take in accompanying our friends in their mixed, adventures; for, methinks, I fee you labouring through, all your inconveniencies of the rough roads, the hard faddle, the trotting horfe, and what not? What an agreeable furprize 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, fet you on an easier pad, and relieved the wandering knight with a night's lodging and rural repaft, at our castle in the foreft? But thefe are only the pleasing imaginations of a disappointed lover, who muft fuffer in a melancholy abfence yet these two months. In the mean time, I take up with the Mufes for want of your better company; the Mufes, quæ nobifcum pernoctant, peregrinantur, rufticantur. Thofe aërial ladies just discover enough to me of their beauties to urge my pursuit, and draw me on in a wandering maze of thought, ftill in hopes (and only in hopes) of attaining those favours from them, which they confer on their more happy admirers. We grafp fome more beautiful idea in our own brain, than our endeavours to express it can set to the view of others; and ftill do but labour to fall fhort of our firft imagination. The gay colouring which fancy gave at the first tranfient 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 feparate 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 feems fo favourable to me. I fhall ever have fuch 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 furface of the earth (if you will pardon a poetical fimilitude) is clearer or gloomier, just as the fun is brighter or more. over-caft.-I fhould be glad to fee the verfes to Lintot which you mention, for, methinks, fomething oddly agreeable may be produced from that fubject-For what re mains, I am so well, that nothing but the affurance of your being fo can make me better; and if you would have me live with any fatisfaction thefe dark days in which I cannot fee you, it must be by your writing fometimes to

Your, etc.

LETTER XXX.

FROM MR. CROMWELL.

December 7, 1711.

MR.

R. Wycherley has, I believe, fent you two or three letters of invitation; but you, like the fair, will be long folicited before you yield, to make the favour the more acceptable to the lover. He is

C

much yours by his talk; for that unbounded genius which has ranged at large like a libertine, now feems confined to you: and I should take him for your miftrefs too by your fimile of the fun 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 luftre, perfuades me it would be juster by the reverse. Oh happy favourite of the Muses! how pernoctare all night long with them? but alas! you do but toy, but skirmish with them, and decline a clofe engagement. Leave elegy and tranflation to the inferior clafs, on whom the Mufes only glance now and then, like our winter-fun, and then leave them in the dark. Think on the dignity of Tragedy, which is of the greater poetry, as Dennis fays, 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 finking Drama; and Mr. Wilks (though I think his talent is Comedy) has expreffed a furious ambition to fwell in your bufkins. We have had a poor Comedy of Johnson's (not Ben) which held feven nights, and has got him three hundred pounds, for the town is fharp-fet on new plays. In vain would I fire you by intereft or ambition, when your mind is not fufceptible of either; though your authority (arifing from the general esteem, like that

of

*He fhewed his excellent good fenfe, by not attempting a fpecies of poetry to which he was so much difinclined; I do not fay unequal.

of fuccefs; for

of Pompey) muft infallibly affure you
which in all your wifhes you will be attended with

those of

LETTER XXXI.

Your, etc.

December 21, 1711.

IF I have not writ to you fo foon as I ought, let my

writing now atone for the delay; as it will infallibly do, when you know what a facrifice I make you at this time, and that every moment my eyes are employed upon this paper, they are taken off from two

of the finest faces in the univerfe. But indeed 'tis fome confolation to me to reflect, that while I but write this period, I escape fome hundred fatal darts from those unerring eyes, and about a thousand deaths or better. Now you, that delight in dying, would not once have dreamt of an absent friend in these circumstances; you that are so nice an admirer of beauty, or (as a Critic would fay after Terence) fo elegant a Spectator of forms; you must have a fober dish of coffee, and a folitary candle at your fide, to write an epistle lucubratory to your friend, whereas I can do it as well with two pair of radiant lights, that outshine the golden god of day and filver goddess of night, and all the refulgent eyes of the firmament.-You fancy now that Sappho's eyes are two of these my

tapers, but it is no fuch matter; these are eyes that have more perfuafion in one glance than all Sappho's oratory and gesture together, let her put her body, into what moving postures fhe pleases. Indeed, indeed, my friend, you never could have found fo improper a time to tempt me with interest or ambition: let me but have the reputation of these in my keeping, and as for my own, let the devil, or let Dennis, take it for ever. How gladly would I give all I am worth, that is to fay, my Paftorals, for one of them, and my Effay for the other; I would lay out all my Poetry in Love; an Original for a Lady, and a Tranflation for a Waiting-maid! Alas! what have I to do with Jane Gray, as long as Mifs Molly, Mifs Betty, or Mifs Patty, are in this world? Shall I write of beauties murdered, long ago, when there are those at this inftant that murder me? I'll e'en compofe my own Tragedy, and the Poet fhall appear in his own perfon, to move compaffion: 'twill be far more effectual than Bays's entering with a rope about his neck, and the world will own, there never was a more miserable object brought upon the stage.

Now you that are a critic, pray inform me, in what manner I may connect the foregoing part of this letter with that which is to follow, according to the rules? I would willingly return. Mr. Gay my thanks for the favour of his poem, and in particular for his kind mention of me; I hoped, when I heard a new Comedy had met with fuccefs upon the stage, that it