ly 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 w