THE END.
The last satires were published in 1738. Six years of life still
remained to Pope; his intellectual powers were still vigorous, and his
pleasure in their exercise had not ceased. The only fruit, however, of
his labours during this period was the fourth book of the Dunciad. He
spent much time upon bringing out new editions of his works, and upon
the various intrigues connected with the Swift correspondence. But his
health was beginning to fail. The ricketty framework was giving way, and
failing to answer the demands of the fretful and excitable brain. In the
spring of 1744 the poet was visibly breaking up; he suffered from
dropsical asthma, and seems to have made matters worse by putting
himself in the hands of a notorious quack--a Dr. Thomson. The end was
evidently near as he completed his fifty-sixth year. Friends, old and
new, were often in attendance. Above all, Bolingbroke, the venerated
friend of thirty years' standing; Patty Blount, the woman whom he loved
best; and the excellent Spence, who preserved some of the last words of
the dying man. The scene, as he saw it, was pathetic; perhaps it is not
less pathetic to us, for whom it has another side as of grim tragic
humour.
Three weeks before his death Pope was sending off copies of the Ethic
Epistles--apparently with the Atossa lines--to his friends. "Here I am,
like Socrates," he said, "dispensing my morality amongst my friends just
as I am dying." Spence watched him as anxiously as his disciples watched
Socrates. He was still sensible to kindness. Whenever Miss Blount came
in, the failing spirits rallied for a moment. He was always saying
something kindly of his friends, "as if his humanity had outlasted his
understanding." Bolingbroke, when Spence made the remark, said that he
had never known a man with so tender a heart for his own friends or for
mankind. "I have known him," he added, "these thirty years, and value
myself more for that man's love than--" and his voice was lost in tears.
At moments Pope could still be playful. "Here I am, dying of a hundred
good symptoms," he replied to some flattering report, but his mind was
beginning to wander. He complained of seeing things as through a
curtain. "What's that?" he said, pointing to the air, and then, with a
smile of great pleasure, added softly, "'twas a vision." His religious
sentiments still edified his hearers. "I am so certain," he said, "of
the soul's being immortal, that I seem to feel it within me, as it were
by intuition;" and early one morning he rose from bed and tried to begin
an essay upon immortality, apparently in a state of semi-delirium. On
his last day he sacrificed, as Chesterfield rather cynically observes,
his cock to Æsculapius. Hooke, a zealous Catholic friend, asked him
whether he would not send for a priest. "I do not suppose that it is
essential," said Pope, "but it will look right, and I heartily thank you
for putting me in mind of it." A priest was brought, and Pope received
the last sacraments with great fervour and resignation. Next day, on May
30th, 1744, he died so peacefully that his friends could not determine
the exact moment of death.
It was a soft and touching end; and yet we must once more look at the
other side. Warburton and Bolingbroke both appear to have been at the
side of the dying man, and before very long they were to be quarrelling
over his grave. Pope's will showed at once that his quarrels were hardly
to end with his death. He had quarrelled, though the quarrel had been
made up, with the generous Allen, for some cause not ascertainable,
except that it arose from the mutual displeasure of Mrs. Allen and Miss
Blount. It is pleasant to notice that, in the course of the quarrel,
Pope mentioned Warburton, in a letter to Miss Blount, as a sneaking
parson; but Warburton was not aware of the flash of sarcasm. Pope, as
Johnson puts it, "polluted his will with female resentment." He left a
legacy of 150_l._ to Allen, being, as he added, the amount received from
his friend--for himself or for charitable purposes; and requested Allen,
if he should refuse the legacy for himself, to pay it to the Bath
Hospital. Allen adopted this suggestion, saying quietly that Pope had
always been a bad accountant, and would have come nearer the truth if he
had added a cypher to the figures.
Another fact came to light, which produced a fiercer outburst. Pope, it
was found, had printed a whole edition (1500 copies) of the _Patriot
King_, Bolingbroke's most polished work. The motive could have been
nothing but a desire to preserve to posterity what Pope considered to be
a monument worthy of the highest genius, and was so far complimentary to
Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke, however, considered it as an act of gross
treachery. Pope had received the work on condition of keeping it
strictly private, and showing it to only a few friends. Moreover, he
had corrected it, arranged it, and altered or omitted passages according
to his own taste, which naturally did not suit the author's. In 1749
Bolingbroke gave a copy to Mallet for publication, and prefixed an angry
statement to expose the breach of trust of "a man on whom the author
thought he could entirely depend." Warburton rushed to the defence of
Pope and the demolition of Bolingbroke. A savage controversy followed,
which survives only in the title of one of Bolingbroke's pamphlets, A
Familiar Epistle to the most Impudent Man living--a transparent
paraphrase for Warburton. Pope's behaviour is too much of a piece with
previous underhand transactions, but scarcely deserves further
condemnation.
A single touch remains. Pope was buried, by his own directions, in a
vault in Twickenham church, near the monument erected to his parents. It
contained a simple inscription ending with the words "_Parentibus bene
merentibus filius fecit._" To this, as he directed in his will, was to
be added simply "_et sibi_." This was done; but seventeen years
afterwards the clumsy Warburton erected in the same church another
monument to Pope himself, with this stupid inscription. _Poeta
loquitur._
_For one who would not lie buried in Westminster Abbey._
Heroes and kings, your distance keep!
In peace let one poor poet sleep
Who never flatter'd folks like you;
Let Horace blush and Virgil too.
Most of us can tell from experience how grievously our posthumous
ceremonials often jar upon the tenderest feelings of survivors. Pope's
valued friends seem to have done their best to surround the last scene
of his life with painful associations; and Pope, alas! was an
unconscious accomplice. To us of a later generation it is impossible to
close this strange history without a singular mixture of feelings.
Admiration for the extraordinary literary talents, respect for the
energy which, under all disadvantages of health and position, turned
these talents to the best account; love of the real tender-heartedness
which formed the basis of the man's character; pity for the many
sufferings to which his morbid sensitiveness exposed him; contempt for
the meannesses into which he was hurried; ridicule for the insatiable
vanity which prompted his most degrading subterfuges; horror for the
bitter animosities which must have tortured the man who cherished them
even more than his victims--are suggested simultaneously by the name of
Pope. As we look at him in one or other aspect, each feeling may come
uppermost in turn. The most abiding sentiment--when we think of him as a
literary phenomenon--is admiration for the exquisite skill which enabled
him to discharge a function, not of the highest kind, with a perfection
rare in any department of literature. It is more difficult to say what
will be the final element in our feeling about the man. Let us hope that
it may be the pity which, after a certain lapse of years, we may be
excused for conceding to the victim of moral as well as physical
diseases.
THE END.
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Variant spellings of William Shakspeare's name have been standardized in
the text, but not in the advertisements at the end of the book.
The following words use an oe ligature in the original:
Boeotian
Breboeuf
manoeuvre
manoeuvres
Phoebus
The following corrections have been made to the text:
page 6: Like so many other poets, he took[original has comma]
infinite delight in
page 14: his companions could practice[original has practise]
with comparative impunity
page 17: we have already[original has aleady] reached
page 25: refine as the reasoning faculties develop[original
has develope]
page 50: Addison gave to Lady M. W. Montagu[original has
Montague]
page 51: _Ib._, March[original has comma] 25
page 54: when dying in distress[original has distres]
page 55: Addison recognizes[original has recognises] his true
character
page 66: philologists and antiquarians in the
background[original has back-ground]
page 73: He allows Teucer to call Hector a dog, but
apologizes[original has apologises] in a note.
page 84: for his neglect of Popish superstition[original has
supersition]
page 86: he was familiar[original has familar] with Bridgeman
and Kent
page 125: what the authors would have suppressed[original has
suppresed]
page 125: he was like a civilised[original has civilized]
commander
page 126: either to shirk responsibility[original has
reponsibility]
page 127: and how successive[original has sucessive] editions
page 135: installed Cibber in[original has in in] his place
page 146: was simply a reproduction of[original has comma]
Curll's publication
page 156: ---4[original has 3 spaces preceding the numeral]
page 166: manuscripts seen by Mallet may probably[original has
probable] have been a commonplace book
page 169: But errs not nature from this gracious end,[original
is missing comma]
page 175: more outspoken than himself[original has himseif]
page 192: And fame, the lord of useless thousands
ends.[original is missing period]
page 193: Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men,[comma
missing in original]
page 198: any collection of British poets innumerable pages of
versification[original has verification]
page 199: by the brilliance of his conversation.[original has
comma]
Footnote 19: Pope's Works, vol. i. p.[period missing in
original] cxxi.
Advertising at end of the book:
HUME. By Professor[original has Pofessor] HUXLEY
Burns' [original has Burn's] poetry
SOUTHEY. By Professor[original has Pofessor] DOWDEN.