Pope,
as may be here said once for all, could be at times grossly indecent;
and in these letters there are passages offensive upon this score,
though the offence is far graver when the same tendency appears, as it
sometimes does, in his letters to women. There is no proof that Pope was
ever licentious in practice. He was probably more temperate than most of
his companions, and could be accused of fewer lapses from strict
morality than, for example, the excellent but thoughtless Steele. For
this there was the very good reason that his "little, tender, crazy
carcass," as Wycherley calls it, was utterly unfit for such excesses as
his companions could practice with comparative impunity. He was bound
under heavy penalties to be through life a valetudinarian, and such
doses of wine as the respectable Addison used regularly to absorb, would
have brought speedy punishment. Pope's loose talk probably meant little
enough in the way of actual vice, though, as I have already said,
Trumbull saw reasons for friendly warning. But some of his writings are
stained by pruriency and downright obscenity; whilst the same fault may
be connected with a painful absence of that chivalrous feeling towards
women which redeems Steele's errors of conduct in our estimate of his
character. Pope always takes a low, sometimes a brutal view of the
relation between the sexes.
Enough, however, has been said upon this point. If Pope erred, he was
certainly unfortunate in the objects of his youthful hero-worship.
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