Note 532b — JOURNAL TO STELLA (continued 12)

It is probable that this is Pope’s friend, William Cleland, who died in 1741, aged sixty-seven. William Cleland served in Spain under Lord Rivers, but was not a Colonel, though he seems to have been a Major. Afterwards he was a Commissioner of Customs in Scotland and a Commissioner of the Land Tax in England. Colonel Cleland cannot, as Scott suggested (Swift’s Works, iii. 142, xviii. 137–39, xix. 8), have been the son of the Colonel William Cleland, Covenanter and poet, who died in 1689, at the age of twenty-eight. William Cleland allowed his name to be appended to a letter of Pope’s prefixed to the Dunciad, and Pope afterwards described him as “a person of universal learning, and an enlarged conversation; no man had a warmer heart for his friends, or a sincerer attachment to the constitution of his country.” Swift, referring to this letter, wrote to Pope, “Pray tell me whether your Colonel (sic) Cleland be a tall Scots gentleman, walking perpetually in the Mall, and fastening upon everybody he meets, as he has often done upon me?” (Pope’s Works, iv. 48, vii. 214).