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yet I hope to gather enough to make the Patriam fu gimus fupportable to me; it is what I am refolved on, with my Penates. If therefore you afk me, to whom you shall complain? I will exhort you to leave laziness and the elms of St. James's Park, and choose to join the other two proposals in one, fafety and friendship, (the least of which is a good motive for most things, as the other is for almost every thing,) and go with me where war will not reach us, nor paultry conftables fummon us to veftries.

The future epistle you flatter me with, will find me ftill here, and I think I may be here a month longer. Whenever I go from hence, one of the few reasons to make me regret my home will be, that I fhall not have the pleasure of saying to you,

Hic tamen hanc mecum poteris requiescere noctem, which would have rendered this place more agreeable than ever else it could be to me; for I proteft, it is with the utmost fincerity that I affure you, I am entirely,

Dear Sir,

Your, etc.

LETTER VIII.

June 22, 1717

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Ir a regard both to public and private affairs may I' plead a lawful excufe in behalf of a negligent correfpondent, I have really a very good title to it. I cannot say whether it is a felicity or unhappiness, that I am obliged at this time to give my whole application to Homer; when without that employment, my thoughts must turn upon what is lefs agreeable, the violence, madness, and refentment of modern Warmakers, which are likely to prove (to some people at least) more fatal, than the fame qualities in Achilles did to his unfortunate countrymen.

Though the change of my fcene of life, from Windfor-Foreft to the fide of the Thames, be one of the grand Eras of my days, and may be called a notable period in fo inconfiderable a history; yet you can scarce imagine any hero paffing from one stage of life to another, with so much tranquillity, so easy a tranfition, and fo laudable a behaviour. I am become fo truly a citizen of the world (according to Plato's expreffion) that I look with equal indifference on what I have left, and on what I have gained *. The

times

• This was written in the year of the affair at Preston. POPE. Modern War-makers! Who, in the name of common sense and humanity, were the War-makers, but those who, in oppofition to the fenfe of the country, brought arms into it?

Is this the language of truth, or affectation?

times and amusements past are not more like a dream to me, than those which are present: I lie in a refreshing kind of inaction, and have one comfort at leaft from obfcurity, that the darkness helps me to fleep the better. I now and then reflect upon the enjoyment of my friends, whom, I fancy, I remember much as feparate fpirits do us, at tender intervals, neither interrupting their own employments, nor altogether careless of ours, but in general conftantly wishing us well, and hoping to have us one day in their company.

*

To grow indifferent to the world is to grow philofophical, or religious (whichfoever of those turns we chance to take); and indeed the world is fuch a thing, as one that thinks pretty much must either laugh at, or be angry with: but if we laugh at it, they say we are proud; and if we are angry with it, they fay we are ill-natured. So the moft politic way is to seem always better pleafed than one can be, greater admirers, greater lovers, and, in fhort, greater fools, than we really are: fo fhall we live comfortably with

Our

The chance of taking a philofophical, or religious turn!" The molt inattentive reader cannot but obferve how much Pope's mind is tinctured with the circumftances of the times. To put religion out of the queftion, what is the fubftance of Pope's philofophy? We muft feem better pleased, than we can be; greater admirers, greater lovers, and (ergo) greater fools than we are; this is the only way to live comfortably with our families," &c. Thefe fentiments are evidently from the school of Loyola †.

+ Founder of the Jefuits' order.

our families, quietly with our neighbours, favoured by our masters, and happy with our mistreffes. I have filled my paper, and fo adieu.

LETTER IX.

Sept. 8, 1717.

THINK your leaving England

was like a good

I

man's leaving the world, with the bleffed conscience of having acted well in it; and I hope you have received your reward, in being happy where you are. I believe, in the religious country you inhabit, you will be better pleased to find I confider you in this light, than if I compared you to those Greeks and Romans, whofe conftancy in fuffering pain, and whose resolution in pursuit of a generous end, you would rather imitate than boast of.

But

Blount, being a rigid Catholic, and confidered a favourer of the cause of the exiled family, felt himfelf, after the unsuccessful turn of their affairs, obliged to leave England. How far Pope's ideas went with him, may be inferred, from his expreffions of

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a good man leaving the world, with the bleffed confcience of having acted well in it." We fhould always, however, keep in mind the afperity and "chiding," as Milton calls it, of the times. It is poffible that Blount might have seriously wifhed quietude : he pleafed himself with affuming the character of Pomponius Atticus; and certainly every Catholic poffeffed of property was fufpected by Government. I think, therefore, we have no right to attribute to Blount more than can be evidently proved.

But I had a melancholy hint the other day, as if you were yet a martyr to the fatigue your virtue made you undergo on this fide the water. I beg, if your health be restored to you, not to deny me the joy of knowing it. Your endeavours of service and good advice to the poor Papists, put me in mind of Noah's preaching forty years to thofe folks that were to be drowned at last *. At the worst I heartily wish your Ark may find an Ararat, and the wife and family (the hopes of the good patriarch) land fafely after the deluge upon the shore of Totness.

cheer

If I durft mix prophane with facred history, I would you with the old tale of Brutus the wandering Trojan, who found on that very coaft the happy end of his peregrinations and adventures.

I have very lately read Jeffery of Monmouth, (to whom your Cornwall is not a little beholden,) in the translation of a clergymant in my neighbourhood. The poor man is highly concerned to vindicate

Jeffery's

This allufion, not very decent, feems to prove that Pope was become hopeless of the fuccefs of the Papifts. The comparison, however, of Blount, who fled his country to avoid a profecution, with Noah, whofe family were the only perfons faved from a deluge which deftroyed the whole world, is too ridiculous to bear examin

ation.

C.

Aaron Thompfon, of Queen's College, Oxon, (but his name does not occur either in the Oxford or Cambridge graduates,) published this work in 1718, 8vo. " cum præfatione," fays "fatis longa."

C.

Tanner, Pope gave to this clergyman the following lines, being a tranflation of a prayer of Brutus, which ought to be preferved:

Goddefs

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