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168
Alexander Pope
The April 1770 GM (pp. 159-160) printed some "Anecdotes of Mr. Pope, Dr. Swift, Count Gyllenberg, the Swede, &c." Since there is no entry for either Dr. Burton or Dr. Thompson in the index to the Twickenham Pope and, as would naturally follow, no mention in the Twickenham Minor Poems volume of either the couplet attributed to Pope or the epigram of uncertain authorship, I assume the Pope anecdotes, which I now quote in their entirety, are generally unknown. Both doctors are mentioned in Pope's letters, however.
During Mr. Pope's last illness, a squabble happened in his chamber
between his two physicians, Dr. Burton, and Dr. Thompson (both since
dead.) Dr. B. charging Dr. T. with hastening his death by the violent
purges he had prescribed, and the other retorting the charge, Mr. Pope at
length silenced them, saying, "Gentlemen, I only learn by your discourse,
that I am in a very dangerous way; therefore all I have now to ask, is, that
the following epigram may be added, after my death, to the new edition of
the Dunciad, by way of postscript:
Dunces, rejoice: Forgive all censures past
The greatest dunce has kill'd your foe at last.
The greatest dunce has kill'd your foe at last.
Others say, that these lines were really written by Dr. Burton himself:
And the following epigram, by a friend of Dr. Thompson's, was occasioned
by the foregoing one:
As Physic and Verse both to Phoebus belong,
So the College oft dabble in potion and song;
Hence Burton, resolv'd his emetics shall hit,
When his recipes fail, gives a puke with his wit.
So the College oft dabble in potion and song;
Hence Burton, resolv'd his emetics shall hit,
When his recipes fail, gives a puke with his wit.
Mr. Pope, on his death-bed, was under an odd perplexity about
Extreme-Unction. If he did not receive it, it would disgust the Catholicks:
If he did, and should recover, his Protestant friends would rally him. He
probably thought of it as King Augustus of Poland did of his bead-roll,
C'est une bagatelle. Lord Lovat, in like manner, was doubtful
whether he should profess himself, when under sentence of death, a
Protestant or a Papist; and was determined to the latter, merely on account
of its being most consistent with his having espoused the cause of the
Pretender.
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