Pope, Alexander

expressing his personal affection to Lyttelton but his scepticism towards his commitment to public affairs (“...I do not ask what you are doing? I am sure it is all the Good you can do...”), 2 pages, with additional autograph postscript, 4to, integral autograph address panel, remains of red wax seal, Bath, 3 November 1741, one leaf split at folds, neat repairs, remains of hinge mount, seal tear

The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. Sherburn (1956), vol. IV, pp.367-368

“...I see no use to be drawn from the knowledge of any publick events; I see must honest men melancholy, & that's enough to make me enquire no more. When I can do any thing either to assist, or not assisting to comfort them I will; But I fear I live in vain, that is, must live only to myself. Yet I feel every day what the Puritans calld outgoings of my soul, in the concern I take for some of you; which upon my word is a warmer sensation then any I feel in my own, and for my own, Being. Why are you a courtier? Why is Murray a lawyer? It may be well for other people, but what is that to your own enjoyment, to mine? I would have you both pass as happy, and as satisfied a life as I have done...”

 This subtly wrought letter is both a declaration of Pope's affection and support to the young, ambitious politician and an expression of his ambivalence towards Lyttelton's pursuit of public success. Lyttelton was a talented writer whose Epistle to Mr Pope, published in 1730 when its author was just 21, called on Pope to abandon satire and write a national epic. In the years that followed, Lyttelton was elected to Parliament and became a leading member of “Cobham's Cubs”, an opposition grouping that fashioned themselves as patriots and centred on Frederick, Prince of Wales – Lyttelton himself becoming the Prince's secretary. Throughout the later 1730s Lyttelton repeated his calls on Pope, now an established correspondent and friend, to lend his pen to the patriots' cause, but by the time this letter was written Pope was thoroughly disillusioned by the politics of the group. This fine letter takes up a contrast between public life and withdrawal to the private realm of poetry that goes back to Classical times, and delicately expresses Pope's concern that Lyttelton was wasting his talents in the corrupt world of Parliamentary politics.