Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/122

 82 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS loss which he often seemed to foresee, and prophetically lamented to his friends. The total deprivation of his senses came upon him by degrees. In the year 1 736 he was seized with a violent fit of giddiness : he was at that time writing a satirical poem, called the "Legion Club;" but he found the effects of his giddi- ness so dreadful that he left the poem unfinished, and never afterward attempted a composition of any length, either in verse or prose. However, his conversation still remained the same, lively and severe ; but his memory gradually grew worse and worse, and as that decreased he grew every day more fretful and impatient From the year 1 739 to the year 1 744 his passions grew so violent and ungov- ernable, his memory so decayed, and his reason so depraved, that the utmost pre- cautions were taken to prevent all strangers from approaching him, for till then he had not appeared totally incapable of conversation. He now, however, grew rapidly worse, and died in 1 745. He had willed all his fortune to be used in founding a home for incurable madmen. ALEXANDER POPE* By Austin Dobson ( i 688-1 744) M' ore than two hundred years ago, on May 21, 1688, was born in Lombard Street, London, a poet whose influence, for nearly a century, reigned paramount in English verse. He had not been long dead, it is true, when his supremacy was contested, but to so little purpose that two decades passed away before his overbold assailant mustered courage to follow up his first attack. Then, after an interval, the challenge was renewed, and for a long period the literary world rang with the blows of the opposing champions. Was Alexander Pope a great poet or was he not ? It was Thomas Warton who first put that question, and it was William Bowles who repeated it. Against Warton was Warburton ; against Bowles were Byron and Campbell and Roscoe, with a host of minor combatants. When at last the contest seemed to droop it was only to begin again upon a new issue ; and the lists shook beneath the in- road of De Quincey and Macaulay. Was Pope a " correct " poet ? The latter-
 * Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.