Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/476

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MALONIANA.
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one who was the son of either his father or mother. I believe she was the wife of Pope’s half-brother; for I saw her once about the year 1760, and she seemed not to be above sixty years old. Since writing the above, I see Pope in his will calls her sister-in-law.


Aubrey, in his MS. Anecdotes of the English Poets, says, that Sir John Suckling, who fled from London to Paris in the troubles in 1641, in dread of being apprehended for conspiracy against the popular interests, was poisoned and died in that capital.


Creech did not translate Manilius. The version of that poet was done by Sir Edward Sherburne, I am informed.


Lady W. Montague corresponded with Dr. Young, the poet, who a little before his death destroyed a great number of her letters, assigning as a reason that they were too indelicate for public inspection.


Swift, in a letter to the Rev. Henry Jenny of Armagh, written in 1732, gives an extremely depreciatory view of the wretchedness of Ireland and her low order of civilization—all due, he will have it, to the tyranny of England; with a passing glance at the more immediate cause in remote districts—oppressive squires. When shown to Malone, he wrote a long comment upon it in 1808, explaining the causes of the misery of the people then and long afterwards, but there is nothing of particular interest to the reader to extract.