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III. PLAN OF POPE'S GARDEN AND GROTTO, BY J. SEARLE

IV. POPE'S WILL AND ESTATE. Mrs. Rackett opposes the adminis-
tration of the Will. Warburton's Remarks on Martha Blount.
George Arbuthnot's Statement of Pope's Affairs, and Letters on the
subject to Martha Blount. Account of the Rackett Family .
V. RELICS OF POPE. Seal Ring presented to Warburton. Snuff-box
presented to the Rev. A. Pope. Drawing of the Prodigal Son by
Pope in Ketley Parsonage

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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

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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

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19. POPE'S SKETCH OF HIS GROTTO

20. CHAPEL, STANTON HARCOURT

21. DAWLEY, THE SEAT OF LORD BOLINGBROKE

22. PORTRAIT OF ELIJAH FENTON

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23. CROWD OF AUTHORS BESIEGING THE PUBLISHERS TO PRE

VENT THE PUBLICATION OF THE DUNCIAD

24. PORTRAIT OF DR. T. WARTON

25. PORTRAIT OF ARBUTHNOT

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29. POPE SURROUNDED BY HIS FRIENDS, A SHORT TIME BEFORE

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30. PORTRAIT OF LORD LYTTELTON

31. MONUMENT TO POPE IN TWICKENHAM CHURCH

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32. FAC-SIMILE OF THE ONLY FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF POPE . 407

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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

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