LETTER XII.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

DEAR MR. GAY,

(1714.)

ABOVE all other news, send us the best, that of your good health, if you enjoy it; which Mr. Harcourt made us very much fear. If you have any design either to amend your health or your life, I know no better expedient than to come hither, where you should not want room though I lay myself in a truckle-bed under the doctor.* You might here converse with the old Greeks, be initiated into all their customs, and learn their prayers by heart as we have done: the doctor, last Sunday, intending to say Our Father, was got half way in Chryses' prayer to Apollo. The ill effects of contention and squabbling, so lively described in the first Iliad, make Dr. Parnelle and myself continue in the most exemplary union in every thing. We deserve to be worshipped by all the poor, divided, factious, interested poets of this world.

As we rise in our speculations daily, we are grown so grave, that we have not condescended to laugh at any of the idle things about us this week. I have contracted a severity of aspect from deep meditation on high subjects, equal to the formidable front of black-browed Jupiter, and become an

* Dr. Parnelle, then on a visit to Mr. Pope at Binfield.

awful nod as well, when I assent to some grave and weighty proposition of the doctor, or enforce a criticism of my own. In a word, Y-g* himself has not acquired more tragic majesty in his aspect by reading his own verses, than I by Homer's.

In this state I cannot consent to your publication of that ludicrous trifling burlesque you write about. Dr. Parnelle also joins in my opinion, that it will by no means be well to print it.

Pray give (with the utmost fidelity and esteem) my hearty service to the Dean, Dr. Arbuthnot, Mr. Ford, and to Mr. Fortescue. Let them also know at Button's that I am mindful of them. I am, divine Bucoliast!

THY LOVING COUNTRYMAN.

DEAR SIR,

LETTER XIII.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

October 23, (1714).

I HAVE been perpetually troubled with

sickness of late, which has made me so melancholy, that the immortality of the soul has been my constant speculation, as the mortality of my body my constant plague. In good earnest, Seneca is nothing to a fit of illness.

Dr. Parnelle will honour Tonson's Miscellany with some very beautiful copies, at my request. He enters heartily into our design. I only fear

his stay in town may chance to be but short. Dr. Swift much approves what I proposed, even to the very title, which I design shall be, The Works of the Unlearned, published monthly, in which whatever book appears that deserves praise, shall be depreciated ironically, and in the same manner that modern critics take to undervalue works of value, and' to commend the high productions of Grub-street.

I shall go into the country about a month hence, and shall then desire to take along with me your poem of the Fan, to consider it at full leisure. I am deeply engaged in poetry, the particulars whereof shall be deferred till we meet.

I am very desirous of seeing Mr. Fortescue when he comes to town, before his journey; if you can any way acquaint him of my desire, I believe his good-nature will contrive a way for our meeting, I am ever, with all sincerity, dear Sir, Your, &c.

LETTER XIV.

MR. POPE TO MR. CONGREVE.

January 16, 1714-15.

METHINKS, when I write to you, I am making a confession: I have got (I cannot tell how) such a custom of throwing myself out upon paper without reserve. You were not mistaken in what you judged of my temper of mind when I writ last.

My faults will not be hid from you, and perhaps it is no dispraise to me that they will not: the cleanness and purity of one's mind is never better proved, than in discovering its own fault at first view; as when a stream shews the dirt at its bottom, it shews also the transparency of the water.

My spleen was not occasioned, however, by any thing an abusive angry critic could write of me. I take very kindly your heroic manner of congratulation upon this scandal; for I think nothing more honourable than to be involved in the same fate with all the great and the good that ever lived; that is, to be envied and censured by bad writers.

You do more than answer my expectations of you, in declaring how well you take my freedom, in sometimes neglecting, as I do, to reply to your letters so soon as I ought. Those who have a right taste of the substantial part of friendship, can wave the ceremonial: a friend is the only one that will bear the omission; and one may find who is not so by the very trial of it.

As to any anxiety I have concerning the fate of my Homer, the care is over with me: the world must be the judge, and I shall be the first to consent to the justice of its judgment, whatever it be. I am not so arrant an author as even to desire, that if I am in the wrong, all mankind should be

So.

I am mightily pleased with a saying of Monsieur Tourreil: "when a man writes he ought to ani

mate himself with the thoughts of pleasing all the world but he is to renounce that desire or hope, the very moment the book goes out of his hands."

I write this from Binfield, whither I came yesterday, having passed a few days in my way with my Lord Bolingbroke; I go to London in three days' time, and will not fail to pay a visit to Mr. M whom I saw not long since at my Lord Halifax's. I hoped from thence he had some hopes of advantage from the present administration: for few people (1 think) but I, pay respects to great men without any prospects. I am in the fairest way in the world of being not worth a groat, being born both a papist and a poet. This puts me in mind of reacknowledging your continued endeavours to enrich me. But, I can tell you, it is to no purpose; for without the Opes, æquum mi animum ipse parabo.

LETTER XV.

MR. POPE TO MR. CONGREVE.

March 19, 1714-15.

THE farce of the What-d'ye-call-it* has occasioned many different speculations in the town. Some looked upon it as a mere jest upon the tragic poets, others as a satire upon the late war. Mr. Cromwell hearing none of the words, and seeing the action to be tragical, was much astonished to * Written by Mr. Gay.

Warburton.