yond the Indies. His favours extended to foreigners, who were furprized at being known to, and recompenfed by, our court. Wherever merit was to be found, it had its protector in Lewis the fourteenth. His royal hand distributed honour and profit without follicitation or without cabals. Guillelmini * Viviani † and the heaven-studying Caffini were attracted to his court, and fome great pen fion would have robbed you of your Sir Ifaac Newton, if it had been poffible to purchase him. Thefe were the real fucceffes which have done immortal honour to the name of Lewis and of France. He was the model of all Europe. It was apprehended that he aimed at univerfal monarchy, and he really obtained it by his munificence.

You do not poffefs monuments of the bounty of your kings equal to those of ours; but your nation makes amends with you the favourable regards of the monarch are not neceffary in order to recompense great talents of every kind.

* Two Italian mathematicians.

Sir Richard Steel, and Sir John Vanbrugh were at the fame time comic authors and members of parliament. The primacy of doctor Tillotson, the embaffy of Mr. Prior, Sir Ifaac Newton's employment, Mr. Addison's fecretaryfhip are but the common confequences of the regard and esteem, in which men of fuperior parts are held among you. They are enriched by you during their lives, and on their decease, you erect them monuments and ftatues. Even your celebrated actresses are placed in the churches next to your famous poets. Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mrs. Oldfield who both fucceeded in the great art to pleafe, as foon as their courfe was over, were honourably conducted to the eternal refting-place of all your lettered republic; where they are magnificently lodged: While our divine Moliere who much better deserved fuch honours, could hardly obtain the cold fatisfaction of being placed in a common church-yard; and the amiable le Couvreur whofe eyes I'clofed, was denied the accustomed ceremony of burial. This perfon formerly fo

honoured:

honoured and fo much admired, was now, thro' charity thrown into a hackney coach, and carried to the banks of the river Seine, where the lies interred. Does not the god of love feem to ftrike with anger and with horror at this relation, and breaking his arrows, fly away? does not Melpo mene in tears abandon and depart the un grateful spot which the fo long adorned with her noble charms ?

"Every thing feems to bring back the French to that barbarifm from which we were raised by Lewis the fourteenth and cardinal Richelieu. Woe to the politicians who do not know the value of the fine arts! The earth is covered with nations as powerful as we are. How comes it, notwithstanding, that we look upon almost all of them with little esteem? It is for the fame reafon that in fociety we despise a rich man without taste or education. Above all things, do not imagine that this empire of the mind, this honour of being the model of other nations is a frivolous advantage. It is an infallible mark of the grandeur of an empire: It

has

has been always under the greatest princes, that arts have flourished, and their de cline has fometimes been the epoch of that of the state. History is full of fuch examples; but this fubject would lead me too far: Adieu, my good friend; continue cultivating the Belles-Lettres and philofophy, without forgetting to fend fhips to the Mediterranean.

SECOND

SECOND EPISTLE

To Sir EVERARD FALKENER,

Ambaffador at Conftantinople.

Taken from the fecond edition of Zara.

M

Y dear friend; for your new dignity of ambaffador renders our friendship only more refpectable, and does not hinder me from making use of a title more facred than that of public minifter. The name of Friend is much fuperior to that of Excellence.

I dedicate to the ambaffador of a great king, and of a free nation, the fame work which I dedicated to the private citizen, the english merchant.

They who know to what point commerce is honoured in your country, know also, that a merchant there is sometimes a legiflator, a good officer, a public minifter.

Some