to the superior man, that is, our judgment and reason. Let an ambassador speak the best sense in the world, and deport himself in the most graceful manner before a Prince, yet if the tail of his shirt happen (as I have known it happen to a very wise man) to hang out behind, more people shall laugh at that than attend to the other; till they recollect themselves, and then they will not have a jot the less respect for the minister. I must confess the iniquity of my countenance before you; several muscles of my face sometimes take an impertinent liberty with my judgment, but then my judgment soon rises, and sets all right again about my mouth: and I find I value no man so much, as him in whose sight I have been playing the fool. I cannot be sub persona before a man I love; and not to laugh with honesty when nature 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, those 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 wise, it is all by myself. You take just another course, and to those that are not your friends, are very civil; and to those that are, very endearing and complaisant thus when you and I meet, there will be the Risus&Blanditia united together in conversation, as they commonly are in verse. But without laughter on the one side, or compliment on the other, I assure you I am, with real esteem,

Your, etc.

LETTER XXVIII.

FROM MR. CROMWELL.

October 16, 1711.

MR. Wycherley visited me at Bath in my sickness,

and expressed much affection to me: hearing from me how welcome his letters would be, he presently writ to you; in which I inserted my scrall, and after, a second. He went to Gloucester in his way to Salop, but was disappointed of a boat, and so returned to the Bath; then he shewed me your answer to his letters, in which you spoke of my good-nature, but, I fear, you found me very froward at Reading; yet you allow for my illness. I could not possibly be in the same house with Mr. Wycherley, though I sought it earnestly; nor come up to town with him, he being engaged with others; but, whenever we met, we talked of you. He praises your poem, and even outvies me in kind expressions of you. As if he had not wrote two letters to you, he was for writing every post; I put him in mind he had already. Forgive me this wrong; I know not whether my talking so much of your great humanity and tenderness to me, and love to him; or whether the return of his natural disposition to you, was the cause; 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 last much wearied, yet had wrote sooner, but was told by Mr. Gay (who has writ a pretty poem to Lintot, and who gives you his service) that you was gone from home. Lewis shewed me your letter, which set me right, and your next letter is impatiently expected from me. Mr. Wycher

ley came to town on Sunday last, and kindly surprized me with a visit on Monday morning. We dined and drank together; and I saying, To our loves, he replied, 'Tis Mr. Pope's health. He said he would go to Mr. Thorold's, and leave a letter for you. Though I cannot answer for the event of all this, in respect of him yet I can assure you, that, when you please to come, you will be most desirable to me, as always by inclination, so now by duty, who shall ever be

;

Your, etc.

LETTER XXIX.

November 12, 1711.

I RECEIVED the entertainment of your letter the day after I had sent you one of mine, and I am but this morning returned hither. The news you tell me of the many difficulties you found in your return from Bath, gives me such a kind of pleasure as we usually take in accompanying our friends in their mixed adventures; for, methinks, I see you labouring through all your inconveniencies of the rough roads, the hard saddle, the trotting horse, 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, set you on an easier pad, and relieved the wandering knight with a night's lodging and rural repast, at our castle in the forest? But these are only the pleasing imaginations of a disappointed lover, who must suffer in a melancholy absence yet these two months. the mean time, I take up with the muses for want of your better company; the Muses, qua nobiscum pernoctant, peregrinantur, rusticantur. Those aërial ladies just discover enough to me of their beauties to urge my pursuit, and draw me on in a wandering maze of thought, still in hopes (and only in hopes) of attain

In

ing those favours from them, which they confer on their more happy admirers. We grasp some more beautiful idea in our own brain, than our endeavours to express it can set to the view of others; and still do but labour to fall short of our first imagination. The gay colouring which fancy gave at the first transient glance we had of it, goes off in the execution: like those 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 confusion.

I am highly pleased with the knowledge you give me of Mr. Wycherley's present temper, which seems so favourable to me. I shall ever have such 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 surface of the earth (if you will pardon a poetical similitude) is clearer or gloomier, just as the sun is brighter or more over-cast. I

should be glad to see the verses to Lintot which you mention, for, methinks, something oddly agreeable may be produced from that subject-For what remains, I am so well, that nothing but the assurance of your being so can make me better; and if you would have me live with any satisfaction these dark days in which I cannot see you, it must be by your writing sometimes to Your, etc.

LETTER XXX.

FROM MR. CROMWELL.

December 7, 171.

MR. Wycherley has, I believe, sent you two or three letters of invitation; but you, like the fair, will be long solicited 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 like a libertine, now seems confined to you: and I should take him for your mistress too, by your simile of the sun 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 lustre, persuades me it would be juster by the reverse. Oh happy favourite of the muses! how pernoctare all night along with them? but alas! you do but toy, but skirmish with them, and decline a close engagement. Leave elegy and translation to the inferior class, on whom the muses only glance now and then, like our winter-sun, and then leave them in the dark. Think on the dignity of tragedy, which is of the greater poetry, as Dennis says, and foil him at his other weapon, as you have done in criticism. Every one wonders that a genius like yours will not support the sinking drama; and Mr. Wilks (though I think his talent is comedy) has expressed a furious ambition to swell in your buskins. We have had a poor comedy of Johnson's (not Ben) which held seven nights, and has got him three hundred pounds, for the town is sharp-set on new plays. In vain would I fire you by interest or ambition, when your mind is not susceptible of either; though your authority (arising from the general esteem, like that of Pompey) must infallibly assure you of success; for which in all your wishes you will be attended with those of Your, etc.

LETTER XXXI.

December 21, 1711.

IF I have not writ to you so soon as I ought, let my writing now atone for the delay; as it will infal libly do, when you know what a sacrifice I make you at this time, and that every moment my eyes are employed upon this paper, they are taken off from two