Alexander Pope | Page 7

The jolly hunting and drinking
squires round Binfield thought him, he says, a well-disposed person,
but unluckily disqualified for their rough modes of enjoyment by his
sickly health. With them he has not been able to make one Latin
quotation, 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 comedies 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,