how excited politicians got over Addison's Cato, which, as the work of a Whig, and appearing at a critical time, was thought to be full of a wicked wit and a subtle innuendo future ages have failed to discover amidst its obvious dulness. Pope, who was not then connected with either party, wrote the prologue, and in one of the best letters ever written to nobody tells the story of the first night.

'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party, on the one side the theatre, were echoed back by the Tories on the other, while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeded more from the hand than the head. This was the case too of the prologue-writer, who was clapped into a stanch Whig, sore against his will, at almost every two lines. I believe that you have heard that, after all the applause of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box between one of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment, as he expressed it, for his defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual

dictator. The Whigs are unwilling to be distanced this way, as it is said, and, therefore, design a present to the said Cato very speedily. In the meantime they are getting ready as good a sentence as the former on their side. So, betwixt them, it is proba ble that Cato, as Dr. Garth expressed it, may have something to live upon after he dies.'

Later on music was dragged into the fray. The Court was all for Handel and the Germans; the Prince of Wales and the Tory nobility affected the Italian opera. The Whigs went to the Haymarket; the Tories to the Opera House in Lincoln's Inn Field. In this latter strife Pope took no part; for, notwithstanding his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, he hated music with an entire sincerity. He also affected to hate the drama; but some have thought this accounted for by the fact that, early in his career, he was damned for the farce of Three Hours After Marriage, which, after the fashion of our own days, he concocted with another, the co-author in this case being a wit of no less calibre than Gay, the author of The Beggars' Opera. The aston

ished audience bore it as best they might till the last act, when the two lovers, having first inserted themselves respectively into the skins of a mummy and a crocodile, talk at one another across the boards; then they rose in their rage, and made an end of that farce. Their yells were doubtless still in Pope's ears when, years afterwards, he wrote the fine lines

'While all its throats the gallery extends,
And all the thunder of the pit ascends,
Loud as the wolves on Orca's stormy deep
Howl to the roarings of the northern deep.'

Pope, as we have said, became a partisan, and so had his hands full of ready-made quarrels; but his period was certainly one that demanded a satirist. Perhaps most periods do; but I am content to repeat, his did. Satire like Pope's is essentially modish, and requires a restricted range. Were anyone desirous of satirising humanity at large I should advise him to check his noble rage, and, at all events, to begin with his next-door neighbour, who is almost certain to resent it, which humanity will not do. This was Pope's method. It was

a corrupt set amongst whom he moved.

The gambling in the South Sea stock had been prodigious, and high and low, married and single, town and country, Protestant and Catholic, Whig and Tory, took part in it. One could gamble in that stock. The mania began in February 1720, and by the end of May the price of £100 stock was up to £340. In July and August it was £950, and even touched £1,000. In the middle of September it was down to £590, and before the end of the year it had dropped to £125. Pope himself bought stock when it stood so low as £104, but he had never the courage to sell, and consequently lost, according to his own account, half his worldly possessions. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, also bought stock, but he sold as did his Most Gracious Majesty the King-at £1,000. The age was also a scandalous, ill-living age, and Pope, who was a most confirmed gossip and tale-bearer, picked up all that was going. The details of every lawsuit of a personal character were at his fingerends. Whoever starved a sister, or forged a will, or saved his candle-ends, made a fortune dishonestly, or lost one disgrace

fully, or was reported to do so, be he citizen or courtier, noble duke or plump alderman, Mr. Pope was sure to know all about it, and as likely as not to put it into his next satire. Living, as the poet did, within easy distance of London, he always turned up in a crisis as regularly as a porpoise in a storm, so at least writes a noble friend. This sort of thing naturally led to quarrels, and the shocking incompleteness of this lecture stands demonstrated by the fact that, though I have almost done, I have as yet said nothing about Pope's quarrels, which is nearly as bad as writing about St. Paul and leaving out his journeys. Pope's quarrels are celebrated. His quarrel with Mr. Addison, culminating in the celebrated description, almost every line of which is now part and parcel of the English language; his quarrel with Lady Mary Wortley Montague, whom he satirised in the most brutal lines ever written by man of woman; his quarrel with Lord. Hervey; his quarrel with the celebrated Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, ought not to be dismissed so lightly, but what can I do? From the Duchess of Marlborough