only pay your club with your author (as our friend fays) but the whole reckoning; who can form such pretty lines from fo trivial a hint.

For my Elegy; it is confeffed, that the topography of Sulmo in the Latin makes but an awkward figure in the verfion. Your couplet of the dog-star is very fine, but may be too fublime in this place. I laughed heartily at your note upon paradife; for to make Ovid talk of the garden of Eden, is certainly most abfurd; but Xenophon in his Economics, fpeaking of a garden finely planted and watered (as is here defcribed) calls it Paradifos: 'tis an interpolation indeed, and ferves for a gradation to the celeftial orb; which expreffes in fome fort the Sidus Caftoris in parte cali-How trees can enjoy, let the naturalift determine; but the poets make them fenfitive*, lovers, batchelors, and married. Virgil in his Georgics, lib. ii. Horace, Ode xv. lib. ii. Platanus cælebs evincet ulmos. Epod. ii. Ergo aut adulta vitium propagine Altas maritat populos. Your critique is a very Dolcepiccante; for after the many faults you juftly find, you smooth your rigour: but an obliging thing is owing (you think) to one who fo much efteems and admires you, and who shall ever be

Your, etc.

P Ovid's Amorum, 1. ii. el. xvi. Pars me Sulmo, etc.

РОРЕ.

* The reader may confult Darwin's "Loves of the Plants," for an illuftration of this remark.

LETTER XVIII.

.

August 21, 1710.

YOUR OUR Letters are a perfect charity to a man in retirement, utterly forgotten of all his friends but you; for fince Mr. Wycherley left London, I have not heard a word from him; though just before, and once fince, I writ to him, and though I know myfelf guilty of no offence but of doing fincerely just what he bid me -Hoc mihi libertas, boc pia lingua dedit! But the greatest injury he does me is the keeping me . in ignorance of his welfare, which I am always very folicitous for, and very uneafy in the fear of any indifpofition that may befal him. In what I sent you fome time ago, you have not verfe enough to be fevere upon, in revenge for my laft criticism: in one point I must perfift, that is to fay, my diflike of your Paradife, in which I take no pleafure; I know very well that in Greek it is not only ufed by Xenophon, but is a common word for any garden; but in England it bears the fignification and conveys the idea of Eden, which alone is (I think) a reafon against making Ovid ufe it; who will be thought to talk too much like a Chriftian, in your verfion at leaft, whatever it might have been in Latin or Greek. As for all the rest of my remarks, fince you do not laugh at them

Correcting his verfes. See the Letters in 1706, and the fol

lowing years, of Mr. Wycherley and Mr. Pope.

POPE.

them as at this, I can be fo civil as not to lay any stress upon them (as, I think, I told you before); and in particular in the point of trees enjoying, you have, I muft own, fully fatisfied me that the expreffion is not only defenfible, but beautiful. I fhall be very glad to fée your tranflation of the elegy, Ad amicam navigantem, as foon as you can; for (without a compliment to you) every thing you write, either in verfe or profe, is welcome to me; and you may be confident (if my opinion can be of any fort of confequence in any thing) that I will never be unfincere, though I may be often mistaken. To ufe fincerity with you is but paying you in your own coin, from whom I have experienced fo much of it; and I need not tell you how much I really esteem you, when I esteem nothing in the world fo much as that quality. I know, you fometimes fay civil things to me in your epiftolary style, but those I am to make allowance for, as particularly when you talk of admiring; it is a word you are so used to in converfation of Ladies, that it will creep into your difcourfe, in fpite of you, even to your friends. But as women, when they think themfelves fecure of admiration, commit a thousand negligences, which fhow them fo much at difadvantage and off their guard, 'as to lofe the little real love they had before: fo when men imagine others entertain fome esteem for their abilities, they often expofe all their imperfections and foolish works, to the difparagement of the little wit they were thought masters

of. I am going to exemplify this to you, in putting into your hands (being encouraged by fo much indulgence) fome verses of my youth, or rather childhood; which (as I was a great admirer of Waller) were intended in imitation of his manner; and are, perhaps, fuch imitations, as those you see in awkward country dames, of the fine and well-bred ladies of the court. If you will take them with you into Lincolnshire, they may fave you one hour from the converfation of the country gentlemen' and their tenants (who differ but in drefs and name), which, if it be there as bad as here, is even worse than my poetry. I hope your stay there will be no longer than (as Mr. Wycherley calls it) to rob the country, and run away to London with your money. In the mean time I beg the favour of a line from you, and am (as I will never cease to be) Your, etc.

One or two of these were fince printed among other Imitations done in his youth. POPE.

However Pope might affect to defpife the "country gentlemen" of his days, they muft furely have been as refpectable, and as ufeful in their ftation, as his own friend was, whom he advised "to ftay no longer in the country, than to rob it, and run away with the money!"

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 defign of feeing my friends there, among the first of which I have reafon to account yourself. But my almost continual illneffes 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 present. He will be content to compound for his quiet only, and leave all the circumftantial part and pomp of life to thofe, who have a health vigorous enough to enjoy all the miftreffes 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 friendfhip of Pope commenced with Wycherley when one was feventeen, and the other feventy.