LETTER XXIX.

November 12, 1711.

I

RECEIVED the entertainment of your letter the day after I had fent you one of mine, and I am but this morning returned hither. The news you tell me of the many difficulties you found in your return from Bath, gives me fuch a kind of pleasure as we ufually take in accompanying our friends in their mixed adventures; for, methinks, I fee you labouring through all your inconveniencies of the rough roads, the hard faddle, the trotting horfe, and what not? What an agreeable furprize would it have been to me, to have met you by pure accident, (which I was within an ace of doing,) and to have carried you off triumphantly, set you on an easier pad, and relieved the wandering knight with a night's lodging and rural repast, at our castle in the foreft? But thefe are only the pleafing imaginations of a difappointed lover, who must fuffer in a melancholy abfence yet thefe two months. In the mean time, I take up with the Mufes for want of your better company; the Mufes, quæ nobifcum pernoctant, peregrinantur, rufticantur. Thofe aërial ladies just discover enough to me of their beauties to urge my purfuit, and draw me on in a wandering maze of thought, ftill in hopes (and only in hopes) of attaining those favours from them, which they confer on their more happy admirers. We grafp fome more

beautiful

beautiful idea in our own brain, than our endeavours to express it can fet to the view of others; and still do but labour to fall fhort of our first imagination. The gay colouring which fancy gave at the first tranfient glance we had of it, goes off in the execution : like thofe various figures in the gilded clouds, which while we gaze long upon, to feparate the parts of each imaginary image, the whole faints before the eye, and decays into confusion.

I am highly pleased with the knowledge you give me of Mr. Wycherley's present temper, which feems fo favourable to me. I fhall ever have fuch a fund of affection for him as to be agreeable to myfelf when

you

am fo to him, and cannot but be gay when he is in good humour, as the furface of the earth (if you will pardon a poetical fimilitude) is clearer or gloomier, juft as the fun is brighter or more over-caft *.-I fhould be glad to fee the verfes to Lintot which mention, for, methinks, fomething oddly agreeable may be produced from that fubject-For what remains, I am fo well, that nothing but the affurance of your being fo can make me better; and if you would have me live with any fatisfaction these dark days in which I cannot fee you, it must be by your writing fometimes to

Your, etc.

* This was written, I have no doubt, with a view of Wycherley's feeing it, fo early had Pope learned "ftratagem:" one can hardly otherwife account for fuch hyperbolical praife.

LETTER XXX.

FROM MR. CROMWELL.

December 7, 1711.

He is

MR. Wycherley has, I believe, fent you two or three letters of invitation; but you, like the fair, will be long folicited before you yield, to make the favour the more acceptable to the lover. much yours by his talk; for that unbounded genius, which has ranged at large like a libertine, now seems confined to you: and I fhould take him for your miftress too, by your fimile of the fun and earth: 'tis very fine, but inverted by the application; for the gaiety of your fancy and the drooping of his by the withdrawing of your lustre, persuades me it would be juster by the reverse. Oh happy favourite of the Muses! how pernoctare all night long with them? but alas! you do but toy, but skirmish with them, and decline a clofe engagement. Leave elegy and tranflation to the inferior class, on whom the Mufes only glance now and then, like our winter-fun, and then leave them in the dark. Think on the dignity of Tragedy, which is of the greater poetry, as Dennis fays, and foil him at his other weapon, as you have done in Criticism. Every one wonders that a genius like yours will not support the finking Drama; and Mr.

*

* He fhewed his excellent good sense, by not attempting a species of poetry to which he was fo much difinclined; I do not fay unequal.

WARTON.

Mr. Wilks (though I think his talent is Comedy) has expreffed a furious ambition to swell in your buskins. We have had a poor Comedy of Johnson's (not Ben) which held seven nights, and has got him three hundred pounds, for the town is fharp-fet on new plays. In vain would I fire you by interest or ambition, when your mind is not susceptible of either; though your authority (arifing from the general esteem, like that of Pompey) must infallibly affure you of fuccefs; for which in all your wishes you will be attended with

thofe of

Your, etc.

LETTER XXXI.

December 21, 1711.

IF

I have not writ to you fo foon as I ought, let my writing now atone for the delay; as it will infallibly do, when you know what a facrifice I make you at this time, and that every moment my eyes are em ployed upon this paper, they are taken off from two of the finest faces in the univerfe. But indeed 'tis fome confolation to me to reflect, that while I but write this period, I escape fome hundred fatal darts from those unerring eyes, and about a thousand deaths or better. Now you, that delight in dying, would not once have dreamt of an absent friend in these circumftances;

VOL. VII.

M

cumstances; you that are so nice an admirer of beauty, or (as a Critic would fay after Terence) fo elegant a Spectator of forms; you must have a fober dish of coffee, and a folitary candle at your fide, to write an epiftle lucubratory to your friend, whereas I can do it as well with two pair of radiant lights, that outfhine the golden god of day and filver goddess of night, and all the refulgent eyes of the firmament.-You fancy now that Sappho's eyes are two of these my tapers, but it is no fuch matter; these are eyes that have more perfuafion in one glance than all Sappho's oratory and gesture together, let her put her body into what moving postures fhe pleases. Indeed, indeed, my friend, you never could have found fo improper a time to tempt me with intereft or ambition: let me but have the reputation of these in my keeping, and as for my own, let the devil, or let Dennis, take it for ever. How gladly would I give all I am worth, that is to say, my Pastorals, for one of them, and my Effay for the other; I would lay out ali my Poetry in Love; an Original for a Lady, and a Translation for a Waiting-maid * ! Alas! what have I to do with Jane Gray, as long as Mifs Molly, Mifs Betty, or Mifs Patty are in this world? Shall I write of beauties murdered long ago, when there are those at this instant that murder me? I'll e'en compose my own Tragedy,

and

*This evidently alludes to the circumftance of Pope's being half-perfuaded to attempt a Tragedy on the fubject of Lady Jane Gray.