btained, his imagination seems to have been too full: it
would be hard to find a man, so well entitled to notice by his wit, that
ever delighted so much in talking of his money. In his letters, and in
his poems, his garden and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, or
some hints of his opulence, are always to be found. The great topick of
his ridicule is poverty; the crimes with which he reproaches his
antagonists are their debts, their habitation in the Mint, and their
want of a dinner. He seems to be of an opinion not very uncommon in the
world, that to want money is to want every thing.

Next to the pleasure of contemplating his possessions, seems to be that
of enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and
whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have been obtained by any
practices of meanness or servility; a boast which was never denied to be
true, and to which very few poets have ever aspired. Pope never set his
genius to sale, he never flattered those whom he did not love, or
praised those whom he did not esteem. Savage, however, remarked, that he
began a little to relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for his
Highness's dog.

His admiration of the great seems to have increased in the advance of
life. He passed over peers and statesmen, to inscribe his Iliad to
Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been complete, had
his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so
great an honour, it is not now possible to know; there is no trace in
literary history of any particular intimacy between them. The name of
Congreve appears in the letters among those of his other friends, but
without any observable distinction or consequence.

To his latter works, however, he took care to annex names dignified with
titles, but was not very happy in his choice; for, except lord
Bathurst, none of his noble friends were such as that a good man would
wish to have his intimacy with them known to posterity; he can derive
little honour from the notice of Cobham, Burlington, or Bolingbroke.

Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his letters, an
opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a perpetual
and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence and particular fondness.
There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, constancy, and tenderness.
It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true
characters-of men may be found in their letter