want of something that I could think worth sending fifteen hundred miles. Italy is such an exhausted subject that I dare say you would easily forgive my saying nothing of it; and the imagination of a poet is a thing so nice and delicate, that it is no easy matter to find out images capable of giving pleasure to one of the few, who (in any age) have come up to that character. I am nevertheless lately returned from an island, where I passed three or four months; which, were it set out in its true colours, might, methinks, amuse you agreeably enough for a minute or two. The island Inarime is an epitome of the whole earth, containing, within the compass of eighteen miles, a wonderful variety of hills, vales, ragged rocks, fruitful plains, and barren mountains, all thrown together in a most romantic confusion. The air is in the hottest season constantly refreshed by cool breezes from the sea. The vales produce excellent wheat and Indian corn, but are mostly covered with vineyards intermixed with fruit trees. Besides the common kinds, as cherries, apricots, peaches, &c. they produce oranges, limes, almonds, pomegranates, figs, water-melons, and many other fruits unknown to our climates, which lie everywhere open to the passenger. The hills are the greater part covered to the top with vines, some with chesnut groves, and others with thickets of myrtle and lentiscus. The fields in the northern side are divided by hedgerows of myrtle. Several fountains and rivulets add to the beauty of this landscape,

which is likewise set off by the variety of some barren spots, and naked rocks. But that which crowns the scene is a large mountain, rising out of the middle of the island (once a terrible volcano, by the ancients called Mons Epomeus); its lower parts are adorned with vines, and other fruits; the middle affords pasture to flocks of goats and sheep, and the top is a sandy pointed rock, from which you have the finest prospect in the world, surveying, at one view, besides several pleasant islands lying at your feet, a tract of Italy about three hundred miles in length, from the promontory of Antium to the cape of Palinurus; the greater part of which hath been sung by Homer and Virgil, as making a considerable part of the travels and adventures of their two heroes. The islands Caprea, Prochyta,* and Parthenope, together with Cajeta, Cumæ, Monte Miseno, the habitations of Circe, the Syrens, and the Læstrigones, the bay of Naples, the promontory of Minerva, and the whole Campagna Felice, make but a part of this noble landscape; which would demand an imagi

* We must lament that we have no more letters of Bp. Berkley; who, we see by this before us, possessed the uncommon talent of describing places in the most lively and graphical manner; a talent in which he has been equalled or excelled only by Mr. Gray, in many of those most lively and entertaining letters published by Mr. Mason; those especially written during his travels.

Warton.

All this description, as Thomson nobly calls it, is "the portrait-painting of nature." No one can better exemplify his own ideas than Dean Berkley, in his lively, distinct, and picturesque descriptions. Bowles.

nation as warm, and numbers as flowing as your own, to describe it. The inhabitants of this delicious isle, as they are without riches and honours, so are they without the vices and follies that attend them; and were they but as much strangers to revenge, as they are to avarice and ambition, they might in fact answer the poetical notions of the golden age. But they have got, as an alloy to their happiness, an ill habit of murdering one another on slight offences. We had an instance of this the second night after our arrival, a youth of eighteen being shot dead by our door: and yet by the sole secret of minding our own business, we found a means of living securely among those dangerous people. Would you know how we pass the time at Naples? Our chief entertainment is the devotion of our neighbours: besides the gaiety of their churches (where folks go to see what they call una bella devotione,* i. e. a sort of religious opera) they make fireworks almost every week, out of devotion; the streets are often hung with arras, out of devotion; and (what is still more strange) the ladies invite gentlemen to their houses, and treat them with music and sweetmeats, out of devotion; in a word, were it not for this devotion of its inhabitants, Naples would have little else to recommend it, beside the air and situation. Learning is in no very thriving state here, as indeed no where else in Italy; however, among many pre

* Milton's idea:

66

Gay religions, full of pomp and gold."

Bowles.

tenders, some men of taste are to be met with. A friend of mine told me not long since, that, being to visit Salvini at Florence, he found him reading your Homer: he liked the notes extremely, and could find no other fault with the version, but that he thought it approached too near a paraphrase; which shews him not to be sufficiently acquainted with our language. I wish you health to go on with that noble work, and when you have that, I need not wish you success. You will do me the justice to believe, that whatever relates to your welfare is sincerely wished by

Your, &c.

LETTER XXX.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

London, Nov. 8, 1717.

I AM extremely glad to find by a letter of yours to Mr. Fortescue, that you have received one from me; and I beg you to keep as the greatest of curiosities, that letter of mine which you received, and I never writ.

But the truth is, that we were made here to expect you in a short time, that I was upon the ramble most part of the summer, and have concluded the season in grief, for the death of my poor father.

I shall not enter into a detail of my concerns and troubles, for two reasons; because I am really afflicted and need no airs of grief, and because they

are not the concerns and troubles of any but myself. But I think you (without too great a compliment) enough my friend, to be pleased to know he died easily, without a groan, or the sickness of two minutes; in a word, as silently and peacefully as he lived.

Sic mihi contingat vivere, sicque mori!

I am not in the humour to say gay things, nor in the affectation of avoiding them. I cannot pretend to entertain either Mr. Pultney* or you, as you have done both my Lord Burlington and me, by your letter to Mr. Lowndes. I am only sorry you have no greater quarrel to Mr. Lowndes, and wish you paid some hundreds a year to the landtax. That gentleman is lately become an inoffensive person to me too; so that we may join heartily in our addresses to him, and (like true patriots) rejoice in all that good done to the nation and government, to which we contribute nothing ourselves.

I should not forget to acknowledge your letter sent from Aix; you told me then that writing was not good with the waters, and I find since, you are of my opinion, that it is as bad without the waters. But, I fancy, it is not writing but think

* Pultney took him this year to Aix, in order to divert a dejection of spirits, arising from disappointment in hopes of patro

nage.

Bowles.

† A poem, intitled, To my ingenious and worthy friend, W. Lowndes, Esq., author of that celebrated treatise in folio, called the LAND-TAX BILL. Warburton.