d the representative of the age that was coming in,
between the friend of Rochester and Buckingham and the friend of
Lyttelton and Mansfield. At first the boy was enchanted by the kindness
and condescension of so eminent a writer, haunted his door, and followed
him about like a spaniel from coffee-house to coffee-house. Letters full
of affection, humility, and fulsome flattery were interchanged between
the friends. But the first ardor of affection could not last. Pope,
though at no time scrupulously delicate in his writings or fastidious as
to the morals of his associates, was shocked by the indecency of a rake
who, at seventy, was still the representative of the monstrous
profligacy of the Restoration. As the youth grew older, as his mind
expanded and his fame rose, he appreciated both himself and Wycherley
more correctly. He felt a just contempt for the old gentleman's verses,
and was at no great pains to conceal his opinion. Wycherley, on the
other hand, though blinded by self-love to the imperfections of what he
called his poetry, could not but see that there was an immense
difference between his young companion's rhymes and his own. He was
divided between two feelings. He wished to have the assistance of so
skilful a hand to polish his lines; and yet he shrank from the
humiliation of being beholden for literary assistance to a lad who might
have been his grandson. Pope was willing to give assistance, but was by
no means disposed to give assistance and flattery too. He took the
trouble to retouch whole reams of feeble stumbling verses, and inserted
many vigorous lines which the least skilful reader will distinguish in
an instant. But he thought that by these services he acquired a right to
express himself in terms which would not, under ordinary circumstances,
become one who was addressing a man of four times his age. In one
letter, he tells Wycherley that "the worst pieces are such as, to render
them very good, would require almost the entire new writing of them." In
another, he gives the following account of his corrections: "Though the
whole be as short again as at first, there is not one thought omitted
but what is a repetition of something in your first volume, or in this
very paper; and the versification throughout is, I believe, such as
nobody can be shocked at. The repeated permission you give me of dealing
freely with you will, I hope, excuse what I have done; for, if I have
not spared you when I thought seve