LETTER XCVII.

MR. POPE TO THE REV. MR. BROOME, PULHAM,

NORFOLK.

DEAR SIR,

August 29, 1730.

I INTENDED to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of Mr. Fenton, before yours came; but stayed to have informed myself and you of the circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a gradual decay, though so early in life, and was declining for five or six months. It was not, as I apprehended, the gout in his stomach, but I believe rather a complication first of gross humours, as he was naturally corpulent, not discharging themselves, as he used no sort of exercise. No man better bore the approaches of his dissolution (as I am told) or with less ostentation yielded up his being. The great modesty which you know was natural to him, and the great contempt he had for all sorts of vanity and parade, never appeared more than in his last moments: he had a conscious satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, in feeling himself honest, true, and unpretending to more than was his own. So he died, as he lived, with that secret, yet sufficient content

ment.

As to any papers left behind him, I dare say they can be but few; for this reason, he never wrote out of vanity, or thought much of the ap

plause of men. I know an instance where he did his utmost to conceal his own merit that way; and if we join to this his natural love of ease, I fancy we must expect little of this sort: at least I hear of none except some few further remarks on Waller, (which his cautious integrity made him leave an order to be given to Mr. Tonson,) and perhaps, though it is many years since I saw it, a translation of the First Book of Oppian. He had begun a tragedy of Dion, but made small progress in it.

As to his other affairs, he died poor, but honest, leaving no debts or legacies; except of a few pounds to Mr. Trumbull and my Lady, in token of respect, gratefulness, and mutual esteem.

I shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet, deserving, unpretending, Christian and philosophical character, in his epitaph.* There truth may be spoken in a few words: as for flourish, and oratory, and poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively writers, such as love writing for writing sake, and would rather show their own fine parts, than report the valuable ones of any other man. So the elegy I renounce.

I condole with you from my heart, on the loss of so worthy a man, and a friend to us both. Now he is gone, I must tell you he has done you many a good office, and set your character in the fairest light, to some who either mistook you, or knew

This Pope has done, in a manner that perfectly accords with the character given of Fenton in this letter.

you not. I doubt not he has done the same for

me.

Adieu: Let us love his memory, and profit by his example. Am very sincerely, dear Sir,

Your affectionate

and real servant.

LETTER XCVIII.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

Sept. 11, 1730.

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MAY with great truth return your speech, that I think of you daily; oftener indeed than is consistent with the character of a reasonable man, who is rather to make himself easy with the things. and men that are about him, than uneasy for those which he wants. And you, whose absence is in a manner perpetual to me, ought rather to be remembered as a good man gone, than breathed after as one living. You are taken from us here, to be laid up in a more blessed state, with spirits of a higher kind: such I reckon his Grace and her Grace since their banishment from an earthly court to a heavenly one, in each other and their friends; for, I conclude, none but true friends will consort or associate with them afterwards. I cannot but look upon myself (so unworthy as a man of Twit'nam seems, to be ranked with such rectified and sublimated beings as you) as a separated spirit too

from courts and courtly fopperies; but, I own, not altogether so divested of terrene matter, not altogether so spiritualized, as to be worthy of admission to your depths of retirement and contentment. I am tugged back to the world and its regards too often; and no wonder, when my retreat is but ten miles from the capital. I am within ear-shot of reports, within the vortex of lies and censures. I hear sometimes of the lampooners of beauty, the calumniators of virtue, the jokers at reason and religion. I presume these are creatures and things as unknown to you, as we of this dirty orb are to the inhabitants of the planet Jupiter; except a few fervent prayers reach you on the wings of the post, from two or three of your zealous votaries at this distance; as one Mrs. H. who lifts up her heart now and then to you, from the midst of the colluvies and sink of human greatness at W-r; one Mrs. B. that fancies you may remember her while you lived in your mortal and too transitory state at Petersham; one Lord B., who admired the Duchess before she grew a goddess; and a few others.

To descend now to tell you what are our wants, our complaints, and our miseries here, I must seriously say, the loss of any one good woman is too great to be borne easily and poor Mrs. Rollinson, though a private woman, was such. Her husband is gone into Oxfordshire very melancholy, and thence to the Bath, to live on, for such is our fate and duty. Adieu. Write to me as often as you

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will, and (to encourage you) I will write as seldom as if you did not. Believe me,

Your, &c.

DEAR SIR,

LETTER XCIX.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

October 1, 1730.

AM something like the sun at this season, withdrawing from the world, but meaning it mighty well, and resolving to shine whenever I can again. But I fear the clouds of a long winter will overcome me to such a degree, that any body will take a farthing candle for a better guide, and more serviceable company. My friends may remember my brighter days, but will think (like the Irishman) that the moon is a better thing when once I am gone. I do not say this with any allusion to my poetical capacity as a son of Apollo, but in my companionable one, (if you will suffer me to use a phrase of the Earl of Clarendon's,) for I shall see or be seen of few of you this winter. I am grown too faint to do any good, or to give any pleasure. I not only, as Dryden finely says, feel my notes decay as a poet, but feel my spirits flag as a companion, and shall return again to where I first began, my books. I have been putting my library in order, and enlarging the chimney in it, with equal intention to warm my mind and body, if I can, to some life. A friend (a woman friend, God help me!) with whom I have spent three or four