ations.

The sale did not answer Lintot's expectation; and he then pretended to
discover something of fraud in Pope, and commenced or threatened a suit
in Chancery.

On the English Odyssey a criticism was published by Spence, at that time
prelector of poetry at Oxford; a man whose learning was not very great,
and whose mind was not very powerful. His criticism, however, was
commonly just; what he thought, he thought rightly; and his remarks were
recommended by his coolness and candour. In him Pope had the first
experience of a critick without malevolence, who thought it as much his
duty to display beauties as expose faults; who censured with respect,
and praised with alacrity.

With this criticism Pope was so little offended, that he sought the
acquaintance of the writer, who lived with him, from that time, in great
familiarity, attended him in his last hours, and compiled memorials of
his conversation. The regard of Pope recommended him to the great and
powerful; and he obtained very valuable preferments in the church.

Not long after, Pope was returning home, from a visit, in a friend's
coach, which, in passing a bridge, was overturned into the water; the
windows were closed, and being unable to force them open, he was in
danger of immediate death, when the postillion snatched him out by
breaking the glass, of which the fragments cut two of his fingers in
such a manner, that he lost their use.

Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation. He
had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with so much
grossness, that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope discovered, by
a trick, that he was a spy for the court, and never considered him as a
man worthy of confidence.

He soon afterwards, 1727, joined with Swift, who was then in England, to
publish three volumes of Miscellanies, in which, amongst other things,
he inserted the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, in ridicule of Burnet's
importance in his own history, and a Debate upon Black and White Horses,
written in all the formalities of a legal process by the assistance, as
is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards master of the Rolls. Before these
Miscellanies is a preface signed by Swift and Pope, but apparently
written by Pope; in which he makes a ridiculous and romantick complaint
of the robberies committed upon authors by the clandestine seizure and
sale of their papers. He tells, in tragick strains, how "the cabinets of
the sick a