The envious may console themselves by thinking that Pope very likely
went to sleep, that Swift was deaf and overbearing, that Congreve and
Bolingbroke were painfully witty, and Gay frightened into silence. When
in 1727 Swift again visited England, and stayed at Twickenham, the
clouds were gathering. The scene is set before us in some of Swift's
verses:--
Pope has the talent well to speak,
But not to reach the ear;
His loudest voice is low and weak,
The deaf too deaf to hear.
Awhile they on each other look,
Then different studies choose;
The dean sits plodding o'er a book,
Pope walks and courts the muse.
"Two sick friends," says Swift in a letter written after his return to
Ireland, "never did well together." It is plain that their infirmities
had been mutually trying, and on the last day of August Swift suddenly
withdrew from Twickenham, in spite of Pope's entreaties. He had heard of
the last illness of Stella, which was finally to crush his happiness.
Unable to endure the company of friends, he went to London in very bad
health, and thence, after a short stay, to Ireland, leaving behind him
a letter which, says Pope, "affected me so much that it made me like a
girl." It was a gloomy parting, and the last. The stern Dean retired to
die "like a poisoned rat in a hole," after long years of bitterness, and
finally of slow intellectual decay. He always retained perfect
confidence in his friend's affection.
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