ion, but
has learnt a song of Tom Durfey's, the sole representative of
literature, it appears, at the "toping-tables" of these thick-witted
fox-hunters. Pope naturally longed for the more refined or at least
more fashionable indulgences of London life. Beside the literary
affectation, he sometimes adopts the more offensive
affectation--unfortunately not peculiar to any period--of the youth who
wishes to pass himself off as deep in the knowledge of the world. Pope,
as may be here said once for all, could be at times grossly indecent;
and in these letters there are passages offensive upon this score,
though the offence is far graver when the same tendency appears, as it
sometimes does, in his letters to women. There is no proof that Pope was
ever licentious in practice. He was probably more temperate than most of
his companions, and could be accused of fewer lapses from strict
morality than, for example, the excellent but thoughtless Steele. For
this there was the very good reason that his "little, tender, crazy
carcass," as Wycherley calls it, was utterly unfit for such excesses as
his companions could practice with comparative impunity. He was bound
under heavy penalties to be through life a valetudinarian, and such
doses of wine as the respectable Addison used regularly to absorb, would
have brought speedy punishment. Pope's loose talk probably meant little
enough in the way of actual vice, though, as I have already said,
Trumbull saw reasons for friendly warning. But some of his writings are
stained by pruriency and downright obscenity; whilst the same fault may
be connected with a painful absence of that chivalrous feeling towards
women which redeems Steele's errors of conduct in our estimate of his
character. Pope always takes a low, sometimes a brutal view of the
relation between the sexes.

Enough, however, has been said upon this point. If Pope erred, he was
certainly unfortunate in the objects of his youthful hero-worship.
Cromwell seems to have been but a pedantic hanger-on of literary
circles. His other great friend, Wycherley, had stronger claims upon
his respect, but certainly was not likely to raise his standard of
delicacy. Wycherley was a relic of a past literary epoch. He was nearly
fifty years older than Pope. His last play, the _Plain Dealer_, had been
produced in 1677, eleven years before Pope's birth. The _Plain Dealer_
and the _Country Wife_, his chief performances, are conspicuous amongst
the come