a hatter's son, and insults him on the score of the meanness

of his family.

These allusions to his origin seem to have galled the Poet more than anything else that was said of him. He was then living in what is called high society, and it was of some importance to him not to be thought meanly bred. Three courses were open to him. He might have assumed to pass over the charge as unworthy his notice: he might have claimed it as a merit to have surpassed his ancestors, and risen to distinction by his own genius, "out of himself drawing his web;" or he might deny the charge altogether. He adopted the last of these courses, and in this he acted wisely and honestly.

--

pressed in letters perhaps not so well known; at least I copy from the originals. They are addressed to her intimate friend the Countess of Oxford.- -“Avignon, Aug. 10, 1744.-I hear that Pope is dead, but suppose it is a mistake, since your Ladyship has never mentioned it. If it is so, I have some small curiosity for the disposition of his affairs, and to whom he has left the enjoyment of his pretty house at Twict'nam, which was in his power to dispose of for only one year after his decease." Again :-" Avignon, Oct. 15.-I am surprised Lord Burlington is unmentioned in Pope's will. On the whole, it appears to me more reasonable and less vain than I expected from him." It was from Lady Oxford that she had received a copy of the will. In another letter (not of this series) Lady Mary speaks of having converted an old ruined windmill on the heights of Avignon into a belvedere, from which she says there was commanded the finest land prospect she had ever seen; then recollecting what were perhaps the happiest months of her life (for her happiness is to be counted by months, not years), she adds, "except Wharncliffe." This "belvedere" must have been on the hill on which still stand the cathedral and the Pope's palace, now barracks. The prospect, though magnificent, does not naturally recal the forests and moors of Wharncliffe. No traces of the "belvedere" are discoverable.

When a defence against such a charge is undertaken, there is an advantage in the difficulty of defining that really undefinable quality called birth. There is an absolute, and a relative, want of it. A rich mercantile family may be a good family when compared with persons of the same class who have been less successful than they; a family owning a good estate in the country is a good family amongst the neighbours; a race of persons eminent in any of the professions may be called a good family. But place these by the side of the ancient aristocracy of the country, who have maintained this position for centuries, and what are they? and let persons even of acknowledged antiquity and elevation be brought into the company of kings and emperors, or even of the great families of the Continent, and they lose something of their lustre:

A deputy shines bright as doth a king
Until a king be by.

Undoubtedly, Pope could not in this respect compare himself with the Pierrepoints and the Herveys; and to them his birth would necessarily appear obscure, if they thought at all about it, and chose to take the unkinder view. But Pope knew that what was relatively true might be absolutely untrue. He therefore took the first opportunity of claiming publicly what in his opinion belonged to him.

In the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which was written early in 1733, he speaks of his birth thus:

Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause,
While yet in Britain honour had applause)

Each parent sprung

Then follows his touching notice of his father, and of his mother (who was then living, in her ninety-third year), not

the less genuine for being written in imitation of Horace. They are handed down for ever as people of

Unspotted names, and venerable long,
If there be force in virtue or in song.

To these lines this note is appended :—" Mr. Pope's father was of a gentleman's family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole heiress married the Earl of Lindsey. His mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York: she had three brothers, one of whom was killed, another died, in the service of King Charles; the eldest following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family."

In his more formal reply to his noble assailant, he says that his father was a younger brother," that he was no mechanic (neither a hatter, nor, which might please your Lordship yet better, a cobler), but in truth of a very honourable family, and my mother of an ancient one."

It happened that while this subject was fresh in the public mind, and within a very few weeks after he had finished his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, the death of his mother occurred. This gave him a fair occasion of publicly asserting his claim to a good position in respect of birth. Accordingly, the following notice, which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for June 1733, we cannot doubt came from himself :-:- "June 8. Died Mrs. Editha Pope, aged 93, the last survivor of the children of William Turner, of York, Esq., who, by Thomasine Newton, his wife, had fourteen daughters and three sons, two of which died in the King's service in the Civil Wars, and the eldest retired into Spain, where he died a general officer."

Pope had now said all that he proposed to make public; and accordingly we find nothing more concerning his descent in the Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Alexander Pope, Esquire, published by William Ayre in 1745, the year after the Poet's death. He might, or might not, have been acquainted with the letter to Curl with the signature P. T., in which a person professing to be well acquainted with Pope's family, undertakes to inform Curl respecting them. This letter has, strangely, been attributed to some actual friend of Pope, and even to the Poet himself writing thus anonymously to Curl, with whom he was at the time in open war. Who P. T. specifically was, has, perhaps, not been discovered; but that he was a person with whom Curl had unfair dealings respecting the collection of Pope's letters, will be seen in Mr. Ayre's Memoirs, p. 300. The information in this letter has been generally received by later writers on the life of Pope, as worthy of the same acceptation which is yielded to the Poet's avowed statements respecting his family; and, undoubtedly, it proceeds from some one who was acquainted with facts in the history of the family a little beyond those which the Poet himself had divulged. To those facts it adds the following:-That Pope's father had an elder brother who studied and died at Oxford: that the father was himself a posthumous child: that he was put to a merchant in Flanders, and acquired a moderate estate by merchandise, which he quitted at the Revolution, and retired to Windsor Forest, where he purchased a small estate: that he married one of the seventeen children of William Turner, Esq., formerly of Burfit Hall, in Yorkshire: and that two of his wife's brothers were killed in the Civil Wars.

The last clause shows the carelessness with which this

letter was written. It is evidently copied from what Mr. Pope had himself written; but then Mr. Pope's account of the matter is, that one brother was slain, and the other died, in the service of King Charles the First. To what Mr. Pope had said of his maternal grandfather, the writer of this letter adds, that he was of Burfit Hall in Yorkshire. Burfit" is the country people's pronunciation of Birthwaite, an old seat of the Yorkshire Baronet family of Burdet. I would not say that he may not have been a temporary inhabitant of this house, but it can have been but a short tenancy by Mr. Turner, whose far more proper designation was that which Pope had given him, "of York," where he for the most part resided. The seventeen children is but a repetition of what Pope had himself told us, and which is supported by better evidence than the testimony of this anonymous writer. That he acquired a fortune by merchandise is doubtless true, though, probably, but a small one; but when he says that the elder Pope had been put to a merchant in Flanders, this is at variance with what we are told by a relation of the family (of whom immediately), that it was to Lisbon that he was sent for the purpose, and that there it was that he became a Roman Catholic. That he was a posthumous child is peculiar to this communication. I think I shall show it to be a little uncertain, supposing that his age at the time of his death is truly stated on his monument of the brother studying and dying at Oxford, also peculiar to the letter, I have seen nothing to support or to disprove.

This will be sufficient to show that there can be no good reason to attribute this letter to Pope himself, or to any person who had received information from him to be given to the world in this form; and, secondly, that in the points where