Pope,[8] whose acquaintance with Allen dated from 1736, brought Warburton. Sitting one day at dinner, at Prior Park, the poet had a letter handed to him, which he read apparently with some disappointment on finding that he should probably miss an opportunity of meeting his friend. Allen, however, on hearing the cause of Pope's trouble, with characteristic native politeness begged him to ask Warburton to the house--a pleasant task which Pope, who used to say that his host's friendship was 'one of the chief satisfactions of his life,'performed in the following letter, which I insert as giving us a peep at the sort of life led in those days by Allen and his friends, and also as affording us a glimpse of the house itself: 'My third motive of now troubling you is my own proper interest and pleasure. I am here in more leisure than I can possibly enjoy, even in my own house, _vacare Literis_. It is at this place that your exhortations may be most effectual to make me resume the studies I had almost laid aside by perpetual avocations and dissipations. If it were practicable for you to pass a month or six weeks from home, it is here I could wish to be with you; and if you would attend to the continuation of your own noble work, or unbend to the idle amusement of commenting upon a poet, who has no other merit than that of aiming, by his moral strokes, to merit some regard from such men as advance truth and virtue in a more effectual way; in either case this place and this house would be an inviolable asylum to you from all you would desire to avoid in so public a scene as Bath. The worthy man who is the master of it invites you in the strongest terms, and is one who would treat you with love and veneration, rather than with what the world calls civility and regard. He is sincerer and plainer than almost any man now in this world, _antiquis moribus_. If the waters of the Bath may be serviceable to your complaints (as I believe from what you have told me of them), no opportunity can ever be better. It is just the best season. We are told the Bishop of Salisbury (Dr. Sherlock) is expected here daily, who, I know, is your friend--at least, though a bishop, is too much a man of learning to be your enemy. You see, I omit nothing to add weight in the balance, in which, however, I will not think _myself_ light, since I have known your partiality. You will want no servant here. Your room will be next to mine, and one man will serve us. Here is a library, and a gallery ninety feet long to walk in, and a coach whenever you would take the air with me. Mr. Allen tells me you might, on horseback, be here in three days. It is less than 100 miles from Newark, the road through Leicester, Stowe-in-the-Wolds, Gloucestershire, and Cirencester, by Lord Bathurst's. I could engage to carry you to London from hence, and I would accommodate my time and journey to your conveniency.'