be thought a commentator. And for another reason too, because I have quite forgot both the verse and the application. I hope it will be no offence to give my most hearty service to Mr. Wycherley, though I perceive, by his last to me, I am not to trouble him with my letters, since he there told me he was going instantly out of town, and till his return was my servant, etc. I guess by yours he is yet with you, and beg you to do what you may with all truth and honour, that is, assure him I have ever borne all the respect and kindness imaginable to him. I do not know to this hour what it is that has estranged him from me: but this I know, that he may for the future be more safely my friend, since no invitation of his shall ever more make me so free with him. I could not have thought any man so very cautious and suspicious, as not to credit his own experience of a friend. Indeed, to believe nobody, may be a maxim of safety, but not so much of honesty. There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men ; that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed, and I can truly boast this comfort in my affairs with Mr. Wycherley. But I pardon his jealousy, which is become his nature, and shall never be his enemy whatsoever he me. says Your, etc. of LETTER XXI. FROM MR. CROMWell. Nov. 5, 1710. I FIND I am obliged to the sight of your loveverses for your opinion of my sincerity; which had never been called in question, if you had not forced me, upon so many other occasions, to express my esteem, I have just read and compared Mr. Rowe's version of the ixth of Lucan, with very great pleasure, where I find none of those absurdities so frequent in that of Virgil, except in two places, for the sake of lashing the priests; one where Cato says- -Sortilegis egeant dubii-and one in the simile of the Hæmorrhois -fatidici Sabai-He is so arrant a whig, that he strains even beyond his author, in passion for liberty, and aversion to tyranny; and errs only in amplification. Lucan ix. in initio, describing the seat of the Semidei manes, says, Quodque patet terras inter lunæque meatus, Mr. Rowe has this line, Then looking down on the sun's feeble ray. Pray your opinion, if there be an error-sphæricus in this or no? Your, etc. LETTER XXII. Nov. 11, 1710. YOU mistake me very much in thinking the freedom you kindly used with my love verses, gave me the first opinion of your sincerity: I assure you it only did what every good-natured action of yours has done since, confirmed me more in that opinion. The fable of the Nightingale in Philips's Pastorals is taken from Famianus Strada's Latin poem on the same subject, in his Prolusiones Academica; only the tomb he erects at the end, is added from Virgil's conclusion of the Culex. I cant forbear giving a passage out of the Latin poem I mention, by which you will find the English poet is indebted to it: P Pieces printed in the 6th vol, of Tonson's Miscellanies. Alternat mira arte fides: dum torquet acutas, This poem was many years since imitated by Crashaw, out of whose verses the following are very remarkable: From this to that, from that to this he flies, I have (as I think I formerly told you) a very good opinion of Mr. Rowe's ixth book of Lucan: indeed he amplifies too much, as well as Brebœuf, the famous French imitator. If I remember right, he sometimes takes the whole comment into the text of the version, as particularly in line 808. Utque solet pariter totis se effundere signis Corycii pressura croci.And in the place you quote, he makes of those two lines in the Latin, Vidit quanta sub nocte jaceret Nostra dies, risitque sui ludibria trunci, no less than eight in the English. What you observe, sure, cannot be an error-sphæricus, strictly speaking, either according to the Ptolemaic, or our Copernican system; Tycho Brahe himself will be on the translator's side. For Mr. Rowe here says no more, than that he looked down on the rays of the sun, which Pompey might do, even though the body of the sun were above him. You can't but have remarked what a journey Lucan here makes Cato take for the sake of his fine descriptions. From Cyrene he travels by land, for no better reason than this; Hæc eadem suadebat hiems, quæ clauserat æquor. The winter's effects on the sea, it seems, were more to be dreaded than all the serpents, whirlwinds, sands, etc. by land, which immediately after he paints out in his speech to the soldiers: then he fetches a compass a vast way round about, to the Nasamones and Jupiter Ammon's temple, purely to ridicule the oracles: and Labienus must pardon me, if I do not believe him when he says- -sors obtulit, et fortuna via-either Labienus, or the map, is very much mistaken here. Thence he returns back to the Syrtes (which he might have taken first in his way to Utica) and so to Leptis Minor, where our author leaves him: who seems to have made Cato speak his own mind, when he tells his army Ire sat est-no matter whither. I am, LETTER XXIII. FROM MR. CROMWELL. Your, etc. Nov. 20, 171C. THE system of Tycho Brahe (were it true, as it is novel) could have no room here: Lucan, with the rest of the Latin poets, seems to follow Plato ; whose order of the spheres is clear in Cicero, De natura Deorum, De somnio Scipionis, and in Macrobius. The seat of the Semidei manes is Platonic too, for Apuleius De deo Socratis assigns the same to the Genii, viz. the region of the air for their intercourse with gods and men; so that, I fancy, Rowe mistook the situation, and I can't be reconciled to Look down on the sun's rays. I am glad you agree with me about the latitude he takes; and wish you had told me, if the sortilegi, and fatidici, could license his invective against priests; but I suppose, you think them (with Helena) undeserving of your protection. I agree with you in Lucan's errors, and the cause of them, his poetic descriptions; for the Romans then knew the coast of Africa from Cyrene (to the south-east of which lies Ammon toward Egypt) to Leptis and Utica but, pray, remember how your Homer nodded, while Ulysses slept, and waking knew not where he was, in the short passage from Corcyra to Ithaca. I like Trapp's versions for their justness: his psalm is excellent, the prodigies in the first Georgic judicious (whence I conclude that 'tis easier to turn Virgil justly in blank verse, than rhyme). The eclogue of Gallus, and fable of Phaeton, pretty well; but he is very faulty in his numbers; the fate of Phaeton might run thus, The blasted Phaëton with blazing hair, I am, Your, etc. LETTER XXIV. Nov. 24, 1710. TO make use of that freedom and familiarity of style, which we have taken up in our correspondence, and which is more properly talking upon paper, than writing; I will tell you without any preface, that I never took Tycho Brahe for one of the ancients, or in the least an acquaintance of Lucan's; nay, 'tis mercy on this occasion that I do not give you an account of his life and conversation; as how he lived some years like an inchanted knight in a certain island, with a tale of a King of Denmark's mistress that shall be nameless-But I have compassion on you, and would not for the world you should stay any longer among the Genii and Semidei Manes, you know where; for if once you get so near the moon, Sappho 9 Mrs. Thomas, |