“Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;
In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child.”

— Alexander Pope

"Epitaph on Gay" (1733), lines 1-2. Reported in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 818. Compare: "Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child", John Dryden, Elegy on Mrs. Killegrew, line 70.

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Alexander Pope158

eighteenth century English poet 1688–1744

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