Moral Essays

It covers the subject of the use of wealth in both a tasteless and a proper manner, and particularly deals with landscaping, gardens and architecture, specific interests of Lord Burlington, who had been a friend of Pope since about 1715.

[2] The key to good taste when designing an estate, Pope says, is to ‘Consult the Genius of the Place in all’ (l. 57), a precept followed by Bathurst and others, but not by the superficial, ostentatious landowner identified as ‘Timon’.

Although his description of Timon’s villa is a synthesis of details from different sites, it was soon widely criticised as an attack on the Berkshire estate of the Duke of Chandos, damaging Pope’s own reputation and career.

It deals with the use of money, arguing that both greedy and wasteful people misapply it, and so derive no happiness from it, though its target is more the rising commercial class, rather than the ruling aristocracy as in Burlington.

[2] Pope presents a series of satirical portraits of wasteful or parsimonious characters, but in particular he describes ‘The Man of Ross’ (John Kyrle), who was generous with his wealth, and ‘Sir Balaam’, whose riches lead him into penury.

After suggesting that Bathurst might ask what vast means he had to achieve all this, the poet replies: ‘Of debts and taxes, wife and children clear, This man possest – five hundred pounds a year.’ (ll.

Atossa is angry and violent, but is eventually: ‘Sick of herself thro’ very selfishness!’ (l. 146) Cloe is the converse of this, a woman who ‘wants a Heart’, and hides in the formal social code, ‘Content to dwell in Decencies forever.’ (l. 164) Martha herself, in contrast, is of a finer character altogether.