self 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 s