joints of the Giant's Causeway sent to Pope by Sir Hans Sloane in 1742, but two years before Pope's death; some huge pieces of glazed and striped jars of pottery; and masses of stalactites and of stone worn by the action of the waters, evidently brought from some cavernous shore or bed of a torrent, perhaps from a great distance, and no doubt at a great expense. As this, however, was the work of Sir William Stanhope, and not of Pope, the whole possesses little interest. Every trace of the temple of which Pope speaks, as being in full view from his grotto, is annihilated; and if the small obelisk, having a funeral urn on each side, said to have been placed in a retired part of the grounds, remain, it escaped my observation. It had this inscription in memory of his mother:
Ah! Editha,
Matrum Optima,
Mulierum Amantissima,
Vale!
Lord Mendip, who married Sir William Stanhope's daughter, is said to have been particularly anxious to retain every trace of Pope. Yet in his care to maintain, he must have very much altered. He stuccoed the house, and adorned it, says a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, in an elegant style. He inclosed the lawn, and propped with uncommon care the far-famed weeping willow, supposed to be the parent stock of the willows in Twickenham Park. Yes, Pope is said to have been the introducer of the weeping willow into England; that, seeing some twigs around the wrapping of an article of vertu sent to Lady Sylvius from abroad, he planted these, saying they might belong to some kind of tree yet unknown in England. From one of these sprung Pope's willow, and from Pope's willow thousands. Slips of his tree were anxiously sought after; they were even transmitted to distant climes; and in 1789, the Empress of Russia had some planted in her garden at Petersburgh. Notwithstanding every care, old age overcame this willow, and in spite of all props, it perished, and fell to the ground in 1801.
On the decease of Lord Mendip in 1802, the property was sold to Sir John Briscoe, Bart.; after whose death it was again sold to the Baroness Howe. This lady and her husband, Sir J. Waller Wathen, with a tasteless Vandalism, leveled the house of Pope to the ground; extirpated ruthlessly almost every trace of him in the gardens, and erected that house already mentioned at the extremity of Pope's property, now occupied as two tenements. This house of the unpoetical Lady Howe was also erected on the site of an elegant little villa, belonging to Hudson, the painter, the master of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Such are the revolutions which have passed over Pope's villa and its grounds. Where he, and such celebrated gardeners as Swift, Bolingbroke, and Gay labored, I found potatoes, black with the disease of 1846, growing. The giant trees planted by his hands, which still lift aloft their noble heads, we know not how long may escape some fresh change. The whole of the larger garden of Pope in which they grow, bears the evidences of neglect on its face. Laurels grow wild under the lofty hedges. The stones of Stanhope's grotto lie scattered about; and vast quantities of the deadly nightshade, as if undisturbed for years, displayed to my notice its dark purple and burnished berries of death.
The remains of Pope rest, with those of his parents, in Twickenham church. In the middle aisle, the sexton shows you a P in one of the stones, which marks the place of their interment. To see the monuments to their memory, you must ascend into the north gallery, where at the east end, on the wall, you see a tablet, with a Latin inscription, which was placed there by Pope in honor of his parents; and on the side wall of the gallery nearest the west is a tablet of gray marble, in a pyramidal form, with a medallion profile of the poet. This was placed here by Bishop Warburton, and bears the following inscription:
Alexandro Pope, M. H. Gulielmus Episcopus, Glocestriensis,
Amicitiæ causâ fac: cur: 1761.
Poeta loquitur.
FOR ONE WHO WOULD NOT BE BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Heroes and kings, your distance keep;
In peace let one poor poet sleep,
Who never flattered folks like you:
Let Horace blush, and Virgil too.
By one of those acts which neither science nor curiosity can excuse, the skull of Pope is now in the private collection of a phrenologist. The manner in which it was obtained is said to have been this. On some occasion of alteration in the church, or burial of some one in the same spot, the coffin of Pope was disinterred, and opened to see the state of the remains; that by a bribe to the sexton of the time, possession of the skull was obtained for a night, and another skull returned instead of it. I have heard that fifty pounds were paid to manage and carry through this transaction. Be that as it may, the skull of Pope figures in a private museum.
DEAN SWIFT.
The principal scenes of residence of Dean Swift lie in Ireland. Johnson, in his life of the dean, makes it doubtful whether he was really an Englishman or an Irishman by birth. He says: "Jonathan Swift was, according to an account said to be written by himself, the son of Jonathan Swift, an attorney, and was born at Dublin on St. Andrew's day, 1667; according to his own report, as delivered by Pope to Spence, he was born at Leicester, the son of a clergyman, who was minister of a parish in Herefordshire. During his life the place of his birth was undetermined. He was contented to be called an Irishman by the Irish, but would occasionally call himself an Englishman. The question may, without much regret, be left in the obscurity in which he delighted to involve it."
There has long ceased to be any obscurity about the matter. His relations, justly proud of the connection, have set that fully in the light which Swift himself characteristically wrapped in mystification. He was of an English family, originally of Yorkshire, but his grandfather Thomas Swift was vicar of Goodrich in Herefordshire. Taking an active part with Charles I. against the Parliament, he was expelled from his living; yet he died at Goodrich, and was buried under the altar there. The account of the plundering of his parsonage by the Parliament army, given in the appendix to Scott's life of the dean, is so lively a description of such an affair, that I will transcribe it:
"When the Earl of Stamford was in Herefordshire, in October, 1642, and pillaged all that kept faith and allegiance to the king, information was given to Mrs. Swift, wife of Thomas Swift, parson of Goodrich, that her house was designed to be plundered. To prevent so great a danger, she instantly repaired to Hereford, where the earl then was, some ten miles from her own home, to petition him that no violence might be offered to her house or goods. He most nobly, and according to the goodness of his disposition, threw the petition away, and swore no small oaths that she should be plundered to-morrow. The good gentlewoman, being out of hope to prevail, and seeing that there was no good to be done by petitioning him, speeds home as fast as she could, and that night removed as much of her goods as the shortness of the time would permit. Next morning, to make good the Earl of Stamford's word, Captain Kirle's troop, consisting of seventy horse and thirty foot, which were hangers on—birds of prey, came to Mr. Swift's house. There they took away all his provision of victuals, corn, household stuff, which was not conveyed away. They empty his beds, and fill the ticks with malt; they rob him of his cart and six horses, and make this part of their theft the means to convey away the rest. Mrs. Swift, much affrighted to see such a sight as this, thought it best to save herself, though she lost her goods; therefore, taking up a young child in her arms, began to secure herself by flight, which one of the troopers perceiving, he commanded her to stay, or, holding a pistol to her breast, threatened to shoot her dead. She, good woman, fearing death whether she went or returned, at last, shunning that death which was next
