LETTER XVI.

July 20, 1710.

GIVE you thanks for the verfion you sent me of Ovid's elegy. It is very much an image of that author's writing, who has an agreeableness that charms us without correctnefs, like a mistress, whofe faults we fee, but love her with them all. You have very judiciously altered his method in fome places, and I can find nothing which I dare infift upon as an error: what I have written in the margins being merely gueffes at a little improvement, rather than criticisms. I affure you I do not expect you fhould fubfcribe to my private notions, but when you fhall judge them agreeable to reafon and good sense. What I have done is not as a critic, but as a friend; I know too well how many qualities are requifite to make the one, and that I want almost all I can reckon up; but I am fure I do not want inclination, nor, I hope, capacity, to be the other. Nor fhall I take it at all amifs, that another diffents from my opinion: 'tis no more than I have often done from my own; and indeed, the more a man advances in understanding, he becomes the more every day a critic upon himself, and finds fomething or other still to blame in his former notions and opinions. I could be glad to know if you have translated the 11th elegy of lib. ii. Ad amicam navigantem. The 8th of book iii. or the

11th of book iii. which are above all others my particular favourites, especially the last of these.

As to the paffage of which you ask my opinion in the fecond Æneid, it is either fo plain as to require no folution; or elfe (which is very probable) you fee farther into it than I can. Priam would fay, that "Achilles (whom furely you only feign to be your "father, fince your actions are so different from his) "did not use me thus inhumanly. He blufhed at "his murder of Hector, when he faw my forrows "for him; and restored his dead body to me to be "buried." To this the answer of Pyrrhus feems to be agreeable enough. "Go then to the fhades, and "tell Achilles how I degenerate from him :" granting the truth of what Priam had faid of the difference between them. Indeed Mr. Dryden's mentioning here what Virgil more judiciously paffes in filence, the circumstance of Achilles's felling for money the body of Hector, seems not fo proper; it in some measure leffening the character of Achilles's generofity and piety, which is the very point of which Priam endea

*

vours

* This behaviour of Achilles could not escape an acute critic, but one too fond of carping at the ancients. "Forgive me, (says Achilles,) my dear Patroclus, for restoring the body of Hector to his father; car (on s'attend qu'il va dire) je n'ai pû resister aux larmes de ce pere infortuné; mais non: for he has brought me a great ranfom. Such paffages prove that true heroism was never fo little known, as in the times called heroic." Marmontel. Poetique, t. ii. p. 197.

The plain answer is, that Achilles speaks and behaves fuitably to the manners, ideas, and sentiments of his age.

vours in this place to convince his fon, and to re. proach him with the want of. But the truth of this circumstance is no way to be queftioned, being exprefsly taken from Homer, who reprefents Achilles weeping for Priam, yet receiving the gold, Iliad xxiv. For when he gives the body, he uses these words: " O my friend Patroclus! forgive me that I quit the "corpfe of him who killed thee; I have great gifts ❝in ransom for it, which I will bestow upon thy "funeral."

I am, etc.

LETTER XVII.

FROM MR. CROMWELL.

Aug. 5, 1710.

L

OOKING among fome French rhymes, I was agreeably furprized to find in the Rondeau of Pour le moins-your Apoticaire and Lavemant, which I took for your own; fo much is your Muse of intelligence with the wits of all languages. You have refined upon Voiture*, whose Où vous favez is much inferior to your You know where-You do not only pay your club with your author (as our friend

• In Voiture's Poems.

* In which paffage there is as little decency as gallantry,

fays)

P.

fays) but the whole reckoning; who can form fuch pretty lines from fo trivial a hint.

For my Elegy; it is confeffed, that the topography of Sulmo in the Latin makes but an awkward figure in the verfion. Your couplet of the dog-ftar is very fine, but may be too fublime in this place. I laughed heartily at your note upon paradife; for to make Ovid talk of the garden of Eden, is certainly most abfurd; but Xenophon in his Economics, fpeaking of a garden finely planted and watered (as is here defcribed) calls it Paradifos: 'tis an interpolation indeed, and ferves for a gradation to the celestial orb ; which expreffes in fome fort the Sidus Caftoris in parte cali-How trees can enjoy, let the naturalift determine; but the poets make them fenfitive*, lovers, batchelors, and married. Virgil in his Georgics,

lib. ii. Horace Ode xv. lib. ii. Platanus cœlebs evincet ulmos. Epod. ii. Ergo aut adulta vitium propagine Altas maritat populos. Your critique is a very Dolcepiccante; for after the many faults you justly find, you fmooth your rigour: but an obliging thing is owing (you think) to one who so much esteems and admires you, and who fhall ever be

Your, &c.

Ovid's Amorum, 1. ii. el. xvi. Pars me Sulmo, etc. P. *As Dr. Darwin has fo fuccefsfully done in a poem that abounds in beautiful defcriptions, and interefting digreffions and alTufions to ancient mythology.

LETTER XVIII.

August 21, 1710.

YOUR OUR Letters are a perfect charity to a man in retirement, utterly forgotten of all his friends but you; for fince Mr. Wycherley left London, I have not heard a word from him; though just before, and once fince, I writ to him, and though I know myself guilty of no offence but of doing fincerely just what he bid me1-Hoc mihi libertas, hoc pia lingua dedit! But the greatest injury he does me is the keeping me in ignorance of his welfare, which I am always very folicitous for, and very uneafy in the fear of any indifpofition that may befal him. In what I fent you fome time ago, you have not verfe enough to be fevere upon, in revenge for my laft criticism: in one point I must perfift, that is to say, my diflike of your Paradife, in which I take no pleasure; I know very well that in Greek it is not only used by Xenophon, but is a common word for any garden; but in Englifh it bears the fignification and conveys the idea of Eden, which alone is (I think) a reafon against making Ovid use it; who will be thought to talk too much like a Christian, in your version at least, whatever it might have been in Latin or Greek. As for all the rest of my remarks, fince you do not laugh at

them

Correcting his verses. See the letters in 1706, and the fol

lowing years, of Mr. Wycherley and Mr. Pope.

P.