Heroes and kings, your distance keep;
In peace let one poor poet sleep,
Who never flattered folks like you:
Let Horace blush, and Virgil too.
By one of those acts which neither science nor curiosity can excuse, the
skull of Pope is now in the private collection of a phrenologist. The
manner in which it was obtained is said to have been this. On some
occasion of alteration in the church, or burial of some one in the same
spot, the coffin of Pope was disinterred, and opened to see the state of
the remains; that by a bribe to the sexton of the time, possession of
the skull was obtained for a night, and _another_ skull returned instead
of it. I have heard that fifty pounds were paid to manage and carry
through this transaction. Be that as it may, the skull of Pope figures
in a private museum.