In beauty or wit
  No mortal as yet
To question your empire has dared;
  But men of discerning
  Have thought that in learning,
To yield to a lady was hard.

  Impertinent schools
  With musty dull rules
Have reading to females denied;
  So Papists refuse
  The Bible to use,
Lest flocks be as wise as their guide

  ’Twas a woman at first
  (Indeed she was curs’d)
In knowledge that tasted delight;
  And sages agree
  The laws should decree
To the first possessor the right. 

  Then bravely, fair dame,
  Resume the old claim,
Which to your whole sex does belong;
  And let men receive
  From a second bright Eve
The knowledge of right and of wrong.

  But if the first Eve
  Hard doom did receive
When only one apple had she,
  What a punishment new
  Shall be found out for you,
Who, tasting, have robbed the whole tree? 

-Alexander Pope for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 

To Swift

October 2, 1727

It is a perfect trouble to me to write to you, and your kind letter left for me at Mr. Gay’s affected me so much, that it made me like a girl. I cannot tell what to say to you; I only feel that I wish you well in every circumstance of life; that it is almost as good to be hated as to be loved, considering the pain it is to minds of any tender turn to find themselves so utterly impotent to do any good, or give any ease to those who deserve most from us. I would fain know, as soon as you recover your complaints, or any part of them. Would to God, I could ease any of them, or had been able even to have alleviated any! I found I was not, and truly it grieved me. I was sorry to find you could think yourself easier in any house than in mine, though at the same time, I can allow for a tenderness in your way of thinking, even when it seemed to want that tenderness. I cannot explain my meaning; perhaps you know it. But the best way of convincing you of my indulgence, will be, if I live, to visit you in Ireland, and act there as much in my own way as you did here in yours. I will not leave your roof, if I am ill. To your bad health, I fear there was added some disagreeable news from Ireland, which might occasion your so sudden departure: for the last time I saw you, you assured me you would not leave us this whole winter, unless your health grew better, and I do not find it so. I never complied so unwillingly in my life with any friend as with you, in staying so entirely from you; nor could I have had the constancy to do it, if you had not promised that before you went we should meet , and you would send to us all to come. I have given your remembrances to those you mention in yours: we are quite sorry for you, I mean for ourselves. I hope, as you do, that we shall meet in a more durable and more satisfactory state; but the less sure I am of that, the more I would indulge it in this. We are to believe we shall have something better than even a friend there, but certainly here we have nothing so good. Adieu for this time. May you find every friend you go to as pleased and happy, as every friend you went from is sorry and troubled.

_____

Letter from Alexander Pope to Swift. “Swift had spent four months with Pope at his villa in Twickenham. Neither of them was in good health, and evidently, good friends as they were, they rasped each other at times. Swift complained that too much company came to the house and that his host was ‘too sickly. and complaisant.’ He finally removed to London and a few weeks afterwards returned to Ireland without seeing Pope again. The two old friends, however, remained friends in spite of all that had happened.”

From Epistle 2. Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to Himself, as an Individual

1. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the skeptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his  mind or body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

-Alexander Pope 

To Wycherley April 30, 1705

I know it is the general opinion; that friendship is best contracted betwixt persons of equal age; but I have so much interest to be of another mind, that you must pardon me if I cannot forbear telling you a few notions of mine in opposition to that opinion. In the first place, it is observable that the love we bear to our friends is generally caused by our finding the same dispositions in them which we feel in ourselves. This is but self-love at the bottom; whereas the affection betwixt people of different ages cannot well be so; the inclinations of such being commonly various. The friendship of two young men is often occasioned by love of pleasure or voluptuousness; each being desirous for his own sake, of one to assist or encourage him in the course he pursues; as that of two old men is frequently on the score of some profit, lucre, or design upon others. Now, as a young man who is less acquainted with the ways of the world, has in all probability less of interest; and an old man, who may be weary of himself, has, or should have, less of self-love; so the friendship between them is the more likely to be true, and unmixed with too much self-regard. One may add to this, that such a friendship is of greater use and advantage to both; for the old man will grow gay and agreeable to please the young one, and the young man more discreet and prudent by the help of the old one; so it may prove a cure of those epidemical diseases of age and youth, sourness and madness. I hope you will not need many arguments to convice you of the possibility of this: one alone abundantly satisfies me, and convinces to the heart; which is, that young as I am, and old as you are, I am your entirely affectionate, &c.

___

- Alexander Pope