" His face, says Johnson, was "not displeasing," and the
portraits are eminently characteristic. The thin, drawn features wear
the expression of habitual pain, but are brightened up by the vivid and
penetrating eye, which seems to be the characteristic poetical beauty.
It was after all a gallant spirit which got so much work out of this
crazy carcase, and kept it going, spite of all its feebleness, for
fifty-six years. The servant whom Johnson quotes, said that she was
called from her bed four times in one night, "in the dreadful winter of
Forty," to supply him with paper, lest he should lose a thought. His
constitution was already breaking down, but the intellect was still
striving to save every moment allowed to him. His friends laughed at his
habit of scribbling upon odd bits of paper. "Paper-sparing" Pope is the
epithet bestowed upon him by Swift, and a great part of the Iliad is
written upon the backs of letters. The habit seems to have been regarded
as illustrative of his economical habits; but it was also natural to a
man who was on the watch to turn every fragment of time to account. If
anything was to be finished, he must snatch at the brief intervals
allowed by his many infirmities. Naturally, he fell into many of the
self-indulgent and troublesome ways of the valetudinarian. He was
constantly wanting coffee, which seems to have soothed his headaches;
and for this and his other wants he used to wear out the servants in
his friends' houses, by "frequent and frivolous errands.
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