all such of my works already printed, as he hath written, or shall write, commentaries or notes upon, and which I have not otherwise disposed of, or alienated; and all the profits which shall arise after my death from such editions as he shall publish without future alterations.

'Item.—In case Ralph Allen, Esq., abovesaid, shall survive me, I order my executors to pay him the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds, being, to the best of my calculation, the account of what I have received from him; partly for my own, and partly for charitable uses. If he refuses to take this himself, I desire him to employ it in a way, I am persuaded, he will not dislike, to the benefit of the Bath Hospital.'—Extract from the Will of Pope (p. clxi., Pope's Works, vol. i., Bell and Daldy's Aldine edition).

When the passage was read to Ralph Allen, he, of course, ordered that the money should be handed over to the hospital (an institution in which it may be observed he always took a deep interest, providing the stone, and giving £1,000 besides: a ward is named after him, where his portrait[11] is preserved, and also a bust by William Hoare of Bath, dated 1757); but he drily added, in allusion to the extent of the obligations which Pope had received from him, 'He forgot to add the other 0 to the £150,'—a quiet, but perhaps as keen a stab as Pope himself had ever dealt with his own malevolent stiletto. And Allen was a man who could afford to say so much, for he used to spend about £1,000 a year in private charities alone.

Many of the letters of Pope to be found among the Egerton MSS. have endorsements by Allen in his own handwriting. On one of them is written 'The last;' and Pope concludes it—evidently, from the change in the handwriting, in great pain—thus: 'I must just set my hand to my heart.' It is dated 'Chelsea College, 7th May, 1741.' The letters also comprise some correspondence from Gertrude Warburton (née Tucker), Allen's favourite niece; from Warburton himself; and from many other distinguished persons.

Besides Prior Park, Allen had a house in London; and another at Weymouth—a place where he often resided for three months annually, and whose decaying fortunes he took a chief share in reviving, about the year 1763[12]—and I rather think he had another house at Maidenhead, near the west end of the bridge, to which house he added a room with a bow-window, and another room over it.

He certainly had a pleasant little retreat at Bathampton; for in a characteristic letter from Pope to Arbuthnot (the roughly humorous physician, strong Tory, and High Churchman), dated 23rd July, 1793, Pope explains how Allen would not let the two friends stay at his villa at Bathampton, but insisted upon having them both up at Prior Park; because, Pope observes, 'I suspect that he has an apprehension in his head that if he lends that house to us, others hereabouts may try to borrow it, which would be disagreeable to him, he making it a kind of villa to change to, and pass now and then a day at it, in private.'

But Prior Park was Ralph Allen's historic abode; and one object which he had in view in building it was to demonstrate the excellent quality of the stone[13] in his Combe Down Quarries. The whole building, which is in the Corinthian style, with its wings and arcades and fine hexastyle portico has a frontage of 1,250 feet; the house itself being 150 feet. We have seen from Pope's letter to Warburton what spacious corridors it contained, admirably adapted for literary disquisitions on a wet day. The mansion also comprised its chapel, in which was kept the Bible given to Pope by Atterbury when the Bishop went into exile. Everything was built in the most solid style. Even the pigeon-houses were of stone throughout; and, strange as it may seem, roofs were composed of the same material. The house was commenced in 1736 and finished in 1743; nor did Allen forget to add to the charms of the demesne by judiciously arranged plantations.

Building, indeed, seems to have been, naturally enough with such magnificent quarries at his disposal, a favourite occupation of Allen's. He even crowned the hill which looks down upon the city of Bath from the south-east with a large and somewhat picturesque structure,—a mere shell, now known as 'Sham Castle;' but which, especially when lit up by the setting sun, is a not unwelcome addition to the panoramic view of the hills as seen from the east end of Pulteney Street. A short time ago, whilst walking along this street, I asked a man, lounging there, who built the castle on the hill? and (alas! such is fame!) he told me that it was 'a Mr. Nash, a gentleman that had done a power of good to the city.' And here it may conveniently be observed that Beau Nash, to whom Dr. Oliver says Ralph Allen was 'very generous' (as he was, indeed, to everyone who had the slightest claim upon his notice), generally superintended the amusements within the walls of Prior Park. On the occasion of one of these entertainments—a masked ball—the solemn Warburton, who thought it beneath the dignity of his cloth to wear a mask, was nevertheless dressed up in a military uniform by his sprightly wife, and was introduced to the company as 'Brigadier-General Moses!' in allusion, I suppose, to Warburton's authorship of the 'Divine Legation.'

The following local tradition respecting the building of Prior Park was communicated to Mr. Kilvert by the late Mr. H. V. Lansdown, of Bath, the well-known artist, a gentleman who had accumulated a large collection of reminiscences of Bath, and its Worthies of the olden time: