your modesty to say much of the verses you inclose, but it would be wronging sense and poetry, not to say they are fine ones, and such as I could not forget, having once seen them.

I have almost forgot what I told you of the patent; but at the time I told it, I could not well be mistaken, having just then had the account from Mr. Davenant the envoy indeed I fancy it was only of his ancestor's patent that he spoke (unless Sir William Davenant bought up Killigrew's). I know no way of coming to the knowledge of this affair, Mr. Davenant being now abroad, and I know not where. But if But if you would have me write about it, I will learn his direction.

I am at all times glad to hear of you, on any occasion. I would willingly wait on you in the Park, if I knew your times. I have called twice or thrice there in vain, without being heard. I guessed you were in the country. My sincere good wishes attend you; and your agreeable family, as far as I have seen of it, I cannot but wish well to. I am, dear Sir,

Your, &c.

LETTER XXVIII.

TO MR. POPE.

SIR,

Nov. 7, 1733.

THOUGH I have, really, no skill in the French, and am (perhaps, for that reason) not over fond of the language, yet I read it with pleasure, in respect to the writers of that nation; and have seldom been more strongly delighted, than with the tragedy of Zaire.

I had seen nothing of M. Voltaire's before, except the Henriade; and whether it was from my own want of taste, or the poem's want of fire, I found it too cold for an epic spirit; so conceived but a moderate opinion

But

as to the dramatic attempts of the same author. genius being limited, we act too rash and unreasonable a part, when we judge after so general a manner. Having been agreeably disappointed in Zaire, it was due, as an atonement, that I should contribute to widen his applause, whom I had thought of too narrowly.

I have, therefore, made this tragedy speak English, and shall bring it on the stage in a month or two; where, though I have no interest in its success, I should be vexed to have it miscarry; because it is certainly an excellent piece, and has not suffered, I hope, so much in the translation, as to justify a cold reception at London, after having run into the most general esteem at Paris. I will do all in my power to prepare the town to receive it, to which end I have given the profits to a gentleman whose acquaintance is too large for his fortune, and your good taste and good nature assure me of your willing concurrence so far, as not only to say of it what it deserves, but to say it at such times and in such manner as you know best how to choose, in order to give your recommendation the intended good consequence.

Lord Bolingbroke was a patron of M. Voltaire, and can effectually advance the reception of his play amongst those who are most his friends, and best able to support it at its appearance. I have ventured to ask it in the author's behalf, and beg you would convey the letter and translation to my lord's hands, as soon as you please, after you have read them.

I would desire you to excuse this trouble, if it were not to look like a distrust of that delight which I know it gives you, when you have an opportunity put into your hands to do a kind or a generous

action.

The last time I had the pleasure of seeing you at

Westminster, you were observing among some rude beginnings of rock-work, which I am designing in my garden, a little obelisk of Jersey shells, over a grotesque portico for Pallas, against the park wall. You then expressed some thoughts of improving such a use of those shells into a nobler obelisk, among your beauties at Twittenham. Allow me to bespeak for myself, against next spring, the permission of presenting you the shells, materials, and workmanship; that I may have the honour to plant in your gardens a probability of being sometimes remembered by the master of that growing paradise. In the mean time be so good to accept this smaller parcel, just enough (if there is yet to come of the season half a week of dry weather without frost) to embellish your marine temple, by inserting them among the hollows, between those large shells which compose it; where being placed in oblique position, so as to lie open to the weather, they will enlighten the gravity, and catch a distant eye with a kind of shining propriety.

I ought never to end a letter to you without a wish for your perfect health, because it is impossible to think of you without a pain from the reflection, that you want it too often. I am,

Yours, &c.

I WRIT to you a very hasty letter, being warmed in the cause of an old acquaintance, in which I was sure you would concur, I mean, John Dennis, whose circumstances were described to me in the moving manner. I went next day with the Lord to

VOL. VII.

U

most

whom you directed your letter and play, which, at my return home, I received but yesterday. I thank you for your agreeable present to my grotto, for your more agreeable letter, and your most excellent translation of Voltaire, to whom you have preserved all the beauty he had, and added the nerves he wanted. This short acknowledgment is all I can make just now: I am just taken up by Mr. Thomson, in the perusal of a new poem he has brought me: I wish you were with The first day I see London, I will wait on you, on many accounts, but on none more than my being affectionately, and with true esteem,

us.

Dear Sir, yours.

I desire Miss Urania will know me for her servant 7.

SIR,

LETTER XXX.

TO MR. HILL.

June 9, 1738$.

THE favour of yours, of May the 11th, had not been unacknowledged so long, but it reached me not

6 Voltaire's Zaire, translated by Hill. If Pope spoke before contemptuously of Hill, he now makes ample amends by flattery.-Bowles. 7 From the date of the preceding letter, there appears to have been a cessation of the correspondence between Pope and Hill till 1738. The cause of this it is not easy to ascertain; but from the frequency with which Hill solicited the assistance, and called for the opinion of Pope on his writings, we may reasonably conjecture that Pope was desirous of being released from such importunity. That the feelings of Mr. Hill were in some degree hurt by this interruption of their acquaintance, may appear from a passage in a letter from him to Thomson, dated May 20, 1736, in which he says: "I am pleased to hear that Mr. Pope was so kind as to make any inquiries concerning me. I must allow such merit as his to entitle its possessors to think when they will and what they will of their friends. It is enough that I feel him through distance; I lose none of his force from the coldness of his friendship; on the contrary, I am made sure, by some reasons I have to be convinced, we think differently of each other, that my esteem for him is the effect of his excellences, because it could have no ground to grow in if it were the return of partiality.”—V. Hill's Works, vol. i. p. 317.

The above letter from Pope to Hill is an answer to a very long epistle

till my return from a journey, which had carried me from scene to scene, where Gods might wander with delight. I am sorry yours was attended with any thoughts less pleasing, either from the conduct towards you of the world in general, or of any one else in particular. As to the subject matter of the letter, I found what I have often done in receiving letters from those I most esteemed, and most wished to be esteemed by; a great pleasure in reading it, and a great inability to answer it. I can only say, you oblige me in seeming so well to know me again, as one extremely willing that the free exercise of criticism should extend over my own writings, as well as those of others, whenever the public may receive the least benefit from it; as I question not they will a great deal when exerted by you. I am sensible of the honour you do me, in proposing to send me your work before it appears; if you do, I must insist that no use in my favour be made of that distinction, by the alteration or softening of any censure of yours on any line of mine.

What you have observed in your letter I think just,

from Hill, dated 11th May, 1738, in which he renews the correspondence, by informing Pope that it was his intention to publish An Essay on Propriety in the thought and expression of Poetry, (to which he has referred in one of his former letters,) in which he intended to take his examples from the works of Pope; at the same time offering to send the manuscript to Twickenham for Pope's correction, being resolved, as he says, "to carry no example of his to the press in a manner against which he has any just cause of exception." In the same letter we find a vindication of some passages cited by Pope from Theobald, in the Treatise on the Bathos, and particularly of the expression,

And of the lines,

66

None but himself can be his parallel."

The criticisms upon which by Pope, he considers as “rash, unweighed censures." This letter, which, as the writer justly observes, "had grown to an unmerciful long one," extending to nearly twenty pages, and containing much diffuse and irrelevant matter, may be found in the Works of Aaron Hill, vol. i. p. 341.