such thing as human vanity: if I had any, I had enough to mortify it a few days ago, for I lost my mind for a whole day.'*

The last words of eminent men have always been received with strong interest; whether it be, that the memory is more anxious to seize those treasures of wisdom and experience, which are so soon to be shut on the human ear; or receives truth with the more esteem, as the legacy of those it loves; or feels a natural curiosity to watch the workings of the mind, in those last hours, which must come alike to all. The biographers of Pope have acknowleged this interest in their minute records of his final expressions.

Shortly before his death, on sending some of his 'Moral Epistles' to his friends,- Here,' said he, am I, like Socrates, distributing my morality among my friends, just as I am dying.'

On the 15th of May, when Mr. Lyttelton came to see him, immediately after his physician had been attempting to convince him that his complaint was more favorable ;- Here,' said he, with calm pleasantry, am I dying of a hundred good symptoms.'

On the 27th, alluding to the little money to

Those anecdotes are chiefly preserved by Spence and Ruffhead.

be left behind him, he quoted two of his own verses, on his life having been divided between 'carefulness and care.' On the same day, he desired to be brought to the table, where Spence and others were at dinner: they thought him at the point of death; so much so, that Mrs. Anne Arbuthnot, less to the honor of her feelings than her learning, cried out, Mercy on us! this is

quite an Egyptian feast.' At an Egyptian banquet, a death's head was sometimes set on the table.

His mind now became obscured. 'The thing that I suffer most from,' said he, 'is, that I cannot think.' Once he said to Dodsley, who was sitting at his bedside, 'What great arm is that I see, coming out of the wall?' Spence was standing beside him, when he exclaimed, What's that?" at the same time steadily pointing into the room: the impression wore away, and he said, smiling, 'It was a vision.'

As he was yielding to the last exhaustion, he said, 'I am so certain of the soul's being immortal, that I seem to feel it within me, as it were by intuition.'

One morning he started from his bed at four, and was found in his library busily employed in writing his subject was an Essay on the Immortality of the Soul,' according to a system of

his own, in which he spoke of material things which he supposed to strengthen the immortality, or which tended to destroy it.

Hooke asked him whether he would not die as his father and mother had done, and send for a priest he answered, 'I do not suppose that it is essential, but it will look right; and I heartily thank you for putting me in mind of it.' On the priest's arrival, he tried to throw himself out of bed, that he might receive the sacrament more reverentially on the floor. Almost his last words were, "There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.' It is gratifying to know that his departure was without bodily suffering: the calmness of his mind is evident from these reflections. His life had been of an order which provides for tranquillity at its close: if his infirmities, his necessities, and his studies, precluded him from taking a distinguished part among the practical benefactors of society, he possessed at least the merit of such virtues as lay within his sphere we hear of no ungenerous rejections of distress, of no personal malignity, of no betrayal of confidence, of neither degrading avarice nor heartless profusion. Temperate in mind and body, social, sincere, and fond, he exhibited great ability without the varnish of the vices, and pos

sessed eminent fame, with perhaps as little of vanity as is consistent with the weakness of human nature. Pope's chief error was in the severity of his satire; but this, he had persuaded himself, was only a just indignation against notorious crime; and conceiving that he was appointed for its punishment, he was deluded by a sense of duty to mankind.

His death took place at last so gently as to be unperceived: he expired at eleven at night, May 30th, 1744, at the age of fifty-six.

If we are to regret that the life of a man of such ability was thus shortened, we must also feel surprise that it should have been sustained against such inaptitude for continuance. Pope's frame, naturally feeble, was from the age of ten in a state of decrepitude: his stature was so low, that at the tables of his friends it was necessary to raise his seat his person was so singularly distorted, that for many years he was never able to go to bed, to rise, or to dress or undress himself, without assistance: his frame was so weak, that it required to be upheld constantly by stays closely laced; and to keep him commonly warm, he was wrapped in a thick fur waistcoat under his shirt, and with flannel over the stays: he always wore three pair of stockings.

Pope's height was little above four feet; but

his countenance was striking from its intelligence, and his eye was remarkably fine. When dressed in his full suit of black, with sword and tie-wig, according to the fashion of his time, he had the air of a man of distinction.

With the usual niceness of an invalid, he was delicate in his table, and fond of luxuries: he indulged in sweetmeats, liqueurs, and highlyseasoned dishes; yet less perhaps from epicurism, than from the feebleness of an appetite which he was unable to strengthen by the natural exercise of a body in health. His fastidiousness was a portion of that inheritance, which made his life a long disease.'*

He was said by Johnson to have been unexciting and unexcitable in conversation. But while to Johnson conversation was the business of existence, to Pope it was but the relaxation of study: the one brought to it the whole tension of a mind gathering its powers for the purpose; the other repaired to it for relief from exhaustion: to the former it was the chosen theatre of intellectual struggle; to the latter the chosen place of intel

* A foolish story of the time attributed his last illness to eating a dish of lampreys stewed in a silver saucepan: whether the guilt fell on the lampreys or the saucepan was left undecided but Pope had enemies enough to propagate any slander of him, without waiting to question its absurdity.