colmar, for a silk or a fan? I will venture to affirm, no critic can have a perfect taste of your Lordship's works, who does not understand both your male phrase and your female phrase.

Your Lordship, to finish your climax, advances up to a hatter; a mechanic, whose employment, you inform us, is not (as was generally imagined) to cover people's heads, but to dress their brains.' A most useful mechanic indeed! I cannot help wishing to have been one, for some people's sake. But this too may be only another lady-phrase: your Lordship and the ladies may take a head-dress for a head, and understand, that to adorn the head is the same thing as to dress the brains.

Upon the whole, I may thank your Lordship for this high panegyric; for if I have but dressed up Homer, as your tailor, silkman, and hatter, have equipped your Lordship, I must be owned to have dressed him marvellously indeed, and no wonder if he is admired by the ladies.'

After all, my Lord, I really wish you would learn your grammar. What if you put yourself awhile under the tuition of your friend W-m? May not I with all respect say to you, what was said to another Noble Poet by Mr. Cowley, Pray, Mr. Howard, if you did read your grammar, what harm would it do you? You yourself wish all lords would learn to write;' though I do not see of what use it could be, if their whole business is to give their votes:' it could only be serviceable in signing their protests. Yet surely this small portion of learning might be indulged to your Lordship, without any breach of that privilege' you so generously assert to all those of your rank, or too great an infringement

of that right' which you claim as hereditary, and for which, no doubt, your noble father will thank you. Surely, my Lord, no man was ever so bent upon depreciating himself!

All your readers have observed the following lines:

How oft we hear some witling pert and dull,
By fashion coxcomb, and by nature fool,
With backney maxims, in dogmatic strain,
Scoffing religion and the marriage chain;
Then from his common-place-book he repeats,
The lawyers all are rogues, and parsons cheats,
That vice and virtue's nothing but a jest,
And all morality deceit well-drest;

That life itself is like a wrangling game, &c.

The whole town and court (my good Lord) have heard this witling; who is so much every body's acquaintance but his own, that I will engage they all name the same person. But to hear you say, that this is only——of whipt cream a frothy store, is a sufficient proof, that never mortal was endued with so humble an opinion both of himself and his own wit, as your Lordship: for, I do assure you, these are by much the best verses in your whole poem.

How unhappy is it for me, that a person of your Lordship's modesty and virtue, who manifests so tender a regard to religion, matrimony, and morality; who, though an ornament to the court, cultivate an exemplary correspondence with the clergy; nay, who disdain not charitably to converse with, and even assist, some of the very worst of writers (so far as to cast a few conceits, or drop a few antitheses, even among the dear joys of the Courant); that you, I say, should look upon Me alone as reprobate and unamendable! Reflect what I was, and what I am. I am even annihilated by your anger: for in these verses you have robbed me of all power to think,' and, in your others, of the very name of a man! Nay, to show that this is wholly your own doing, you have told us that before I wrote my last Epistles, (that is, before I unluckily mentioned Fanny and Adonis, whom, I protest, I knew not to

"To be fools."

Ibid.-WARBURTON.

"P-e, who ne'er could think." P. 7.-WARBURTON.

be your Lordship's relations,) I might have lived and died in glory.'

What would I not do to be well with your Lordship Though, you observe, I am a mere imitator of Homer, Horace, Boileau, Garth, &c. (which I have the less cause to be ashamed of, since they were imitators of one another), yet what if I should solemnly engage never to imitate your Lordship? May it not be one step towards an accommodation, that while you remark my ignorance in Greek, you are so good as to say, you, have forgot your own? What if I should confess I translated from Dacier ? That surely could not but oblige your Lordship, who are known to prefer French to all the learned languages. But allowing that in the space of twelve years' acquaintance with Homer, I might unhappily contract as much Greek as your Lordship did in two at the university, why may not I forget it again as happily?

Till such a reconciliation take effect, I have but one thing to entreat of your Lordship.. It is, that you will not decide of my principles on the same grounds as you have done of my learning; nor give the same account of my: want of grace, after you have lost all acquaintance with my person, as you do of my want of Greek, after you have confessedly lost all acquaintance with the language. You are too generous, my Lord, to follow the gentlemen of the Dunciad quite so far, as to seek my utter perdition; as Nero once did Lucan's, merely for presuming to be a poct, while one of so much greater quality was a writer. I therefore make this humble request to your Lordship, that the next time you please to write to me, speak of me, or even whisper of me, you will recollect it is full eight years since I had the honour of any conversation or correspondence with your Lordship, except just half an hour in a lady's lodgings at court, and then I had the happiness of her being present all the time. It would therefore be difficult even for your Lordship's penetration to tell, to what, or from

"In glory then he might have

liv'd and died."

Ibid.-WARBURTON.

"The whisper, that to greatness

still too near,

Perhaps yet vibrates on his
sovereign's ear."

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
WARBURTON.

what principles, parties, or sentiments, moral, political, or theological, I may have been converted, or perverted in all that time. I beseech your Lordship to consider the injury a man of your high rank and credit may do to a private person, under penal laws and many other disadvantages, not for want of honesty or conscience, but merely perhaps for having too weak a head, or too tender a heart.' It is by these alone I have hitherto lived excluded from all posts of profit or trust: as I can interfere with the views of no man, do not deny me, my Lord, all that is left, a little praise, or the common encouragement due, if not to my genius, at least to my industry.

Above all, your Lordship will be careful not to wrong my moral character with THOSE' under whose protection I live, and through whose lenity alone I can live with comfort. Your Lordship, I am confident, upon consideration will think, you inadvertently went a little too far when you recommended to THEIR perusal, and strengthened by the weight of your approbation, a libel, mean in its reflections upon my poor figure, and scandalous in those on my honour and integrity: wherein I was represented as "an enemy to the human race, a murderer of reputations, and a monster marked by God like Cain, deserving to wander accursed through the world."

A strange picture of a man, who had the good fortune to enjoy many friends, who will be always remembered as the first ornaments of their age and country; and no enemies that ever contrived to be heard of, except Mr. John Dennis, and your Lordship: a man, who never wrote a line in which the religion or government of his country, the royal family, or their ministry, were disrespectfully mentioned; the animosity of any one party gratified at the expense of another; or any censure passed, but upon known vice, acknowledged folly, or aggressive impertinance. It is with infinite pleasure he finds, that some men, who seem ashamed and afraid of nothing else, are so very sensible of his ridicule: and it is for that very

See Letters to Bishop Atterbury, 2 The K. and Q.-WARBURTON,

Lett. ir.-Warburton,

reason he resolves (by the grace of God, and your Lordship's good leave)

That, while he breathes, no rich or noble knave
Shall walk the world in credit to his grave.

This, he thinks, is rendering the best service he can to the public, and even to the good government of his country; and · for this at least, he may deserve some countenance, even from the GREATEST PERSONS in it. Your Lordship knows of WHOM I speak. Their NAMES I shall be as sorry, and as much ashamed to place near yours, on such an occasion, as I should be to see you, my Lord, placed so near their PERSONS, if you could ever make so ill an use of their ear' as to asperse or misrepresent any innocent man.

This is all I shall ever ask of your Lordship, except your pardon for this tedious letter. I have the honour to be, with equal respect and concern,

My Lord,

Your truly devoted servant,

A. POPE.

"Close at the ear of Eve." Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.-WARBURTON.