But he must have been very trying to his hosts.

He could seldom lay aside his self-consciousness sufficiently to write an easy letter; and the same fault probably spoilt his conversation.

Swift complains of him as a silent and inattentive companion.

He went to sleep at his own table, says Johnson, when the Prince of Wales was talking poetry to him--certainly a severe trial.

He would, we may guess, be silent till he had something to say worthy of the great Pope, and would then doubt whether it was not wise to treasure it up for preservation in a couplet.
His sister declared that she had never seen him laugh heartily; and Spence, who records the saying, is surprised, because Pope was said to have been very lively in his youth; but admits that in later years he never went beyond a "particular easy smile." A hearty laugh would have sounded strangely from the touchy, moody, intriguing little man, who could "hardly drink tea without a stratagem." His sensitiveness, indeed, appearing by his often weeping when he read moving passages; but we can hardly imagine him as ever capable of genial self-abandonment.
His unsocial habits, indeed, were a natural consequence of ill-health.
He never seems to have been thoroughly well for many days together.