the fine lady whom he had dared to court in reality, after being
allowed and allured to flirt with her in rhyme--do you suppose that
this man had nothing to madden him--to convert him into a sneering
snarling misanthrope? Yet was there one noble soul who met him who
did not love him, or whom he did not love? Have you your doubts? Do
you find it difficult to make your own speculations, even your own
honest convictions, square with the popular superstitions? What were
your doubts, your inward contradictions, to those of a man who, bred
a Papist, and yet burning with the most intense scorn and hatred of
lies and shams, bigotries and priestcrafts, could write that "Essay
on Man"? Read that, young gentlemen of the Job's-wife school, who
fancy it a fine thing to tell your readers to curse God and die, or,
at least, to show the world in print how you could curse God by
divine right of genius, if you chose, and be ashamed of your cowardly
wailings.

Alexander Pope went through doubt, contradiction, confusion, to which
yours are simple and light; and conquered. He was a man of like
passions with yourselves; infected with the peculiar vices of his
day; narrow, for his age was narrow; shallow, for his age was
shallow; a bon-vivant, for his age was a gluttonous and drunken one;
bitter, furious, and personal, for men round him were such; foul-
mouthed often, and indecent, as the rest were. Nay, his very power,
when he abuses it for his own ends of selfish spite and injured
vanity, makes him, as all great men can be (in words at least, for in
life he was far better than the men around him), worse than his age.
He can out-rival Dennis in ferocity, and Congreve in filth. So much
the worse for him in that account which he has long ago rendered up.
But in all times and places, as far as we can judge, the man was
heart-whole, more and not less righteous than his fellows. With his