Ranelagh in a coach with a lady who was obliged to sit upon a stool placed in the bottom of the coach, the height of her head-dress not allowing her to occupy the regular seat.

Lady

Their tight lacing was equally absurd. Crewe told me, that, on returning home from Ranelagh, she has rushed up to her bed-room, and desired her maid to cut her laces without a moment's delay, for fear she should faint.

Doctor Fordyce sometimes drank a good deal at dinner. He was summoned one evening to see a lady patient, when he was more than half-seas-over, and conscious that he was so.

Feeling her pulse,

count its beats, he

and finding himself unable to muttered, "Drunk, by God!" Next morning, recollecting the circumstance, he was greatly vexed: and just as he was thinking what explanation of his behaviour he should offer to the lady, a letter from her was put into his hand. "She too well knew," said the letter, "that he had discovered the unfortunate condition in which she was when he last visited her; and she entreated him to keep the mat

ter secret in consideration of the enclosed (a hundredpound bank-note)."

I have several times talked to a very aged boatman on the Thames, who recollected "Mr. Alexander Pope." This boatman, when a lad, had frequently assisted his father in rowing Pope up and down the river. On such occasions Pope generally sat in a sedan-chair.

When I first began to publish, I got acquainted with an elderly person named Lawless,* shopman of Messrs. Cadell and Davies the booksellers. Lawless told me, that he was once walking through Twickenham, accompanied by a friend, and a little boy the son of that friend. On the approach of a very diminutive, misshapen, and shabbily-dressed person, the child drew back half-afraid. "Don't be alarmed,"

*This Lawless (as I was informed by Mr. Maltby,-see notice prefixed to the Porsoniana, in this vol.) used daily to eat his dinner in the shop, placing a large folio before him so as to conceal his plate. Often, to his great annoyance, just as he was beginning his meal, Gibbon would drop in, and ask a variety of questions about books. One day, Lawless, out of all patience at the interruption, exclaimed from behind the folio, "Mr. Gibbon, I'm at dinner, and can't answer any questions till I have finished it."-ED.

"A

said Lawless; "it is only a poor man."-" A poor man!" cried his friend: "why, that is Mr. Alexan

der Pope."

Lawless also told me that he had been intimate with the waiting-maid of Pope's beloved Martha Blount. According to the maid's account, her mistress was one of the best-natured and kindest persons possible: she would take her out in the carriage to see sights, &c. &c.

Long ago, when Pope's villa was for sale, I had a great wish to buy it; but I apprehended that it would fetch a much larger sum than it did; and moreover I dreaded the epigrams, &c., which would certainly have been levelled at me, if it had become mine. The other day, when the villa was finally dismantled, I was anxious that the obelisk erected. by Pope to his mother's memory should be placed in the gardens at Hampton Court, and I offered to contribute my mite for that purpose:-but, no!and the obelisk is now at Gopsall, Lord Howe's seat in Leicestershire.

There are at Lord Bathurst's a good many unpublished letters of Pope, Bolingbroke, &c., which I have turned over. In one of them Bolingbroke says

that he has no desire to "wrestle with a chimneysweeper," that is, Warburton.-Lady Bathurst promised to send me some of Pope's letters: instead of which, she sent me a packet of letters from Queen Mary to King William, in which he is addressed as her "dear husban.'

In Pope's noble lines To the Earl of Oxford, prefixed to Parnell's Poems, there is an impropriety which was forced upon the poet by the rhyme;

"The Muse attends thee to thy silent shade:

She waits, or to the scaffold or the cell,

When the last lingering friend has bid farewell."

It should be, of course,

fold."

"or to the cell or the scaf

* "Lord Bathurst has lent me a very entertaining collection of original letters, from Pope, Bolingbroke, Swift, Queen Mary, &c., and has promised to make me a present of any thing I like out of them. I cannot say these communications have given me a very great idea of Queen Mary's head; but her heart, I am persuaded, was a very good one. The defect must have been in her education; for such spelling and such English I never saw; romantic and childish too, as to sentiment. My reverence for her many virtues leads me to hope she was very young when she wrote them." Letter of Hannah More, in her Memoirs, &c. vol. i. 358, third ed.-ED.

Pope has sometimes a beautiful line rhyming to a very indifferent one. For instance, in the Epistle

to Jervas,

66

Alas, how little from the grave we claim !

Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name :"

the latter line is very good: in the former, "claim" is forced and bad; it should have been "save" or "preserve." Again, in the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,

"A heap of dust alone remains of thee;

"Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be,"

the former line is touching, the latter bad.

What a charming line is that in The Rape of the

Lock!

"If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you'll forget them all.”

These verses in his Imitation of the Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace (verses which Lord Holland is so fond of hearing me repeat) are as good as any in Horace himself;

"Years following years, steal something every day,

At last they steal us from ourselves away;