fame would be delighted to
receive with reverence; he had the reputation for telling anecdotes
skilfully, and we may suppose that when he felt at ease, with a
respectful and safe companion, he could do himself justice. But he must
have been very trying to his hosts. He could seldom lay aside his
self-consciousness sufficiently to write an easy letter; and the same
fault probably spoilt his conversation. Swift complains of him as a
silent and inattentive companion. He went to sleep at his own table,
says Johnson, when the Prince of Wales was talking poetry to
him--certainly a severe trial. He would, we may guess, be silent till he
had something to say worthy of the great Pope, and would then doubt
whether it was not wise to treasure it up for preservation in a couplet.
His sister declared that she had never seen him laugh heartily; and
Spence, who records the saying, is surprised, because Pope was said to
have been very lively in his youth; but admits that in later years he
never went beyond a "particular easy smile." A hearty laugh would have
sounded strangely from the touchy, moody, intriguing little man, who
could "hardly drink tea without a stratagem." His sensitiveness, indeed,
appearing by his often weeping when he read moving passages; but we can
hardly imagine him as ever capable of genial self-abandonment.

His unsocial habits, indeed, were a natural consequence of ill-health.
He never seems to have been thoroughly well for many days together. He
implied no more than the truth when he speaks of his Muse as helping him
through that "long disease, his life." Writing to Bathurst in 1728, he
says that he does not expect to enjoy any health for four days together;
and, not long after, Bathurst remonstrates with him for his
carelessness, asking him whether it is not enough to have the headache
for four days in the week and be sick for the other three. It is no
small proof of intellectual energy that he managed to do so much
thorough work under such disadvantages, and his letters show less of the
invalid's querulous spirit than we might well have pardoned. Johnson
gives a painful account of his physical defects, on the authority of an
old servant of Lord Oxford, who frequently saw him in his later years.
He was so weak as to be unable to rise to dress himself without help. He
was so sensitive to cold that he had to wear a kind of fur doublet under
a coarse linen shirt; one of his sides was contracted, and he could
sca