs could heal: these were the long-nourished animofities against the woman he once adored, and her chief companion and favourite, Lord Hervey.

*

The first public attack on Lord Hervey we have feen was in the Bathos. He was exhibited again, as fome imagine, in the Dunciad, where it is said,

"Room for my Lord, &c."

After

* Lord Hervey wrote memoirs of his own times, with ftrict injunctions that they were not to be published until the decease of his prefent Majefty. They are contained in two thick quarto volumes MS., and are now in the poffeffion of Lord Hervey's fon, General Hervey, and will be published as foon as the event mentioned takes place. Lord Hervey also wrote a farce, the subject of which was the fuppofed account of his death, as received by Queen Caroline and her Maids of Honour, &c. in which her Majefty's character, and those of her attendants, are accurately displayed.

- After this provocation, neither his Lordship nor the Lady were filent; but the great and long-meditated attack was not made till fome time afterwards.

Pope, in a letter to Craggs, written not long after Dennis's pamphlet against the " Effay," fays, he did not know Dennis was perfecuted by fortune. This was faid handsomely, and the old man had been appeased; and far from being, as Johnson says, the "perpetual perfecutor of his ftudies," the criticifm, which he wrote on the first appearance of the Rape of the Lock, was fuppreffed, and never would have appeared probably, if Pope had not provoked it.

The publication of the Dunciad feemed to fet the mind of Pope in fome degree at ease, except in the inftances we have mentioned. He had proceeded leifurely on the great moral plans he had projected, the chief of which was the Effay on Man, begun fo early as 1725.

The return of Bolingbroke to England (1726), and the converfations in the gården and the grot, which is described as the place where the

"Nobly-penfive St. John fat and thought,"

tended to promote the maturity of this work.

Bolingbroke, as he could not illuminate the world by politicks, was refolved to do it with philofophy. Pope was the harmonist, whilft the "nobly-penfive St. John" dictated the subject, which, in its new and

more

more captivating drefs, was now prefented to the public.

I need not repeat that the three books, in confe quence of the fears excited from the hoftility of the numerous authors he had provoked, were publifhed anonymoufly.

The fourth book was avowed, with the confcious pride, that

"He ftoop'd to truth, and moralis'd his fong.”

The Moral Epiftles, which, he wished to perfuade himself, formed a part of a great general plan, were separately finished and published.

The firft which appeared, though it now ftands the fourth in the volume, was the Epistle to Lord Burlington, in 1731, the occafion of much obloquy, as Pope was considered, after the pointed fatire on Cannons, injurious and ungrateful: injurious, in making a direct attack on a benevolent, though oftentatious nobleman; and ungrateful, as having himfelf partaken of the hospitality, if not of the bounty, of the liberal poffeffor of Cannons.

All things confidered, in the firft inftance, no great blame can furely attach to Pope: his fubject was pub lic, and the imperial fopperies of the Duke of Chandos were public. The "False Tafte" (under which title the Epiftle firft appeared) was, as far as taste could be concerned, a public evil; the correction of it, a public good.

The

The perfonality, the hofpitality, as it was univerfally fuppofed, ungratefully returned; the general character of kindness and benevolence which the Duke of Chandos preferved; and the paltry equivocation that Pope afterwards made ufe of, were the circumftances that injured him in the public efteem.

At the fame time, I must confefs my opinion, that Pope, as he was before made little less than a tool by Bolingbroke, became, in this inftance, the echo of Burlington, Bathurst, Cobham, &c. who were piqued that a nobleman, whose great wealth was acquired from his having been paymafter to the army, fhould rival them in pretenfions to tafte, and totally eclipse them in fplendour and magnificence.

The entrance fteps, each of which was one folid piece of the most beautiful marble; the doors, which were faid to turn on golden hinges; the princely array of domestic retinue at Cannons, were fuch that, in the opinion of the multitude, the woods of Cirencefter, the temples at Stowe, and the Palladian designs of Chifwick, hid "their diminished heads."

Lord Burlington, notwithstanding Pope's laboured letter to him, was always, it is understood, ready to acknowledge whofe house and gardens were meant, and whofe character was intended to be ridiculed under the name of Timon.

In fact, HE was the perfon moft gratified.This feems evident from the caricature by Hogarth,

in which Pope is represented as white-washing Chiswick House, while the Duke of Chandos's carriage, paffing, is befpattered with dirt.

Some circumstances respecting Cannons may be here more particularly mentioned.

As every thing at this magnificent villa was intended to bear the air of regal state, there was an establishment for the chapel, (memorable for its "filver bell,") of which there was no example in England, fo that the fatire could no where else apply.

Here, according to Dr. Burney, the "cathedral service was daily performed by a choir of voices and inftruments, fuperior in number and excellence to that of any sovereign Prince in Europe." Here, also, it was, fays the fame author, that "Handel produced, besides his anthems, the chief part of his hautbois concertos, fonatas, leffons, and organ fugues."

These last seem evidently to be alluded to, when Pope, who had no ear, fays,

"Light quirks of music, broken and uneven.”

Though this is very far from being characteristic of the fublime and unrivalled ftrains of Handel, yet to an uncultivated ear the organ fugues might no doubt feem fuch as is defcribed.

There is only one circumftance in Pope's defcription, which did not apply to Cannons: it is said,

"On every fide you look, behold a wall!"

VOL. I.

This