ous sense. Pope is evidently putting his best foot
forward, and never for a moment forgets that he is a young author
writing to a recognized critic--except, indeed, when he takes the airs
of an experienced rake. We might speak of the absurd affectation
displayed in the letters, were it not that such affectation is the most
genuine nature in a clever boy. Unluckily it became so ingrained in Pope
as to survive his youthful follies. Pope complacently indulges in
elaborate paradoxes and epigrams of the conventional epistolary style;
he is painfully anxious to be alternately sparkling and playful; his
head must be full of literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism
of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one
place from extravagant bombast; he communicates the latest efforts of
his muse, and tries, one regrets to say, to get more credit for
precocity and originality than fairly belongs to him; he accidentally
alludes to his dog that he may bring in a translation from the Odyssey,
quote Plutarch, and introduce an anecdote which he has heard from
Trumbull about Charles I.; he elaborately discusses Cromwell's classical
translations, adduces authorities, ventures to censure Mr. Rowe's
amplifications of Lucan, and, in this respect, thinks that Breboeuf,
the famous French translator, is equally a sinner, and writes a long
letter as to the proper use of the caesura and the hiatus in English
verse. There are signs that the mutual criticisms became a little trying
to the tempers of the correspondents. Pope seems to be inclined to
ridicule Cromwell's pedantry, and when he affects satisfaction at
learning that Cromwell has detected him in appropriating a rondeau from
Voiture, we feel that the tension is becoming serious. Probably he found
out that Cromwell was not only a bit of a prig, but a person not likely
to reflect much glory upon his friends, and the correspondence came to
an end, when Pope found a better market for his wares.

Pope speaks more than once in these letters of his country retirement,
where he could enjoy the company of the muses, but where, on the other
hand, he was forced to be grave and godly, instead of drunk and
scandalous as he could be in town. The jolly hunting and drinking
squires round Binfield thought him, he says, a well-disposed person, but
unluckily disqualified for their rough modes of enjoyment by his sickly
health. With them he has not been able to make one Latin quotat