Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool, Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool; Not proud, nor servile--be one poet's praise That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways; That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame, And thought a lie in prose or verse the same. Admitting that the last line suggests a slight qualm, the portrait suggested in the rest is about as faithful as one can expect a man to paint from himself. And hence we come to the question, what was the morality which Pope dispensed from this exalted position? Admitting his independence, can we listen to him patiently when he proclaims himself to be Of virtue only, and her friends, the friend; or when he boasts in verses noble if quite sincere-- Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God, afraid of me; Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne, Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. Is this guardian of virtue quite immaculate, and the morality which he preaches quite of the most elevated kind? We must admit, of course, that he does not sound the depths, or soar to the heights, in which men of loftier genius are at home. He is not a mystic, but a man of the world. He never, as we have already said, quits the sphere of ordinary and rather obvious maxims about the daily life of society, or quits it at his peril. His independence is not like Milton's, that of an ancient prophet, consoling himself by celestial visions for a world given over to baseness and frivolity; nor like Shelley's, that of a vehement revolutionist, who has declared open war against the existing order; it is the independence of a modern gentleman, with a competent fortune, enjoying a time of political and religious calm. And therefore his morality is in the main the expression of the conclusions reached by supreme good sense, or, as he puts it, Good sense, which only is the gift of heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven.