under a road that ran through his grounds. Here Pope received in state,
and his house and garden was for years the center of the most brilliant
society in England. Here Swift came on his rare visits from Ireland, and
Bolingbroke on his return from exile. Arbuthnot, Pope's beloved
physician, was a frequent visitor, and Peterborough, one of the most
distinguished of English soldiers, condescended to help lay out the
garden. Congreve came too, at times, and Gay, the laziest and most
good-natured of poets. Nor was the society of women lacking at these
gatherings. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the wittiest woman in England,
was often there, until her bitter quarrel with the poet; the grim old
Duchess of Marlborough appeared once or twice in Pope's last years; and
the Princess of Wales came with her husband to inspire the leaders of
the opposition to the hated Walpole and the miserly king. And from first
to last, the good angel of the place was the blue-eyed, sweet-tempered
Patty Blount, Pope's best and dearest friend.

Not long after the completion of the 'Iliad', Pope undertook to edit
Shakespeare, and completed the work in 1724. The edition is, of course,
quite superseded now, but it has its place in the history of
Shakespearean studies as the first that made an effort, though irregular
and incomplete, to restore the true text by collation and conjecture. It
has its place, too, in the story of Pope's life, since the bitter
criticism which it received, all the more unpleasant to the poet since
it was in the main true, was one of the principal causes of his writing
the 'Dunciad'. Between the publication of his edition of Shakespeare,
however, and the appearance of the 'Dunciad', Pope resolved to complete
his translation of Homer, and with the assistance of a pair of friends,
got out a version of the Odyssey in 1725. Like the 'Iliad', this was
published by subscription, and as in the former case the greatest men in
England were eager to show their appreciation of the poet by filling up