have written, not letters only, but whole tomes and voluminous treatises about nothing? Why should a fellow like me, who all his life does nothing, be ashamed to write nothing; and that to one who has nothing to do but to read it? But perhaps you'll say, the whole world has something to do, something to talk of, something to wish for, something to be employed about: But pray, Sir, cast up the account, put all these somethings together, and what is the sum total but just nothing? I have no more to say, but to desire you to give my service (that is nothing) to your friends, and to believe that I am nothing more than Your, etc. LETTER III. May 10, 1708. YOU talk of fame and glory, and of the great men of antiquity: Pray, tell me, what are all your great dead men, but so many little living letters ? What a vast reward is here for all the ink wasted by writers, and all the blood spilt by princes? There was in old time one Severus a Roman Emperor. I dare say you never called him by any other name in your life and yet in his days he was styled Lucius, Septimius, Severus, Pius, Pertinax, Augustus, Parthicus, Adiabenicus, Arabicus, Maximus, and what not? What a prodigious waste of letters has time made! what a number have here dropt off, and left the poor surviving seven unattended! For my own part, four are all I have to take care for; and I'll be judged by you if any man could live in less compass? Well, for the future I'll drown all high thoughts in the lethe of cowslip-wine; as for fame, renown, reputation, take them, critics! Tradam protervis in Mare Criticum If ever I seek for immortality here, may I be damned, for there's not so much danger in a poet's being damned: Damnation follows death in other men. But your damn'd poet lives and writes agen. LETTER IV. Nov. 1, 1708. I HAVE been so well satisfied with the country ever since I saw you, that I have not once thought of the town, or enquired of any one in it besides Mr. Wycherley and yourself. And from him I understand of your journey this Summer into Leicestershire; from whence I guess you are returned by this time, to your old apartment in the widow's corner, to your old business of comparing critics, and reconciling commentators, and to your old diversions of a losing game at piquet with the ladies, and half a play, or a quarter of a play at the theatre: where you are none of the malicious audience, but the chief of amorous spectators; and for the infirmity of one sense, which there, for the most part, could only serve to disgust you, enjoy the vigour of another, which ravishes you. [b You know, when one sense supprest, It but retires into the rest, according to the poetical, not the learned *, Dodwell; who has done one thing worthy of eternal memory; wrote two lines in his life that are not nonsense!] So you have the advantage of being entertained with all the beauty of the boxes, without being troubled with any of the dulness of the stage. You are so good a a His hearing. b Omitted by the Author in his own edition. * Alluding to Mr. Henry Dodwell, the celebrated nonjuror. critic, that it is the greatest happiness of the modern poets that you do not hear their works: And next, that you are not so arrant a critic, as to damn them (like the rest) without hearing. But now I talk of those critics, I have good news to tell you concerning myself, for which I expect you should congratulate with me: It is that, beyond all my expectations, and far above my demerits, I have been most mercifully reprieved by the sovereign power of Jacob Tonson, from being brought forth to public punishment; and respited from time to time from the hands of those barbarous executioners of the muses, whom I was just now speaking of. It often happens that guilty poets, like other guilty criminals, when once they are known and proclaimed, deliver themselves into the hands of justice, only to prevent others from doing it more to their disadvantage, and not out of any ambition to spread their fame, by being executed in the face of the world, which is a fame but of short continuance. That poet were a happy man who could but obtain a grant to preserve his for ninety-nine years; for those names very rarely last so many days, which are planted either in Jacob Tonson's, or the Ordinary of Newgate's Miscellanies. I have an hundred things to say to you, which shall be deferred till I have the happiness of seeing you in town, for the season now draws on, that invites every body thither. Some of them I had communicated to you by letters before this, if I had not been uncertain where you passed your time the last season: So much fine weather, I doubt not, has given you all the pleasure you could desire from the country, and your own thoughts the best company in But nothing could allure Mr. Wycherley to our forest; he continued (as you told me long since he would) an obstinate lover of the town, in spite of friendship and fair weather. Therefore henceforward, to all those considerable qualities I know you possessed of, I shall add that of prophecy. But I still believe Mr. Wycherley's intentions were good, and am satisfied that he promises nothing, but with a real design to perform it: How much soever his other excellent qualities are above my imitation, his sincerity, I hope, is not; and it is with the utmost that I am, of LETTER V. Sir, etc. Jan. 22, 1708-9. I HAD sent you the inclosed papers before this time, but that I intended to have brought them myself, and afterwards could find no opportunity of sending them without suspicion of their miscarrying; not that they are of the least value, but for fear somebody might be foolish enough to imagine them so, and inquisitive enough to discover those faults which I (by your help) would correct. I therefore beg the favour you to let them go no farther than your chamber, and to be very free of your remarks in the margins, not only in regard to the accuracy, but to the fidelity of the translation; which I have not had time to compare with its original. And I desire you to be the more severe, as it is much more criminal for me to make another speak nonsense, than to do it in my own proper person. For your better help in compar. ing, it may be fit to tell you, that this is not an entire version of the first book. There is an omission from the 168th line-Jam murmura serpunt Plebis Agenorea-to the 312th-Interea patriis olim vagus exul ab oris (between these two Statius has a description of the council of the gods, and a speech of This was a translation of the first book of Statius, done when the Author was but fourteen years old, as appears by an advertisement before the first edition of it in a miscellany published by B. Lintot, 8vo. 1711. These he since translated, and they are extant in the printed. version. Jupiter; which contain a peculiar beauty and majesty, and were left out for no other reason, but because the consequence of this machine appears not till the second book.) The translation goes on from thence to the words Hic vero ambobus rabiem fortuna cruentam, where there is an odd account of a battle at fisty-cuffs between the two princes on a very slight occasion, and at a time when, one would think, the fatigue of their journey, in so tempestuous a night, might have rendered them very unfit for such a scuffle. This I had actually translated, but was very ill satisfied with it, even in my own words, to which an author cannot but be partial enough of conscience; it was therefore omitted in this copy, which goes on above eighty lines farther, at the words-Hic primum lustrare oculis, etc.-to the end of the book. You will find, I doubt not, that Statius was none of the discreetest poets, though he was the best versifier next Virgil: In the very beginning he unluckily betrays his ignorance in the rules of poetry (which Horace had already taught the Romans) when he asks his Muse where to begin his Thebaid, and seems to doubt whether it should not be ab ovo Ledao. When he comes to the scene of his poem, and the prize in dispute between the brothers, he gives us a very mean opinion of it Pugna est de paupere regno Very different from the conduct of his master Virgil, who at the entrance of his poem informs his reader of the greatness of its subjects-Tanta molis erat Romanam condere gentem. [Bossu on Epic Poetry.] There are innumerable little faults in him, among which I cannot but take notice of one in this book, where, speaking of the implacable hatred of the brothers, he says, The whole world would be too small a prize to repay so much impiety. Quid si peteretur crimine tanto Limes uterque poli, quem Sol emissus Eoo |