Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

LETTER XIV.

TO MR. ADDISON.

December 14, 1713

I

HAVE been lying in wait for my own imagination, this week and more, and watching what thoughts came up in the whirl of the fancy, that were worth communicating to you in a letter. But I am at length convinced that my rambling head can produce nothing of that fort; so I must e'en be contented with telling you the old ftory, that I love you heartily. I have often found by experience, that nature and truth, though never fo low or vulgar, are yet pleasing when openly and artlessly represented: it would be diverting to me to read the very letters of an infant, could it write its innocent inconfiftencies and tautologies just as it thought them. This makes me hope a letter from me will not be unwelcome to you, when I am confcious I write with more unreservedness than ever man wrote, or perhaps talked to another. I trust your good-nature with the whole range of my follies, and really love you fo well, that I would rather you fhould pardon me than efteem me; fince one is an act of goodness and benevolence, the other a kind of constrained defer

ence.

You

You can't wonder my thoughts are fcarce confiftent, when I tell you how they are distracted. Every hour of my life my mind is strangely divided; this minute perhaps I am above the ftars, with a thousand fyftems round about me, looking forward into a vast abyss, and lofing my whole comprehenfion in the boundless space of Creation, in dialogues with Whiston and the Aftronomers; the next moment I am below all trifles groveling with T. in the very centre of nonsense: now I am recreated with the brifk fallies and quick turns of wit which Mr. Steele in his livelieft and freeft humours darts about him; and now levelling my application to the infignificant obfervations and quirks of Gram. mar of C and D .. Good God! what an incon. gruous animal is man! how unfettled in his best part, his foul! and how changing and variable in his frame of body! the conftancy of the one fhook by every notion, the temperament of the other affected by every blaft of wind! What is he altogether but one mighty inconfiftency*; sickness and pain is the lot of one half of him; doubt and fear the portion of the other! What a bustle we make about paffing our time, when all our space is but a point! what aims and ambitions are crowded into this little inftant of our life, which (as Shakespear finely words it) is rounded with a fleep! Our whole

extent

*Addifon must have fmiled at receiving a letter fo full of folemn declamation, and fo many trite moralities!

WARTON.

extent of being is no more in the eye of him who gave it, than a scarce perceptible moment of duration. Those animals whose circle of living is limited to three or four hours, as the naturalifts tell us, are yet as long-lived and poffefs as wide a scene of action as man, if we confider him with a view to all Space, and all Eternity. Who knows what plots, what atchievements a mite may perform in his kingdom of a grain of duft, within his life of fome minutes; and of how much lefs confideration than even this, is the life of man in the fight of God, who is from ever, and for ever?

Who that thinks in this train, but muft fee the world, and its contemptible grandeurs, leffen before him at every thought? 'Tis enough to make one remain ftupified in a poize of inaction, void of all defires, of all defigns, of all friendships.

But we must return (through our very condition of being) to our narrow felves, and thofe things that affect ourselves; our paffions, our interefts flow in upon us, and unphilofophize us into mere mortals. For my part, I never return fo much into myfelf, as when I think of you, whofe friendship is one of the beft comforts I have for the infignificancy of myself. I am Your, etc.

POPE fays of this Letter, that "he writes with more unreserved"ness than ever man wrote, or perhaps talked." In this manner he might have written a serious fermon, quite as unreservedly; for the whole is a laboured, not to fay affected, difcourfe.

LETTER XV.

TO MR. ADDISON.

January 30, 1713-14

YOUR letter found me very bufy in my grand un

up

dertaking, to which I muft wholly give myself

for fome time, unless when I fnatch an hour to please myself with a distant converfation with you and a few others, by writing. 'Tis no comfortable prospect to be reflecting, that fo long a fiege as that of Troy lies upon my hands, and the campaign above half over, before I have made any progrefs. Indeed the Greek fortification, upon a nearer approach, does not appear fo formidable as it did, and I am almost apt to flatter myself, that Homer fecretly feems inclined to a correspondence with me, in letting me into a good part of his intentions. There are, indeed, a fort of underling auxiliars to the difficulty of a work, called Commentators and Critics, who would frighten many people by their number and bulk, and perplex our progrefs under pretence of fortifying their author. These lie very low in the trenches and ditches tney themselves have digged, encompaffed with dirt of their own heaping up; but, I think, there may be found a method of coming at the main works by a more speedy and gallant way than by mining under ground,

that is, by using the poetical engines, wings, and flying over their heads ".

* While I am engaged in the fight, I find you are concerned how I fhall be paid, and are folicitous that I may not have the ill fate of many difcarded Generals, to be first envied and maligned, then perhaps praised, and lastly neglected. The former (the conftant attendant upon all great and laudable enterprizes) I have already experienced. Some have faid I am not a master in the Greek, who either are fo themselves or are not if they are not, they can't tell; and if they are, they can't without having catechized me. But if they can read, (for, I know, fome critics can, and others cannot,) there are fairly lying before them fome fpecimens of my tranflation from this Author in the Miscellanies, which they are heartily welcome to. I have met with as much malignity another way, some calling me a Tory, because the heads of that party have been diftinguifhingly favourable to me; fome a Whig, because I have been favoured with yours, Mr. Congreve's,

There is a ftrange confufion in this long-continued metaphor: fometimes the fortifications spoken of are to keep the ignorant out; fometimes to let them in; and fometimes only to quibble with; as in the words [under pretence of fortifying their author]. But it is no matter. The Critics and Commentators are to be abused, and, on fuch an occafion, any thing ferves the turn.

WARBURTON.

* Throughout all the Letters of Pope to Addison, there is a ftiffness and ftudy, that seem to fhow they did not contain fentiments that flowed freely and unrefervedly from his heart.

WARTOS.

« AnteriorContinuar »