his mind was
beginning to wander. He complained of seeing things as through a
curtain. "What's that?" he said, pointing to the air, and then, with a
smile of great pleasure, added softly, "'twas a vision." His religious
sentiments still edified his hearers. "I am so certain," he said, "of
the soul's being immortal, that I seem to feel it within me, as it were
by intuition;" and early one morning he rose from bed and tried to begin
an essay upon immortality, apparently in a state of semi-delirium. On
his last day he sacrificed, as Chesterfield rather cynically observes,
his cock to AEsculapius. Hooke, a zealous Catholic friend, asked him
whether he would not send for a priest. "I do not suppose that it is
essential," said Pope, "but it will look right, and I heartily thank you
for putting me in mind of it." A priest was brought, and Pope received
the last sacraments with great fervour and resignation. Next day, on May
30th, 1744, he died so peacefully that his friends could not determine
the exact moment of death.

It was a soft and touching end; and yet we must once more look at the
other side. Warburton and Bolingbroke both appear to have been at the
side of the dying man, and before very long they were to be quarrelling
over his grave. Pope's will showed at once that his quarrels were hardly
to end with his death. He had quarrelled, though the quarrel had been
made up, with the generous Allen, for some cause not ascertainable,
except that it arose from the mutual displeasure of Mrs. Allen and Miss
Blount. It is pleasant to notice that, in the course of the quarrel,
Pope mentioned Warburton, in a letter to Miss Blount, as a sneaking
parson; but Warburton was not aware of the flash of sarcasm. Pope, as
Johnson puts it, "polluted his will with female resentment." He left a
legacy of 150_l._ to Allen, being, as he added, the amount received from
his friend--for himself or for charitable purposes; and requested Allen,
if he should refuse the legacy for himself, to pay it to the Bath
Hospital. Allen adopted this suggestion, saying quietly that Pope had
always been a bad accountant, and would have come nearer the truth if he
had added a cypher to the figures.

Another fact came to light, which produced a fiercer outburst. Pope, it
was found, had printed a whole edition (1500 copies) of the _Patriot
King_, Bolingbroke's most polished work. The motive could have been
nothing but a desire to preserve to posterity what Pope con