Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/108

104 in many mouths; and if I do not forget or misapprehend Savage's account, Pope pretending to decline what was, not yet offered, left his house for a time, not, I suppose, for any other reason than left he should be thought to stay at home in expectation of an honour which would not be conferred. He was therefore angry at Swift, who represents him as "refusing the visits of a Queen," because he knew that what had never been offered had never been refused.

Beside the general system of morality, supposed to be contained in the "Essay on Man," it was his intention to write distinct poems upon the different duties or conditions of life; one of which is the Epistle to Lord Bathurst (1733) on the "Use of Riches," a piece on which he declared great labour to have been bestowed.

Into this poem some hints are historically thrown, and some known characters are introduced, with others of which it is difficult to say how far they are real or fictitious; but the praise of Kyrl, the Man of Ross deserves particular examination, who after a long and pompous enumeration of his Rh