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men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, "and whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have " been obtained by any practices of meanness or servility; a boaft which was never denied to be true, and to which very few poets have ever "afpired. Pope never fet his genius to fale; he never flattered those whom he did not love, or "praise those whom he did not efteem. Savage " however remarked, that he began a little to

relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for "his Highness's dog.

"His admiration of the great, seems to have. " increased in the advance of life. He paffed

over peers and ftatefmen to inscribe his Iliad to "Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the "praise had been complete, had his friend's vir-, " tue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen "for so great an honour, it is not now possible to know; there is no trace, in literary history, of

any particular intimacy between them; nor does "the name of Congreve appear in the letters. To "his latter works, however, he took care to an

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nex names dignified with titles; but was not very happy in his choice; for, except Lord "Bathurst, none of his noble friends were fuch

as that a good man would with to have his in"timacy with them configned to pofterity: he can. " derive little honour from the notice of Cobham, " Burlington, or Bolingbroke."

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