acid temperament, accepts placidly the conclusion that as he can
see through a good many people, virtue generally is a humbug. If he has
grace enough left to be soured by such a conclusion, he raves at the
universal corruption of mankind. Now Pope, notwithstanding his petty
spite, and his sympathy with the bitterness of his friends, always shows
a certain tenderness of nature which preserves him from sweeping
cynicism. He really believes in nature, and values life for the power of
what Johnson calls reciprocation of benevolence. The beauty of his
affection for his father and mother, and for his old nurse, breaks
pleasantly through the artificial language of his letters, like a sweet
spring in barren ground. When he touches upon the subject in his poetry,
one seems to see tears in his eyes, and to hear his voice tremble. There
is no more beautiful passage in his writings than the one in which he
expresses the hope that he may be spared

To rock the cradle of reposing age,
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky.

Here at least he is sincere beyond suspicion; and we know from
unimpeachable testimony that the sentiment so perfectly expressed was
equally exemplified in his life. It sounds easy, but unfortunately the
ease is not always proved in practice, for a man of genius to be
throughout their lives an unmixed comfort to his parents. It is
unpleasant to remember that a man so accessible to tender emotions
should jar upon us by his language about women generally. Byron
countersigns the opinion of Bolingbroke that he knew the sex well; but
testimony of that kind hardly prepossesses us in his favour. In fact,
the school of Bolingbroke and Swift, to say nothing of Wycherley, was
hardly calculated to generate a chivalrous tone of feeling. His
experience of Lady Mary gave additional bitterness to his sentiments.
Pope, in short, did not love good women--

Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguished as black, brown, or fair,

as he impudently tells a lady--as a man of genius ought; and women have
generally returned the dislike. Meanwhile the vein of benevolence shows
itself unmistakably in Pope's language about his friends. Thackeray
seizes upon this point of his character in his lectures on the English
Humourists, and his powerful, if rather