not always so discriminative. He advised Pope, as has
been already stated, to 'polish' _Samson Agonistes_, declared that all
verses should have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet,
as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was 'all over
morality from the beginning to the end of it.' He ventured occasionally
into the verse-making field himself, and wrote a song to Silvia, in
which, after admitting that he had loved before as men worship strange
deities, he adds:

'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,
Like bees on gaudy flowers,
And many a thousand loves has changed,
Till it was fixed on yours.

'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,
'Twas soon determined there;
Stars might as well forsake the skies,
And vanish into air.

'When I from this great rule do err,
New beauties to adore,
May I again turn wanderer,
And never settle more.'

The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did honour to both men,
and when Pope went to London he would 'lie at the deanery.' There,
unknown to his friend, the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues,
and there may still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than one
great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed his treasonable
correspondence. The poet did not believe that his friend was guilty, but
it has been well known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more
than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by Atterbury at his
trial in the House of Lords was based upon a falsehood. For years the
bishop appears to have corresponded, under feigned names and by the help
of ciphers, with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to
his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered until 1722, when
he was arrested for high treason. At his trial he called God to witness
his innocence; and when Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the
poet he would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should
ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his exile. Pope
gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told Spence, lost his
self-possession and made two or three blunders.

Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais he heard that
Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his way to England, having had a
royal pardon. 'Then I am exchanged,' he said.

The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted daughter's
illness and voyage