It is affecting to note, through Pope's correspondence, the marked way in which his friends, the greatest, the most famous, and wittiest men of the time—generals and statesmen, philosophers and divines,—all have a kind word, and a kind thought for the good simple old mother, whom Pope tended so affectionately. Those men would have scarcely valued her, but that they knew how much he loved her and that they pleased him by thinking of her. If his early letters to women are affected and insincere, whenever he speaks about this one, it is with a childish tenderness and an almost sacred simplicity. In 1718, when young Mr. Pope had, by a series of the most astonishing victories and dazzling achievements, seized the crown of poetry; and the town was in an uproar of admiration, or hostility, for the young chief; when Pope was issuing his famous decrees for the translation of the Iliad; when Dennis and the lower critics were hooting and assailing him; when Addison and the gentlemen of his court were sneering with sickening hearts at the prodigious triumphs of the young conqueror; when Pope, in a fever of victory, and genius, and hope, and anger, was struggling through the crowd of shouting
nephew, a Guinea trader, came in, 'Nephew,' said Sir Godfrey, 'you have the honour of seeing the two greatest men in the world.'—'I don't know how great you may be,' said the Guinea man, 'but I don't like your looks: I have often bought a man, much better than both of you together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.'"—Dr. Warburton (Spence's Anecdotes).
