Poor, good-hearted Dick! Then there was Parson Swift, who sat behind the scenes with mild interest on his face and a sneer in that ugly, gnarled heart of his.

"We stood on the stage," he writes to Stella, "and it was foolish enough to see the actors prompting every moment, and the poet directing them, and the drab that acts Cato's daughter (Mrs.Oldfield) out in the midst of a passionate part, and then calling out 'What's next ?'" Lastly came the great Mr.Pope, with that poor, deformed body and brilliant mind.

He was not content merely to be a "looker on in Vienna," or in Utica; he pottered around unceasingly, hobnobbed with Oldfield (who now began to take the liveliest interest in the play), and suggested several alterations in the text.

Once Nance ventured to criticise a speech of Portius; the amiable Addison, unlike the fashion of some other amiable authors, heard her objections with approval, and soon Mr.Pope was again called into consultation.

There was more hobnobbing, a change of diction, and the rehearsals continued.