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481 BOYSE ters, he, with great caution, quitted Edinburgh; and his absence was regretted by a numerous class of society-his creditors. On his arrival in London, in 1737, he waited on Pope, but as he happened to be from home, he never repeated his visit. There is some reason to think, however, that he was afterwards known to Pope, who acknowledged that there were lines in his poem of " The Deity" which he should not have been ashamed to have written; and Boyse complains to one of his correspondents, that nothing was approved of unless sanctioned by the infallibility of a PoPE. By the lord chancellor he is said to have beern received with kindness, and to have been occasionally admitted to his lordship's table. So despicable were his habits, however, and such his aversion to polite company and rational society, that this latter part of his history, which he used to relate himself, has been doubted by those who lived near enough his time to have known the fact. Whatever advantages he derived from the recommen- dations he brought with him from Scotland, they made not the smallest alteration in his line of conduct, in that he was lamentably consistent; and, consequently, was speedily reduced to a state of extreme indigence, from which he attempted no means of extricating himself, but by writing complimentary poems and mendicant letters, except that he frequently applied for assistance to several eminent dissenters, from whom he received numerous benefactions, in consequence of the respect which they paid to his father's memory. But such supplies were quickly dissipated in the lowest gratifications, and his friends were at length tired of exerting their bounty, that was thus rendered useless to the object of it. The author of his life in Cibber's works informs us, that, " Often when he had received half a guinea in consequence of a supplicating letter, he would go into a tavern, order a supper to be prepared, drink of the richest wines, and spend all the money that had just been given him in