ought. His health and mine are now fo good, that we wish with all our fouls you were a witness of it. We never meet but we lament over you: we pay a kind of weekly rites to your memory, where we ftrow flowers of rhetoric, and offer fuch libations to your name as it would be profane to call Toafting. The Duke of B m is fometimes the High Priest of your praises; and upon the whole, I believe there are as few men that are not forry at your departure, as women that are; for, you know, most of your fex want good fenfe, and therefore muft want generosity: you have so much of both, that, I am fure, you pardon them; for one cannot but forgive whatever one despises. For my part I hate a great many women for your fake, and undervalue all the rest. 'Tis you are to blame, and may God revenge it upon you, with all those bleffings and earthly profperities, which, the Divines tell us, are the cause of our perdition; for if he makes you happy in this world, I dare trust your own virtue to do it in the other. I am Your, etc. LETTER XXIII. TO MRS. ARABELLA FERMOR*. ON HER MARRIAGE. ou are by this time satisfied how much the tenγου derness of one man of merit is to be preferred to the addresses of a thousand. And by this time the gentleman you have made choice of is fenfible, how great is the joy of having all those charms and good qualities which have pleased so many, now applied to please one only. It was but just, that the same Virtues which gave you reputation, should give you happiness; and I can wish you no greater, than that you may receive it in as high a degree yourself, as fo much good humour muft infallibly give it to your husband. It may be expected, perhaps, that one who has the title of Poet fhould fay fomething more polite on this occafion but I am really more a well-wisher to your felicity, than a celebrater of your beauty. Befides, you are now a married woman, and in a way to be a great many better things than a fine lady; fuch as an excellent wife, a faithful friend, a tender parent, and at last, as the confequence of them all, a faint in heaven. You ought now to hear nothing but that, which was all you ever defired to hear, (what ever * This Letter, though very elegant and well-turned, must yield to Waller's Letter to Sacchariffa, on her marriage. ever others may have spoken to you,) I mean Truth: and it is with the utmost that I affure you, no friend you have can more rejoice in any good that befals you, is more fincerely delighted with the prospect of your future happiness, or more unfeignedly defires a long continuance of it. I hope you will think it but just, that a man who will certainly be spoken of as your admirer, after he is dead, may have the happiness to be esteemed, while he is living, Your, etc. LETTERS TO AND FROM SIR WILLIAM TRUMBULL From the Year 1705 to 1716. LETTER I. SIR WILLIAM TRUMBULL TO MR. POPE. I SIR, October 19, 1705. RETURN you the book you were pleased to fend me, and with it your obliging letter, which deferves my particular acknowledgment: for, next to the pleasure of enjoying the company of fo good a friend, the welcomest thing to me is to hear from him. I expected to find, what I have met with, an admi. rable genius in those Poems, not only because they were Milton's*, or were approved by Sir Hen. Wooton, 2 Secretary of State to King William the Third. P. b L'Allegro, Il Penferofo, Lycidas, and the Masque of Comus. P.* * From hence it appears, that these four exquifite Poems of Milton were read, and relished, and recommended by our author, much earlier than they are supposed to have been. He has taken many VOL. VII. P |