I am afraid, will prove but a wooden one: and you know ex quovis ligno, etc. You will pardon Mrs. R's pedantry, and believe me to be Your, etc.

P.S. By the inclosed you will see I am like to be impressed, and enrolled in the list of Mr. Curl's authors; but, I thank God! I shall have your company. I believe it high time you should think of administering another emetic.

THE REV. DEAN BERKLEY TO MR. POPE.

Leghorn, May 1, 1714. AS I take ingratitude to be a greater crime than impertinence, I chuse rather to run the risk of being thought guilty of the latter, than not to return you my thanks for a very agreeable entertainment you just now gave me. I have accidentally met with your Rape of the Lock here, having never seen it before. Style, painting, judgment, spirit, I had already admired in other of your writings; but in this I am charmed with the magic of your invention, with all those images, illusions, and inexplicable beauties, which you raise so surprisingly, and at the same time so naturally, out of a trifle. And yet I cannot say that I was more pleased with the reading of it than I am with the pretext it gives me to renew in your thoughts the remembrance of one who values no happiness beyond the friendship of men of wit, learning, and good-nature.

I remember to have heard you mention some halfformed design of coming to Italy. What might we not expect from a muse that sings so well in the bleak climate of England, if she felt the same warm sun, and breathed the same air with Virgil and Horace?

There are here an incredible number of poets, that have all the inclination, but want the genius, or perhaps the art, of the ancients. Some among them, who understand English, begin to relish our authors; and I am informed, that at Florence they have translated Milton into Italian verse. If one who knows so well how to write like the old Latin poets, came among them, it would probably be a means to retrieve them from their cold, trivial conceits, to an imitation of their predecessors.

As merchants, antiquaries, men of pleasure, etc. have all different views in travelling: I know not whether it might not be worth a poet's while, to travel, in order to store his mind with strong images of

nature.

Green fields and groves, flowery meadows and purling streams, are no where in such perfection as in England: but if you would know lightsome days, warm suns, and blue skies, you must come to Italy: and to enable a man to describe rocks and precipices, it is absolutely necessary that he pass the Alps.

You will easily perceive that it is self-interest makes me so fond of giving advice to one who has no need of it. If you came into these parts, I should fly to see you. I am here (by the favour of my good friend the Dean of St. Patrick's) in quality of Chaplain to the Earl of Peterborough; who above three months since left the greatest part of his family in this town. God knows how long we shall stay here. I am,

Your, etc.

LETTER II.

MR. POPE TO MR. JERVAS IN IRELAND.

June 9, 1716. THOUGH, as you rightly remark, I pay my tax but once in half a year, yet you shall see by this letter upon the neck of my last, that I pay a double tax, as Non-jurors ought to do. Your acquaintance on this side of the sea are under terrible apprehensions from your long stay in Ireland, that you may grow too polite for them; for we think (since the great success of such a play as the Non-juror) that politeness is gone over the water; but others are of opinion it has been longer among you, and was introduced much about the same time with frogs, and with equal success. Poor poetry! the little that is left of it here longs to cross the seas, and leave Eusden in full and peaceable possession of the British laurel: and we begin to wish you had the singing of our poets, as well as the croaking of our frogs, to yourselves, in sacula sæculorum. It would be well in exchange, if Parnelle, and two or three more of your Swans, would come hither, especially that Swan, who, like a true modern one, does not sing at all, Dr. Swift. I am (like the rest of the world) a sufferer by his idleness. Indeed I hate that any man should be idle, while I must translate and comment; and I may the more sincerely wish for good poetry from others, because I am become a person out of the question; for a translator is no more a poet, than a taylor is a man.

You are, doubtless, persuaded of the validity of that famous verse,

"Tis Expectation makes a blessing dear:

you

but why would you make your friends fonder of than they are? There is no manner of need of it.

We begin to expect you no more than Anti-christ; a man that hath absented himself so long from his friends, ought to be put into the Gazette.

Every body here has great need of you. Many faces have died for want of your pencil, and blooming ladies have withered in expecting your return. Even

Frank and Betty (that constant pair ") cannot console themselves for your absence; I fancy they will be forced to make their own picture in a pretty babe, before you come home: 'twill be a noble subject for a family-piece. Come then, and having peopled Ireland with a world of beautiful shadows, come to us, and see with that eye (which, like the eye of the world, creates beauties by looking on them); see, I say, how England has altered the airs of all its heads in your absence; and with what sneaking city-attitudes our most celebrated personages appear, in the mere mortal works of our painters.

-Mr. Fortescue is much yours: Gay commemorates you; and lastly (to climb by just steps and degrees) my Lord Burlington desires you may be put in mind of him. His gardens flourish, his structures rise, his pictures arrive, and (what is far more valuable than all) his own good qualities daily extend themselves to all about him: of whom I the meanest (next to some Italian fiddlers, and English bricklayers) am a living instance. Adieu.

These were domestic servants of Jervas. * Afterwards Judge Fortescue.