Only bare mention need here be made of Pope's edition of Shakspere, prepared with his usual hard work but with inadequate knowledge and appreciation, and published in 1725.
During his last fifteen years Pope's original work was done chiefly in two very closely related fields, first in a group of what he called 'Moral' essays, second in the imitation of a few of the Satires and Epistles of Horace, which Pope applied to circumstances of his own time.
POPE. To me and Peter shalt thou grovelling lie, And crouch before the Papal dignity.-- Sound trumpets, then; for thus Saint Peter's heir, From Bruno's back, ascends Saint Peter's chair.
Go, haste thee, gentle Mephistophilis, Follow the cardinals to the consistory; And, as they turn their superstitious books, Strike them with sloth and drowsy idleness, And make them sleep so sound, that in their shapes Thyself and I may parley with this Pope, This proud confronter of the Emperor; And, in despite of all his holiness, Restore this Bruno to his liberty, And bear him to the states of Germany.
I suppose that if I once cherished such a passion for Pope personally that I would willingly have done the things that he did, and told the lies, and vented the malice, and inflicted the cruelties that the poor soul was full of, it was for the reason, partly, that I did not see these things as they were, and that in the glamour of his talent I was blind to all but the virtues of his defects, which he certainly had, and partly that in my love of him I could not take sides against him, even when I knew him to be wrong.
My reading from the first was such as to enamour me of clearness, of definiteness; anything left in the vague was intolerable to me; but my long subjection to Pope, while it was useful in other ways, made me so strictly literary in my point of view that sometimes I could not see what was, if more naturally approached and without any technical preoccupation, perfectly transparent.
"Thou old pope," said here Zarathustra interposing, "hast thou seen THAT with thine eyes?
--"What do I hear!" said then the old pope, with intent ears; "O Zarathustra, thou art more pious than thou believest, with such an unbelief!
"Spada knew what these invitations meant; since Christianity, so eminently civilizing, had made progress in Rome, it was no longer a centurion who came from the tyrant with a message, `Caesar wills that you die.' but it was a legate a latere, who came with a smile on his lips to say from the pope, `His holiness requests you to dine with him.'
"Then Caesar and the pope hastened to lay hands on the heritage, under presence of seeking for the papers of the dead man.
You would deserve to be pope at Rome, as well as at Paris."
In the meantime, all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the cutpurses, joined with the scholars, had gone in procession to seek, in the cupboard of the law clerks' company, the cardboard tiara, and the derisive robe of the Pope of the Fools.