perhaps, such 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 save you one hour from the conversation of the country gentlemen and their tenants (who differ but in dress 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, &c.

LETTER XIX.

TO MR. CROMWELL.

Oct. 12, 1710.

I

DEFERRED answering your last, upon the advice I received, that you were leaving the town for some time, and expected your return with impatience, having then a design of seeing 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 satisfactions of my life: however, I may say one good thing of sickness, that it is the best cure in nature for ambition, and designs 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 circumstantial part and pomp of life to those, who have a health vigorous enough to enjoy all the mistresses of their desires. I thank God, there is nothing out of myself which I would be at the trouble of seeking, except a friend; a happiness I once hoped to have possessed in Mr. Wycherley; but-Quantum mutatus ab illo !-I have for some years been employed much like children that build houses with cards, endeavouring very busily and 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 subject.

I was mightily pleased, to perceive by your quotation from Voiture, that you had tracked me so far as France. You see it is with weak heads as with weak stomachs, they immediately throw out what they received last; and what they read floats upon the surface of the mind, like oil upon water, without incorporating. This I think, however, cannot be said of the love-verses I last troubled you with, where all (I am afraid) is so puerile and so like the author, that nobody will suspect any thing to be borrowed. Yet you (as a friend, entertaining a better opinion of them) it seems, searched in Waller, but searched 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

so freely, and it will save me a labour; if you thnki 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 Ovid been as long composing it, as you in sending it, the lady might have sailed 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 desire you to furnish me with, as I do you in the town:

Sic servat studii fœdera quisque sui.

I am obliged to Mr. Caryl (whom, you tell me, you met at Epsom) 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 consumere soles,
Et tecum primas epulis decerpere noctes;
Unum opus et requiem pariter disponimus ambo,
Atque verecundâ laxamus seria mensâ.

* In the present improved state of literature, for improved it is, we are surprized to see these critics and poets writing to each other, with seriousness and earnestness, about translations of Ovid's Elegies and Epistles, which the youths at the top of our great schools would almost think it a disgrace to be employed about, at present. Warton.

When the youths at our great schools produce such translations and imitations as Pope did, at as early an age, we may then assent to the propriety of the above remark.

By these Epulæ, as I take it, Persius meant the Portugal snuff and burnt claret, which he took with his master Cornutus; and the verecunda mensa was, without dispute, some coffee-house table of the ancients.-I will only observe, that these four lines are as elegant and musical as any in Persius, not excepting those six or seven which Mr. Dryden quotes as the only such in all that author.-I could be heartily glad to repeat the satisfaction described in them, being truly

Your, etc.

LETTER XX.

TO MR. CROMWELL.

October 28, 1710.

I AM glad to find by your last letter that you write to me with the freedom of a friend, setting down your thoughts as they occur, and dealing plainly with me in the matter of my own trifles, which, I assure you, I never valued half so much as I do that sincerity in you which they were the occasion of discovering to me; and which while I am happy in, I may be trusted with that dangerous weapon, poetry; since I shall do nothing with it but after asking and following your advice. I value sincerity the more, as I find, by sad experience, the practice of it is more dangerous; writers rarely pardoning the executioners of their verses, even though themselves pronounce sentence upon

them-As to Mr. Philips's Pastorals, I take the first to be infinitely the best, and the second the worst; the third is for the greatest part a translation from Virgil's Daphnis. I will not forestal your judgment of the rest, only observe in that of the Nightingale these lines (speaking of the musi→ cian's playing on the harp):

Now lightly skimming o'er the strings they pass,
Like winds that gently brush the plying grass,
And melting airs arise at their command;
And now, laborious, with a weighty hand,
He sinks into the cords with solemn pace,
And gives the swelling tones a manly grace.

To which nothing can be objected, but that they are too lofty for pastoral, especially being put into the mouth of a shepherd, 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 seems 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 same author published in the Tatler, No. 12, on the Danish winter. It is poetical painting, and I recommend it to your perusal.

Dr. Garth's poem I have not seen, but believe I shall be of that critic's opinion you mention at Will's, who swore it was good: for though I am very cautious of swearing after critics, yet I think one may do it more safely when they commend, than when they blame.