LETTER XIX.

Oct. 12, 1710.

I DEFERRED answering your last, upon the advice I received, that you were leaving the town for fome time, and expected your return with impatience, having then a design of feeing my friends there, among the first of which I have reason to account yourself. But my almost continual illnesses prevent that, as well as most other fatisfactions of my life: however, I may fay one good thing of fickness, that it is the best cure in nature for ambition, and defigns upon the world or fortune it makes a man pretty indifferent for the future, provided he can but be easy, by intervals, for the prefent. He will be content to compound for his quiet only, and leave all the circumstantial part and pomp of life to those, who have a health vigorous enough to enjoy all the mistreffes of their defires. I thank God, there is nothing out of myself which I would be at the trouble of feeking, except a friend; a happiness I once hoped to have. poffeffed in Mr. Wycherley; but-Quantum mutatus ab illo !-I have for fome years been employed much like children that build houses with cards, endeavouring very bufily and eagerly

* Can this be real, or affected? The friendship of Pope commenced with Wycherley when one was feventeen, and the other feventy.

eagerly to raise a friendship, which the first breath of any ill-natured by-stander could puff away.-But I will trouble you no farther with writing, nor myself with thinking, of this fubject.

I was mightily pleafed *, to perceive by your quotation from Voiture, that you had tracked me fo far as France. You fee it is with weak heads as with weak ftomachs, they immediately throw out what they received last; and what they read floats upon the furface of the mind, like oil upon water, without incorporating. This I think, however, cannot be faid of the love-verses I laft troubled you with, where all (I am afraid) is so puerile and fo like the author, that no body will fufpect any thing to be borrowed. Yet you (as a friend, entertaining a better opinion of them) it feems, fearched in Waller, but fearched in vain. Your judgment of them is (I think) very right,—for it was my own opinion before. If you think them not worth the trouble of correcting, pray tell me fo freely, and it will fave me a labour; if you think the contrary, you would particularly oblige me by your remarks on the several thoughts as they occur. I long to be nibbling at your verses, and have not forgot who promised me Ovid's elegy †, Ad amicam navigantem.

Had

*Was this true? Why fhould he be "mightily pleafed," that Cromwell had difcovered what he thought was concealed?

In the prefent improved ftate of literature, for improved it is, we are furprised to fee thefe critics and poets writing to each

other,

Had Ovid been as long compofing it, as you in fending it, the lady might have failed to Gades and received it at her return. I have really a great itch of criticism upon me, but want matter here in the country which I defire you to furnish me with, as I you in the town,

do

Sic fervat ftudii fœdera quifque fui.

m obliged to Mr. Caryl (whom, you tell me, met at Epfom) for telling you truth, as a man is in these days to any one that will tell truth to his advantage; and I think none is more to mine, than what he told you, and I should be glad to tell all the world, that I have an extreme affection and esteem

for you.

Tecum etenim longos memini confumere foles,

Et tecum primas epulis decerpere noctes;
Unum opus et requiem pariter difponimus ambo,
Atque verecunda laxamus feria menfa.

By thefe Epula, as I take it, Perfius meant the Portugal fnuff and burnt Claret, which he took with his master Cornutus; and the verecunda menfa was, without difpute, fome coffee-house table of the ancients. I will only observe, that these four lines are as elegant and musical as any in Perfius, not except

ing

other, with feriousness and earnestness, about tranflations of Ovid's Elegies and Epiftles, which the youths at the top of our great • schools would almost think it a difgrace to be employed about, at prefent. WARTON.

ing thofe fix or feven which Mr. Dryden quotes as the only fuch in all that author.-I could be heartily glad to repeat the fatisfaction defcribed in them, being truly

LETTER XX.

Your, etc.

October 28, 1710.

I AM glad to find by your last letter that you write to me with the freedom of a friend, fetting down your thoughts as they occur, and dealing plainly with me in the matter of my own trifles, which, I affure you, I never valued half so much as I do that fincerity in you which they were the occafion of discovering to me; and which while I am happy in, I may be trusted with that dangerous weapon, Poetry; fince I shall do nothing with it but after afking and foliowing your advice. I value fincerity the more, as I find, by fad experience, the practice of it is more dangerous; writers rarely pardoning the executioners of their verses, even though themselves pronounce fentence upon them.—As to Mr. Philips's Paftorals, I take the first to be infinitely the best, and the second the worst; the third is for the greatest part a tranflation from Virgil's Daphnis. I will not foreftal your judgment of the reft, only obferve in that of the

Nightingale

Nightingale thefe lines (fpeaking of the musician's playing on the harp):

Now lightly skimming o'er the ftrings they pass,
Like winds that gently brush the plying grass,
And melting airs arife at their command;
And now, laborious, with a weighty hand,
He finks into the cords with folemn pace,
And gives the fwelling tones a manly grace.

To which nothing can be objected, but that they are
too lofty for paftoral, especially being put into the
mouth of a fhepherd, as they are here; in the poet's
own person they had been (I believe) more proper.
They are more after Virgil's manner than that of
Theocritus, whom yet in the character of pastoral he
rather feems to imitate. In the whole, I agree with
the Tatler, that we have no better Eclogues in our
language. There is a small copy of the fame author
published in the Tatler N° 12. on the Danish winter *
'Tis poetical painting, and I recommend it to your
perufal.

Dr.

* Philips's description of Winter, in his Epiftle from Copenhagen, is certainly a very beautiful poetical painting; witness the following:

"The ftarving wolves along the main fea prowl,

And to the moon, in icy vallies, howl.

For many a fhining league the level main
Here spreads itself into a gloffy plain:
There folid billows, of enormous fize,
Alps of green ice, in wild diforder rise.”

"The