Probably the good Wordsworth was wishing to do a little bit of excessive candour.

Pope will not introduce his scenery without a turn suited to the taste of the town:-- Here waving groves a chequer'd scene display, And part admit and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover's fond address, Nor quite indulges nor can quite repress.
He has some well turned lines upon the sports of the forest, though they are clearly not the lines of a sportsman.

They betray something of the sensitive lad's shrinking from the rough squires whose only literature consisted of Durfey's songs, and who would have heartily laughed at his sympathy for a dying pheasant.

I may observe in passing that Pope always showed the true poet's tenderness for the lower animals, and disgust at bloodshed.

He loved his dog, and said that he would have inscribed over his grave, "O rare Bounce," but for the appearance of ridiculing "rare Ben Jonson." He spoke with horror of a contemporary dissector of live dogs, and the pleasantest of his papers in the _Guardian_ is a warm remonstrance against cruelty to animals.