eminent physician and medical writer, who was at one time remarkable for his obesity and convivial habits. In his work, "The English Malady," he describes his own case-how he reformed, took to a milk diet, then relapsed, swelled out to thirty-two stones weight, and finally reverted to his milk regimen, on which he enjoyed good health till his death in 1748, at the age of seventy-two. In the neighbourhood of Bath (where Cheyne lived and died) the name is pronounced as spelt by Gay, and in some of the journals of that time it is written "Cheney." Tooker, mentioned in stanza xx., is a Devonshire name, the Tookers of Exeter. One John Tooker, of Norton Hall, Somersetshire (of the same family as the Exeter Tookers), was so zealous a Jacobite that he had inscribed on his tomb, "Inconcussæ fidei Jacobita," which remained in Chilcompton Church from 1737 to 1885. With Dennis and Gildon, and Henry Cromwell, mentioned after Maine and Cheney, the reader is already acquainted. 45 Humphrey Wanley [born 1673, died 1726] was librarian to the Earl of Oxford. He was a zealous antiquary, and made considerable collections relative to archeology and bibliography. The following is an amusing letter addressed to Wanley by Pope: "To my worthy and special Friend, Maistre Wanley, dwelling at my singular goode Lord's, my Lord of Oxford, kindly present. "WORTHY SIR,-I shall take it as a singular mark of your friendly disposition and kindnesse to me, if you will recommend to my palate from the experienced taste of yours, a dousaine quartes of goode and wholesome wine, such as yee drink at the Genoa Arms, for the which I will in honourable sort be indebted, and well and truly pay the owner thereof, your said merchant of wines at the said Genoa Arms. As witness this myne hand, which also witnesseth its master to be, in sooth and sincerity of heart, "Goode sir, yours ever bounden, "From Twickenham, this firste of Julie, 1725." "A POPE. 46 Dr. Abel Evans, Oxford, usually called the epigrammatist. He was of St. John's College, and much in the confidence and esteem of Pope. Bowles quotes the epigram made on Evans when, as bursar, he cut down some trees before his College: "The rogue the gallows as his fate foresees, This was made by Dr. Tadlow, a person remarkable for corpulency, upon whom Evans, in retaliation wrote, "When Tadlow treads the streets, the paviors cry, "Tragic Young," mentioned after Evans, was, of course, Edward Young, the poet. 47 Barton Booth, the tragedian [born 1681, died 1733]. Booth eloped from Westminster School, at the age of seventeen, to commence actor. He was highly celebrated in the personation of tragic characters, and was the original Cato in Addison's tragedy. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his widow erected a monumental bust to his memory. NOTES TO GAY'S POEM. 209 48 James Francis Mawbert, a portrait painter. Dallaway says he distinguished himself by copying all the portraits of English poets he could meet with; and that Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, and Pope sat to him. He died in 1746, aged eighty. 49 Philip Frowde, a dramatist, alluded to in Pope's Farewell to London. 50 The Hon. R. Digby. See Pope's Epitaphs. 51 Some of the names in this stanza have been previously introduced-as the Doncastles of Binfield (whose family held the manor of Binfield for two centuries), Counsellor Bickford (of the family of Bickford of Dunsland), and Mr., afterwards Judge, Fortescue, of Fallopit. The Devonshire Fortescues were famous for lawyers-having given a Chief Justice to Ireland, and a Chief Justice to England, besides Pope's friend, the Master of the Rolls. Eckershall, Clerk of the Kitchen to Queen Anne, died at Drayton in 1753, aged seventy-four. The name of Sykes is of Yorkshire renown. Rawlinson was not, we suspect, Thomas Rawlinson, the famous book-collector, but William Rollinson, mentioned in Pope's will, and who was also a friend of Swift and Bolingbroke. This gentleman had been a merchant in London, but retired from business, and lived in Oxfordshire. "Hearty Morley" may have been George Morley, afterwards appointed a commissioner of the lottery. There was a person of the name a writer in the Miscellanies, and also Mr. Morley, husband of the Thalestris of the Rape of the Lock, and sister of Sir George Brown, Berkshire, the Sir Plume of the same poem. Brown took high offence at the manner in which he is drawn in the Rape of the Lock, and Gay does not include him among the poet's friends. Ayrs may be "Squire Ayre," the poet's biographer, who certainly claimed to be acquainted with Pope after the publication of the Essay on Man. Squire Ayre, however, was so very small a man that we think Gay must have meant one of Pope's neighbours, the Eyres of Welford, in Berkshire. Graham is a common name, and identification here is impossible. There were at this time a Thomas Graham, apothecary to the king, and Dr. Graham, warder of the Freemasons; old Colonel Graham, of Bagshot Heath, &c. Buckeridge may have been Mr. Baynting Buckridge, an officer who had been in the East India Company's Service, and who died in 1783. 52 Thomas Stonor, Esq., of Stonor Park, the head of a Catholic family, now represented by Lord Camoys. Mr. Stonor died in 1722, and Pope said he had lost by his death "a very easy, humane, and gentlemanly neighbour." 53 Elijah Fenton, the poet. See Pope's Epitaphs. 54 Perhaps John Ward, the philologist and antiquary, who was appointed Professor of Rhetoric in Gresham College in 1720. 55 The Rev. William Broome, of St. John's College, Cambridge, afterwards associated with Pope in the translation of the Odyssey. Pope must have been highly gratified with this poetical blazon, though death and absence had reduced the roll of friends. Peterborough was then abroad. Parnell had died in 1718, and in a few months this loss was followed by that P of Garth and Rowe. These were early and sincere friends, and the social circle of poets was thus already narrowed, and Time was teaching the prosperous bard of Twickenham one of its sternest and saddest lessons. In another year Addison was gone, and his death must have struck a monitory knell of a deep and solemn tone. Atterbury was next to be severed from him as a State criminal. On the 24th of August, 1722, as the bishop was residing at his deanery, he was arrested on a charge of treasonable correspondence with the Pretender, and was taken, with all his papers, before the Privy Council. Letters, written under feigned names, were produced, the object of which was to obtain a foreign force of 5000 troops, to land under the Duke of Ormond. The publication of Atterbury's correspondence and the Stuart papers has since fully established his criminality, but the evidence against him was slight. Similarity of handwriting was a slender ground of accusation, and Atterbury would make no explanation or acknowledgment to the Privy Council. One seemingly trifling circumstance weighed against him. "There was no doubt that the letters to and from Jones and Illington were of a treasonable nature; the point was to prove that these names were designed for the bishop. Now, it so happened, that Mrs. Atterbury, who died early this year, had a little before received a present from Lord Mar in France of a small spotted dog called Harlequin, and this animal having broken its leg, and being left with one Mrs. Barnes to be cured, was more than once mentioned in the correspondence of Jones and Illington. Mrs. Barnes and some other persons were examined before the Council on this subject, and they, supposing that at all events there could be no treason in a lap-dog, readily owned that Harlequin was intended for the Bishop of Rochester. There were many other collateral proofs, but it was the throwing up this little straw which decisively showed from what quarter blew the wind."18 Atterbury was committed to the Tower, and was so strictly guarded and watched that Pope said even pigeonpies sent to him were opened. "It is the first time," adds the poet, "that dead pigeons have been suspected of conveying intelligence." A bill of pains and penalties enacting 13 Lord Mahon's History of England. BANISHMENT OF ATTERBURY. 211 banishment and deprivation, but without forfeiture of goods, was carried against the bishop in the House of Commons without a division. On the 8th of May, 1723, Atterbury was brought to the House of Lords. He had written to Pope (April 10), that he might call upon the poet to give evidence as to the manner in which he spent his time at the deanery, "which," he added, "did not seem calculated towards managing plots and conspiracies." Pope was accordingly called, but his selfpossession seems to have deserted him. He got nervous and confused, and, as he himself related to Spence, "though I had but ten words to say, and that on a plain point, how the bishop spent his time whilst I was with him at Bromley, I made two or three blunders in it, and that, notwithstanding the first row of lords, which was all I could see, were mostly of my acquaintance." Even Garrick, upon one occasion, though so much accustomed to public appearances, made as indistinct and confused a witness. On the 11th of May, Atterbury entered upon his defence, and delivered an eloquent and argumentative address-in some parts highly pathetic-but without invalidating any essential part of the evidence. The tone of this speech-the bishop's complaints of the proceedings against him by so extraordinary a method as a bill of pains and penalties-the hardships he had undergone in the Tower, and the restrictions which had been put upon his only consolation, the visits of his beloved daughter -all these topics, heightened by strong feeling and artfully blended, render Atterbury's defence not dissimilar in character to the more memorable one of the Earl of Strafford before his accusers of the Long Parliament. The bill passed by a majority of 83 to 43; and his Majesty having given, though reluctantly, his assent, the bishop prepared for his departure to France. Pope had written to him shortly before (April 20), under the impression, then apparent, that the bill would pass, reminding him of the fate of Tully, Bacon, and Clarendon, the disgraced part of whose lives, he said, was now most envied, and was that which he was sure the bishop would choose to have lived. His personal affection for Atterbury was strongly expressed, and the letter concludes with this striking declaration: "Perhaps it will not be in this life only that I shall have cause to remember and acknowledge the friendship of the Bishop of Rochester." The following is Pope's farewell letter: "May 2, 1723. "Once more I write to you, as I promised, and this once, I fear, will be the last! the curtain will soon be drawn between my friend and me, and nothing left but to wish you a long good-night. May you enjoy a state of repose in this life, not unlike that sleep of the soul which some have believed is to succeed it, where we lie utterly forgetful of that world from which we are gone, and ripening for that to which we are to go. If you retain any memory of the past, let it only image to you what has pleased you best; sometimes present a dream of an absent friend, or bring you back an agreeable conversation. But upon the whole, I hope you will think less of the time past than of the future; as the former has been less kind to you than the latter infallibly will be. Do not deny the world your studies; they will tend to the benefit of men against whom you can have no complaint, I mean of all posterity; and perhaps, at your time of life, nothing else is worth your care. What is every year of a wise man's life but a censure or critique on the past? Those whose date is the shortest, live long enough to laugh at one half of it: the boy despises the infant, the man the boy, the philosopher both, and the Christian all. You may now begin to think your manhood was too much a puerility; and you'll never suffer your age to be but a second infancy. The toys and baubles of your childhood are hardly now more below you than those toys of our riper and of our declining years, the drums and rattles of ambition, and the dirt and bubbles of avarice. At this time, when you are cut off from a little society, and made a citizen of the world at large, you should bend your talents not to serve a party, or a few, but all mankind. Your genius should mount above that mist in which its participation and neighbourhood with earth long involved it; to shine abroad and to heaven, ought to be the business and the glory of your present situation. Remember it was at such a time that the greatest lights of antiquity dazzled and blazed the most, in their retreat, in their exile, or in their death: but why do I talk of dazzling or blazing? it was then that they did good, that they gave light, and that they became guides to mankind. "Those aims alone are worthy of spirits truly great, and such I therefore hope will be yours. Resentment indeed may remain, perhaps cannot be quite extinguished, in the noblest minds; but revenge never will harbour there : higher principles than those of the first, and better principles than those of the latter, will infallibly influence men whose thoughts and whose hearts are enlarged, and cause them to prefer the whole to any part of mankind, especially to so small a part as one's single self. "Believe me, my Lord, I look upon you as a spirit entered into |
