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 ourfelves we do not fhew to our friends. There is, indeed, no tranfaction which offers ftronger temptations to fallacy and fophiftication than epiftolary intercourse. In the eagerness of converfation the fir.t emotions of the mind often burft out, before they are confidered; in the tumult of business, interest and paffion have their genuine effect; but a friendly Letter is a calm and deliberate performance, in the cool of leifure, in the stillness of folitude, and furely no man fits down to depreciate by defign his own character.

Friendship has no tendency to fecure veracity; for by whom can a man fo much wish to be thought better than he his, as by him whofe kindness he defires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world there is lefs constraint; the author is not confronted with his reader, and takes his chance of approbation among the different difpofitions of mankind; but a Letter is addreffed to a fingle mind, of which the prejudices and partialities are known; and must therefore please, if not by favouring them, by forbearing to oppofé them.

To charge those favourable representations, which men give of their own minds, with the guilt of hys pocritical falfehood, would fhew more feverity than knowledge. The writer commonly believes himself. Almost every man's thoughts, while they are general, are right; and moft hearts are pure, while temptation is away. It is easy to awaken generous fentiments in privacy; to defpife death when there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when there is nothing to be VOL. IV.

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given. While fuch ideas are formed they are felt, and felf-love does not fufpect the gleam of virtue to be the meteor of fancy.

If the Letters of Pope are confidered merely as compofitions, they feem to be premeditated and arti ficial. It is one thing to write, because there is fomething which the mind wishes to discharge; and another, to folicit the imagination, because ceremony or vanity requires fomething to be written. Pope confeffes his early Letters to be vitiated with affectation and ambition: to know whether he difentangled himself from these perverters of epiftolary integrity, his book and his life must be fet in comparison.

One of his favourite topicks is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if it had been real, he would deferve no commendation; and in this he was certainly not fincere, for his high value of himself was fufficiently observed; and of what could he be proud but of his poetry? He writes, he fays, when he has just nothing else to do; yet Swift complains that he was never at leifure for converfation, because he bad always fome poetical fcheme in his head. It was punctually required that his writing-box fhould be fet upon his bed before he rofe; and Lord Oxford's domeftick related, that, in the dreadful winter of Forty, fhe was called from her bed by him four times in one night, to fupply him with paper, left he fhould lofe a thought.

He pretends infenfibility to cenfure and criticifin, though it was obferved by all who knew him that every pamphlet disturbed his quiet, and that his extreme irritability laid him open to perpetual vexation; but he wifhed to defpife his criticks, and therefore hoped that he did defpife them.

As

As he happened to live in two reigns when the Court paid little attention to poetry, he nurfed in his mind a foolish difefteem of Kings, and proclaims that he never fees Courts. Yet a little regard fhewn him by the Prince of Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say when he was afked by his Royal Highness, how he could love a Prince while he disliked Kings?

He very frequently profeffes contempt of the world, and reprefents himself as looking on mankind, fometimes with gay indifference, as on emmets of a hillock, below his ferious attention; and fometimes with gloomy indignation, as on monsters more worthy of hatred than of pity. These were difpofitions apparently counterfeited. How could he despise those whom he lived by pleafing, and on whofe approbation his esteem of himself was fuperftructed? Why fhould he hate thofe to whofe favour he owed his honour and his eafe? Of things that terminate in human life, the world is the proper judge; to defpife its fentence, if it were poffible, is not juft; and if it were juft, is not poffible. Pope was far enough from this unreafonable temper; he was fufficiently a fool to Fame, and his fault was, that he pretended to neglect it. His levity and his fullenness were only in his Letters; he paffed through common life, fometimes vexed, and fometimes pleased, with the natural emotions of com

mon men.

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

It is evident that his own importance fwells often in his mind. He is afraid of writing, left the clerks of the Poft-office fhould know his fecrets; he has many enemies; he confiders himfelf as furrounded by univerfal jealoufy; after many deaths, and many difperfions, two or three of us, fays 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 fhew what friends wits may be, in spite of all the fools in the world. 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 inévitably excites; and with what degree of friendship the wits might live, very few were fo much fools as ever to enquire.

Some part of this pretended difcontent he learned from Swift, and expreffès it, I think, moft frequently in his correfpondence with him. Swift's refentment was unreasonable, but it was fincere; 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 and retirement had thrown him on the world, and that there was danger left a glut of the world should throw him back upon ftudy and retirement. To this Swift anfwered with great propriety, that Pope had not yet either acted or fuffered enough in the world to have become weary of it. And, indeed, it must be some very powerful reafon that can drive back to folitude him who has once enjoyed the pleasures of fociety.

In the Letters both of Swift and Pope there appears fuch narrowness of mind, as makes them infenfible of any excellence that has not fome affinity with their own,

and

and confines their efteem and approbation to fo fmall a number, that whoever should form his opinion of the age from their reprefentation, would fuppofe them to haye lived amidst ignorance and barbarity, unable to find among their contemporaries either virtue or intelligence, and perfecuted by thofe that could not understand them.

When Pope murmurs at the world, when he professes contempt of fame, when he fpeaks of riches and poverty, of fuccefs and disappointment, with negligent indifference, he certainly does not exprefs his habitual and fettled fentiments, but either wilfully difguifes his own character, or, what is more likely, invefts himself with temporary qualities, and fallies out in the colours of the prefent moment. His hopes and fears, his joys and forrows, acted strongly upon his mind; and if he differed from others, it was not by careleffnefs; he was irritable and refentful; his malignity to Philips, whom he had first made ridiculous, and then hated for being angry, continued too long. Of his vain defire to make Bentley contemptible, I never heard any adequate reafon. He was fometimes wanton in his attacks; and, before Chandos, Lady Wortley, and Hill, was mean in his

retreat.

The virtues which feem to have had moft of his affection were liberality and fidelity of friendship, in which it does not appear that he was other than he defçribes himself. His fortune did not fuffer his charity to be fplendid and confpicuous; but he affifted DodЛley with a hundred pounds, that he might open a fhop: and of the fubfcription of forty pounds a year, that he raised for Savage, twenty were paid by himself. He

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was