T LETTER XX. FROM MR. WYCHERLEY. May 26, 1709. HE laft I received from you was dated the 22d of May. I take your charitable hint to me very kindly, wherein you do like a true friend, and a true christian, and I fhall endeavour to follow your advice, as well as your example.--As for your wishing to fee your friend an Hermit with you, I cannot be faid to leave the world, fince I fhall enjoy in your converfation all that I can defire of it; nay, can learn more from you alone, than from my long experience of the great, or little vulgar in it. As to the fuccefs of your poems in the late mifcellany, which I told you of in my laft; upon my word I made you no compliment, for you may be affured that all fort of readers like them, except they are writers too; but for them (I must needs say) the more they like them, they ought to be the less pleased with them fo that you do not come off with a bare faving game (as you call it) but have gained fo much credit at first, that you must needs fupport it to the laft: fince you fet up with so great a stock of good fense, judgment, and wit, that your judgment enfures all that your wit ventures at. The falt of your wit has been enough to give a relish to the whole infipid hotch hotch-potch it is mingled with; and you will make Jacob's ladder* raise you to immortality, by which others are turned off fhamefully to their damnation (for poetic thieves as they are) who think to be faved by others good works, how faulty foever their own are: but the coffee-houfe wits, or rather anti-wits the critics, prove their judgments by approving your wit; and even the news-mongers and poets will own, you have more invention than they; nay the detractors or the envious, who never speak well of any body (not even of those they think well of in their abfence) yet will give you even in your abfence their good word; and the critics only hate you, for being forced to speak well of you whether they will or no: All this is true upon the word of Your, etc. *If any thing profane can be witty, this allufion is fo; but Boileau would never allow that fuch an union was poffible. Though Jacob Tonfon, whofe mifcellany is here meant, was Dryden's' favourite Printer, yet they fometimes difagreed. And once Dryden fent him the following fevere Lines, not printed in his works, defcriptive of his perfon: With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, LETTER XXI. FROM MR. WYCHERLEY. Aug. 11, 1709. y letters, fo much inferior to yours, can only MY make up their scarcity of sense by their number of lines; which is like the Spaniards paying a debt of gold with a load of brass money. But to be a plain dealer, I must tell you, I will revenge the raillery of your letters by printing them (as Dennis did mine) without your knowledge too, which would be a revenge upon your judgment for the raillery of your wit; for fome dull rogues (that is, the moft in the world) might be fuch fools as to think what you faid of me was in earnest; It is not the first time your great wits have gained reputation by their paradoxical or ironical praises; your forefathers have done it, Erafmus and others. For all mankind who know me must confess, he must be no ordinary genius, or little friend, who can find out any thing to commend in me seriously; who have given no fign of my judgment but my opinion of yours, nor mark of my wit, but my leaving off writing to the public now you are beginning to fhew the world what you can do by yours; whose wit is as fpiritual as your judgment infallible ; in whose judgment I have an implicit faith, and shall always fubfcribe to it to fave my works, in this world, from the flames and damnation.-Pray, prefent my moft most humble service to Sir William Trumbull; for whom and whofe judgment I have fo profound a refpect, that his example had almoft made me marry, more than my nephew's ill carriage to me; having once refolved to have revenged myself upon him by my marriage, but now am refolved to make my re venge greater upon him by His marriage. LETTER XXII, FROM MR. WYCHERLEY. April 1, 1710. I HAVE had yours of the 30th of the last month, which is kinder than I defire it fhould be, fince it tells me you could be better pleased to be fick again in Town in my company, than to be well in the Country without it; and that you are more impatient to be deprived of happiness than of health. Yet, my dear friend, fet raillery or compliment aside, I can bear your abfence (which procures your health and eafe) better than I can your company when you are in pain: for I cannot fee you fo without being fo too. Your love to the Country I do not doubt, nor do you (I hope) my love to it or you, fince there I can enjoy your company without feeing you in pain to give me fatisfaction and pleasure; there I can have you without rivals or difturbers; without the too civil, or the too rude: without the noise of the loud or the cenfure of the filent: and would rather have you abuse me there with the truth, than at this diftance with your compliment: fince now, your business of a friend, and kindness to a friend, is by finding fault with his faults, and mending them by your obliging feverity. I hope (in point of your goodnature) you will have no cruel charity for those papers of mine, you are fo willing to be troubled with; which I take most infinitely kind of you, and fhall acknowledge with gratitude, as long as I live. No friend can do more for his friend than preferving his reputation (nay, not by preferving his life) fince by preserving his life he can only make him live about threefcore or fourfcore years; but by preferving his reputation he can make him live as long as the world lafts; fo fave him from damning, when he is gone to the devil. Therefore, I pray, condemn me in private, as the Thieves do their accomplices in Newgate, to fave them from condemnation by the public. Be most kindly unmerciful to my poetical faults, and do with my papers, as you country-gentlemen do with your trees, flash, cut, and lop off the excrefcences and dead parts of my withered bays, that the little remainder may live the longer, and increase the value of them by diminishing the number. I have troubled you with my papers rather to give you pain than pleasure, notwithstanding your compliment which fays you take the trouble kindly fuch is your generosity |