time and about three months after I wrote to Lord Halifax, to thank him for his obliging offer; "that I had considered the matter over fully; and that all the difference I could find in having or not having a pension was, that if I had one, I might live more at large in town; and that, if I had not, I might live happily enough in the country." There was something said too of his love of being quite free, and without any thing that might even look like a bias laid on him. "So the thing (added he) dropped, and I had my liberty without a coach."-The same.

Craggs afterwards went further than this. He told me, as a real friend, that a pension of 300l. a year was at my service, and that, as he had the management of the secret service money in his hands, he could pay me such a pension yearly without any one's knowing that I had it. Mr. Pope declined even this: he thanked Mr. Craggs for the heartiness and sincerity of his. friendship; told him that he did not like a pension any way; but that since he had

so much goodness towards him, if he should want money, he would come to him for a hundred pounds, or even for five hundred, if his wants ran so high.-The same. [I do not find that he ever did go to Mr. Craggs for any thing after all; and have been assured by some of his friends, who knew his private affairs the most intimately, that they think he never did.]

Craggs was so friendly as to press this to me several times; and always used to insist on the convenience that a coach would be of to me, to incline me to accept of his kind offer. It is true, it would have been very convenient; but then I considered that such an addition to my income was very uncertain, and that if I had received it, and kept a coach for some time, it would have made it more inconvenient for me to live without one, whenever that should fail.-Mr. Pope.

Mr. Pope never flattered any body for money in the whole course of his writings. Alderman Barber had a great inclination to have a stroke in his commendation inserted

in some part of Mr. Pope's works. He did not want money, and he wanted fame. He would probably have given four or five thousand pounds to have been gratified in this desire; and gave Mr. Pope to understand as much. Mr. Pope would not comply with such a baseness; and when the Alderman died he left him only a legacy of a hundred pounds, which might have been some thousands, if he had obliged him only with a couplet.-Mr. W.* [who had it from Mr. Pope, and I have been assured of it by others who knew both Mr. Pope and the Alderman very well.]

When Mr. Pope's nephew† that had been * Mr. W. here quoted as an authority about Alderman Barber, was probably Warburton.-M.

This nephew was, I suppose, the son of Mrs. Racket, Pope's half-sister, or half sister-in-law. None of the biographers have told us whether Mrs. Racket was the daughter of Pope's father by a former wife, or the daughter of his mother by a former husband, or the wife of one who was the son of either his father or mother. I believe she was the wife of Pope's half-brother; for I once saw her about the year 1760, and she seemed not to be above 60 years old.-M. I see Pope, in his will, calls her sister-in-law.

handsome

used to the sea, refused a very settlement that was offered him in the West Indies, and said that fifty pounds a year was all he wanted, and would make him happy, Mr. Pope, instead of using any arguments to persuade him not to refuse so advantageous a proposal, immediately offered to settle the yearly sum upon him which he said would make him happy.-Mr. W.

In talking over the design for a dictionary that might be authoritative for our English writers, Mr. Pope rejected Sir Walter Raleigh twice, as too affected.Mr. Pope.

The list for prose authors, from whose works such a dictionary should be collected, was talked over several times. There were eighteen* of them named by Mr. Pope,

but four* of that number were only named as authorities for familiar dialogues and writings of that kind.-The same.

Should I not write down Hooke and Middleton? Ay; and I think there's scarce any more of the living that you need name. The same.

The list of writers that might serve as authorities for poetical language was begun upon twice, but left very imperfect. There were but nine † mentioned, and two of those only for the burlesque style. -The same.

The chief difficulty in a work of this kind would be in giving the definitions of the names of mixed modes; as to the names of

Butler and Swift. Fletcher was mentioned only as an authority for familiar dialogue and the slighter kinds of writing.