In his answer to an opponent, entitled 'A Defence of Freethinking in Mathematics,' London, 1735, 8vo. page 10, speaking of Addison, whom he names, Berkeley says, "He [Addison] assured me that the infidelity of a certain noted mathematician, still living, was one principal reason assigned by a witty man of those times for his being an infidel." And his opponent, Dr. Jurin (under the name of Philalethes Cantabrigiensis), a man likely to be well informed on the current topics of his day, has nothing to answer as to Addison or Halley, but only says of the disciple, "Surely this witty man is in jest; at least he was no wise man.' We agree with Mr. Rigaud that there is no escaping from the conclusion. We heartily wish that this attack and defence of religion and religions, by means of authoritative names, were done and over; but as long as it is continued, it must be done correctly. There is no shade of feeling, from perfect indifference to grovelling superstition, no kind of doctrine, from atheism to the extreme of submission to church authority, which may not boast the support of some names of powerful intellect. And we have always observed, that in proportion as these names are relied on, evidence and argument are abandoned. We agree with Dr. Jurin, that the witty man above mentioned was no wise one; but he has plenty of imitators in all sects and all churches. ano ALEXANDER POPE was born in London, one account "Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause To which in the folio edition of 1735 the following note is subjoined :-"Mr. Pope's father was of a gentleman's family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole heiress married the Earl of Lindsay. His mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York. She had three brothers; one of whom was killed; another died in the service of King Charles; the eldest, following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family." The facts that may be considered to be ascertained are these: His father, Alexander Pope, was the younger of the two sons of a clergyman of the Church of England, settled in Hampshire, and was born (it has been said, after the death of his father) about the year 1642. Being intended for a mercantile life, he was placed, when a boy, with a merchant in Lisbon, where he became a convert to popery. Pope's own notion that he was of the family of the Earls of Downe (in the Irish peerage)—in consequence of which extraction it is asserted by a writer in the Biographia Britannica that he once intended to give a piece of plate to Trinity College, Oxford, in memory of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder, who was uncle of the first Earl of Downe-appears to be without any foundation.* His father became a wholesale linen-merchant in Lombard Street, London, and married Editha, one of the seventeen children of William Turner, Esq., of Burfit Hall, in Yorkshire, another of whom was married to Samuel Cooper, the celebrated miniature-painter. Mrs. Pope, whose family was Roman Catholic, had been previously married to a person of the name of Racket, and had by him a son, Charles, whose wife was the Mrs. Magdalen Racket often spoken of as the poet's sister: he styles her in his will his sister-in-law. Pope's father would be forty-six when his son was born, and his wife two years older. They had no other children. Very soon after, we are told, Mr. Pope re *See note in Warton's 'Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope,' ii., 326; and Life' by Bowles, p. 17. |