the popular actors and actresses of the day, and with all the frequenters of Will's coffee-house, Cromwell was familiar. He had done more than take a pinch out of Dryden's snuffbox, which was a point of high ambition and honour at Will's; he had inscribed to him one of his translations from Ovid. Gay characterised this literary and eccentric squire as "honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches," and Dr. Johnson could learn nothing particular of him, excepting that he used to ride a-hunting in a tie-wig. The epithet "hatless" may, as Mr. De Quincey suggests,23 refer to Ĉromwell's desire to be considered a fine gentleman devoted to the ladies; for it was then the custom for such gallant persons, when walking with ladies, to carry their hats in their hand. The fashion was a Continental one, prevalent at the Courts of Louis XIV. and XV. (the former rode uncovered by the side of Madame de Maintenon's sedan-chair); and in the present day German princes may be seen walking hat in hand through their village capitals,-a circumstance which provoked this anathema from a Turk: "May thy soul find no more rest in paradise than the hat of a German prince!" What with ladies and literature, rehearsals and reviews (though he was somewhat deaf), and critical attention to the quality of his coffee and Brazil snuff-the latter then a somewhat costly luxury only to be obtained at three shillings an ounce. -Henry Cromwell's time was fully occupied. Here is one of his gallant effusions, written at Bath, and preserved among the Bodleian MSS.: VENUS AT BATH.-BY MR. CROMWELL. "The sportive mistress of the Paphian Court, At church she takes a FOWLER's face to charm; Or walks, salutes in WENTWORTH'S graceful form; Her shape is MORRIS; ABINGDON's her air, And then she kills with SCURLOCK's eyes and hair. She's BALAM at the bath, and GREVILLE at the ball." Most of Pope's letters to his friend are addressed to him at 23 Encyclopædia Britannica, Seventh Edit., Article "Pope." POETICAL EPISTLE TO CROMWELL. 37 the Blue Ball, in Great Wild-street, near Drury-lane, and others to "Widow Hambleton's coffee-house, at the end of Princes-street, near Drury-lane, London." Cromwell was a dangerous acquaintance for Pope at the age of sixteen or seventeen, but he was a very agreeable one. The earliest instance of their correspondence (which evinces their previous intimacy) is a rhyming epistle addressed by Pope to Cromwell, which, from its allusion to the siege of Toulon, must have been written in 1707. This piece is found only in the surreptitious editions, and was never included by Pope in his works. Its poetical merit is small, but it possesses some biographical interest. He seems then to have felt what he specially guarded against in after years by means of rigid prudence and careful management a want of money. "I had to see you some intent, Which spoils full many a good design, As that which in the hero's pate Other satirical touches mark the latent vein—and here also Cromwell might have traced his young friend to Voiture: "When was it known one bard did follow The Granvilles write their name plain Greenfield, Nay, Mr. Wycherley see Binfield. You have no cause to take offence, sir, Zounds you're as sour as Cato censor! Ten times more like him I profess, The fallusion to Whig maxims and the Major-General would seem to indicate that even then Pope had taken his side in politics. He had friends of both parties, and was too much absorbed in literature ever to become a keen partisan; but his leanings were towards the Tories, and his subsequent acquaintance with Swift, Bolingbroke, Harley, and Arbuthnot, strengthened the connexion. From being in his youth so much in the company of old men, Pope said he had contracted some troublesome habits. He had prematurely become a man of the world, and the tone of public feeling and morality was then low. There would seem to have been little about men like Wycherley, Cromwell, and Tydcombe to conciliate the regard of a young poet, but they must have appeared to him as studies in a new field of observation. They occupied a considerable place in society, and their attentions would thus have the grace of condescension as well as the attraction of novelty. Many of the deferential expressions addressed to Cromwell were omitted by Pope on the republication of his letters, along with numerous indications of his anxiety to stand well with Wycherley. Next year Pope accomplished another visit to London, and on his return thus wrote to Cromwell: "March 18, 1708. "SIR,-I believe it was with me when I left the town, as it is with a great many honest men when they leave the world, whose loss itself they do not so much regret, as that of their friends whom they leave behind in it. For I do not know one thing for which I can envy London, but for your continuing there. Yet I guess you will expect me to recant this expression, when I tell you that Sappho (by which heathenish name you have christened a very orthodox lady) did not accompany me into the country. Well, you have your lady in the town still, and I have my heart in the country still, which being wholly unemployed as yet, has the more room in it for my friends, HOW POPE LIVES IN THE COUNTRY. 39 and does not want a corner at your service. You have extremely obliged me by your frankness and kindness; and if I have abused it by too much freedom on my part, I hope you will attribute it to the natural openness of my temper, which hardly knows how to show respect, where it feels affection. I would love my friend, as my mistress, without ceremony; and hope a little rough usage sometimes may not be more displeasing to the one, than it is to the other. "If you have any curiosity to know in what manner I live, or rather lose a life, Martial will inform you in one line: "Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lego, cœno, quiesco.' "Every day with me is literally another yesterday, for it is exactly the same: it has the same business, which is poetry: and the same pleasure, which is idleness. A man might indeed pass his time much better, but I question if any man could pass it much easier. Human life, as Plutarch has just now told me, is like a game at tables, where every one may wish for the best cast, but after all he is to make his best of that which happens, and go on contentedly. If you will visit our shades this spring, which I very much desire, you may perhaps instruct me to manage my game more wisely; but at present I am satisfied to trifle away my time any way, rather than let it stick by me; as shopkeepers are glad to get rid of those goods at any rate, which would otherwise always be lying on their hands. "Sir, if you will favour me sometimes with your letters, it will be a great satisfaction to me on several accounts; and on this in particular, that it will show me (to my comfort) that even a wise man is sometimes very idle; for so you needs must be when you can find leisure to write to such a fellow as, sir, your most faithful and obliged servant,-A. POPE. "P.S. Pray do not put an anachronism again upon me, for my game at tables out of Plutarch. I gave your service to Mr. Wycherley yesterday, and desire you to give mine to—let me see—Mr. Tidcombe." 24 Of this early friend, Tidcombe or Tydcombe, we have not been able to find any particulars. His name occurs occasionally in the poet's correspondence, and he is one of the friends whom Gay introduces into his "Welcome from Greece," congratulating Pope on the completion of his Homer. There was a certain Colonel Tidcombe, a bon vivant and member of The passages He had trans 24 Printed Correspondence, collated with the original. which we have given in italics, were omitted by Pope. ferred the remark about Plutarch and the tables, to a letter printed as addressed to Steele, June 18, 1712. the Kit-cat Club, but he died in 1713. The scattered notices of Pope's friend in the printed correspondence, and in one of Warton's notes to Dryden, represent him as a careless, jovial person, very free in his sentiments on religious subjects. The Sappho of the above letter was, we suspect, a Roman Catholic lady of Berkshire, Mrs. Nelson, who wrote verses, corresponded with Teresa Blount, of Mapledurham, and indeed was intimate with most of the poet's country friends. We have not met with any of her acknowledged poetry-ladies were then averse to appearing in print-but a complimentary effusion addressed to Pope, following the lines of Wycherley in Tonson's Miscellany of 1709 (evidently written by some personal friend), is probably of her composition. Pope did not republish the piece among the other encomiastic verses prefixed to his works in 1717, but he had then quarrelled with Mrs. Nelson. The correspondence with Cromwell was for some time steadily maintained, Pope appearing to delight in the careless ease of his friend's tone and manner: “SIR, This letter greets you from the shades; Or skim the flowery meads of Asphodill:) "April 25, 1708. Strong drink was drunk, and gambols play'd, And two substantial meals a day were made. The business of it is t' express, From me and from my holiness, Το you and to your gentleness, How much I wish you health and happiness, &c. "I made no question but the news of Sappho's staying behind me in the town would surprise you. But she has since come into the country, and, to surprise you more, I will inform you, that the first person she named, when I waited on her, was one Mr. Cromwell. What an ascendant have you over all the sex, who could gain the fair one's heart by appearing before her in a long, black, unpowdered periwig; nay, without so much as the very extremities of clean linen in neckcloth and cuffs! I guess that friend Vertumnus, among all the forms he assumed to win the good graces of Pomona, never took upon him that of a slovenly beau. Well, sir, I leave you to your meditations, on this occasion, and to languish unactive (as you call it)." your |