Bryant or Mr. Cambridge, will be able to tell you more about him. Alsop was of Westminster; so out of my way, though I have heard little stories of him. He was a companion of my Lord of Yorke. He being a Whig does not fare so well as Alsop, though he could have "joked like Horace" as well as Alsop. "Steeped in port," when applied to Dr. Bentley, alludes to his drinking too much port in his later days. This is all that I can remember at present. Perhaps, if you put queries to me, I could remember more.
Let me be allowed to say this for my old friend Bishop Warburton, that he avows he left undone what he thought it unfit for him to have done. As to his finding out meanings which his author never meant, I suppose you allude to the Essay on Man, which Dr. Warburton wished Pope to make less exceptionable than it seemed to be—but he was under the guidance of Bolingbroke. I forgot to mention the famous couplet concerning Sir Thomas Burnet, which Pope was at last prevailed upon to omit, while he ridiculously preserved the line, "This shines a comet, &c." By that time Sir Thomas Burnett was one of the twelve judges of England, and high in the public favour. I never could learn whether Pope had a personal or political quarrel with Judge Burnett. The tract by Sir Thos. [illegible] Doggrel has nothing to do with Pope's Homer; so far as, after a long space from reading it, I can recollect. It is a ridicule on the Tory members of the House of Commons.
In former days, when I read without selection, I studied the State poems, &c. It is very possible that upon recollection I might be able to fill up many of the initial letters. But in such party collections, little is to be learnt beside the personal appearance of the parties satirized. I remember that I had formed to myself an idea of Dryden being a man of good height, such as in England is colloquially called a personable man. This notion was formed on his head, by Kneller, which I saw in Mr. West's dining-room, and which has been well engraved by Edylynck, Vertue, and Houbraken. But from the State poems I learnt not to put my faith in painters; for there it is uniformly Poet-Squab, a short, thick man.
