Alexander Pope, residing in the neighbouring old tower during three summers, “translating” Horace, and writing fantastic letters in the meanwhile to his friend, the Duke of Buckingham, exercised his fancy on this kitchen, and found it to resemble the forge of Vulcan, the cave of Polyphemus, and the Temple of Moloch: “The horror of it has made such an impression upon the country people that they believe the witches keep their Sabbath here, and that once a year the Devil treats them with infernal venison, viz. a toasted tiger, stuffed with tenpenny nails.” But all, according to him, was decrepit at Stanton Harcourt:— “Its very rats are grey. I pray the roof may not fall upon them, as they are too infirm to seek other lodgings.” It is the nature of rats to be grey; but we need not seek to deprive Pope of his point. The place was haunted, too, by the ghost of one “Lady Frances,” and we hear “some prying maids of the family report that they have seen a lady in a fardingale through the keyhole; but the matter is hushed up, and the servants are forbidden to talk of it.” “Pope’s Tower” is in three floors. On the ground-floor is the domestic chapel, roofed in fan-vaulting. You enter it by an ante-chapel with a wooden ceiling in blue, spangled with gilt stars: a gorgeous, but tarnished firmament. The upper room, known as “Pope’s Study,” was occupied by him during two hard-working summers, and he celebrated the completion of his task by inscribing on a pane of red glass in one of the windows, “In the year 1718 Alexander Pope finished here the fifth volume of Homer.” The glass has been removed, and is now at Nuneham. I have already placed the word “translating” in quotation-marks, to indicate the fact that Pope’s claim to have rendered Homer’s _Iliad_ from the Greek into English verse was a mere pretence. He was no Greek scholar, and fobbed off upon his publisher and upon confiding subscribers his metrical version of translations by more scholarly persons. He grew rich upon the fraud, and still enjoys a reputation among the uncritical for a classical learning he did not possess. The church, standing close at hand, has a central tower, of which the lower stage is clearly seen to be Early English. On this an upper stage has been reared. The junction of the two is prominently marked by the upper stage being boldly set back; producing a striking sense of massiveness. [Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH SCREEN (UNRESTORED), STANTON HARCOURT.]