Note 1455 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
MS.:
Yet hemmed with plagues, and breathing deathful air, Marseilles' good bishop still possess the chair; And long kind chance, or heav'n's more kind decree, Lends an old parent, etc.
Pope's mother died June 7, 1733. She was said by the poet to be 93, but was only 91, if the register of her baptism, June 18, 1642, gives the year of her birth, which is doubtless the case, since an elder sister was baptised in 1641, and a younger in 1643.