CONTENTS. Publication of the Pastorals and Essay on Criticism. Letters to Ad- dison and Steele. Acquaintance with Teresa and Martha Blount. Windsor Forest. Acquaintance with Swift, Arbuthnot, Parnell, etc. Removal from Binfield to Chiswick. Quarrels with Curll and Cibber. PAGE Correspondence with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Completion of the Translation of the Iliad, and Gay's Congratulatory Poem. Ba- Epistles and Essay on Man. Death of Gay, of Pope's Mother, and of Arbuthnot. Publication by Curll of Pope's Correspondence. Last I. MAPLEDURHAM MANUSCRIPTS. Case of Richard Savage. Letters II. LETTERS OF VOITURE'S PUBLISHED AS POPE'S. Note by Douce, III. PLAN OF Pope's Garden anD GROTTO, BY J. SEARLE IV. POPE'S WILL AND ESTATE. Mrs. Rackett opposes the adminis- ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. PORTRAIT OF POPE-Frontispiece. 2. POPE'S TOWER, MAPLEDURHAM-Title-page. 3. PORTRAIT OF MRS. POPE 4. POPE'S HOUSE AT BINFIELD 5. POPE (WHEN YOUNG) FIRST SEES DRYDEN AT WILL'S COFFEE-HOUSE to face 6. POPE AND SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS IN AN AUCTION ROOM 7. PORTRAIT OF WYCHERLEY 8. PORTRAIT OF WALSH 9. PORTRAIT OF TONSON 10. PORTRAIT OF DENNIS, BY HOGARTH 11. MAPLEDURHAM HOUSE 12. PORTRAIT OF ADDISON 13. BUSHY PARK 14. PORTRAIT OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU 15. POPE AND MARY LEPELL 16. FAC-SIMILE OF POPE'S HANDWRITING 17. PORTRAIT OF ATTERBURY 18. POPE'S VILLA 19. POPE'S SKETCH OF HIS GROTTO 20. CHAPEL, STANTON HARCOURT 21. DAWLEY, THE SEAT OF LORD BOLINGBROKE 22. PORTRAIT OF ELIJAH FENTON PAGE 11 14 64. 91 132 134 to face 135 161 162 167 175 185 227 233 22 23 31 34 47 51 23. CROWD OF AUTHORS BESIEGING THE PUBLISHERS TO PRE- 25. PORTRAIT OF ARBUTHNOT 26. VIEW IN BATH 27. POPE AT LORD COBHAM'S, AT STOWE 28. POPE ON THE THAMES, AT TWICKENHAM 29. POPE SURROUNDED BY HIS FRIENDS, A SHORT TIME BEFORE to face 264 299 310 369 to face 376 to face 381 31. MONUMENT TO POPE IN TWICKENHAM CHURCH 32. FAC-SIMILE OF THE ONLY FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF POPE to face 388 402 PAGE LIFE OF POPE. CHAPTER I. [1688-1708.] POPE'S BIRTH, FAMILY, AND EDUCATION. HIS EARLY FRIENDS, SIR WILLIAM TRUMBULL, WYCHERLEY, WALSH, AND HENRY CROMWELL. THE death of Dryden, on the 1st of May, 1700, left the poetical throne of England vacant, with no prospect of an immediate or adequate successor. His dominion had often been disputed, and was assailed to the last; but as every year strengthened his claims, and as the latter portion of his life was the most rich and glorious of his literary career, his adversaries ultimately withdrew or became powerless, and his supremacy was firmly established. The magnificent funeral of the poet, though a gaudy and ill-conducted pageant, had a moral that penetrated through the folds of ceremony-it was a public recognition of merits which every effort of envy, faction, and caprice, had been employed to thwart and contemn. And posterity has amply ratified this acknowledgment of the services of the great national poet. Dryden inherited the faults and vices of his age, and he wanted the higher sensibilities, the purity of taste, and lofty moral feeling that dignify the poet's art. But even when sinning with his contemporaries he soared far above them, and his English nature at length overcame his French tastes and the fashion of the Court. His sympathies had a wider and nobler range; his conceptions were clear and masculine; and no one approached him in command of the stores of our language-whether B |