hands the fubfcriptions paid for me to him, as Secretary to that Club. The heads of it have fince given him to understand, that they take it ill; but (upon the terms I ought to be with fuch a man) I would not afk him for this money, but commiffioned one of the Players, his equals, to receive it. This is the whole matter; but as to the fecret grounds of this malignity, they will make a very pleasant history when we meet. Mr. Congreve and fome others have been much diverted with it, and most of the gentlemen of the Hanover Club have made it the fubject of their ridicule on their Secretary. It is to this management of Philips that the world owes Mr. Gay's Pastorals, The ingenious author is extremely your fervant, and would have complied with your kind invitation, but that he is just now appointed Secretary to my Lord Clarendon, in his embaffy to Hanover. I am fenfible of the zeal and friendship with which, I am fure, you will always defend your friend in his abfence, from all thofe little tales and calumnies, which a man of any genius or merit is born to. I fhall never complain while I am happy in fuch noble defenders, and in fuch contemptible opponents. May their envy and ill-nature ever increafe, to the glory and pleasure of those they would injure; may they represent me what they will, as long as you think me, what I am. Your, etc. *Gay was appointed to attend Lord Clarendon to Hanover, to announce to the Elector the illness of the Queen. Του LETTER XVIII. you did me; and per July 13, 1714. rou mention the account I gave you fome time ago of the things which Philips faid in his foolishness but I can't tell from any thing in your letter, whether you received a long one from me about a fortnight fince. It was principally intended to thank you for the laft obliging favour haps for that reafon you pafs it in filence. I there launched into fome account of my temporal affairs, and intend now to give you fome hints of my fpiritual. The conclufion of your letter draws this upon you, where you tell me you prayed for me. Your proceeding, Sir, is contrary to that of most other friends, who never talk of praying for a man after they have done him a fervice, but only when they will do him none. Nothing can be more kind than the hint you give me of the vanity of human fciences, which, I affure you, I am daily more convinced of; and indeed I have, for fome years paft, looked upon all of them no better than amusements. To make them the ultimate end of our purfuit, is a miferable and fhort ambition, which will drop from us at every little difap. pointment here, and even, in cafe of no difappointments here, will infallibly defert us hereafter. The utmost fame they are capable of bestowing, is never worth the pains they coft us, and the time they lofe us. If you attain the top of your defires that way, all those who envy you will do you harm; and of those who admire you, few will do you good. The unsuccessful writers are your declared enemies, and probably the fuccessful your fecret ones: for those hate not more to be excelled, than thefe to be rivalled: and at the upfhot, after a life of perpetual application, you reflect that you have been doing nothing for yourfelf, and that the fame or lefs industry might have gained you a friendship that can never deceive or end, a fatisfaction, which praife cannot beftow nor vanity feel, and a glory, which (though in one respect like fame, not to be had till after death) yet shall be felt and enjoyed to eternity. Thefe, dear Sir, are unfeignedly my fentiments, whenever I think at all: for half the things that employ our heads deferve not the name of thoughts, they are only stronger dreams of impreffions upon the imagination: our fchemes of government, our fyftems of philofophy, our golden worlds of poetry, are all but fo many fhadowy images, and airy prospects, which arise to us but fo much the livelier and more frequent, as we are more overcaft with the darknefs, and difturbed with the fumes, of human vanity. The fame thing that makes old men willing to leave this world, makes me willing to leave poetry, long habit, and wearinefs of the fame track. Homer will work a cure upon me; fifteen thousand verfes are equi valent to fourscore years, to make one old in rhyme : and I should be forry and afhamed, to go on jingling to the laft ftep, like a waggoner's horfe, in the fame road, and fo leave my bells to the next filly animal that will be proud of them. That man makes a mean figure in the eyes of Reafon, who is measuring fyllables and coupling rhymes, when he fhould be mending his own foul, and fecuring his own immortality. If I had not this opinion, I fhould be unworthy even of those small and limited parts which God has given me; and unworthy of the friendship of fuch a man as you. I am LETTER XIX. Your, etc. July 25, 1714. I HAVE no better excufe to offer you, that I have omitted a task naturally fo pleafing to me as converfing upon paper with you, but that my time and eyes have been wholly employed upon Homer *, whom, * Of the state of his mind, after he had undertaken to translate the Iliad, he gave the following account to Mr. Spence, from whose anecdotes I tranfcribed it. What horrible moments does one feel after having engaged for a large work in the beginning of my tranflating Homer, I wifhed any body would hang me, a hundred times! It fat fo very heavily on my mind at first, : that whom, I almost fear, I fhall find but one way of imi tating, which is, in his blindness. I am perpetually afflicted with head-achs, that very much affect my fight, and indeed fince my coming hither I have scarce paffed an hour agreeably, except that in which I read your letter. I would feriously have you think, you have no man who more truly knows to place a right value on your friendship, than he who leaft deferves it on all other accounts than his due fenfe of it. But, let me tell you, you can hardly guess what a task undertake, when you profefs yourfelf my friend; there are fome Tories who will take you for a Whig, fome Whigs who will take you for a Tory, fome Proteftants who will efteem you a rank Papist, and fome Papists who will account you a Heretic. you I find by dear experience, we live in an age, where it is criminal to be moderate; and where no one man can be allowed to be just to all men. The notions of right and wrong are fo far ftrained, that perhaps to be in the right fo very violently may be of worse confequence than to be easily and quietly in the wrong. I really wish all men fo well, that, I am fatisfied, but few that I often ufed to dream of it; and even do fo fometimes ftill to this day my dream ufually was, that I had fet out on a very long journey, puzzled which way to take, and full of fears that I should never get to the end of it. When I fell into the method of tranflating thirty or forty lines before I got up, and piddled with it the reft of the morning, it went on eafily enough; and when I was thoroughly got into the way of it, I did the reft with pleasure." WARTON |