dies of the Restoration dramatists for sheer brutality. During
Pope's boyhood he was an elderly rake about town, having squandered his
intellectual as well as his pecuniary resources, but still scribbling
bad verses and maxims on the model of Rochefoucauld. Pope had a very
excusable, perhaps we may say creditable, enthusiasm for the
acknowledged representatives of literary glory. Before he was twelve
years old he had persuaded some one to take him to Will's, that he might
have a sight of the venerable Dryden; and in the first published
letter[1] to Wycherley he refers to this brief glimpse, and warmly
thanks Wycherley for some conversation about the elder poet. And thus,
when he came to know Wycherley, he was enraptured with the honour. He
followed the great man about, as he tells us, like a dog; and,
doubtless, received with profound respect the anecdotes of literary life
which fell from the old gentleman's lips. Soon a correspondence began,
in which Pope adopts a less jaunty air than that of his letters to
Cromwell, but which is conducted on both sides in the laboured
complimentary style which was not unnatural in the days when Congreve's
comedy was taken to represent the conversation of fashionable life.
Presently, however, the letters began to turn upon an obviously
dangerous topic. Pope was only seventeen when it occurred to his friend
to turn him to account as a literary assistant. The lad had already
shown considerable powers of versification, and was soon employing them
in the revision of some of the numerous compositions which amused
Wycherley's leisure. It would have required, one might have thought,
less than Wycherley's experience to foresee the natural end of such an
alliance. Pope, in fact, set to work with great vigour in his favourite
occupation of correcting. He hacked and hewed right and left; omitted,
compressed, rearranged, and occasionally inserted additions of his own
devising. Wycherley's memory had been enfeebled by illness, and now
played him strange tricks. He was in the habit of reading himself to
sleep with Montaigne, Rochefoucauld, and Racine. Next morning he would,
with entire unconsciousness, write down as his own the thoughts of his
author, or repeat almost word for word some previous composition of his
own. To remove such repetitions thoroughly would require a very free
application of the knife, and Pope would not be slow to discover that he
was wasting talents fit for original work in bot