the judge, and I shall be the first to consent to the justice of its judgment, whatever it be. I am not so arrant an author as even to desire, that if I am in the wrong, all mankind should be so.

I am mightily pleased with a saying of Monsieur Tourreil: when a man writes he ought to animate "himself with the thoughts of pleasing all the world: "but he is to renounce that desire or hope, the very "moment the book goes out of his hands."

I write this from Binfield, whither I came yesterday, having passed a few days in my way with my Lord Bolingbroke; I go to London in three days' time, and will not fail to pay a visit to Mr. M

whom

I saw not long since at my Lord Hallifax's. I hoped from thence he had some hopes of advantage from the present administration: for few people (I think) but I, pay respects to great men without any prospects. I am in the fairest way in the world of being not worth a groat, being born both a Papist and a Poet. This puts me in mind of re-acknowledging your continued endeavours to enrich me. But, I can tell you, 'tis to no purpose, for without the Opes, æquum mi animum ipse parabo.

LETTER XXVIII.

TO MR. CONGREVE.

March 19, 1714-15.

Some

THE farce of the What-d'ye call-it has occasioned many different speculations in the town. looked upon it as a mere jest upon the tragic poets, others as a satire upon the late war. Mr. Cromwell hearing none of the words, and seeing the action to be tragical, was much astonished to find the audience laugh; and says the Prince and Princess must doubt

P Written by Mr.Gay.

less be under no less amazement on the same account. Several templars and others of the more vociferous kind of critics, went with a resolution to hiss, and confessed they were forced to laugh so much, that they forgot the design they came with. The Court in general has in a very particular manner come into the jest, and the three first nights (notwithstanding two of them were court-nights) were distinguished by very full audiences of the first quality. The common people of the pit and gallery received it at first with great gravity and sedateness, some few with tears; but after the third day they also took the hint, and have ever since been very loud in their claps. There are still some sober men who cannot be of the general opinion; but the laughers are so much the majority, that one or two critics seem determined to undeceive the town at their proper cost, by writing grave dissertations against it: to encourage them in which laudable design, it is resolved a preface shall be prefixed to the farce, in vindication of the nature and dignity of this new way of writing.

Yesterday Mr. Steele's affair was decided: I am sorry I can be of no other opinion than yours, as to his whole carriage and writings of late. But certainly he has not only been punished by others, but suffered much even from his own party in the point of character, nor (I believe) received any amends in that of interest, as yet, whatever may be his prospects for the future.

This gentleman, among a thousand, others, is a great instance of the fate of all who are carried away by party-spirit, of any side. I wish all violence may succeed as ill: but am really amazed that so much of that sour and pernicious quality should be joined with so much natural good humour as, I think, Mr. Steele is possessed of. I am, etc.

MR. POPE is

LETTER XXIX.

TO MR. CONGREVE.

April 7, 1715.

gone to Mr. Jervas's, where Mr. Addison is sitting for his picture; in the mean time, amidst clouds of tobacco at a coffee-house, I write this letter. There is a grand revolution at Will's; Morrice has quitted for a coffee-house in the city, and Titcomb is restored, to the great joy of Cromwell, who was at a great loss for a person to converse with upon the fathers and church-history; the knowledge I gain from him is entirely in painting and poetry; and Mr. Pope owes all his skill in astronomy to him and Mr. Whiston, so celebrated of late for his discovery of the longitude in an extraordinary copy of verses ". Mr. Rowe's Jane Gray is to be played in Easter-week, when Mrs. Oldfield is to personate a character directly opposite to female nature; for what woman ever despised sovereignty? You know Chaucer has a tale where a knight saves his head, by discover. ing it was the thing which all women most coveted. Mr. Pope's Homer is retarded by the great rains that have fallen of late, which causes the sheets to be long a drying this gives Mr. Lintot great uneasiness, who is now endeavouring to corrupt the curate of his parish to pray for fair weather, that his work may go on. There is a six-penny criticism lately published upon the tragedy of the What-d'ye-call-it, wherein he with much judgment and learning calls me a blockhead, and Mr. Pope a knave. His grand charge is against the Pilgrim's Progress being read, which, he says, is directly levelled at Cato's reading Plato; to back this

The beginning of this letter is by Gay.

* Called, An Ode on the Longitude, in Swift and Pope's Miscellanies.

censure, he goes on to tell you, that the Pilgrim's. Progress being mentioned to be the eight edition, makes the reflection evident, the tragedy of Cato having just eight times (as he quaintly expresses it) visited the press. He has also endeavoured to show, that every particular passage of the play alludes to some fine part of tragedy, which, he says, I have injudiciously and profanely abused. Sir Samuel Garth's poem upon my Lord Clare's house, I believe, will be published in the Easter-week.

Thus far Mr. Gay, who has in his letter forestalled all the subjects of diversion; unless it should be one to you to say, that I sit up till two o'clock over Burgundy and Champagne; and am become so much a rake, that I shall be ashamed in a short time to be thought to do any sort of business. I fear I must get the gout by drinking; purely for a fashionable pretence to sit still long enough to translate four books of Homer. I hope you'll by that time be up again, and I may succeed to the bed and couch of my predecessor pray cause the stuffing to be repaired, and the crutches shortened for me. The calamity of your gout is what all your friends, that is to say, all that know you, must share in ; we desire you in your turn to condole with us, who are under a persecution, and much afflicted with a distemper which proves mortal to many poets, a criticism. We have indeed some relieving intervals of laughter, (as you know there are in some diseases,) and it is the opinion of divers good guessers, that the last fit will not be more violent than advantageous; for poets assailed by critics, are like men bitten by tarantula's, they dance on so much the faster.

Mr. Thomas Burnet hath played the precursor to the coming of Homer, in a treatise called Homerides.

This curious piece was intitled, A complete Key to the What-d'ye-call-it, written by one Griffin a player, assisted by Lewis Theobald.

He has since risen very much in his criticisms, and, after assaulting Homer, made a daring attack upon the What-d'ye-call-it. Yet is there not a proclamation issued for the burning of Homer and the Pope by the common hangman; nor is the What-d'ye-call-it yet silenced by the Lord Chamberlain. Your, etc.

LETTER XXX.

FROM MR. CONGREVE.

May 6 I HAVE the pleasure of your very kind letter. I have always been obliged to you for your friendship and concern for me, and am more affected with it than I will take upon me to express in this letter. I do assure you there is no return wanting on my part, and am very sorry I had not the good luck to see the Dean before I left the town: it is a great pleasure to me, and not a little vanity to think that he misses me. As to my health, which you are so kind to enquire after, it is not worse than in London: I am almost afraid yet to say that it is better, for I cannot reasonably expect much effect from these waters in so short a time; but in the main they seem to agree with me. Here is not one creature that I know, which, next to the few I would chuse, contributes very much to my satisfaction. At the same time that I regret the want of your conversation, I please myself with thinking that you are where you first ought to be, and engaged where you cannot do too much. Pray, give my humble service, and best wishes, to your good mother. I am sorry you don't tell me how Mr. Gay does in his health: I should have been glad to have heard he was better. My young amanuensis, as you call him,

In one of his papers called The Grumbler.