dispositions of mankind; but a letter is addressed to a single mind,
of which the prejudices and partialities are known; and must
therefore please, if not by favouring them, by forbearing to oppose
them. 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.

If the Letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they
seem to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write
because there is something which the mind wishes to discharge, and
another to solicit the imagination because ceremony or vanity
requires something to be written. Pope confesses his early Letters
to be vitiated with AFFECTATION AND AMBITION: to know whether he
disentangled himself from these perverters of epistolary integrity,
his book and his life must be set in comparison. One of his
favourite topics is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if it had
been real, he would deserve no commendation; and in this he was
certainly not sincere, for his high value of himself was
sufficiently observed; and of what could he be proud but of his
poetry? He writes, he says, when "he has just nothing else to do;"
yet Swift complains that he was never at leisure for conversation,
because he "had always some poetical scheme in his head." It was
punctually required that his writing-box should be set upon his bed
before he rose; and Lord Oxford's domestic related that, in the