find the audience laugh; and says the prince and princess must doubtless be under no less amazement on the same account. Several templars and others of the more vociferous kind of critics, went with a resolution to hiss, and confessed they were forced to laugh so much, that they forgot the design they came with. The court in general has in a very particular manner come into the jest, and the three first nights (notwithstanding two of them were court-nights) were distinguished by very full audiences of the first quality. The common people of the pit and gallery received it at first with great gravity and sedateness, some few with tears; but after the third day they also took the hint, and have ever since been very loud in their claps. There are still some sober men who cannot be of the general opinion; but the laughers are so much the majority, that one or two critics seem determined to undeceive the town at their proper cost, by writing grave dissertations against it: to encourage them in which laudable design, it is resolved a preface shall be prefixed to the farce, in vindication of the nature and dignity of this new way of writing.

*

Yesterday Mr. Steele's affair was decided. I am sorry I can be of no other opinion than yours, as to his whole carriage and writings of late. But certainly he has not only been punished by others, but suffered much even from his own party in the

* Hence it appears that Congreve was candid and moderate in his political opinions. Warton.

point of character, nor (I believe) received any amends in that of interest, as yet, whatever may be his prospects for the future.

This gentleman, among a thousand others, is a great instance of the fate of all who are carried away by party spirit of any side. I wish all violence may succeed as ill: but am really amazed that so much of that sour and pernicious quality should be joined with so much natural good humour as, I think, Mr. Steele is possessed of.

LETTER XVI.

I am, &c.

MR. GAY AND MR. POPE TO MR. CONGREVE.

April 7, 1715.

MR. Pope is gone to Mr. Jervas's where Mr. Addison is sitting for his picture; in the mean time, amidst clouds of tobacco at a coffee-house, I write this letter. There is a grand revolution at Will's; Morrice has quitted for a coffee-house in the city, and Titcomb is restored, to the great joy of Cromwell, who was at a great loss for a person to converse with upon the fathers and church-history; the knowledge I gain from him is entirely in painting and poetry; and Mr. Pope owes all his skill in astronomy to him and Mr. Whiston, so celebrated of late for his discovery of the longitude in an extraordinary copy of verses.*

* Called, An Ode on the Longitude, in Swift and Pope's Miscellanies.

Pope.

A very

Mr. Rowe's Jane Grey is to be played in Easterweek, when Mrs. Oldfield is to personate a character directly opposite to female nature; for what woman ever despised sovereignty? You know Chaucer has a tale where a knight saves his head, by discovering it was the thing which all women most coveted. Mr. Pope's Homer is retarded by the great rains that have fallen of late, which causes the sheets to be long a drying: this gives Mr. Lintot great uneasiness, who is now endeavouring to corrupt the curate of his parish to pray for fair weather, that his work may go on. There is a six-penny criticism lately published upon the tragedy of the What-d'ye-call-it, wherein he with much judgment and learning calls me a blockhead, and Mr. Pope a knave. His grand charge is against the Pilgrim's Progress being read, which, he says, is directly levelled at Cato's reading Plato; to back this censure, he goes on to tell you, that the Pilgrim's Progress being mentioned to be the eighth edition, makes the reflection evident, the tragedy of Cato having just eight times (as he quaintly expresses it) visited the press. He has also endeavoured to show, that every particular passage of the play alludes to some fine part of tragedy, which, he says, I have injudiciously and profanely abused.* Sir Samuel

A very flat and feeble attack truly, on a man respectable for integrity, simplicity of manners, and extensive learning, though his opinions may be erroneous ! Warton.

This curious piece was intitled, A complete Key to the

Garth's poem upon my Lord Clare's house, I believe, will be published in the Easter-week.

Thus far Mr. Gay, who has in his letter forestalled all the subjects of diversion; unless it should be one to you to say, that I sit up till two o'clock over Burgundy and Champagne; and am become so much a rake, that I shall be ashamed in a short time to be thought to do any sort of business. I fear I must get the gout by drinking; purely for a fashionable pretence to sit still long enough to translate four books of Homer. I hope you will by that time be up again, and I may succeed to the bed and couch of my predecessor: pray cause the stuffing to be repaired, and the crutches shortened for me. The calamity of your gout is what all your friends, that is to say, all that know you, must share in; we desire you in your turn to condole with us, who are under a persecution, and much afflicted with a distemper which proves mortal to many poets, a criticism. We have indeed some relieving intervals of laughter, (as you know there are in some diseases,) and it is the opinion of divers good guessers, that the last fit will not be more violent than advantageous; for poets assailed by critics, are like men bitten by Tarantulas; they dance on so much the faster.

Mr. Thomas Burnet hath played the precursor to the coming of Homer, in a treatise called Homerides. He has since risen very much in his cri

What-dye-call-it, written by one Griffin, a player, assisted by Lewis Theobald.

Pope.

ticisms, and, after assaulting Homer, made a daring attack upon the What-d'ye-call-it. Yet is there not a proclamation issued for the burning of Homer and the Pope by the common hangman; nor is the What-d'ye-call-it yet silenced by the Lord Chamberlain.

Your, &c.

LETTER XVII.

MR. POPE AND MR. GAY TO DR. PARNELLE.

DEAR SIR,

but

(May, 1715.)

MUST Own I have long owed you a letter, you must own you have owed me one a good deal longer. Besides, I have but two people in the whole kingdom of Ireland to take care of; the Dean and you but you have several who complain of your neglect in England. Mr. Gay complains, Mr. Harcourt complains, Mr. Jervas complains, Mr. Arbuthnot complains, my Lordt complains; I complain. (Take notice of this figure of iteration, when you make your next sermon.) Some say, you are in deep discontent at the new turn of affairs; others, that you are so much in the archbishop's good graces, that you will not correspond with any that have seen the last ministry. Some affirm you have quarrelled with Pope (whose friends they observe daily fall from him, on account

* In one of his papers called The Grumbler. + Bolingbroke.

Bowles.

Pope.