love; and not to laugh with honesty, when na ture prompts, or folly (which is more a second nature, than any thing I know) is but a knavish hypocritical way of making a mask of one's own face. To conclude, thofe that are my friends, I laugh with, and those that are not I laugh at; so am merry in company, and if ever I am wife, it is all by myself. You take just another course, and to thofe that are not your friends, are very civil; and to those that are, very endearing and complaifant: thus when you and I meet, there will be the Rifus & Blanditia united together in conversation, as they commonly are in verfe. But without laughter on the one fide, or compliment on the other, I afsure you I am, with real esteem,

Your, &c:

M

LETTER XXVIII.

From Mr. CROMWELL.

Oct. 16, 1711.

R. Wycherley vifited me at Bath in my sickness, and exprefs'd much affection to me: hearing from me how welcome his letters would be, he presently writ to you; in which I inferted my fcrall, and after, a second.

He

He went to Gloucester in his way to Salop, but was difappointed of a boat, and fo return'd to the Bath; then he fhewed me your answer to his letters, in which you spoke 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 we met, we talk'd of you. He praises your a Poem, and even outvies me in kind expreffions of you. As if he had not wrote two letters to you, he was for writing every poft; 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 difpofition to you, was the caufe; 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 a pretty poem to Lintot, and who gives you his fervice) that you was gone from home. Lewis fhew'd me your letter, which fet me right, and

VOL. VII.

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your next letter

Effay on Criticiím. P.

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is impatiently expected from me. Mr. Wycherley came to town on Sunday laft, and kindly furprized me with a vifit on Monday morning. We dined and drank together; and I saying, 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 of him yet I can affure you, that, when you please to come, you will be moft defireable to me, as always by inclination, fo now by duty, who fhall ever be

;

Your, &c.

LETTER XXIX.

Nov. 12, 1711.

Received the entertainment of your letter the

on

day after I had fent you one of mine, and I am but this morning return'd hither. The news you tell me of the many difficulties you found in your return from Bath, gives me fuch a kind of pleasure as we ufually take in accompanying our friends in their mix'd adventures; for, methinks, I fee you labouring thro' all your inconveniencies 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, fet 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 must fuffer in a melancholy absence yet these two months. In the mean time, I take up with the Mufes for want of your better company; the Muses, quæ nobifcum pernoctant, peregrinantur, rufticantur. Thofe aërial ladies juft difcover 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 exprefs it can fet to the view of others; and ftill do but labour to fall fhort of our firft imagination. The gay colouring which fancy gave at the first 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 present temper,

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which

I shall ever

which feems fo favourable to me. 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 furface 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 see the verses to Lintot which you mention, for, methinks, fomething oddly agreeable may be produced from that fubject. For what remains, I am fo well, that nothing but the affurance of your being so can make me better; and if you would have me live with any fatisfaction thefe dark days in which I cannot see you, it must be by your writing sometimes to

—

Your, &c.

LETTER XXX.

From Mr. CROMWELL.

Dec. 7, 1711.

R. Wycherley has, I believe, fent you

MR

two or three letters of invitation; but you, like the fair, will be long folicited 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 ranged at

large