Pope's valued friends seem to have done their best to surround the last scene of his life with painful associations; and Pope, alas! was an unconscious accomplice.

To us of a later generation it is impossible to close this strange history without a singular mixture of feelings.
Admiration for the extraordinary literary talents, respect for the energy which, under all disadvantages of health and position, turned these talents to the best account; love of the real tender-heartedness which formed the basis of the man's character; pity for the many sufferings to which his morbid sensitiveness exposed him; contempt for the meannesses into which he was hurried; ridicule for the insatiable vanity which prompted his most degrading subterfuges; horror for the bitter animosities which must have tortured the man who cherished them even more than his victims--are suggested simultaneously by the name of Pope.

As we look at him in one or other aspect, each feeling may come uppermost in turn.

The most abiding sentiment--when we think of him as a literary phenomenon--is admiration for the exquisite skill which enabled him to discharge a function, not of the highest kind, with a perfection rare in any department of literature.

It is more difficult to say what will be the final element in our feeling about the man.