No. X.

POPE.-WHITE OF SELBORNE.-WARTON.

"I was not much afear'd; but, once or twice,

I was about to speak, and tell him plainly,
The selfsame sun that shines upon his court
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Shines on all alike."

SHAKSPEARE: Winter's Tale.

How delightful, after having been engaged in the investigation of the great tumultuary passions, as exemplified in the struggles of the world, and these again painted by such writers as Clarendon, or Davila, or De Thou, or De Retz; how soothing to sit down to the quieter pictures of humbler but philosophic life, remote from all temptation, and gratified to content with domestic or intellectual enjoyments! How bewitching the life of some poet, or pious divine, or other lettered and retired man, possessing his own mind, doing good in his station, conversing with his God, or cultivating the muse! The contrast is enchanting. Various are the writers of this description; nor do I know a greater relief to the mind, when tossed with ambition or the pursuit of riches, particularly if likely to fail, but even also if with a prospect of success, than a collection of examples amongst those poets, or moral writers in prose, which prove the charms of golden moderation:

"Auream quisquis mediocritatem
Diligit, tutus caret obsoleti

Sordibus tecti, caret invidenda

Sobrius aula."

The happiness to be found in a life of nature, innocence, and privacy, the independence of such a life, that has no hankerings (those baleful enemies of our peace, especially when directed to forbidden objects), is beyond all that ever crowned a statesman, soldier, or even a monarch's felicity.

With a few of these examples I will now refresh the reader, which will pleasingly close the subject, after the harassing anecdotes that have hitherto occupied us. And in beginning with some of the sentiments of Pope, let it not be thought that I quote him as a specimen of the equanimity I have been describing, though a great pretender to it. For, of all the genus irritabile, he was the most irritable; and, when he professed that the attacks upon him were his amusement, he writhed under them so much, that his selfdeception was detected by a mere youth. But still Pope was a poet of sweetness as well as vigour; approached to sincerity in his professed indifference to courts; and was, as far as he could be, a genuine lover of independence. He was often, indeed, an actor, but as often natural; and, when the eyes of the world were not upon him, his heart might be trusted. Johnson has dealt fairly by him; shown up his many vanities and pretensions, but done justice to many virtues ; among them, his prudence in owing every thing to himself. Chesterfield, who drew him as accurately as he did all others whom he painted, allows he was the most irritable of his class; but lays the blame, in

* Young Richardson.

a great measure, on his poor, crazy, deformed body, which, he says, was a mere Pandora's box, containing all the ills that ever afflicted humanity. On the other hand, he compliments him on his charity and filial piety, and gives him credit, after seeing his mind in an undress for a week at a time, for being both agreeable and instructive. We can, therefore, easily believe that such a man, who was always in undress with his friend the Bishop of Rochester, was sincere and natural when he wrote thus to him on his (Pope's) indisposition to public life. "If I could bring myself to fancy what I think you do but fancy, that I have any talents for active life, I want health for it; and besides, it is a real truth, I have less inclination, if possible, than ability. Contemplative life is not only my scene, but my habit. I began my life where most people end theirs, with a disrelish of all that the world calls ambition. I don't know why it is called so, for it always seemed to me rather stooping than climbing. In my politics, I think no farther than how to preserve the peace of my life in any government under which I live; nor, in my religion, than to preserve the peace of my conscience in any church with which I communicate. If I was born under an absolute prince, I would be a quiet subject." These are the sentiments of a man who desired not power, at least political power, to make him happy. If he had many drawbacks while pursuing the power he did seek, namely that to be derived from poetical fame, the fault was his own, for not showing the same

* To Atterbury, 20th Nov. 1717.

moderation in his literary career, as he certainly did in respect to courts and ministers. As to these, we find him as sincere as powerful in what he says of one of the greatest of them, in his privacy:

"Seen him I have; but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill exchang'd for power:
Seen him uncumber'd with the venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe."

Then, as to the felicity of middle life, take what he says of his father:

"Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife;
Stranger to civil and religious rage,

The good man walk'd innoxious through his age.
No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dar'd an oath, nor hazarded a lie.
Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language but the language of the heart.
His life, though long, to sickness past unknown;
His death was instant, and without a groan.
Oh! grant me thus to live, and thus to die,

Who sprang from kings shall know less joy than I."*

In this we may believe him, as well as in the prose account of himself, when telling his friend Blount, on the death of the queen, that he was moved by the common curiosity of mankind, who leave their own business to be looking after other men's. "But

I thank God," he says, "that, as to myself, I am below all the accidents of state changes by my circumstances, and above them by my philosophy. Common charity of man to man, and universal goodwill to all, are the points I have most at heart; and I am sure these are not to be broken for the sake of any governors or

*Prol. to the Satire.

my

government." These were the sentiments of his adult age. The following is a still more pleasing picture of earlier years, of which the freshness delights us in every line. It is his boyhood he is talking of. "When I had done with my priests, I took to reading by myself. This I did without any design but of pleasing myself; I followed every where, as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fall in his way. These five or six years I still look upon as the happiest part of life." This natural pleasure, so much excelling all that the most successful ambition can give, seems to have been fully shared by a great friend of his, whose stormy life and overbearing mind would not have taught us to expect it. Writing of his former delights, in an autumnal morning, Bishop Warburton says to his friend Hurd: "But I now enjoy little of this, compared to what I formerly had, when I used, with a book in my hand, to traverse the delightful lawns and hedgerows round about Newark, the unthinking place of my nativity."†

Pope's friend, Blount, who seems to have resembled him in parts of his mind, consoles both him and himself for being Papists, as ambition is a vice which their disabilities tend to mortify. In another letter he says: "It is many years since I fell in love with the character of Pomponius Atticus, and have contrived hitherto to be, like him, of no party, but to be a faithful friend to some of both; and I live in a certain peace of mind by it, which, I am persuaded, brings a man

* Spencer.

† Hurd's Life of Warburton.