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 shew 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 274 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 2: 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 275 their own minds 3, with the guilt of hypocritical falsehood, would shew more severity than knowledge. The writer commonly great truth, sounded by the knowing to the ignorant, and so echoed by the ignorant to the knowing,' in John. Letters, ii. 52. In the Preface to his Letters (1737) Pope said that they showed 'what were his real sentiments, as they flowed warm from the heart, and fresh from the occasion, without the least thought that ever the world should be a witness to them.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. Introd. p. 40. In the letter published by him as written to Addison on Dec. 14, 1713, he says:-'I am conscious I write with more unreservedness than ever man wrote, or perhaps talked to another. I trust your good-nature with the whole range of my follies.' Ib. vi. 405. This letter he forged. It had The Bishop of St. Asaph said, In the first edition :-' which every man gives of himself.' 276 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 3. 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. 277 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 certainly was 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 Pope wrote to Aaron Hill on Feb. 5, 1730-1:-'Of my life and manners I do not yet repent one jot.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), x. 19. 2 BOSWELL. I have often blamed myself, Sir, for not feeling for others as sensibly as many say they do. JOHNSON. Sir, don't be duped by them any more. You will find these very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling. Boswell's Johnson, ii. 95. 3 Ante, POPE, 167, 172. Pope wrote to Swift on Nov. 28, 1729:'It is many years ago since I wrote as a Wit.' On this Warburton remarks:-' He used to value himself on this particular.' Warburton, ix. III. 'Mr. Pope laboured his letters as much as the Essay on Man, and as they were written to everybody they do not look as if they had been 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 3. He pretends insensibility to censure and criticism, though it 278 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 279 little attention to poetry he nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of Kings, and proclaims that 'he never sees Swift, in 1733, wrote of him and Bolingbroke: Mr. Pope can neither eat nor drink, loves to be alone, and hath always some poetical scheme in his head. Thus the two best com. panions and friends I ever had have utterly disqualified themselves for my conversation and my way of living.' Swift's Works, xviii. 138. 2 Swift wrote on Jan. 18 of this year: It is now 25 days since we have found nothing but frost and misery.' On Feb. 3 he wrote:-'My garden is still all in white.' Ib. xix. 217, 221. For the 'Frost Fair' on the Thames see Gent. Mag. 1740, p. 35, Post, POPE, 297. Horace Walpole (Works, i. 383) tells how the poetical Duchess of Newcastle (ante, DRYDEN, 43) 'had a servant who lay in a truckle-bed within her bedchamber, and whenever in the night she felt inspiration, she called out, "John, I conceive"; on which summons he rose, and wrote down the fruits of her reveries.' Ante, BLACKMORE, II; POPE, 239. Warburton, in a note on Epil. Sat. ii. 220, says: There is now in his Library a complete collection of all the horrid Libels against him. These he had bound up in several volumes; and to each of them hath affixed this motto out of Job (xxxi. 35-6):-"Behold, my desire is that mine adversary should write a book. Surely I should take it upon my LIVES OF PORTS. 111 P shoulder, and bind it as a crown to 5 Johnson hesitated between 'con- 'Pope,' writes Warton, 'is so perpetually expressing an affected contempt for Kings that it becomes al"The pride of Kings" [Essay on Man, i. 2]. "Some monster of a King" [Imit. Hor., Epis. ii. 1. 210]. "Pity Kings" [Pope's Donne's Sat. iv. 187]. "The gifts of Kings" [Imit. Hor., Epis. i. 6. 15]. "Gods of Kings" [Epil. Sat. ii. 225]. "Much above a King" [Imit. Hor., Epis. i. 1. 186]. “Settle writ of Kings" [1b. ii. I. 417]. "Midas and a King" [Prol. Sat. 1.70]. Hawkins Brown laughed at him for his affectation in the Imitations of English Poets, On Tobacco"Come let me taste thee, unexcised by Kings." most a nauseous cant. [Campbell's British Poets, p. 444.] Kings have been of late years [written in 1797] spoken of with even much more disrespect.' Warton, iv. 116. Warton, in his Essay,ii. 393, quotes Montaigne:-'Since we cannot attain to greatness, let us have our revenge by railing at it.' To a Catholic like Pope,' writes Mr. Courthope, 'the Brunswick dynasty was identified with the revival of the Penal Laws, with double taxes, and harsh restrictions of per 280 Courts. Yet a little regard shewn 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 2.' He very frequently professes contempt of the world3, 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 superstructed? 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 5: 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. sonal liberty.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iii. 31. He wrote to Swift in 1728:'Courts I see not, courtiers I know not, kings I adore not, queens I compliment not.' Ib. vii. 111. 2 When Mr. Pope met the Prince [ante, POPE, 217, 259] at the waterside, he expressed the sense of the honour done him, &c. On which the Prince said: "It is very well; but how shall we reconcile your love to a Prince with your professed indisposition to Kings, since Princes will be Kings in time?" "Sir," replied Pope, "I consider royalty under that noble and authorized type of the Lion; while he is young, and before his nails are grown, he may be approached, and caressed with safety and pleasure.' Ruffhead, p. 535. See Boswell's Johnson, iv. 50, for Wilkes's version of this repartee, and ante, POPE, 264, for his 'one apophthegm.' Pope wrote to Swift:-'I despise the world yet, I assure you, more than either Gay or you.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 123. He wrote to Bethell: A few honest people is all the world is worth; but you shall never find them agree to stand by one another and despise the rest.'' Ib. ix. 167. Writing to Swift of 'the praises given by men of virtue,' Pope continues:All other praise, whether from poets or peers, is contemptible alike, and I am old enough, and experienced enough, to know, that the only praises worth having are those bestowed by virtue for virtue.' Ib. vii. 311. The wonder is that he should thus cant to such a man as Swift. His scorn of the Great is repeated too often to be real1: no 281 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 2. It is evident that his own importance swells often in his mind3, 282 He is afraid of writing lest the clerks of the Post-office should know his secrets'; he has many enemies; he considers himself as surrounded by universal jealousy; 'after many deaths, and many dispersions, two or three of us,' says he, 'may still be brought together, not to plot, but to divert ourselves, and the world too, if it pleases'; and they can live together, and 'shew what friends wits may be, in spite of all the fools in the world 5. All this while it was likely that the clerks did not know his hand: he certainly had no more enemies than a publick character like his inevitably excites, and with what degree of friendship the wits might live very few were so much fools as ever to enquire. Some part of this pretended discontent he learned from Swift, 283 and expresses it, I think, most frequently in his correspondence with him. Swift's resentment was unreasonable, but it was sincere ; Pope's was the mere mimickry of his friend, a fictitious part which he began to play before it became him. When he was only twenty-five years old he related that 'a glut of study ii. 109. 'It is probable his hand was not so very well known, nor his letters so eagerly opened, by the clerks of the office as he seems always to think.' GOLDSMITH, Works, iv. 85. Pope wrote to Swift in 1734, about the authorship of the first Essay on Man:-'I beg your pardon for not telling you...; but no secret can cross your Irish Sea, and every clerk in the post-office had known it.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 324. See also ib. viii. 411. Swift wrote to him in 1738:'I have an ill name in the post-office of both kingdoms, which makes the letters addressed to me not seldom miscarry, or be opened and read.' Ib. vii. 364. In 1735 many members of the House of Commons complained of Gray wrote to Wharton in 1753:'Remember this election-time letters are apt to be opened at the offices.' Gray's Letters, i. 244. In 1783 Pitt wrote to his mother: -'I believe the fashion which prevails of opening almost every letter that is sent makes it almost impossible to write anything worth reading.' Stanhope's Pitt, 1861, i. 136. 5 Johnson quotes, not quite accurately, two letters of Pope to Swift, dated Sept. 14, 1725, March 23, 1736-7. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 50, 357. 6 Ante, SWIFT, 135. |