And Pitt wrote in a similar strain to Mrs. Allen[9] on her husband's death, saying, 'I fear not all the example of his virtues will have power to raise up to the world his like again.'
That Pitt had good reason thus to write of his deceased friend is abundantly clear from the following letter, preserved amongst the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum:
'St. James's Square, Dec. 16, 1760.
'Dear Sir,
'The very affecting token of esteem and affection which you put into my hands last night at parting, has left impressions on my heart which I can neither express nor conceal. If the approbation of the good and wise be our wish, how must I feel the sanction of applause and friendship accompany'd with such an endearing act of kindness from the best of men? True Gratitude is ever the justest of Sentiments, and Pride too, which I indulge on this occasion, may, I trust, not be disclaim'd by Virtue. May the gracious Heaven long continue to lend you to mankind, and particularly to the happiness of him who is unceasingly, with the warmest gratitude, respect, and affection,
'My dear Sir,
'Your most faithfull Friend and
most obliged humble Servant,
'W. Pitt.'
Very different from this noble passage in the lives of these two illustrious men was that which, for a while at least, disturbed the friendly feelings of Allen towards Pope. The equivocal relations which existed between the poet and Martha Blount are well known;—'the fiend, a woman fiend, God help me! with whom I have spent three or four hours a day these fifteen years.' She seems, nevertheless, to have been tolerated at Allen's house at Bathampton hard by; but when she demanded the use of Mr. Allen's chariot to attend a Roman Catholic Chapel at Bath, Allen being a staunch Protestant and Hanoverian,[10] the line was drawn, and a coolness, if not a quarrel, ensued. Pope used to deny the whole story. At any rate the breach was patched up, and intimacy between him and Allen was resumed; but the waspish little man never, in my opinion, either forgot or forgave what happened, and to this the following extract from his will,—a will, as Johnson said, 'polluted with female resentment,'—suave though the passage reads at first, I think bears witness: