1733.
R.]

[Footnote 137: Among many manuscripts, letters, &c. relating to Pope,
which I have lately seen, is a lampoon in the bible style, of much
humour, but irreverent, in which Pope is ridiculed as the son of a
_hatter_.]

[Footnote 138: On a hint from Warburton. There is, however, reason to
think, from the appearance of the house in which Allen was born at Saint
Blaise, that he was not of a _low_, but of a _decayed_ family.]

[Footnote 139: Since discovered to have been Atterbury, afterwards
bishop of Rochester.

See the collection of that prelate's Epistolary Correspondence, vol. iv.
p. 6. N. This I believe to be an error. Mr. Nichols has ascribed this
preface to Atterbury on the authority of Dr. Walter Harte, who, in a
manuscript note on a copy of Pope's edition, expresses his surprise that
Pope should there have described the former editor as anonymous, as he
himself had told Harte fourteen years before his own publication, that
this preface was by Atterbury. The explication is probably this; that
during that period he had discovered that he had been in a mistake. By a
manuscript note in a copy presented by Crynes to the Bodleian library,
we are informed that the former editor was Thomas Power, of Trinity
college, Cambridge. Power was bred at Westminster, under Busby, and was
elected off to Cambridge in the year 1678. He was author of a
translation of Milton's Paradise Lost; of which only the first book was
published, in 1691. J.B.]

[Footnote 140: In 1743.]

[Footnote 141: In 1744.]

[Footnote 142: Mr. Roscoe, with good reason, doubts the accuracy of this
inconsistent and improbable story. See his Life of Pope, 556.]

[Footnote 143: Spence.]

[Footnote 144: This is somewhat inaccurately expressed. Lord Bolingbroke
was not an executor: Pope's papers were left to him specifically, or, in
case of his death, to lord Marchmont.]

[Footnote 145: This account of the difference between Pope and Mr. Allen
is not so circumstantial as it was in Johnson's power to have made it.
The particulars communicated to him concerning it he was too indolent to
commit to writing; the business of this note is to supply his omissions.
Upon an invitation, in which Mrs. Blount was included, Mr. Pope made a
visit to Mr. Allen, at Prior-park, and having occasion to go to Bristol
for a few days, left Mrs. Blount behind him. In his absence Mrs. Blount,
who was of the Romish persuasion, signified an inclination to go to the
popi