No More Learning

After this general war upon dulness, he seems to have indulged himself
awhile in tranquillity; but his subsequent productions prove that he was
not idle. He published, 1731, a poem on Taste, in which he very
particularly and severely criticises the house, the furniture, the
gardens, and the entertainments, of Timon, a man of great wealth and
little taste. By Timon he was universally supposed, and by the earl of
Burlington, to whom the poem was addressed, was privately said, to mean
the duke of Chandos; a man, perhaps, too much delighted with pomp and
show, but of a temper kind and beneficent, and who had, consequently,
the voice of the publick in his favour.

A violent outcry was, therefore, raised against the ingratitude and
treachery of Pope, who was said to have been indebted to the patronage
of Chandos for a present of a thousand pounds, and who gained the
opportunity of insulting him by the kindness of his invitation.

The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publickly denied; but from the
reproach which the attack on a character so amiable brought upon him, he
tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in
an apology, by which no man was satisfied; and he was at last reduced to
shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that
disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an
exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great
magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his
professions. He said, that to have ridiculed his taste, or his
buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man; but that in
Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between
them, it had been less easily excused.

Pope, in one of his letters, complaining of the treatment which his poem
had found, "owns that such criticks can intimidate him, nay, almost
persuade him to write no more, which is a compliment this age
deserves. " The man who threatens the world is always ridiculous; for the
world can easily go on without him, and, in a short time, will cease to
miss him. I have heard of an idiot, who used to revenge his vexatious by
lying all night upon the bridge. "There is nothing," says Juvenal, "that
a man will not believe in his own favour. " Pope had been flattered till
he thought himself one of the moving powers in the system of life. When
he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and
implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went
away and laughed.

The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had known early,
and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness than any other of his
literary friends. Pope was now forty-four years old; an age at which the
mind begins less easily to admit new confidence, and the will to grow
less flexible; and when, therefore, the departure of an old friend is
very acutely felt.

In the next year he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for she
had lasted to the age of ninety-three; but she did not die unlamented.
The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and
exemplary; his parents had the happiness of living till he was at the
summit of poetical reputation, till he was at ease in his fortune, and
without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his respect or
tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and
whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has, among
its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give than such a
son.

One of the passages of Pope's life, which seems to deserve some inquiry,
was a publication of letters between him and many of his friends, which
falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious bookseller of no good fame,
were by him printed and sold. This volume containing some letters from
noblemen, Pope incited a prosecution against him in the house of lords
for a breach of privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the
resentment of his friends. Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing
himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence.
"He has," said Curll, "a knack at versifying, but in prose I think
myself a match for him. " When the orders of the house were examined,
none of them appeared to have been infringed; Curll went away
triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.

Curll's account was, that one evening a man in a clergy-man's gown, but
with a lawyer's band, brought and offered to sale a number of printed
volumes, which he found to be Pope's Epistolary Correspondence; that he
asked no name, and was told none, but gave the price demanded, and
thought himself authorised to use his purchase to his own advantage.

That Curll gave a true account of the transaction it is reasonable to
believe, because no falsehood was ever detected[130] and when, some
years afterwards, I mentioned it to Lintot, the son of Bernard, he
declared his opinion to be, that Pope knew better than any body else how
Curll obtained the copies, because another parcel was at the same time
sent to himself, for which no price had ever been demanded, as he made
known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal
with a nameless agent.

Such care had been taken to make them publick, that they were sent at
once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize them as a
prey; and to Lintot, who might be expected to give Pope information of
the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did nothing; and Curll did what
was expected. That to make them publick was the only purpose, may be
reasonably supposed, because the numbers offered to sale by the private
messengers showed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of
the impression.

It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his letters, and not
knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this
country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion;
that, when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously
published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.

Pope's private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation with
praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his
purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship. There were some letters
which a very good or a very wise man would wish suppressed; but, as they
had been already exposed, it was impracticable now to retract them.

From the perusal of those letters, Mr. Allen first conceived the desire
of knowing him; and with so much zeal did he cultivate the friendship
which he had newly formed, that, when Pope told his purpose of
vindicating his own property by a genuine edition, he offered to pay the
cost.

This, however, Pope did not accept; but, in time, solicited a
subscription for a quarto volume, which appeared, 1737, I believe, with
sufficient profit. In the preface he tells, that his letters were
reposited in a friend's library, said to be the earl of Oxford's, and
that the copy thence stolen was sent to the press. The story was
doubtless received with differe at degrees of credit. It may be
suspected that the preface to the Miscellanies was written to prepare
the publick for such an incident; and to strengthen this opinion, James
Worsdale, a painter, who was employed in clandestine negotiations, but
whose veracity was very doubtful, declared that he was the messenger who
carried, by Pope's direction, the books to Curll.

When they were thus published and avowed, as they had relation to recent
facts, and persons either then living or not yet forgotten, they may be
supposed to have found readers; but as the facts were minute, and the
characters, being either private or literary, were little known, or
little regarded, they awakened no popular kindness or resentment; the
book never became much the subject of conversation; some read it as
contemporary history, and some, perhaps, as a model of epistolary
language; but those who read it did not talk of it. Not much, therefore,
was added by it to fame or envy; nor do I remember that it produced
either publick praise or publick censure.

It had, however, in some degree, the recommendation of novelty. Our
language had few letters, except those of statesmen. Howel, indeed,
about a century ago, published his letters, which are commended by
Morhoff, and which alone, of his hundred volumes, continue his memory.
Loveday's letters were printed only once; those of Herbert and Suckling
are hardly known. Mrs. Phillips's (Orinda's) are equally neglected. And
those of Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any
living mistress or friend. Pope's epistolary excellence had an open
field; he had no English rival, living or dead.

Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other contemporary
wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the comparison; but it must
be remembered, that he had the power of favouring himself; he might have
originally had publication in his mind, and have written with care, or
have afterwards selected those which he had most happily conceived, or
most diligently laboured; and I know not whether there does not appear
something more studied and artificial[131] in his productions than the
rest except one long letter by Bolingbroke, composed with all the skill
and industry of a professed author. It is, indeed, not easy to
distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously formed a
style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease. Pope may be said to
write always with his reputation in his head; Swift, perhaps, like a man
who remembered he was writing to Pope; but Arbuthnot, like one who lets
thoughts drop from his pen as they rise into his mind.

Before these letters appeared, he published the first part of what he
persuaded himself to think a system of ethicks, under the title of an
Essay on Man; which, if his letter to Swift, of Sept. 14, 1725, be
rightly explained by the commentator, had been eight years under his
consideration, and of which he seems to have desired the success with
great solicitude. He had now many open, and, doubtless, many secret
enemies. The _dunces_ were yet smarting with the war; and the
superiority which he publickly arrogated, disposed the world to wish his
humiliation.

All this he knew, and against all this he provided. His own name, and
that of his friend to whom the work is inscribed, were in the first
editions carefully suppressed; and the poem, being of a new kind, was
ascribed to one or another, as favour determined, or conjecture
wandered; it was given, says Warburton, to every man, except him only
who could write it. Those who like only when they like the author, and
who are under the dominion of a name, condemned it; and those admired it
who are willing to scatter praise at random, which, while it is
unappropriated, excites no envy. Those friends of Pope, that were
trusted with the secret, went about lavishing honours on the new-born
poet, and hinting that Pope was never so much in danger from any former
rival.

To those authors whom he had personally offended, and to those whose
opinion the world considered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy
or malevolence, he sent his essay as a present before publication, that
they might defeat their own enmity by praises, which they could not
afterwards decently retract.

With these precautions, in 1733, was published the first part of the
Essay on Man. There had been, for some time, a report that Pope was busy
upon a system of morality; but this design was not discovered in the new
poem, which had a form and a title with which its readers were
unacquainted. Its reception was not uniform; some thought it a very
imperfect piece, though not without good lines. While the author was
unknown, some, as will always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and
some censured him as an intruder; but all thought him above neglect;
the sale increased, and editions were multiplied[132]

The subsequent editions of the first epistle exhibited two memorable
corrections. At first, the poet and his friend,

Expatiate freely o'er this scene of man,
A mighty maze _of walks without a plan_.

For which he wrote afterwards,

A mighty maze, _but not without a plan_:

for, if there were no plan, it were in vain to describe or to trace the
maze.

The other alteration was of these lines:

And spite of pride, _and in thy reason's spite_,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right;

but having afterwards discovered, or been shown, that the "truth" which
subsisted "in spite of reason" could not be very "clear," he
substituted,

And spite of pride, _in erring reason's spite_.

To such oversights will the most vigorous mind be liable, when it is
employed at once upon argument and poetry.

The second and third epistles were published; and Pope was, I believe,
more and more suspected of writing them; at last, in 1734, he avowed the
fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet.

In the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged, that the doctrine of
the Essay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, who is said to have
ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as having
adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive the
consequence, and as blindly propagating opinions contrary to his own.
That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme regularly
drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only transformed
from prose to verse, has been reported, but can hardly be true. The
essay plainly appears the fabrick of a poet: what Bolingbroke supplied
could be only the first principles; the order, illustration, and
embellishments, must all be Pope's.

These principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity,
dogmatism, or falsehood; but they were not immediately examined;
philosophy and poetry have not often the same readers; and the essay
abounded in splendid amplifications, and sparkling sentences, which were
read and admired with no great attention to their ultimate purpose; its
flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage
concealed, and, for a time, flourished in the sunshine of universal
approbation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as
innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety.

Its reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into
French prose, and afterwards, by Resnel, into verse. Both translations
fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the version in
prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted Resnel's
version, with particular remarks upon every paragraph.

Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise of
logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme; and, however little known or
regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those in
which philosophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to
argument and disquisition, and, perhaps, was grown too desirous of
detecting faults; but his intentions were always right, his opinions
were solid, and his religion pure.

His incessant vigilance for the promotion of piety disposed him to look
with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes
of virtue and happiness purely rational; and, therefore, it was not long
before he was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated,
for the most part, in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind
away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality; and it is undeniable,
that in many passages a religious eye may easily discover expressions
not very favourable to morals, or to liberty.

About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first
ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and
vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry, with wonderful
extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his
imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a
memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original
combinations, and, at once, exerted the powers of the scholar, the
reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be
always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be always cautious. His
abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal
or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his
adversaries with such contemptuous superiority, as made his readers
commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of
some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman
emperour's determination, "oderint dum metuant;" he used no allurements
of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade.

His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness;
he took the words that presented themselves: his diction is coarse and
impure, and his sentences are unmeasured.

He had, in the early part of his life, pleased himself with the notice
of inferiour wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope. A
letter[133] as produced, when he had, perhaps, himself forgotten it, in
which he tells Concanen, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of
leisure, and Pope for want of genius; Milton out of pride, and Addison
out of modesty. " And when Theobald published Shakespeare, in opposition
to Pope, the best notes were supplied by Warburton.

But the time was now come when Warburton was to change his opinion; and
Pope was to find a defender in him who had contributed so much to the
exaltation of his rival.

The arrogance of Warburton excited against him every artifice of
offence, and, therefore, it may be supposed that his union with Pope was
censured as hypocritical inconstancy; but surely to think differently,
at different times, of poetical merit, may be easily allowed. Such
opinions are often admitted, and dismissed, without nice examination.
Who is there that has not found reason for changing his mind about
questions of greater importance?

Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook, without solicitation, to
rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the
imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and from
month to month continued a vindication of the Essay on Man, in the
literary journal of that time, called the Republick of Letters.

Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad
that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know the full
meaning, could, by any mode of interpretation, be made to mean well. How
much he was pleased with his gratuitous defender, the following letter
evidently shows:

"April 11, 1732.

"Sir,--I have just received from Mr. R. two more of your
letters. It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write
this; but I cannot help thanking you in particular for your
third letter, which is so extremely clear, short, and full, that
I think Mr. Crousaz ought never to have another answer, and
deserved not so good an one. I can only say, you do him too much
honour, and me too much right, so odd as the expression seems;
for you have made my system as clear as I ought to have done,
and could not. It is, indeed, the same system as mine, but
illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say our natural body
is the same still when it is glorified. I am sure I like it
better than I did before, and so will every man else. I know I
meant just what you explain; but I did not explain my own
meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I do
myself; but you express me better than I could express myself.
Pray accept the sincerest acknowledgments. I cannot but wish
these letters were put together in one book, and intend (with
your leave) to procure a translation of part at least, or of all
of them, into French; but I shall not proceed a step without
your consent and opinion, &c. "

By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment, Pope
testified that, whatever might be the seeming or real import of the
principles which he had received from Bolingbroke, he had not
intentionally attacked religion; and Bolingbroke, if he meant to make
him, without his own consent, an instrument of mischief, found him now
engaged, with his eyes open, on the side of truth.

It is known that Bolingbroke concealed from Pope his real opinions. He
once discovered them to Mr. Hooke, who related them again to Pope, and
was told by him that he must have mistaken the meaning of what he heard;
and Bolingbroke, when Pope's uneasiness incited him to desire an
explanation, declared that Hooke had misunderstood him.

Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his pupil from him; and a
little before Pope's death they had a dispute, from which they parted
with mutual aversion.

From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his commentator,
and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he introduced him to
Mr. Murray, by whose interest he became preacher at Lincoln's inn; and
to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his estate, and, by
consequence, a bishoprick. When he died, he left him the property of
his works; a legacy which may be reasonably estimated at four thousand
pounds.

Pope's fondness for the Essay on Man appeared by his desire of its
propagation. Dobson, who had gained reputation by his version of Prior's
Solomon, was employed by him to translate it into Latin verse, and was,
for that purpose, some time at Twickenham; but he left his work,
whatever was the reason, unfinished; and, by Benson's invitation,
undertook the longer task of Paradise Lost. Pope then desired his friend
to find a scholar who should turn his essay into Latin prose; but no
such performance has ever appeared.

Pope lived at this time "among the great," with that reception and
respect to which his works entitled him, and which he had not impaired
by any private misconduct or factious partiality. Though Bolingbroke was
his friend, Walpole was not his enemy; but treated him with so much
consideration as, at his request, to solicit and obtain from the French
minister an abbey for Mr. Southcot, whom he considered himself as
obliged to reward, by this exertion of his interest, for the benefit
which he had received from his attendance in a long illness.

It was said, that, when the court was at Richmond, queen Caroline had
declared her intention to visit him. This may have been only a careless
effusion, thought on no more: the report of such notice, however, was
soon in many mouths; and, if I do not forget or misapprehend Savage's
account, Pope, pretending to decline what was not yet offered, left his
house for a time, not, I suppose, for any other reason than lest he
should be thought to stay at home in expectation of an honour which
would not be conferred. He was, therefore, angry at Swift, who
represents him as "refusing the visits of a queen," because he knew that
what had never been offered had never been refused.

Beside the general system of morality, supposed to be contained in the
Essay on Man, it was his intention to write distinct poems upon the
different duties or conditions of life; one of which is the epistle to
lord Bathurst, 1733, on the Use of Riches, a piece on which he declared
great labour to have been bestowed[134].

Into this poem some incidents are historically thrown, and some known
characters are introduced, with others of which it is difficult to say
how far they are real or fictitious; but the praise of Kyrl, the man of
Ross, deserves particular examination, who, after a long and pompous
enumeration of his publick works and private charities, is said to have
diffused all those blessings from "five hundred a year. " Wonders are
willingly told, and willingly heard. The truth is, that Kyrl was a man
of known integrity and active benevolence, by whose solicitation the
wealthy were persuaded to pay contributions to his charitable schemes;
this influence he obtained by an example of liberality exerted to the
utmost extent of his power, and was thus enabled to give more than he
had. This account Mr. Victor received from the minister of the place:
and I have preserved it, that the praise of a good man, being made more
credible, may be more solid. Narrations of romantick and impracticable
virtue will be read with wonder, but that which is unattainable is
recommended in vain; that good may be endeavoured, it must be shown to
be possible.

This is the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his
religion, by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the pope, and by
mentioning, with some indignation, the inscription on the monument.

When this poem was first published, the dialogue, having no letters of
direction, was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written with no
very distinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle to Bathurst, in which
Bathurst is introduced as speaking.

He afterwards, 1734, inscribed to lord Cobham his Characters of Men,
written with close attention to the operations of the mind and
modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to establish and
exemplify his favourite theory of the "ruling passion," by which he
means an original direction of desire to some particular object; an
innate affection, which gives all action a determinate and invariable
tendency, and operates upon the whole system of life, either openly, or
more secretly by the intervention of some accidental or subordinate
propension.

Of any passion, thus innate and irresistible, the existence may
reasonably be doubted. Human characters are by no means constant; men
change by change of place, of fortune, of acquaintance; he who is at one
time a lover of pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those, indeed,
who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit: for
excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. But to the particular
species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or
predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early
conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and
emulation.

It must be, at least, allowed, that this "ruling passion," antecedent to
reason and observation, must have an object independent on human
contrivance; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. No
man, therefore, can be born, in the strict acceptation, a lover of
money; for he may be born where money does not exist: nor can he be
born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for society, politically
regulated, is a state contradistinguished from a state of nature; and
any attention to that coalition of interests which makes the happiness
of a country, is possible only to those whom inquiry and reflection have
enabled to comprehend it.

This doctrine is, in itself, pernicious, as well as false; its tendency
is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or
overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is
prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall
excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful
dominion of nature, in obeying the resistless authority of his "ruling
passion[135]. "

Pope has formed his theory with so little skill, that, in the examples
by which he illustrates and confirms it, he has confounded passions,
appetites, and habits.

To the Characters of Men, he added soon after, in an epistle supposed to
have been addressed to Martha Blount, but which the last edition has
taken from her, the Characters of Women. This poem, which was laboured
with great diligence, and in the author's opinion with great success,
was neglected at its first publication, as the commentator supposes,
because the publick was informed, by an advertisement, that it contained
"no character drawn from the life;" an assertion which Pope probably did
not expect or wish to have been believed, and which he soon gave his
readers sufficient reason to distrust, by telling them, in a note, that
the work was imperfect, because part of his subject was "vice too high"
to be yet exposed.

The time, however, soon came, in which it was safe to display the
dutchess of Marlborough under the name of Atossa; and her character was
inserted with no great honour to the writer's gratitude.

He published, from time to time, between 1730 and 1740, imitations of
different poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once, as was
suspected, without it. What he was upon moral principles ashamed to own,
he ought to have suppressed. Of these pieces it is useless to settle the
dates, as they had seldom much relation to the times, and, perhaps, had
been long in his hands.

This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarized, by
adapting their sentiments to modern topicks, by making Horace say of
Shakespeare what he originally said of Ennius, and accommodating his
satires on Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of
our own time, was first practised in the reign of Charles the second, by
Oldham and Rochester, at least I remember no instances more ancient. It
is a kind of middle composition between translation and original design,
which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, and the
parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope's favourite amusement; for
he has carried it farther than any former poet.

He published, likewise, a revival, in smoother numbers, of Dr. Donne's
satires, which was recommended to him by the duke of Shrewsbury and the
earl of Oxford. They made no great impression on the publick. Pope seems
to have known their imbecility, and, therefore, suppressed them while he
was yet contending to rise in reputation, but ventured them when he
thought their deficiencies more likely to be imputed to Donne than to
himself.

The epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which seems to be derived, in its first
design, from Boileau's Address _à son Esprit_, was published in January,
1735, about a month before the death of him to whom it is inscribed. It
is to be regretted, that either honour or pleasure should have been
missed by Arbuthnot; a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his
life, and venerable for his piety.

Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession,
versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to
animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a
scholar with great brilliancy of wit; a wit, who, in the crowd of life,
retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.

In this poem Pope seems to reckon with the publick. He vindicates
himself from censures; and with dignity, rather than arrogance, enforces
his own claims to kindness and respect.

Into this poem are interwoven several paragraphs which had been before
printed as a fragment, and among them the satirical lines upon Addison,
of which the last couplet has been twice corrected. It was at first,

Who would not smile if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

Then,

Who would not grieve if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

At last it is,

Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?

He was at this time at open war with lord Hervey, who had distinguished
himself as a steady adherent to the ministry; and, being offended with a
contemptuous answer to one of his pamphlets[136], had summoned Pulteney
to a duel. Whether he or Pope made the first attack, perhaps, cannot now
be easily known: he had written an invective against Pope, whom he
calls, "Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure;" and hints that his
father was a _hatter_[137]. To this Pope wrote a reply in verse and
prose; the verses are in this poem; and the prose, though it was never
sent, is printed among his letters; but to a cool reader of the present
time exhibits nothing but tedious malignity.

His last satires, of the general kind, were two dialogues, named, from
the year in which they were published, Seventeen Hundred and
Thirty-eight. In these poems many are praised, and many are reproached.
Pope was then entangled in the opposition; a follower of the prince of
Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who obstructed and
censured the conduct of the ministers. His political partiality was too
plainly shown: he forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his
earlier years, uninjured and unoffending, through much more violent
conflicts of faction.

In the first dialogue, having an opportunity of praising Allen of Bath,
he asked his leave to mention him as a man not illustrious by any merit
of his ancestors, and called him in his verses "low-born Allen. " Men are
seldom satisfied with praise introduced or followed by any mention of
defect. Allen seems not to have taken any pleasure in his epithet, which
was afterwards softened[138] into "humble Allen. "

In the second dialogue he took some liberty with one of the Foxes, among
others; which Fox, in a reply to Lyttelton, took an opportunity of
repaying, by reproaching him with the friendship of a lampooner, who
scattered his ink without fear or decency, and against whom he hoped the
resentment of the legislature would quickly be discharged.

About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the
lords for a poem called Manners, together with Dodsley, his publisher.
Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, skulked and escaped; but
Dodsley's shop and family made his appearance necessary. He was,
however, soon dismissed; and the whole process was probably intended
rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish Whitehead.

Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the poet, nor
drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from his attempts of
reformation is imputed, by his commentator, to his despair of prevailing
over the corruption of the time. He was not likely to have been ever of
opinion, that the dread of his satire would countervail the love of
power or of money; he pleased himself with being important and
formidable, and gratified sometimes his pride, and sometimes his
resentment; till, at last, he began to think he should be more safe, if
he were less busy.

The Memoirs of Scriblerus, published about this time, extend only to the
first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot,
who used to meet in the time of queen Anne, and denominated themselves
the Scriblerus Club. Their purpose was to censure the abuses of learning
by a fictitious life of an infatuated scholar. They were dispersed; the
design was never completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, as an
event very disastrous to polite letters.

If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the
production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches, perhaps, by Pope, the want
of more will not be much lamented; for the follies which the writer
ridicules are so little practised, that they are not known; nor can the
satire be understood but by the learned: he raises phantoms of
absurdity, and then drives them away. He cures diseases that were never
felt.

For this reason this joint production of three great writers has never
obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little read, or when read
has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by
remembering it.

The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its general
resemblance to Don Quixote, there will be found in it particular
imitations of the History of Mr. Ouffle.
Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for
his travels; and with those the world might have been contented, though
the rest had been suppressed.

Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have
been explored by many other of the English writers; he had consulted the
modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau
endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally neglected.
Pope, however, was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for
the advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selection
from the Italians, who wrote in Latin, had been published at London,
about the latter end of the last century, by a man[139] who concealed
his name, but whom his preface shows to have been well qualified for his
undertaking. This collection Pope amplified by more than half, and,
1740, published it in two volumes, but injuriously omitted his
predecessor's preface. To these books, which had nothing but the mere
text, no regard was paid; the authors were still neglected, and the
editor was neither praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness;
he had planned a work, which he considered as subsequent to his Essay on
Man, of which he has given this account to Dr Swift:

"March 25, 1736.

"If ever I write any more epistles in verse, one of them shall
be addressed to you. I have long concerted it, and begun it; but
I would make what bears your name as finished as my last work
ought to be, that is to say, more finished than any of the rest.
The subject is large, and will divide into four epistles, which
naturally follow the Essay on Man; viz. 1. Of the extent and
limits of human reason and science. 2. A view of the useful,
and, therefore, attainable, and of the unuseful, and, therefore,
unattainable, arts. 3. Of the nature, ends, application, and
use, of different capacities. 4. Of the use of learning, of the
science of the world, and of wit. It will conclude with a satire
against the misapplication of all these, exemplified by
pictures, characters, and examples. "

This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma, and
finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage
to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided, he added,
at Warburton's request, another book to the Dunciad, of which the design
is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either
pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use.

When this book was printed, 1742, the laurel had been, for some time,
upon the head of Cibber; a man whom it cannot be supposed that Pope
could regard with much kindness or esteem, though, in one of the
imitations of Horace, he has liberally enough praised the Careless
Husband. In the Dunciad, among other worthless scribblers, he had
mentioned Cibber; who, in his Apology, complains of the great poet's
unkindness as more injurious, "because," says he, "I never have offended
him. "

It might have been expected, that Pope should have been, in some degree,
mollified by this submissive gentleness, but no such consequence
appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned
him afterwards contemptuously in one of his satires, and again in his
epistle to Arbuthnot: and, in the fourth book of the Dunciad, attacked
him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable.
Perhaps he imagined, that, in ridiculing the laureate, he satirized
those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious
petulance, with which he affected to insult the great.

The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. He had
confidence enough in his own powers to believe, that he could disturb
the quiet of his adversary, and, doubtless, did not want instigators,
who, without any care about the victory, desired to amuse themselves by
looking on the contest. He, therefore, gave the town a pamphlet, in
which he declares his resolution, from that time, never to bear another
blow without returning it, and to tire out his adversary by
perseverance, if he cannot conquer him by strength.

The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a very
distant cause. After the Three Hours after Marriage had been driven off
the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the
audience, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened
that Cibber played Bayes in the Rehearsal; and, as it had been usual to
enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions,
he said, that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in
a mummy and a crocodile. "This," says he, "was received with loud claps,
which indicated contempt of the play. " Pope, who was behind the scenes,
meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the
virulence of a "wit out of his senses;" to which he replied, "that he
would take no other notice of what was said by so particular a man, than
to declare, that, as often as he played that part, he would repeat the
same provocation. "

He shows his opinion to be, that Pope was one of the authors of the play
which he so zealously defended; and adds an idle story of Pope's
behaviour at a tavern. The pamphlet was written with little power of
thought or language, and, if suffered to remain without notice, would
have been very soon forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with
human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his
understanding, that, from a contention like his with Cibber, the world
seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expense of the higher
character. When Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was excited; what Pope
would say of Cibber, nobody inquired, but in hope that Pope's asperity
might betray his pain and lessen his dignity.

He should, therefore, have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die,
without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shown as
Cibber's antagonist could never be compensated by the victory. Cibber
had nothing to lose; when Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him,
he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies. Silence
only could have made him despicable; the blow which did not appear to be
felt would have been struck in vain.

But Pope's irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to tell the whole
English world that he was at war with Cibber; and, to show that he
thought him no common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance; he
published a new edition of the Dunciad[140], in which he degraded
Theobald from his painful preeminence, and enthroned Cibber in his
stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope
was unwilling to lose what he had already written; he has, therefore,
depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the cold pedantry,
and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.

Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest, to make another change,
and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers.
Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any
disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that which
raised Pope's resentment, that he should be put into the Dunciad; but he
had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till, in
time, I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally
in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable
impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other.
Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those
who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by
transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its
efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to
say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own
magpie, who, from his cage, calls cuckold at a venture.

Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the Dunciad with another
pamphlet[141], which, Pope said, "would be as good as a dose of
hartshorn to him;" but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I have
heard Mr. Richardson relate, that he attended his father, the painter,
on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the hands of Pope,
who said, "these things are my diversion. " They sat by him while he
perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young
Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be
preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope.

From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and his vital
powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his faculties with any
original composition, nor proposed any other employment for his
remaining life than the revisal and correction of his former works; in
which he received advice and assistance from Warburton, whom he appears
to have trusted and honoured in the highest degree.

He laid aside his epick poem, perhaps without much loss to mankind; for
his hero was Brutus the Trojan, who, according to a ridiculous fiction,
established a colony in Britain. The subject, therefore, was of the
fabulous age: the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been
exhausted, and attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily
be recalled, when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted
with great imprudence, and, I think, without due consideration of the
nature of our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by
Ruffhead; by which it appears that Pope was thoughtless enough to model
the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with the time
or country in which he places them.

He lingered through the next year; but perceived himself, as he
expresses it, "going down the hill. " He had, for at least five years,
been afflicted with an asthma, and other disorders, which his physicians
were unable to relieve. Towards the end of his life he consulted Dr.
Thomson, a man who had, by large promises, and free censures of the
common practice of physick, forced himself up into sudden reputation.
Thomson declared his distemper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the
water by tincture of jalap; but confessed that his belly did not
subside. Thomson had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to dismiss
him.

While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was one
day sitting in the air with lord Bolingbroke and lord Marchmont, he saw
his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked lord
Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not liking his errand,
crossed his legs and sat still; but lord Marchmont, who was younger and
less captious, waited on the lady, who, when he came to her, asked,
"What, is he not dead yet[142]? " She is said to have neglected him, with
shameful unkindness, in the latter time of his decay; yet, of the little
which he had to leave she had a very great part. Their acquaintance
began early; the life of each was pictured on the other's mind; their
conversation, therefore, was endearing, for when they met, there was an
immediate coalition of congenial notions. Perhaps he considered her
unwillingness to approach the chamber of sickness as female weakness, or
human frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself of peevishness and
impatience, or, though he was offended by her inattention, might yet
consider her merit as overbalancing her fault; and if he had suffered
his heart to be alienated from her, he could have found nothing that
might fill her place; he could have only shrunk within himself; it was
too late to transfer his confidence or fondness.

In May, 1744, his death was approaching[143]; on the 6th, he was all day
delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a sufficient
humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing
things as through a curtain, and in false colours; and one day, in the
presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came out from the wall.
He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think.

Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay; and
being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his
deliriousness, was always saying something kind either of his present or
absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to have survived his
understanding, answered, "It has so. " And added, "I never in my life
knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or
more general friendship for mankind. " At another time he said, "I have
known Pope these thirty years, and value myself more in his friendship
than"--His grief then suppressed his voice.

Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by
his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father
and mother, and whether a priest should not be called; he answered, "I
do not think it essential, but it will be very right; and I thank you
for putting me in mind of it. "

In the morning, after the priest had given him the last sacraments, he
said, "There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship,
and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue. "

He died in the evening of the thirtieth day of May, 1744, so placidly,
that the attendants did not discern the exact time of his expiration. He
was buried at Twickenham, near his father and mother, where a monument
has been erected to him by his commentator, the bishop of Gloucester.

He left the care of his papers to his executors; first to lord
Bolingbroke[144], and, if he should not be living, to the earl of
Marchmont; undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and
eager to extend his fame. But let no man dream of influence beyond his
life. After a decent time, Dodsley, the bookseller, went to solicit
preference as the publisher, and was told that the parcel had not been
yet inspected; and, whatever was the reason, the world has been
disappointed of what was "reserved for the next age. "

He lost, indeed, the favour of Bolingbroke, by a kind of posthumous
offence. The political pamphlet, called the Patriot King, had been put
into his hands that he might procure the impression of a very few
copies, to be distributed, according to the author's direction, among
his friends, and Pope assured him that no more had been printed than
were allowed; but, soon after his death, the printer brought and
resigned a complete edition of fifteen hundred copies, which Pope had
ordered him to print, and to retain in secret. He kept, as was observed,
his engagement to Pope, better than Pope had kept it to his friend; and
nothing was known of the transaction, till, upon the death of his
employer, he thought himself obliged to deliver the books to the right
owner, who, with great indignation, made a fire in his yard, and
delivered the whole impression to the flames.

Hitherto nothing had been done which was not naturally dictated by
resentment of violated faith; resentment more acrimonious, as the
violator had been more loved or more trusted. But here the anger might
have stopped; the injury was private, and there was little danger from
the example.

Bolingbroke, however, was not yet satisfied; his thirst of vengeance
excited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his
last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell
the tale to the publick with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose
heart was warm with his legacy, and tender by the recent separation,
thought it proper for him to interpose; and undertook, not indeed to
vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal,
but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be
denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the
motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have
induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity by
usurping the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been shown to a
number more than sufficient to preserve the author's claim; he could not
gratify his avarice, for he could not sell his plunder till Bolingbroke
was dead: and even then, if the copy was left to another, his fraud
would be defeated, and if left to himself, would be useless.

Warburton, therefore, supposes, with great appearance of reason, that
the irregularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal for
Bolingbroke, who might, perhaps, have destroyed the pamphlet, which Pope
thought it his duty to preserve, even without its author's approbation.
To this apology an answer was written in a Letter to the most impudent
Man living.

He brought some reproach upon his own memory by the petulant and
contemptuous mention made in his will of Mr. Allen, and an affected
repayment of his benefactions. Mrs. Blount, as the known friend and
favourite of Pope, had been invited to the house of Allen, where she
comported herself with such indecent arrogance, that she parted from
Mrs. Allen in a state of irreconcilable dislike, and the door was for
ever barred against her. This exclusion she resented with so much
bitterness as to refuse any legacy from Pope, unless he left the world
with a disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her
dominion, now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist the
violence of her temper, or, perhaps, with a prejudice of a lover,
persuaded that she had suffered improper treatment, he complied with her
demand, and polluted his will with female resentment. Allen accepted
the legacy, which he gave to the hospital at Bath, observing that Pope
was always a bad accomptant, and that, if to 150_l_. he had put a cipher
more, he had come nearer to the truth[145].

The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed on the nicest
model. He has, in his account of the Little Club, compared himself to a
spider, and, by another, is described as protuberant behind and before.
He is said to have been beautiful in his infancy; but he was of a
constitution originally feeble and weak; and, as bodies of a tender
frame are easily distorted, his deformity was, probably, in part the
effect of his application. His stature was so low, that to bring him to
a level with common tables, it was necessary to raise his seat. But his
face was not displeasing, and his eyes were animated and vivid.

By natural deformity, or accidental distortion, his vital functions were
so much disordered, that his life was a "long disease. " His most
frequent assailant was the headache, which he used to relieve by
inhaling the steam of coffee, which he very frequently required.

Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities was
communicated by a female domestick of the earl of Oxford, who knew him,
perhaps, after the middle of life. He was then so weak as to stand in
perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of cold, so that
he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen
with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of
stiff canvass, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till they were
laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted.
His legs were so slender, that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of
stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able
to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without
help. His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean.

His hair had fallen almost all away; and he used to dine sometimes with
lord Oxford, privately, in a velvet cap. His dress of ceremony was
black, with a tie-wig and a little sword.

The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness required, had taught
him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary man. He
expected that every thing should give way to his ease or humour; as a
child, whose parents will not hear her cry, has an unresisted dominion
in the nursery:

C'est que l'enfant toujours est homme;
C'est que i'homme est toujours enfant.

When he wanted to sleep he "nodded in company;" and once slumbered at
his own table while the prince of Wales was talking of poetry.

The reputation which his friendship gave procured him many invitations;
but he was a very troublesome inmate. He brought no servant, and had so
many wants that a numerous attendance was scarcely able to supply them.
Wherever he was, he left no room for another, because he exacted the
attention, and employed the activity of the whole family. His errands
were so frequent and frivolous, that the footmen, in time, avoided and
neglected him; and the earl of Oxford discharged some of the servants
for their resolute refusal of his messages. The maids, when they had
neglected their business, alleged that they had been employed by Mr.
Pope. One of his constant demands was of coffee in the night, and to the
woman that waited on him in his chamber, he was very burdensome; but he
was careful to recompense her want of sleep; and lord Oxford's servant
declared, that in a house where her business was to answer his call, she
would not ask for wages.

He had another fault easily incident to those who, suffering much pain,
think themselves entitled to whatever pleasures they can snatch. He was
too indulgent to his appetite: he loved meat highly seasoned and of
strong taste; and at the intervals of the table amused himself with
biscuits and dry conserves. If he sat down to a variety of dishes, he
would oppress his stomach with repletion; and though he seemed angry
when a dram was offered him, did not forbear to drink it. His friends,
who knew the avenues to his heart, pampered him with presents of luxury,
which he did not suffer to stand neglected. The death of great men is
not always proportioned to the lustre of their lives. Hannibal, says
Juvenal, did not perish by the javelin or the sword; the slaughters of
Cannae were revenged by a ring. The death of Pope was imputed, by some
of his friends, to a silver saucepan, in which it was his delight to
heat potted lampreys.

That he loved too well to eat, is certain; but that his sensuality
shortened his life, will not be hastily concluded, when it is
remembered that a conformation so irregular lasted six-and-fifty years,
notwithstanding such pertinacious diligence of study and meditation.

In all his intercourse with mankind, he had great delight in artifice,
and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected
methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem. " If, at the house of
his friends, he wanted any accommodation, he was not willing to ask for
it in plain terms, but would mention it remotely as something
convenient; though, when it was procured, he soon made it appear for
whose sake it had been recommended. Thus he teased lord Orrery till he
obtained a screen. He practised his arts on such small occasions, that
lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that "he played the
politician about cabbages and turnips. " His unjustifiable impression of
the Patriot King, as it can be imputed to no particular motive, must
have proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning; he caught
an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought of
outwitting Bolingbroke[146].

In familiar or convivial conversation, it does not appear that he
excelled. He may be said to have resembled Dryden, as being not one that
was distinguished by vivacity in company. It is remarkable, that so near
his time, so much should be known of what he has written, and so little
of what he has said: traditional memory retains no sallies of raillery,
nor sentences of observation; nothing either pointed or solid, either
wise or merry. One apophthegm only stands upon record. When an
objection, raised against his inscription for Shakespeare, was defended
by the authority of Patrick, he replied, "horresco referens"--that, "he
would allow the publisher of a dictionary to know the meaning of a
single word, but not of two words put together. "

He was fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be
capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave lord Oxford silently,
no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more letters and
messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The table was, indeed,
infested by lady Mary Wortley, who was the friend of lady Oxford, and
who, knowing his peevishness, could by no entreaties be restrained from
contradicting him, till their disputes were sharpened to such asperity,
that one or the other quitted the house.

He sometimes condescended to be jocular with servants or inferiours; but
by no merriment, either of others or his own, was he ever seen excited
to laughter.

Of his domestick character, frugality was a part eminently remarkable.
Having determined not to be dependent, he determined not to be in want,
and, therefore, wisely and magnanimously rejected all temptations to
expense unsuitable to his fortune. This general care must be universally
approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony,
such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters,
as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which, perhaps, in
five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his
friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in
his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and,
having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say,
"Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine. " Yet he tells his friends, that
"he has a heart for all, a house for all, and, whatever they may think,
a fortune for all. "

He sometimes, however, made a splendid dinner, and is said to have
wanted no part of the skill or elegance which such performances require.
That this magnificence should be often displayed, that obstinate
prudence with which he conducted his affairs would not permit; for his
revenue, certain and casual, amounted only to about eight hundred pounds
a year, of which, however, he declares himself able to assign one
hundred to charity[147].

Of this fortune, which, as it arose from publick approbation, was very
honourably obtained, his imagination seems to have been too full: it
would be hard to find a man, so well entitled to notice by his wit, that
ever delighted so much in talking of his money. In his letters, and in
his poems, his garden and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, or
some hints of his opulence, are always to be found. The great topick of
his ridicule is poverty; the crimes with which he reproaches his
antagonists are their debts, their habitation in the Mint, and their
want of a dinner. He seems to be of an opinion not very uncommon in the
world, that to want money is to want every thing.

Next to the pleasure of contemplating his possessions, seems to be that
of enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and
whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have been obtained by any
practices of meanness or servility; a boast which was never denied to be
true, and to which very few poets have ever aspired. Pope never set his
genius to sale, he never flattered those whom he did not love, or
praised those whom he did not esteem. Savage, however, remarked, that he
began a little to relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for his
Highness's dog.

His admiration of the great seems to have increased in the advance of
life. He passed over peers and statesmen, to inscribe his Iliad to
Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been complete, had
his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so
great an honour, it is not now possible to know; there is no trace in
literary history of any particular intimacy between them. The name of
Congreve appears in the letters among those of his other friends, but
without any observable distinction or consequence.

To his latter works, however, he took care to annex names dignified with
titles, but was not very happy in his choice; for, except lord
Bathurst, none of his noble friends were such as that a good man would
wish to have his intimacy with them known to posterity; he can derive
little honour from the notice of Cobham, Burlington, or Bolingbroke.

Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his letters, an
opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a perpetual
and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence and particular fondness.
There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, constancy, and tenderness.
It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true
characters-of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes
to his friend, lays his heart open before him. But the truth is, that
such were the simple friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the
friendships only of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they
dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed,
they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and, certainly, what we
hide from ourselves we do not show to our friends. There is, indeed, no
transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and
sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of
conversation, the first emotions of the mind often burst out before they
are considered; in the tumult of business, interest and passion have
their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate
performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and
surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character.

Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man so
much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose kindness he
desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world there is less
constraint; the author is not confronted with his reader, and takes his
chance of approbation among the different dispositions of mankind; but a
letter is addressed to a single mind, of which the prejudices and
partialities are known; and must, therefore, please, if not by favouring
them, by forbearing to oppose them.

To charge those favourable representations which men give of their own
minds with the guilt of hypocritical falsehood, would show more severity
than knowledge. The writer commonly believes himself. Almost every man's
thoughts, while they are general, are right; and most hearts are pure
while temptation is away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in
privacy; to despise death when there is no danger; to glow with
benevolence when there is nothing to be given. While such ideas are
formed, they are felt; and self-love does not suspect the gleam of
virtue to be the meteor of fancy.

If the letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they seem
to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write, because
there is something which the mind wishes to discharge; and another to
solicit the imagination, because ceremony or vanity requires something
to be written. Pope confesses his early letters to be vitiated with
"affectation and ambition:" to know whether he disentangled Himself from
these perverters of epistolary integrity, his book and his life must be
set in comparison.

One of his favourite topicks is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if
it had been real, he would deserve no commendation; and in this he was
certainly not sincere, for his high value of himself was sufficiently
observed; and of what could he be proud but of his poetry? He writes, he
says, when "he has just nothing else to do;" yet Swift complains that he
was never at leisure for conversation, because he had "always some
poetical scheme in his head. " It was punctually required that his
writing-box should be set upon his bed before he rose; and lord Oxford's
domestick related, that, in the dreadful winter of forty, she was called
from her bed by him four times in one night, to supply him with paper,
lest he should lose a thought.

He pretends insensibility to censure and criticism, though it was
observed, by all who knew him, that every pamphlet disturbed his quiet,
and that his extreme irritability laid him open to perpetual vexation;
but he wished to despise his criticks, and, therefore, hoped that he
did despise them.

As he happened to live in two reigns when the court paid little
attention to poetry, he nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings,
and proclaims that "he never sees courts. " Yet a little regard shown him
by the prince of Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say
when he was asked by his royal highness, "How he could love a prince
while he disliked kings. "

He very frequently professes contempt of the world, and represents
himself as looking on mankind, sometimes with gay indifference, as on
emmets of a hillock, below his serious attention; and sometimes with
gloomy indignation, as on monsters more worthy of hatred than of pity.
These were dispositions apparently counterfeited. How could he despise
those whom he lived by pleasing, and on whose approbation his esteem of
himself was super-structed? Why should he hate those to whose favour he
owed his honour and his ease? Of things that terminate in human life,
the world is the proper judge; to despise its sentence, if it were
possible, is not just; and if it were just, is not possible. Pope was
far enough from this unreasonable temper: he was sufficiently "a fool to
fame," and his fault was, that he pretended to neglect it. His levity
and his sullenness were only in his letters; he passed through common
life, sometimes vexed, and sometimes pleased, with the natural emotions
of common men.

His scorn of the great is too often repeated to be real; no man thinks
much of that which he despises; and, as falsehood is always in danger of
inconsistency, he makes it his boast, at another time, that he lives
among them.

It is evident that his own importance swells often in his mind.