C

He went to Gloucefter in his way to Salop, but was disappointed of a boat, and so return'd to the Bath; then he fhewed me your answer to his letters, in which you speak of my goodnature, but, I fear, you found me very froward at Reading; yet you allow for my illness. I could not poffibly be in the fame house with Mr. Wycherley, tho' I fought it earnestly; nor come up to town with him, he being engaged with others; but, whenever he met, we talk'd of you. He praises your Poem, and even out-vies me in kind expreffions of you. As if he had not wrote two letters to you, he was for writing every post; I put him in mind he had already. Forgive me this wrong; I know not whether my talking fo much of your great humanity and tenderness to me, and love to him; or whether the return of his natural disposition to you, was the cause; but certainly you are now highly in his favour: now he will come this winter to your house, and I must go with him; but first he will invite you speedily to town.---I arrived on Saturday laft much wearied, yet had wrote fooner, but was told by Mr. Gay (who has writ à pretty poem to Lintot, and who gives you his fervice) that you was gone from home. Lewis fhewed me your Letter, which fet me right, and your next letEffay on Criticism.

C

P.

ter

ter is impatiently expected from me. Mr. Wycherley came to town on Sunday laft, and kindly furprized me with a visit on Monday morning. We dined and drank together; and I faying, To our Loves, he reply'd, 'Tis Mr. Pope's health: He faid he would go to Mr. Thorold's and leave a letter for you. Tho' I cannot answer for the event of all this, in respect to him; yet I can affure you, that, when you please to come, you will be most desirable to me, as always by inclination, fo now by duty, who shall ever be

Your, &c.

LETTER XXIX.

Nov. 12, 1711..

Received the entertainment of your letter the day after I had fent you one of mine, and I am but this morning returned hither. The news you tell me of the many difficulties you found in your return from Bath, gives me such a kind of pleasure as we ufually take in accom- ́ panying our friends in their mix'd adventures ; for, methinks, I fee you labouring thro' all your inconveniences of the rough roads, the hard faddle, the trotting horfe, and what not? What an agreeable furprize would it have been to me,

to

to have met you by pure accident, (which I was within an ace of doing) and to have carried you off triumphantly, set you on an easier pad, and relieved the wandring knight with a night's lodging and rural repaft, at our caftle in the forest? But these are only the pleafing imaginations of a disappointed lover, who muft fuffer in a melancholy abfence yet these two months. In the mean time, I take up with the Muses for want

of your better company; the Mufes, quæ nobif

cum pernoctant, peregrinantur, rufticantur. Those aërial ladies just discover enough to me of their beauties to urge my purfuit, and draw me on in a wandering maze of thought, ftill in hopes (and only in hopes) of attaining those favours from them, which they confer on their more happy admirers. We grafp fome more beautiful idea in our own brain, than our endeavours to express it can set to the view of others; and ftill do but labour to fall short of our first imagination. The gay colouring which fancy gave at the firft tranfient glance we had of it, goes off in the execution: like thofe various figures in the gilded clouds, which while we gaze long upon, to separate the parts of each imaginary image, the whole faints before the eye, and decays into confufion.

I am highly pleased with the knowledge you give me of Mr. Wycherley's prefent temper, L 2

which

which feems fo favourable to me.

I fhall ever

have fuch a fund of affection for him as to be agreeable to myself when I am so to him, and cannot but be gay when he is in good humour, as the surface of the earth (if you will pardon a poetical fimilitude) is clearer or gloomier, just as the fun is brighter or more over-cast---I should be glad to fee the verses to Lintot which you mention, for, methinks, fomething oddly agreeable may be produced from that subject--For what remains, I am fo well, that nothing but the affurance of your being fo can make me better; and if you would have me live with fatisfaction these dark days in which I cannot you, it must be by your writing fometimes

fee

to

any

Your, &c.

LETTER XXX.

From Mr. CROMWELL.

Dec. 7, 1711.

MR. Wycherley has, I believe, fent you two

or three letters of invitation; but you, like the fair, will be long follicited before you yield, to make the favour the more acceptable to the lover. He is much yours by his talk; for that unbounded genius which has rang'd at

large

large like a libertine, now feems confin'd to you: and I fhould take him for your mistress too by fimile of the fun and earth: 'Tis very fine, your but inverted by the application; for the gaiety of your fancy, and the drooping of his by the withdrawing of your luftre, perfuades me it would be jufter by the reverse. Oh happy favourite of the Muses! how per noctare, all night long with them? but alas! you do but toy, but fkirmish with them, and decline a clofe engagement. Leave Elegy and translation to the inferior clafs, on whom the Mufes only glance now and then like our winter-fun, and then leave them in the dark. Think on the dignity of Tragedy, which is of the greater poetry, as Dennis fays, and foil him at his other weapon, as you have done in Criticism. Every one wonders that a genius like yours will not fupport the finking Drama: and Mr. Wilks (tho', I think, his talent is Comedy) has exprefs'd a furious ambition to fwell in your bufkins. We have had a poor Comedy of Johnson's (not Ben) which held feven nights, and has got him three hundred pounds, for the town is fharp-set on new plays. In vain would I fire you by intereft or ambition, when your mind is not fufceptible of either; tho' your authority (arifing from the general efteem, like that of Pompey) muft infallibly affure you of fuccefs; for which