Over time, Pope’s endeavour altered focus. His collection of scintillating materials – gems, precious ores and shells, with mirror glass inserts, illuminated by a lamp hanging from the centre of the chamber – morphed into something less eye-catching but intensely investigative, as fossils, sections of basalt and a simulacrum of a mine were fixed to the walls and ceilings of the grotto in the cellars of his Thames-side villa. Advice came from the Cornish cleric and geologist William Borlase; minerals (and encouragement) from Pope’s quarry-owning friend, Ralph Allen of Bath. He even found a spring, which may have made its way into his description of Calypso’s cave in his translation of the Odyssey

Gillian Darley, "In Pope's Grotto", London Review of Books, 2 maj 2023