Some of these friendships have become famous, and will be best noticed in connexion with passages in his future career.

It will be sufficient if I here notice a few names, in order to show that a complete picture of Pope's life, if it could now be produced, would include many figures of which we only catch occasional glimpses.
Pope, as I have said, though most closely connected with the Tories and Jacobites, disclaimed any close party connexion, and had some relations with the Whigs.

Some courtesies even passed between him and the great Sir Robert Walpole, whose interest in literature was a vanishing quantity, and whose bitterest enemies were Pope's greatest friends.
Walpole, however, as we have seen, asked for preferment for Pope's old friend, and Pope repaid him with more than one compliment.

Thus, in the Epilogue to the Satires, he says,-- Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power.
Seen him, encumber'd with the venal tribe, Smile without art and win without a bribe.
Another Whig statesman for whom Pope seems to have entertained an especially warm regard was James Craggs, Addison's successor as Secretary of State, who died whilst under suspicion of peculation in the South Sea business (1721).

The Whig connexion might have been turned to account.