No More Learning

C. L. which had
been offered him at the same time, and wrote the Fourth Book of the
'Dunciad' to satirize the stupidity of the university authorities. In
conjunction with Warburton he proceeded further to revise the whole
poem, for which his new friend wrote notes and a ponderous introduction,
and made the capital mistake of substituting the frivolous, but clever,
Colley Gibber, with whom he had recently become embroiled, for his old
enemy, Theobald, as the hero. And the last year of his life was spent in
getting out new editions of his poems accompanied by elaborate
commentaries from the pen of Warburton.

In the spring of 1744, it was evident that Pope was failing fast. In
addition to his other ailments he was now attacked by an asthmatical
dropsy, which no efforts of his physicians could remove. Yet he
continued to work almost to the last, and distributed copies of his
'Ethic Epistles' to his friends about three weeks before his death, with
the smiling remark that like the dying Socrates he was dispensing his
morality among his friends. His mind began to wander; he complained that
he saw all things as through a curtain, and told Spence once "with a
smile of great pleasure and with the greatest softness" that he had seen
a vision. His friends were devoted in their attendance. Bolingbroke sat
weeping by his chair, and on Spence's remarking how Pope with every
rally was always saying something kindly of his friends, replied: "I
never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his
particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I have
known him these thirty years; and value myself more for that man's love
than"--here his head dropped and his voice broke in tears. It was
noticed that whenever Patty Blount came into the room, the dying flame
of life flashed up in a momentary glow. At the very end a friend
reminded Pope that as a professed Catholic he ought to send for a
priest. The dying man replied that he did not believe it essential, but
thanked him for the suggestion.
When the priest appeared, Pope attempted
to rise from his bed that he might receive the sacrament kneeling, and
the priest came out from the sick room "penetrated to the last degree
with the state of mind in which he found his penitent, resigned and
wrapt up in the love of God and man. " The hope that sustained Pope to
the end was that of immortality. "I am so certain of the soul's being
immortal," he whispered, almost with his last breath, "that I seem to
feel it within me, as it were by intuition. " He died on the evening of
May 30, so quietly that his friends hardly knew that the end had come.
He was buried in Twickenham Church, near the monument he had erected to
his parents, and his coffin was carried to the grave by six of the
poorest men of the parish.

It is plain even from so slight a sketch as this that the common
conception of Pope as "the wicked wasp of Twickenham," a bitter,
jealous, and malignant spirit, is utterly out of accord with the facts
of his life. Pope's faults of character lie on the surface, and the most
perceptible is that which has done him most harm in the eyes of
English-speaking men. He was by nature, perhaps by training also,
untruthful. If he seldom stooped to an outright lie, he never hesitated
to equivocate; and students of his life have found that it is seldom
possible to take his word on any point where his own works or interests
were concerned. I have already (p. x) attempted to point out the
probable cause of this defect; and it is, moreover, worth while to
remark that Pope's manifold intrigues and evasions were mainly of the
defensive order. He plotted and quibbled not so much to injure others as
to protect himself. To charge Pope with treachery to his friends, as has
sometimes been done, is wholly to misunderstand his character.

Another flaw, one can hardly call it a vice, in Pope's character was his
constant practice of considering everything that came in his way as
copy. It was this which led him to reclaim his early letters from his
friends, to alter, rewrite, and redate them, utterly unconscious of the
trouble which he was preparing for his future biographers. The letters,
he thought, were good reading but not so good as he could make them, and
he set to work to improve them with all an artist's zeal, and without a
trace of a historian's care for facts.