Beside the literary affectation, he sometimes adopts the more offensive affectation--unfortunately not peculiar to any period--of the youth who wishes to pass himself off as deep in the knowledge of the world.

Pope, as may be here said once for all, could be at times grossly indecent; and in these letters there are passages offensive upon this score, though the offence is far graver when the same tendency appears, as it sometimes does, in his letters to women.

There is no proof that Pope was ever licentious in practice.

He was probably more temperate than most of his companions, and could be accused of fewer lapses from strict morality than, for example, the excellent but thoughtless Steele.

For this there was the very good reason that his "little, tender, crazy carcass," as Wycherley calls it, was utterly unfit for such excesses as his companions could practice with comparative impunity.