POPE, 427 



were mostly addressed to the public, perhaps even to 

 posterity. But letters, however carefully drilled to be 

 circumspect, are sure to blab, and those of Pope leave 

 in the reader's mind an unpleasant feeling of circum- 

 spection, — of an attempt to look as an eminent literary 

 character should rather than as the man really was. 

 They have the unnatural constraint of a man in full 

 dress sitting for his portrait and endeavoring to look his 

 best. We never catch him, if he can help it, at un- 

 awares. Among all Pope's correspondents, Swift shows 

 in the most dignified and, one is tempted to say, the 

 most amiable light. It is creditable to the Dean that 

 the letters which Pope addressed to him are by far the 

 most simple and straightforward of any that he wrote. 

 No sham could encounter those terrible eyes in Dublin 

 without wincing. I think, on the whole, that a revision 

 of judgment would substitute " discomforting conscious- 

 ness of the public " for " insincerity " in judging Pope's 

 character by his letters. He could not shake off the 

 habits of the author, and never, or almost never, in 

 prose, acquired that knack of seeming carelessness that 

 makes Walpole's elaborate compositions such agi-eeable 

 reading. Pope would seem to have kept a common- 

 place-book of phrases proper to this or that occasion ; 

 and he transfers a compliment, a fine moral sentiment, 

 nay, even sometimes a burst of passionate ardor, fi'om 

 one correspondent to another, with the most cold-blooded 

 unpartiality. Were it not for this curious economy of 

 his, no one could read his letters to Lady Wortley Mon- 

 tagiie without a conviction that they were written by a 

 lovei". Indeed, I think nothing short of the spretce in- 

 juria formce will account for (though it will not excuse) 

 the savage vindictiveness he felt and showed towards 

 her. It may be suspected also that the bitterness of 

 caste added gall to his resentment. His enemy wore 



