Pope called Wycherley an “obstinate lover of the town,”[6] and the phrase may well be taken to mark one characteristic of the orthodox classicists. Poems, letters, journals, biographies, and essays bear witness to the reluctance with which the men and women of this age bade farewell to the “dear, damned, distracting town.”[7] Charles Lamb’s lifelong devotion to Fleet Street and the Strand, and the sentiment of the cockneys who, as Hazlitt said, preferred hanging in London to a natural death out of it,[8] have their true prototypes in the classical age. “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life,” is Dr. Johnson’s dictum. Gibbon said that when he visited the country it was to see his friends and not the trees. Boswell’s only justification of a hastily expressed liking for the country was that he had “appropriated the finest descriptions in the ancient Classicks to certain scenes there.”[9] But not even the classics could reconcile most people to a country life. It was dreary, monotonous, difficult. There was no society, no news. The days went yawningly by with no vivid interests, no stirring occurrences. “No person of sense,” exclaimed Mr. Mallet’s sister, “would live six miles out of London.”[10] To live in the country was to be buried. Lord Bathurst looked upon his sojourn in his country home as a “sound nap”[11] preparatory to Parliament. “If you wish to know how I live, or rather lose, a life in the country,” wrote Pope, “Martial will inform you in one line: Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lego, caeno, quiesco.”[12] Pope found pure air and regular hours a physical necessity, but he often rebelled at his banishment from town delights, as did his “fond virgin” when compelled to seek wholesome country air. She went to plain-work, and to purling brooks, Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks, She went from Opera, Park, Assembly, Play, To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day; To part the time ’twixt reading and bohea, To muse, and spill her solitary tea, Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon, Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.[13]