that trust her promises, make
little scruple of revelling to-day on the profits of the morrow."

Here is another shrewd comment upon the compliments paid to Halifax, of
whom Pope says in the character of Bufo,--

Fed with soft dedications all day long,
Horace and he went hand and hand in song.

"To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, or to
suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehoods of his
assertions, is surely to discover great ignorance of human nature and of
human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on reference
and comparison, judgment is always in some degree subject to affection.
Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.

"Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he receives, and
considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of
discernment. We admire in a friend that understanding that selected us
for confidence; we admire more in a patron that bounty which, instead of
scattering bounty indiscriminately, directed it to us; and if the patron
be an author, those performances which gratitude forbids us to blame,
affection will easily dispose us to exalt.

"To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power always
operating, though not always, because not willingly, perceived. The
modesty of praise gradually wears away; and, perhaps, the pride of
patronage may be in time so increased that modest praise will no longer
please.

"Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax, which he would never
have known had he no other attractions than those of his poetry, of
which a short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed
no honour by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told
that, in strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Halifax."

I will venture to make a longer quotation from the life of Pope, which
gives, I think, a good impression of his manner:--

"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