I am fenfible of the zeal and friendship with which, I am fure, you will always defend your friend in his absence, from all those little tales and calumnies, which a man of any genius or merit is born to. I fhall never complain while I am happy in fuch noble defenders, and in fuch contemptible opponents. May their envy and ill-nature ever increase, to the glory and pleasure of those they would injure; may they represent me what they will, as long as you think me, what I am, Your, etc.

LETTER XVIII.

July 13, 1714.

You

Ou mention the account I gave you fome time ago of the things which Philips faid in his foolishness: but I can't tell from any thing in your letter, whether you received a long one from me about a fortnight fince. It was principally intended to thank you for the last obliging favour you did me; and perhaps for that reafon you pafs it in filence. I there launched into fome account of my temporal affairs, and intend now to give you fome hints of my spiritual. The conclufion of your letter draws this upon you, where you tell me you prayed for me. Your proceeding, Sir, is contrary to that of most other friends, who never talk of praying for a man after they have

done him a fervice, but only when they will do him none. Nothing can be more kind than the hint you give me of the vanity of human sciences, which, I affure you, I am daily more convinced of; and indeed I have, for fome years past, looked upon all of them no better than amusements. To make them the ultimate end of our purfuit, is a miserable and short ambition, which will drop from us at every little difappointment here, and even, in case of no disappointments here, will infallibly defert us hereafter. The utmost fame they are capable of beftowing, is never worth the pains they coft us, and the time they lofe us. If attain the top you of your defires that way, all those who envy you will do you harm; and of those who admire you, few will do you good. The unsuccessful writers are your declared enemies, and probably the fuccefsful your fecret ones: for those hate not more to be excelled, than these to be rivalled : and at the upfhot, after a life of perpetual application, you reflect that you have been doing nothing for yourself, and that the fame or less industry might have gained you a friendship that can never deceive or end, a fatisfaction, which praise cannot bestow nor vanity feel, and a glory, which (though in one respect like fame, not to be had till after death) yet shall be felt and enjoyed to eternity. Thefe, dear Sir, are unfeignedly my fentiments, whenever I think at all: for half the things that employ our heads deferve not the name of thoughts, they are only stronger dreams of

impreffions

impreffions upon the imagination: our schemes of government, our systems of philosophy, our golden worlds of poetry, are all but fo many fhadowy images, and airy profpects, which arife to us but fo much the livelier and more frequent, as we are more overcast with the darkness, and disturbed with the fumes, of human vanity.

The fame thing that makes old men willing to leave this world, makes me willing to leave poetry, long habit, and wearinefs of the fame track. Homer will work a cure upon me; fifteen thousand verfes are equivalent to fourscore years, to make one old in rhyme: and I should be forry and afhamed, to go on jingling to the last step, like a waggoner's horse, in the fame road, and so leave my bells to the next filly animal that will be proud of them. That man makes a mean figure in the eyes of Reason, who is measuring fyllables and coupling rhymes, when he should be mending his own foul, and fecuring his own immortality. If I had not this opinion, I should be unworthy even of those small and limited parts which God has given me; and unworthy of the friendship of fuch a man as you. I am

Your, etc.

LETTER XIX.

July 25, 1714.

I

HAVE no better excufe to offer you, that I have omitted a task naturally fo pleafing to me as converfing upon paper with you, but that my time and eyes have been wholly employed upon Homer *, whom, I almost fear, I shall find but one way of imitating, which is, in his blindness. I am perpetually afflicted with head-achs, that very much affect my fight, and indeed fince my coming hither I have scarce past an hour agreeably, except that in which I read your letter. I would seriously have you think, you have no man who more truly knows to place a right value on your friendship, than he who leaft deferves it on all other accounts than his due sense of it. But, let me tell you, you can hardly guess what a task you undertake,

*Of the ftate of his mind, after he had undertaken to tranflate the Iliad, he gave the following account to Mr. Spence, from whofe anecdotes I tranfcribed it. "What horrible moments does one feel after having engaged for a large work: in the beginning of my tranflating Homer, I wifhed any body would hang me, a hundred times! It fat so very heavily on my mind at first, that I often used to dream of it; and even do so sometimes still to this day my dream ufually was, that I had fet out on a very long journey, puzzled which way to take, and full of fears that I fhould never get to the end of it. When I fell into the method of tranflating thirty or forty lines, before I got up, and piddled with it the reft of the morning, it went on eafily enough; and, when I was thoroughly got into the way of it, I did the reft with pleasure."

undertake, when you profess yourself my friend; there are fome Tories who will take you for a Whig, fome Whigs who will take you for a Tory, fome Proteftants who will efteem you a rank Papist, and fome Papists who will account you a Heretic.

I find by dear experience, we live in an age, where it is criminal to be moderate; and where no one man can be allowed to be just to all men. The notions of right and wrong are fo far ftrained, that perhaps to be in the right so very violently may be of worse confequence than to be easily and quietly in the wrong. I really wish all men fo well, that, I am fatisfied, but few can wish me fo; but if those few are fuch as tell me they do, I am content, for they are the best people I know. While you believe me what I profess as to religion, I can bear any thing the bigoted may say; while Mr. Congreve likes my poetry, I can endure Dennis, and a thousand more like him; while the most honest and moral of each party think me no ill man, I can easily bear that the most violent and mad of all parties rife up to throw dirt at me.

I must expect an hundred attacks upon the publi cation of my Homer. Whoever in our times would be a profeffor of learning above his fellows, ought at the very first to enter the world with the conftancy and refolution of a primitive Chriftian, and be prepared to fuffer all fort of public perfecution. It is certainly to be lamented, that if any man does but endeavour to distinguish himself, or gratify others by his studies, he

VOL. VII.

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