calculations by which Pope contrived to deceive Curll there is the spirit not only of the deliberate impostor, but of the diplomatist with cabbages and turnips. He had the sporting instinct which delights in the successful working of traps and springes. To see so old a fox as Curll walk into the snare set for him, just as Dennis had done in his 'Remarks on Cato,' and the Dunces after the chapter in the Bathos,' gave him, we cannot doubt, great satisfaction; and it is not unreasonable to believe that the pleasure he took in enacting the part of P. T. diverted some part of his attention from the selfishness of the main motive by which he was animated. It is indeed evident, from expressions in some of his letters, that he did not deny the fact that he had, to some extent, connived at Curll's publication.' This plea, of course, will not avail him in the case of the publication of Swift's correspondence, the whole history of which is a melancholy example of the excesses of which he had become capable from the indulgence of his ruling passion of self-love, and of his incorrigible habit of plotting.

In the manipulation of the correspondence itself we trace the hand of the professional composer. Having once determined to make use of his correspondence as a means of revealing his character to the public, he treated both character and correspondence precisely like a poem which it was important to give to the world in the best possible form. The correspondence with Wycherley, in its actual state, afforded a striking picture of the relations existing between an old man of sixtyfour and a youth of seventeen, but the effect of the composition as a whole might be still further pointed and heightened by adding a few ideal touches to strengthen the light and deepen the shadows. Whatever Pope was capable of feeling he thought himself capable of being. He had 'poured out all himself,' so he thought

"As plain

As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne,"

See, for instance, letter to Fortescue, Vol. IX., p. 133, and letter

to Lord Oxford of June 17, 1735.

in his letters to Caryll. When this inner self, however, with all its protestations of effusive benevolence, was to be exhibited to the world, it was necessary that it should shine in a more splendid setting than in letters addressed to a plain Sussex Squire. The character, so Pope doubtless argued the matter with his conscience, was shown in the sentiment: it mattered not whether the sentiment had been in the first place communicated to Caryll or to Addison. He probably did not care to debate with himself the more vital question whether, in view of the relations existing between himself and Addison, he was by the fictitious addresses of his letters doing an injury to the memory of the latter. His immediate object was to clear himself of the charges brought against him by his enemies in respect of the character of Atticus. Convinced that he was himself the aggrieved party, he was bent on establishing his case with the public by facts where possible, by fictions where necessary; and the fictitious letters to Addison were part of the machinery which he considered himself justified in employing for so laudable a purpose.

The foregoing remarks are in no way intended to excuse or extenuate Pope's misdoings. They are meant simply to place before the reader the variety of motives which under the circumstances are likely to have dictated his conduct, so that he may at least be allowed that consideration which all human beings are entitled to receive when they are being judged by their fellows. When Johnson wrote his Life of Pope the full extent of the poet's frauds was not known. Yet even after recent revelations, experience of human nature enables us to place the source of the imposture in the fanaticism of self-love, and in man's infinite capacity of self-deception; and the judgment of Johnson, a man of the sturdiest honesty, may well be weighed by those who are inclined to condemn Pope's character as a whole, on the ground of his dealings in the matter of his correspondence.

"It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true characters of men may be found in their letters, and that he who

But the truth is and are now the

writes to his friend lays his heart open before him. that such were the friendships of the Golden Age,' friendships only of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed, they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and certainly what we hide from ourselves, we do not show to our friends. To charge those favourable representations which men give of their own minds with the guilt of hypocritical falsehood would show more severity than knowledge. The writer commonly believes himself. Almost every man's thoughts, while they are general, are right; and most hearts are pure while temptation is away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in privacy; to despise death when there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when there is nothing to be given. While such ideas are formed they are felt, and self-love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be the meteor of fancy."

CHAPTER XIV.

POPE AND THE PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION.

Death of Peterborough-Despondency of Swift-The Political SituationThe Third Moral Essay-The Opposition and the Prince of WalesIntroduction of Pope to the Prince-'Epistle to Augustus - Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-eight '-Secession of the Opposition from Parliament-Conferences at Pope's Villa-'1740.'

1733-1740.

Ir anything were needed to excite compassion and indulgence for Pope's abnormal craving for fame, the materials would be found in the glimpses afforded in his correspondence of the state of his health and feelings at this period. He did not exaggerate when in the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot' he spoke of that long disease my life.' His letters tell a tale of constant headaches, perpetual sickness, chronic sleeplessness; and passages here and there in them show how deep was his sense of the contrast between his ideal and his actual self.

"In sincere truth," he writes on one occasion to Lord Bathurst, "I often think myself (it is all I can do) with your lordship; and let me tell you my life in thought and imagination is as much superior to my life in action and reality as the best soul can be to the vilest body. I find the latter grows yearly so much worse and more declining that I believe I shall soon scruple to carry it about to others; it will become almost a carcase, and as unpleasing as those which they say the spirits now and then use for frightening folks. My health is so temporary that, if I pass two days abroad, it is odds but one of them I must be a trouble to any good-natured friend and to his family; and the other, remain dispirited enough to make them no sort of amends by my languid conversation."

1

He found some relief in perpetual change of scene, and every year was accustomed to make a round of visits to the

1 Letter of Pope to Lord Bathurst, No. 23, Vol. VIII., p. 359.

seats of his chosen friends, beginning with Lord Cobham and Stowe, whence he would proceed first to General Dormer's at Rousham, then to Lord Bathurst's at Cirencester, afterwards to Bath, ending his travels at Bevis Mount, the home of Lord Peterborough, near Southampton, or sometimes with Caryll at Ladyholt. In 1735 he paid his last visit to Bevis Mount.

"Lord Peterborough," he writes in November, 1735, "I went to take a last leave of at his setting sail for Lisbon. No body can be more wasted, no soul can be more alive. Poor Lord Peterborough ! there is another string lost that would have helped to draw you hither!"

Peterborough died at Lisbon on October 25, 1735. Swift, to whom the above was written, was fallen into an even more melancholy condition than Pope. Deafness, giddiness, and a sense of desertion weighed heavily upon him, and the tone of acute suffering and affection in which he writes to Pope in the following year is tragically pathetic.

"What Horace says, Singula de nobis anni prædantur, I feel every month, at farthest; and by this computation, if I hold out two years I shall think it a miracle. My comfort is, you began to distinguish so confounded early that your acquaintance with distinguished men of all kinds was almost as ancient as mine. I mean Wycherley, Rowe, Prior, Addison, Parnell, &c., and in spite of your heart you have owned me as a contemporary; not to mention Lords Oxford, Bolingbroke, Harcourt, Peterborough. In short, I was the other day recollecting twenty-seven great ministers or men of wit and learning who are all dead, and all of my acquaintance within twenty years past neither have I the grace to be sorry that the present times are drawn to the dregs as well as my own life. May my friends be happy in this and a better life, but I value not what becomes of posterity when I consider from what monsters they are to spring."1

Pope, in his correspondence with the Dean, says, as is fitting, comparatively little of his own ailments, but mentions with a delicate sympathy his consciousness of a decline in his creative powers.

"My understanding, indeed, such as it is, is extended rather than diminished; I see things more in the whole, more consistent, and more

Letter from Swift to Pope of December 2, 1736