e may trace Mr. Pope's hospitality throughout his letters. I
will merely select one or two instances. In a letter to _Swift_, he
says, "My house is too large; my gardens furnish too much wood and
provision for _my_ use. My servants are sensible and tender of me. They
have intermarried, and are become rather low friends than servants.
Would to God you would come over with Lord Orrery, whose care of you in
the voyage I could so certainly depend on; and bring with you your old
housekeeper, and two or three servants. I have room for all, a heart for
all, and (think what you will) a fortune for all." In another letter to
Swift, he says, "I wish you had any motive to see this kingdom. I could
keep you; for I am rich, that is, I have more than I want. I can afford
room for yourself and two servants. I have, indeed, room enough, nothing
but myself at home: the kind and hearty housewife is dead! the agreeable
and instructive neighbour is gone! yet my house is enlarged, and the
gardens extend and flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have
lost. I have more fruit trees and kitchen garden than you have any
thought of; nay, I have good melons and pineapples of my own growth." In
a letter to _Mr. Allen_, he says, "Let me know your day for coming, and
I will have every room in my house as warm for you as the owner always
would be." Mr. Mathias, in his Pursuits of Literature, (besides
expatiating with fond delight, in numerous pages, on the genius of
Pope,) thus speaks of him:--"Familiar with the great, intimate with the
polite, graced by the attentions of the fair, admired by the learned, a
favourite with the nation, independent in an acquired opulence, the
honourable product of his genius, and of his industry; the companion of
persons distinguished for their virtue, birth, high fashion, rank, or
wit, and resident in the centre of all public information and
intelligence; every avenue to knowledge, and every mode of observation
were open to his curious, prying, piercing, and unwearied
intellect."[78]

One may with truth further apply to Mr. Pope what was said of Buchanan,
that his mind was stored with all the fire, and all the graces of
ancient literature. Mr. Pope's attachment to _gardens_, appears not only
in his letter to Martha Blount, describing Sir W. Raleigh's seat--but in
his own garden at Twickenham, (where, as Mr. Loudon feelingly observes,
_only the soil of which now remains_)--and in his letter to Mr. Blount,
desc