CHAPTER XXVIII.
LADY MARCHMONT TO SIR JASPER MEREDITH.
Life's best gifts are bought dearly. Wealth is won
By years of toil, and often comes too late:
With pleasure comes satiety; and pomp
Ts compassed round with vexing vanities:
And genius, earth's most glorious gift, that lasts
When all beside is perished in the dust-
How bitter is the suffering it endures!
How dark the penalty that it exacts!
My Dearest Uncle,—I return at once to the dinner at Lady Oxford's. Mr. Pope was within two of me at table. At first our meeting was a little awkward: he could not forget that I had witnessed his mortification. Pope is more pettish than the Dean of St. Patrick's. He could not, I am persuaded, even comprehend the other's deep misanthropy. He takes pleasure in what Swift would disdain. I cannot imagine the dean laying out grass plots, and devising grottoes; he has no elegant tastes,—sources, it must be acknowledged, of great gratification to the possessor. Pope, moreover, is greedy: such a dinner he devoured, and then talked of his moderation! I do not think that he would have given Swift's answer to Lord B, who tried to persuade him to dine with him by saying,—"I will send you my bill of fare." "Send me," was the reply, "your bill of company." Still, I am charitable enough to make great allowance for the capricious appetite of an invalid, more than I do for his predilection for Mrs. Martha Blount, who was also of our party. She is undeniably handsome—what you gentlemen call a fine woman; but she has cold, unkind eyes, and thin lips, which she bites. Now, if a bad temper has an outward and visible sign, it is that. I hear that she has great influence over the poet, and can readily believe it. He is affectionate, and keenly sensitive to his personal defects; and would, therefore, be at once grateful for, and flattered by, any display of feminine kindness. Moreover, in all domestic arrangements, it is the better nature that yields; a violent temper is despotic the moment that it crosses your threshold. I disliked her, too, for her depreciating way; she had an if and a but for every person named. Now, the individual who can find no good in any one else has certainly no good in himself:
"How can we reason but from what we know?"
Pope talked very readily and playfully about his translation of Homer: for example, some discussion arising about what flower was meant by the asphodel of Homer, he said, laughing,—"Why, I believe it to be the poor yellow flower that grows wild in our fields: what would you say if I had rendered the line thus,—
'The stern Achilles
Stalked through a mead of daffodillies?'"
He also told me an anecdote quite as characteristic of the teller as that of Swift's. There was a Lord Russell, who had ruined his constitution by riotous living. He was not fond of field-sports, but used to go out with his dogs to hunt, for an appetite. If he felt any delightful approaches of hunger, he would cry out, "Oh, I have found it!" and ride home again, though in the middle of the finest chase.
"You see," said Pope, "there is no fool without some portion of sense."
Gay gave me more the idea of a clever child; he was dressed with the greatest neatness, and did not dislike a little raillery about his toilet. He has a sweet, placid expression of countenance; and an excellent appetite, which quite belied the melancholy manner in which he told us of his disappointments at court. He quoted that deeply pathetic passage of Spencer's,—
"Full little knowest thou, who hast not tried,
What hell it is, in sueing long, to bide:
To lose good days, that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
Yet there was something so irresistibly ludicrous in his manner, that there was not one of us but laughed at his misfortunes.
Alas, for human nature! even grief must take an attitude before it can hope for sympathy. I now understand on what principles our widows wear weeds, and our judges wigs. The imposing external appearance is every thing in this world.
The Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, however, have taken Gay under their especial patronage; and he lives with them. And now that the day is over, there is one great regret, which is, that, with all my wish to tell you every thing, I can remember so little. But the spirit of conversation cannot be caught and re-corked: moreover, of all our faculties, memory is the one the least under our control. I am sometimes amused, but oftener provoked, at the way in which a thing utterly escapes recollection, and then comes back when least expected, and, usually, when least wanted. Still my general impression is that of great interest and amusement; and you know, my dear uncle, you spoil me, by saying, "Only tell me every thing—your telling is enough." All my details, at least, serve to show you how anxious I am to make you acquainted with every thought of
Your affectionate
Henrietta.