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 firft 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 fhewed me your Letter, which fet me right, and your next letter is impatiently expected from me. Mr. Wycherley came to town on Sunday last, and kindly surprized 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 refpect to him; yet 1 can affure you, that, when you please to come, you will be moft defirable to me, as always by inclination, so now by duty, who fhall 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 butthis morning returned 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 usually HS take in accompanying our friends in their mix'd adventures; for, methinks, I see you labouring thro' all your inconveniences of the rough roads, the hard faddle, the trotting horfe, and what not? What an agreeable surprize would it have been to me, 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 eafier, pad, and relieved the wandring knight with a night's lodging and rural repast, at our cattle in the foreft? But thefe are only the pleafing imaginations of a difappointed lover, who must suffer in a melancholy absence yet these two months. In the mean time, I take up with the Muses for want of your better company; the Mules, quæ nobifcum pernoctant, peregrinantur, rufticantur. Those aërial ladies juít difcover enough to me of their beauties to urge my purfuit, and draw me on in a wandering maze of thought, still 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 set to the view of others; and ftill do but labour to fall fhort of our first imagi nation. 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 feparate 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, 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 fo 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, juft as the fun is brighter or more over-caft I fhould be glad to fee 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 fo can make me better; and if you would have me live with any fatisfaction thefe dark days in which I cannot fee you, it must be by your writing sometimes to Your, &c. LETTER XXX. From Mr. Свомw Dec. 7, 1711. M2, ones, latin, but you, like the R. Wycherley has, I believe, fent you two or 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 unbounted genius which has rang'd at large like a libertine, now feems confin'd to you and I fhould take him for your miftrefs too by your fimile of the fun and earth: 'Tis very fine, 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 Mufes! how per noctare, all night long with them ? but alas! you do but toy, but fkirmish with them, and decline a close engagement. Leave Elegy and tranflation 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 Criticiin. 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 express'd a furious ambition to fwell in your buskins. 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-fet 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) must infallibly affure you of fuccefs; for which in all your wifhes you will be attended with thofe of Your, &c. LETTER XXXI. Dec. 21, 17IL. F I have not writ to you fo foon as I ought, let IF my writing now atone for the delay; as it will infallibly do, when you know what a facrifice I make you at this time, and that every moment my eyes are employ'd upon this paper, they are taken off from two of the finest faces in the universe. But indeed 'tis fome confolation to me to reflect, that while I but write this period, I efcape fome hundred fatal darts from thofe unerring eyes, and about a thousand deaths or better. Now you, that delight in dying, would not once have dreamt of an absent friend in these circuinstances; you that are so nice an admirer of beauty, or (as a Critic would say after Terence) so elegant a Spectator of forms; you must have a fober dish of coffee, and a folitary candle at your fide, to write an epittle lucubratory to your friend; whereas I can do it as well with two pair of radiant lights, that outshine the golden god of day and filver goddess of night, and all the refulgent eyes of the firmament. You fancy now that Sappho's eyes are two of these my tapers, but it is no fuch matter; these are eyes that have more perfuafion in one glance than all Sappho's oratory and gefture together, let her put her body into what moving postures fhe pleases. Indeed, indeed, my friend, you could never have found fo improper a time to tempt me with intereft or ambition: let me but have the reputation of these in my keeping, and as for my own, let the devil, or let Dennis, take it for ever. How gladly would I give all I am worth, that is tò fay, my Paftorals, for one of them, and my Effay for the other? I would lay out all my Poetry in Love; an Original for a Lady, and a Tranflation for a Waitingmaid! Alas! what have I to do with Jane Gray, as long as Mifs Molly, Miss Betty, or Mifs Patty are in this world? Shall I write of beauties murdered long ago, when there are thofe at this inftant that murder |