by himself; though Pope, in an advertisement
prefixed afterwards to a new volume of his works, claimed only twelve. A
natural curiosity after the real conduct of so great an undertaking,
incited me once to inquire of Dr. Warburton, who told me, in his warm
language, that he thought the relation given in the note "a lie;" but
that he was not able to ascertain the several shares. The intelligence
which Dr. Warburton could not afford me, I obtained from Mr. Langton, to
whom Mr. Spence had imparted it.

The price at which Pope purchased this assistance was three hundred
pounds paid to Fenton, and five hundred to Broome, with as many copies
as he wanted for his friends, which amounted to one hundred more. The
payment made to Fenton I know not but by hearsay; Broome's is very
distinctly told by Pope, in the notes to the Dunciad.

It is evident, that, according to Pope's own estimate, Broome was
unkindly treated. If four books could merit three hundred pounds, eight,
and all the notes, equivalent, at least, to four, had certainly a right
to more than six.

Broome probably considered himself as injured, and there was, for some
time, more than coldness between him and his employer. He always spoke
of Pope as too much a lover of money; and Pope pursued him with avowed
hostility; for he not only named him disrespectfully in the Dunciad, but
quoted him more than once in the Bathos, as a proficient in the Art of
Sinking; and in his enumeration of the different kinds of poets
distinguished for the profound, he reckons Broome among "the parrots who
repeat another's words in such a hoarse odd tone as makes them seem
their own." I have been told that they were afterwards reconciled; but I
am afraid their peace was without friendship.

He afterwards published a Miscellany of Poems, which is inserted, with
corrections, in the late compilation.

He never rose to a very high dignity in the church. He was some time
rector of Sturston, in Suffolk, where he married a wealthy widow; and
afterwards, when the king visited Cambridge, 1728, became doctor of
laws. He was, in August, 1728, presented by the crown to the rectory of
Pulham, in Norfolk, which he held with Oakley Magna, in Suffolk, given
him by the lord Cornwallis, to whom he was chaplain, and who added the
vicarage of Eye, in Suffolk; he then resigned Pulham, and retained the
other two.

Towards the close of his life he grew again poetical, and amused himself
with translating Odes