too favourable, description
brings out forcibly the essential tenderness of the man who, during the
lucid intervals of his last illness, was 'always saying something kindly
of his present or absent friends.' Nobody, as has often been remarked,
has paid so many exquisitely turned compliments. There is something
which rises to the dog-like in his affectionate admiration for Swift and
for Bolingbroke, his rather questionable 'guide, philosopher, and
friend.' Whenever he speaks of a friend, he is sure to be felicitous.
There is Garth, for example--

The best good Christian he,
Although he knows it not.

There are beautiful lines upon Arbuthnot, addressed as--

Friend to my life, which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song.

Or we may quote, though one verse has been spoilt by familiarity, the
lines in which Bolingbroke is coupled with Peterborough:--

There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
The feast of reason and the flow of soul;
And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines
Now farms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines,
And tames the genius of the stubborn plain
Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.

Or again, there are the verses in which he anticipates the dying words
attributed to Pitt:--

And you, brave Cobham, to the latest breath,
Shall feel the ruling passion strong in death;
Such in those moments, as in all the past,
'Oh, save my country, Heaven!' shall be your last.

Cobham's name, again, suggests the spirited lines--

Spirit of Arnall! aid me while I lie,
Cobham's a coward, Polwarth is a slave,
And Lyttelton a dark, designing knave;
St. John has ever been a wealthy fool--
But let me add Sir Robert's mighty dull,
Has never made a friend in private life,
And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.

Perhaps the last compliment is ambiguous, but Walpole's name again
reminds us that Pope could on occasion be grateful even to an opponent.
'Go see Sir Robert,' suggests his friend in the epilogue to the Satires;
and Pope replies--

Seen him I have; but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe
Smile without art, and win without a bribe;
Would he oblige me? Let me only find
He does not think me what he thinks mankind;
Come, come; at all I laugh, he laughs no doubt;
The only difference