He valued money, as a man values it who has been poor and feels it essential to his comfort to be fairly beyond the reach of want, and was accordingly pretty sharp at making a bargain with a publisher or in arranging terms with a collaborator.

But he could also be liberal on occasion.

Johnson says that his whole income amounted to about 800_l._ a year, out of which he professed himself able to assign 100_l._ to charity; and though the figures are doubtful, and all Pope's statements about his own proceedings liable to suspicion, he appears to have been often generous in helping the distressed with money, as well as with advice or recommendations to his powerful friends.

Pope, by his infirmities and his talents, belonged to the dependent class of mankind.
He was in no sense capable of standing firmly upon his own legs.

He had a longing, sometimes pathetic and sometimes humiliating, for the applause of his fellows and the sympathy of friends.