little smoke, and
after, this faithful pair--John, with one arm about his Sarah's
neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from
the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and
cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on
their bodies--only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed, and a
small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in
one grave!"

And the proof that this description is delightful and beautiful is, that
the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he thought proper to steal it
and to send it off to a certain lady and wit, with whom he pretended to be
in love in those days--my Lord Duke of Kingston's daughter, and married to
Mr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople.

We are now come to the greatest name on our list--the highest among the
poets, the highest among the English wits and humourists with whom we have
to rank him. If the author of the _Dunciad_ be not a humourist, if the
poet of the _Rape of the Lock_ be not a wit, who deserves to be called so?
Besides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which we
should respect him, men of letters should admire him as being the greatest
literary _artist_ that England has seen. He polished, he refined, he
thought; he took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own;
borrowing an idea or a cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a
simile from a flower, river, stream, or any object which struck him in his
walk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at an early
age;(123) and taught himself to write by copying printed books. Then he
passed into the hands of the priests, and from his first clerical master,
who came to him when he was eight years old, he went to a school at
Twyford, and another school at Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned all
that he had got from his first instructor. At twelve years old, he went
with his father into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a few months
under a fourth priest. "And this was all the teaching I ever had," he
said, "and God knows it extended a very little way."

When he had done with his priests he took to reading by himself, for which
he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. He
learned versification from Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of
_Alcander_, he imitated every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statius,
H