ous faith of our poet, and he owed much to
Warburton in having that faith confirmed. But Pope rejected,
with his characteristic good sense, Warburton's tampering with
him to abjure the Catholic religion. On the belief of a future
state, Pope seems often to have meditated with great anxiety;
and an anecdote is recorded of his latest hours, which shows
how strongly that important belief affected him. A day or two
before his death he was at times delirious, and about four
o'clock in the morning he rose from bed and went to the
library, where a friend who was watching him found him busily
writing. He persuaded him to desist, and withdrew the paper he
had written. The subject of the thoughts of the delirious poet
was a new theory on the "Immortality of the Soul," in which he
distinguished between those material objects which tended to
strengthen his conviction, and those which weakened it. The
paper which contained these disordered thoughts was shown to
Warburton, and surely has been preserved.

[239] "A letter to the Lord Viscount B----ke, occasioned by his
treatment of a deceased friend." Printed for A. Moore, without
date. This pamphlet either came from Warburton himself, or
from one of his intimates. The writer, too, calls Pope his
friend.

[240] We find also the name of Mallet closely connected with another
person of eminence, the Patriot-Poet, Leonidas Glover. I take
this opportunity of correcting a surmise of Johnson's in his
Life of Mallet, respecting Glover, and which also places
Mallet's character in a true light.

A minute life of Mallet might exhibit a curious example of
mediocrity of talent, with but suspicious virtues, brought
forward by the accident of great connexions, placing a
bustling intriguer much higher in the scale of society than
"our philosophy ever dreamt of." Johnson says of Mallet, that
"It was remarkable of him, that he was the only Scot whom
Scotchmen did not commend." From having been accidentally
chosen as private tutor to the Duke of Montrose, he wound
himself into the favour of the party at Leicester House; he
wrote tragedies conjointly with Thomson, and was appointed,
with Glover, to write the Life of the Duk