much of that which he despises; and as falsehood is always in danger
of inconsistency, he makes it his boast at another time that he
lives among them. It is evident that his own importance swells
often in his mind. He is afraid of writing, lest the clerks of the
post-office should know his secrets; he has many enemies; he
considers himself as surrounded by universal jealousy: "After many
deaths, and many dispersions, two or three of us," says he, "may
still be brought together, not to plot, but to divert ourselves, and
the world too, if it pleases;" and they can live together, and "show
what friends wits may be, in spite of all the fools in the world."
All this while it was likely that the clerks did not know his hand;
he certainly had no more enemies than a public character like his
inevitably excites; and with what degree of friendship the wits
might live, very few were so much fools as ever to inquire. Some
part of this pretended discontent he learned from Swift, and
expresses it, I think, most frequently in his correspondence with
him. Swift's resentment was unreasonable, but it was sincere;
Pope's was the mere mimicry of his friend, a fictitious part which
he began to play before it became him. When he was only twenty-five
years old, he related that "a glut of study and retirement had
thrown him on the world," and that there was danger lest "a glut of
the world should throw him back upon study and retirement." To this
Swift answered with great propriety, that Pope had not yet acted or
suffered enough in the world to have become weary of it. And,
indeed, it must have been some very powerful reason that can drive
back to solitude him who has once enjoyed the pleasures of society.

In the Letters both of Swift and Pope there appears such narrowness
of mind as makes them insensible of any excellence that has not some
affinity with their own, and confines their esteem and approbation