LETTERS TO AND FROM MR. STEELE, MR. ADDISON, From the Year 1712 to 1715, I LETTER I. FROM MR. STEELE, June 1, 1712. AM at a folitude, an house between Hampstead and London, wherein Sir Charles Sedley died. This circumstance set me a thinking and ruminating upon the employments in which men of wit* exercife themfelves. It was faid of Sir Charles, who breathed his laft in this room, Sedley * Pope faid of Steele, that though he led a careless and vicious life, yet he had, nevertheless, a love and reverence of virtue. It is faid George I. fent five hundred guineas to Steele for the dedication of his Confcious Lovers. Dennis wrote against this comedy, and called Steele a two-penny author, alluding to the price of his Tatler. Sedley has that prevailing gentle art, Till the poor vanquish'd Maid diffolves away This was a happy talent to a man of the town, but I dare fay, without prefuming to make uncharitable conjectures on the author's prefent condition, he would rather have had it faid of him that he had prayed, Oh thou my voice inspire, Who touch'd Ifaiah's hallow'd lips with fire! I have turned to every verfe and chapter, and think you have preferved the fublime heavenly fpirit throughout the whole, especially at-Hark, a glad voiceand-The lamb with wolves fhall graze- -There is but one line* which I think is below the original; He wipes the tears for ever from our eyes. You have expreffed it with a good and pious, but not fo exalted and poetical a spirit as the prophet, The Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces. If you agree with me in this, alter it by way of paraphrase *In confequence of this objection this line was altered thus; From every eye he wipes off every tear. I own I cannot forbear thinking that this repetition of the word every is a quaint and pretty modernifm, unfuited to the fubject. phrase or otherwife, that when it comes into a volume it may be amended. Your poem is already better than the Pollio. I am LETTER II. THE ANSWER. Your, etc. June 18, 1712. γου Ou have obliged me with a very kind letter, by which I find you fhift the scene of your life from the town to the country, and enjoy that mixed ftate which wife men both delight in, and are qualified for. Methinks the moralifts and philofophers have generally run too much into extremes in commending entirely either folitude, or public life. In the former, men for the most part grow useless by too much rest, and in the latter are destroyed by too much precipitation; as waters lying ftill, putrify, and are good for nothing, and running violently on do but the more mischief in their paffage to others, and are fwallowed up and loft the fooner themselves. Those indeed who can be useful to all states, fhould be like gentle * There are too many common-place fentences and reflections in this letter, and an air of solemn declamation, unfuited to a familiar epiftle. The fame may be faid of the fucceeding letter. gentle streams, that not only glide through lonely valleys and forests amidst the flocks and the shepherds, but vifit populous towns in their course, and are at once of ornament and service to them. But there are another fort of people who seem defigned for folitude, fuch, I mean, as have more to hide than to fhow. As for my own part, I am one of those of whom Seneca fays, Tam umbratiles funt, ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce eft. Some men, like fome pictures, are fitter for a corner than a full light; and, I believe, fuch as have a natural bent to folitude (to carry on the former fimilitude) are like waters, which may be forced into fountains, and exalted into a great height, may make a noble figure and a louder noise, but after all they would run more fmoothly, quietly, and plentifully, in their own natural course upon the ground. The confideration of this would make me very well contented with the poffeffion only of that Quiet which Cowley calls the companion of Obscurity. But whoever has the Muses too for his companions, can never be idle enough, to be uneafy. Thus, Sir, you fee, I would flatter myself into a good opinion of my own way of living. Plutarch just now told me, that 'tis in human life as in a game at tables, where a The foregoing Similitudes our Author had put into verse some years before, and inferted into Mr. Wycherley's poem on Mixed Life. We find them in the verfification very diftinct from the reft of that poem. See his pofthumous works, octavo, page 3 and 4. P. |