There are signs that the mutual criticisms became a little trying
to the tempers of the correspondents. Pope seems to be inclined to
ridicule Cromwell's pedantry, and when he affects satisfaction at
learning that Cromwell has detected him in appropriating a rondeau from
Voiture, we feel that the tension is becoming serious. Probably he found
out that Cromwell was not only a bit of a prig, but a person not likely
to reflect much glory upon his friends, and the correspondence came to
an end, when Pope found a better market for his wares.
Pope speaks more than once in these letters of his country retirement,
where he could enjoy the company of the muses, but where, on the other
hand, he was forced to be grave and godly, instead of drunk and
scandalous as he could be in town. The jolly hunting and drinking
squires round Binfield thought him, he says, a well-disposed person, but
unluckily disqualified for their rough modes of enjoyment by his sickly
health. With them he has not been able to make one Latin quotation, but
has learnt a song of Tom Durfey's, the sole representative of
literature, it appears, at the "toping-tables" of these thick-witted
fox-hunters. Pope naturally longed for the more refined or at least
more fashionable indulgences of London life. Beside the literary
affectation, he sometimes adopts the more offensive
affectation--unfortunately not peculiar to any period--of the youth who
wishes to pass himself off as deep in the knowledge of the world.
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