"I sent the verses to Mr. Addison," said Pope, "and he used me very civilly ever after." No wonder he did. It was shame very likely move than fear that silenced him. Johnson recounts an interview between Pope and Addison after their quarrel, in which Pope was angry, and Addison tried to be contemptuous and calm. Such a weapon as Pope's must have pierced any scorn. It flashes for ever, and quivers in Addison's memory. His great figure looks out on us from the past—stainless but for that—pale, calm, and beautiful: it bleeds from that black wound. He should be drawn, like St. Sebastian, with that arrow in his side. As he sent to Gay and asked his pardon, as he bade his step-son come and see his death, be sure he had forgiven Pope, when he made ready to show how a Christian could die.
Pope then formed part of the Addisonian court for a short time, and describes himself in his letters as sitting with that coterie until two o'clock in the morning over punch and Burgundy amidst the fumes of tobacco. To use an expression of the present day, the "pace" of those viveurs of the former age was awful. Peterborough lived into the very jaws of death; Godolphin laboured all day and gambled at night; Bolingbroke,[1] writing to Swift, from Dawley, in his
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LORD BOLINGBROKE TO THE THREE YAHOOS OF TWICKENHAM.
"July 23, 1726."Jonathan, Alexander, John, Most Excellent Triumvirs of Parnassus,—
"Though you are probably very indifferent where I am, or what
