In olden times-and sometimes in modern-literature was but a sorry profession. The poet or the scholar, it was said, was like a grasshopper-he lived on the air as well as slept in it. Sometimes the simile was less elegant. "Like an ass," quoth Burton," he wears out his time for provender, and can show a stum-rod." Pope happily was not one who found its rewards so thankless. Though no such magnificent sums were thought of then, as in our time have been realized, he had no reason to be dissatisfied. The subscription to his translation of Homer was so large as to enable him to provide a comfortable habitation for the rest of his days. Out of the profits of that work he purchased, about 1715, the estate where we now are; and immediately commenced the erection of a house upon it. His letters abundantly testify to the delight he took in his new occupation. His house and his garden"my Tusculum," as he fondly styles them--are referred to with continual pleasure: and although fresh from Windsor Forest, the scenery of Twickenham equally delights him. "Though the change of my scene of life," he writes to one friend, "from Windsor Forest to the side of the Thames be one of the grand eras of my days, and may be called a notable period in so inconsiderable a history; yet you can scarce imagine any hero passing from one stage of life to another with so much tranquillity, so easy a transition, and so laudable a behaviour. I am become so truly a citizen of the world (according to Plato's expression), that I look with equal indifferency on what I have lost and on what I have gained." Somewhat later he writes to another friend (Jervas, the painter), who had inquired about his removal to Twickenham-

"The history of my transplantation and settlement which you desire, would require a volume, were I to enumerate the many projects, difficulties, vicissitudes, and various fates attending that important part of my life; much more, should I describe the many draughts, elevations, profiles, perspectives, etc. of every palace and garden proposed, intended, and happily raised, by the strength of that faculty wherein all great geniuses excel, imagination. At last, the gods and fate have fixed me on the borders of the Thames, in the districts of Richmond and Twickenham: it is here I have passed an entire year of my life, without any fixed abode in London, or more than casting a transitory glance (for a day or two at most in a month) on the pomps of the town.

It is here I hope to receive you, Sir, returned from eternizing the Ireland of this age. For you my structures rise; for you my colonnades extend their wings; for you my groves aspire, and roses bloom.”

His letters enable us to follow the progress of his edifice, and to perceive that there is no decline in the complacency with which he regards it. year or two later he thus writes, one fine May morning, about the house and the scenery :

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"No ideas you could form in the winter can make you imagine what Twickenham is in this warmer season. Our river glitters beneath an unclouded sun, at the same time that its banks retain the verdure of showers: our gardens are offering their first nosegays; our trees, like new acquaintance brought happily together, are stretching their arms to meet each other, and growing nearer and nearer every hour; the birds are paying their thanksgiving songs for the new habita

tions I have made them; my building rises high enough to attract the eye and curiosity of the passenger from the river, where, upon beholding a mixture of beauty and ruin, he inquires what house is falling, or what church is rising. So little taste have our common Tritons of Vitruvius; whatever delight the poetical gods of the river may take in reflecting on their streams my Tuscan porticos or Ionic pilasters."

When his house was completed, he amused himself with the improvement of his gardens; and to connect them with the building, from which they were divided by a public road, he caused a subterraneous passage to be excavated. The dressing and planting of his grounds, and the adorning of his grotto-as he called his tunnel, and by which name it soon became so celebrated-henceforth afforded him an agreeable occupation, and engaged no small share of his thoughts.

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"A grotto," says Dr. Johnson, moralizing, according to his wont, on Pope's amusement, not often the wish or pleasure of an Englishman, who has more frequent need to solicit than to exclude the sun; but Pope's excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden; and as some men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious and reflective"-continues the Doctor, using weightier words, and a more solemn manner than one is prepared to expect, even from him, when discoursing on such a matter-" that they are proud of trifles, and that their amusements seem trivial and childish; whether it be that men conscious of great

reputation, think themselves above the reach of censure, and safe in the admission of negligent indulgences, or that mankind expect from elevated genius a uniformity of greatness, and watch its degradation with malicious wonder; like him who, having followed with his eye an eagle into the clouds, should lament that she ever descended to a perch."

Warburton did not think so lightly of the grotto as the Doctor. In his all-admiring annotations on his poetic friend, he declares it to be his belief that "the beauty of Pope's poetic genius appeared to as much advantage in the disposition of these romantic materials as in any of his best contrived poems"!

Having had the benefit of the lucubrations of the bishop and the sage, we shall be prepared to listen with due attention to the poet's own account of this famous grotto. The passage has been often quoted, but having begun to quote, it would be intolerable to omit this quotation. He is writing to Mr. Blount: the young ladies are the Miss Blounts:

"Let the young ladies be assured I make nothing new in my gardens without wishing to see the print of their fairy steps in every part of them. I have put the last hand to my works of this kind in happily finishing the subterraneous way and grotto: I there found a spring of the clearest water, which falls in a perpetual rill, that echoes through the cavern day and night. From the river Thames, you see through my arch up a walk of the wilderness, to a kind of open temple, wholly composed of shells in the rustic manner; and from that distance under the temple you look down