intimate. "I passed about a week at Twickenham," Warburton writes, "in a most agreeable manner. Mr. Pope is as good a companion as a poet, and what is more, appears to be as good a man."

Pope told

Neither poet nor divine was chary of compliments. Warburton he had a genius equal to his pains, and a taste equal to his learning; and Warburton told Pope that he was unrivalled in uniting wit with sublimity. "Your wit," said he, "gives a splendour and delicacy to your sublimity, and your sublimity gives a grace and dignity to your wit." What Warburton meant he might have found it difficult to explain; but if his object in flattering the first author of the day were worldly advancement, he had his reward. Through Pope's introduction to Allen-"humble Allen," who did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame-Warburton gained a wealthy wife, and ultimately the bishopric of Gloucester. How he hated Bolingbroke, and how Bolingbroke hated him, and how, metaphorically speaking, they came to blows over the dead poet's grave, it does not fall within the scope of this paper to relate. Unfortunately, the memory of Pope himself did not escape in the mêlée, and the words of affectionate regret uttered by Bolingbroke at the bedside of the dying poet were sadly belied by his after conduct. These words, in which Bolingbroke speaks with sensitive feeling of Pope's tender heart for his particular friends, are recorded by Spence, afterwards Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Spence, like Warburton, won the friendship of the poet by praising his poetry. His admiration was genuine, and it was a happy hour that brought Pope the acquaintance of so amiable a chronicler. Spence's "Anecdotes" are full of interest for all lovers of literature. He acted the part of a Boswell to his friend, but he was a Boswell in miniature. There is neither insight into character in his pages, nor any trace of the dramatic art which makes Boswell's narrative so delightful. He has, however, recorded in all truthfulness and simplicity a great many interesting facts and sayings, and, honest though he be, all he says is in Pope's favour. His affection for the poet was that of a son for his father; he was constantly with him in his dying hours, and seems to have watched over him with the utmost tenderness. Spence's love was not the less sincere because Pope, who knew as well as any man how to serve a friend, was eager to promote his interests. This is an honourable feature in Pope's character. Like Swift, he was always ready to speak and act for others, and in many cases his great influence was not exerted in vain. "When the hour of death comes," said Jeanie Deans to Queen Caroline, "it

is na what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist pleasantly;" and Pope, faulty and tricky though in some respects he was, may have remembered then without pride or presumption how often in the hour of need he had been kind to such as needed kindness.

One of the worst features in his poetry is the low estimate he takes of women. In this respect his verse, like that of Prior, is essentially immoral. With the exception of the beautiful lines about his mother, which every lover of poetry should know by heart, there is no recognition in his works of the honour due to the weaker sex, and paid by all "finely touched" spirits. In his eyes, most women have no character at all; their ruling passions are the love of pleasure and the love of sway; "every woman is at heart a rake;" and he cannot even praise the "bright nymph" whose lost lock of hair suggested an inimitable poem, without insulting her at the same time. Yet there can be little doubt that one of the most faithful friendships of Pope's life was with the "fair-haired" Martha Blount. It was an early friendship, with a dash of sentiment about it, that might, under happier circumstances, have ripened into love. And it was a perfectly intelligible friendship. There may be, as Mrs. Oliphant has well said, a love between man and woman which does not point to matrimony, and there seems no ground for the scandal that assailed the life-long intimacy of Martha and the poet. There was not, indeed, much delicacy in their intercourse, but the coarseness of the age was extraordinary, and men and women of fashion sometimes wrote to one another in language that could not now be uttered in respectable society. Pope's relation to Martha resembles, in some respects, Swift's relation to the unhappy and more celebrated "Stella ;” but while the reader, thanks to Swift's inimitable "Journal," soon learns to know Hester Johnson, he never gains more than a shadowy acquaintance with Martha Blount. In his early days Pope seems to have felt an equal affection for Teresa, the elder sister; but at a later period, from some doubtful cause, there was a complete estrangement between them. In his correspondence with Caryll, who was Martha's godfather, Pope accuses Teresa of cruelty to her mother "beyond all imagination," and of an intrigue with "a gallant;" but the story, in Mr. Elwin's judgment, is unworthy of credit, since we have no proof of its truth beyond the word of Pope. Both sisters, by the way, were considered beautiful in their youth, but neither of them married. We do not know that "Mrs. Patty" ever had an offer, and it is possible that her undefined connection with Pope destroyed her matrimonial prospects. If the glimpses we gain of her are slight, they are

always attractive, and in the Pope correspondence all the poet's friends seem to have a good word for Patty. Swift writes to her that he will stand by his dear Patty against all the world, and hopes to find her, when they meet, a fine, healthy, plump lady. "If Mr. Pope chides you," says the Dean, "threaten him that you will turn heretic ;" and he adds, "Adieu, dear Patty, and believe me to be one of your truest friends and humblest servants; and that, since I can never live in England, my greatest happiness would be to have you and Mr. Pope condemned during my life to live in Ireland-he at the deanery, and you, for reputation's sake, just at next door, and I will give you eight dinners a week and a whole half-dozen of pint bottles of good French wine at your lodgings, a thing you could never expect to arrive at." Martha Blount returned Swift's affection, and was, as Pope told the Dean, "as constant to old friendships as any man ;" and, in another letter, Swift is told that she speaks of him constantly, and "is one of the most considerate and mindful of women in the world "She never towards others, the least so in regard to herself." neglects a friend ill or absent," is another statement made by Pope; and we quote it with the more satisfaction because it serves to strengthen one's disbelief in the amazing and wholly unauthenticated story that Martha neglected Pope in his dying hours. Who that knows the faithfulness and self-sacrifice of a woman's love can believe that a friendship which was the growth of years, and had stood the brunt of many a storm, could have thus failed in the supreme hour of trial? It is certain that Pope's affection continued warm to the last, and Warburton relates that during the poet's illness "Mrs. Blount's coming in gave a new turn of spirits or a temporary strength to him."

Readers familiar with the literary history of Pope's age will find it impossible to forget the men whom the poet loved and honoured. The name of Bolingbroke reminds us not only of a famous statesman and politician, but of the "guide, philosopher, and friend" who taught the poet

Happily to steer

From grave to gay, from lively to severe.

We take up Arbuthnot's "John Bull," one of the wittiest productions of a brilliant age, and remember the masterly "Epistle" in which Pope celebrates the "art and care" of this famous physician; and how, in the "Satires" that follow, he recognises gratefully the special skill of the most celebrated doctor and of "the most noted and most deserving man in the whole profession of chirurgery,"

I'll do what Mead and Cheselden advise

To keep these limbs and to preserve these eyes;

We recall too his praise of the "blameless Bethel "—

Who always speaks his thought,

And always thinks the very thing he ought

and of "well-natured Garth," himself a small poet as well as a sound physician, who, when Pope was young and unknown, took him kindly by the hand. And we do not forget, what is greatly to Pope's credit, that he could esteem and celebrate the ministers of a church to which he did not belong; how pleasing he found "Atterbury's softer hour;" how he discovered "manners with candour " in Benson, a "heart" in Rundel, and in the far-famed Berkeley "every virtue under heaven."

These names are but a few among many of men who, apart from their own worth, will "live with the eternity" of Pope's fame If, as Mr. Pattison observes, Pope's satire is an expression of genuine feeling, it is well to remember that to the poet's warmth of feeling is due also the praise so generously lavished on his friends. It was surely no slight privilege to be the associate of a man who delighted to bestow upon those whom he held in honour an earthly immortality.

JOHN DENNIS.

623

SCIENCE NOTES.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SALT OF THE SEA.

ONNENSTADT has found that the water of the ocean contains

SONN

gold in solution, and he estimates the quantity at of a gramme (about 14 grains, troy) to every ton of sea water. Many years ago silver was found in sea water, in spite of the apparent insolubility of its chloride. Minute analysis, when exhaustively applied, appears to bring out from sea water any and every element thus sought for.

Many authors have treated the saltness of the sea as a great physical mystery, but a few simple considerations will, I think, prove pretty clearly that there would be far more reason for wonderment if the sea were composed of fresh water.

The ocean covers the lower valleys of the earth, and the land generally slopes towards it. It thus receives nearly all the drainage and washings of the exposed surface of the earth. Some of the materials of the solid earth are readily soluble in water, none are absolutely insoluble. Therefore the rain that falls upon the earth must exert its solvent power, must take up as much as it can of whatever it meets on its way downwards, and carry this dissolved matter into the general receptacle. When the water leaves the ocean again by rising as vapour, it does not carry the dissolved earthy matter with it, but is distilled as pure water to fall again and re-enter the ocean as river water, or water more or less hardened by the matter it has dissolved from the earth.

Thus every river or streamlet that pours into the sea carries with it fresh contributions of salinity, and this having gone on as long as the surface of the earth has consisted of land and water, the saltness of the ocean is but a natural and necessary matter of course.

This view of the origin of the saline matters dissolved in the ocean is confirmed by an examination of other bodies of water similarly related to surrounding land, i.e. of lakes which occupy hollows in the land and receive the inflow of a river or rivers without having any outlet but that which is due to evaporation.