Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/130

126 place; he could have only shrunk within himself; it was too late to transfer his confidence or fondness.

In May 1744 his death was approaching ; on the sixth, he was all day delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a sufficient humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing things as through a curtain, and in false colours, and one day, in the presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came out from the wall. He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think.

Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay; and being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his deliriousness, was always saying something kind either of his present or absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to have survived his understanding, answered, "It has so." And added, "I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more general friendship for man kind." At another time he said, "I have known Pope these thirty years, and value myself more in his friendship than"—his grief then suppressed his voice. Rh