Cromwell seems to have been but a pedantic hanger-on of literary
circles. His other great friend, Wycherley, had stronger claims upon
his respect, but certainly was not likely to raise his standard of
delicacy. Wycherley was a relic of a past literary epoch. He was nearly
fifty years older than Pope. His last play, the _Plain Dealer_, had been
produced in 1677, eleven years before Pope's birth. The _Plain Dealer_
and the _Country Wife_, his chief performances, are conspicuous amongst
the comedies of the Restoration dramatists for sheer brutality. During
Pope's boyhood he was an elderly rake about town, having squandered his
intellectual as well as his pecuniary resources, but still scribbling
bad verses and maxims on the model of Rochefoucauld. Pope had a very
excusable, perhaps we may say creditable, enthusiasm for the
acknowledged representatives of literary glory. Before he was twelve
years old he had persuaded some one to take him to Will's, that he might
have a sight of the venerable Dryden; and in the first published
letter[1] to Wycherley he refers to this brief glimpse, and warmly
thanks Wycherley for some conversation about the elder poet. And thus,
when he came to know Wycherley, he was enraptured with the honour. He
followed the great man about, as he tells us, like a dog; and,
doubtless, received with profound respect the anecdotes of literary life
which fell from the old gentleman's lips. Soon a correspondence began,
in which Pope adopts a less jaunty air than that of his letters to
Cromwell, but which is conducted on both sides in the laboured
complimentary style which was not unnatural in the days when Congreve's
comedy was taken to represent the conversation of fashionable life.
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