Swift has the credit of eventually prompting the 'Dunciad.' Pope's next effort, the 'Essay on Man,' is inscribed to another "guide, philoso pher and friend," Bolingbroke. One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right"— which is the last line of the first of its four epistles, might be de scribed as the keynote of his attempt "to vin dicate the ways of God to Man.° The writer's metrical dexterity, his power of crystallizing precept, and his executive skill generally, were never shown to greater advantage than in this work; but the consensus of criticism has come to the conclusion that he was not in complete sympathy with, if indeed he thoroughly compre hended, the philosophical tenets of the meteoric genius whom he terms "the master of the poet and the song.* Hence critics like the late Sir Leslie Stephen have come to describe the argu ments as "confused, contradictory, and often childish." Yet, although the poem labors un der these disadvantages, and although, more over, it is only part of an unfinished whole, it had an extraordinary popularity with its first public, and also on the Continent, where, in its translated form, it must have made its appeal by its matter rather than its manner.
To Bolingbroke also Pope owed what must ever be regarded as his greatest and most per sonal performances, his 'Moral Essays' and his 'Satires and Epistles.' The 'Moral Essays' appeared from 1720 to 1735; the 'Satires and Epistles' from 1733 to 1738. These last are un rivaled in their pungent criticism and por traiture of contemporary character and man ners. "It is no paradox,* said the late Rector of Lincoln College, Mark Pattison, "to say that these (Imitations' are among the most original of Pope's writings. So entirely do they breathe the spirit of the age and country in which they were written that they can be read without ref erence to their Latin model" (Preface to 'Satires and Epistles)).
The .discussion of Pope's untiring literary labors has left his life somewhat in the back ground. In April 1716, not long after the ap pearance of the first instalment of his Homer he moved from Binfield to Chiswick, where he lived in what is now known as Mawson's Row. In 1717 his works had become numerous enough to fill a handsome folio volume which was issued by Tonson and Lintot, with its author's portrait engraved by George Vertue after Charles Jervas. In October of the same year his father died; and he moved with his mother to a little villa at Twickenham in which he thenceforth resided, "twisting and twirling and rhyming and harmonizing" five acres of garden until it became "two or three sweet little lawns, opening into one another and surrounded with impenetrable woods." Here he received his friends, among others the Joseph Spence, to whom we owe the bulk of our Popiana. In 1733 his mother, to whom he had always shown an exquisite filial affection, and whom he tended lovingly to the last, died at an advanced age. Ten years later he himself was passing away. prematurely old, and worn out with asthma and dropsy, though scarcely 55. To the end he continued to "dispense his morality" (in the form of his Ethic epistles), and to revise and rearrange his other poems. Finally he died at
Twickenham, 30 May 1744, and was buried in the middle isle of the parish church, where 17 years later a monument was erected to him by his literary executor, Bishop Warburton. In 1730 Gilliver had published a second volume of his poems,. and in 1737-41 had appeared two corresponding volumes of his letters, etc. The story of these last,—of the artifices employed to secure their publication, of their manipula tion and readjustment to suit the writer's own views would take too long to tell here. But the subject has been amply discussed in Mice's 'Papers of a Critic,' 1875, in the "Introduction to Pope's Correspondence" (Vol. VI, 1871) of Elwin and Courthope's 'Works,' and in Court hope's 'Life' (1889) .
Pope was never married. At one period of his career he had cherished a passion for the brilliant Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, by whom he was encouraged and scorned, treat ment for which he took his revenge fiercely in subsequent satires. But his greatest feminine friend was Miss Martha Blount of Mapledur ham, an old acquaintance of the Binfield days, with whom he renewed his relations at Chis wick and Twickenham, and whose friendship he retained at the close of his life. He had spent three or four hours a day with her for 15 years, he said in 1730; and the companionship, which was prolonged for nearly 15 years more, seems always to have had a cheering effect upon his drooping and variable spirits. Into the tangle of gossip which has gathered about this connection, memorable among literary alliances, it is profitless to enter. But that Pope was de votedly attached to his blue-eyed goddess there can be no manner of doubt.
Pope's character is so intimately connected with his personality that it is impossible to omit here some description of his habits and appear ance. Though amiable and attractive in child hood, his sedentary life and close application in early youth speedily affected a constitution not radically sound at the outset. He was remark ably frail and small (four feet six), and he rapidly became deformed. As already stated he was a martyr to headaches. In his diet he re quired to exercise the greatest caution; and he suffered cruelly from any deviation from his regime. He was intensely susceptible to changes of temperature and climate. In his earlier days he was able to take horse exercise,• but in his manhood he could not dress himself without help, nor could he come abroad without being wadded with furs and stiffened with buck ram. That these things reacted upon his views of life can scarcely be contested. He was the most irritable of the irritable race,° says one contemporary; Mens curva in corpore curvo, says another. <'He played the politician about cabbages and says a third. Per contra, it must be remembered that, however sensitive, artificial and vindictive, he was a devoted son and an attached friend. And at least he was a genuine litterateur.