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 prophane to call Toafting. The Duke of Bm is fometimes the High Prieft 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 must want generofity: You have so much of both, that, I am fure, you pardon them: for one cannot but forgive whatever one defpifes. For my part I hate a great many women for your fake, and undervalue all the reft. 'Tis you are to blame, and may God revenge it upon you, with all thofe bleffings and earthly profperities, which, the divines tells us, are the cause of our perdition; for if he makes you happy in this world, I dare truft your own virtue to do it in the other. I am Your, &c. LETTER XXIII. To Mrs. ARABELLA FERMOR. You On her Marriage. OU are by this time fatisfied how much the tenderness of one man of merit is to be pre ferred 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 thofe charms and good qualities which have pleafed fo many, now applied to please one only. It was but juft, that the fame 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 must infallibly give it to your husband. It may be expected, perhaps, that one who has the title of Poet should 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 laft, 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 (whatever others may have spoken to you) I mean Truth and it is with the utmoft that I affure you, no friend you have can moré rejoice in any good that befals you, is more fincerely delighted with the profpect of your future happiness, or more unfeignedly defires a long continuance of it. I hope, you will think it but juft, 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, &c.: 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 welcomeft thing to me is to hear from him. I expected to find, what I have met with, an admirable genius in thofe Poems, not only because they were Milton's †, or were approved by Sir Hen. Wooton, but because you had commended them; • Secretary of State to King William the Third. + L'Allegro, Il Penferofo, Lycidas, and the Mafque of Comus. and give me leave to tell you, that I know no body fo like to equal him, even at the age he wrote most of them, as yourself. Only do not afford more cause of complaints against you, that you fuffer nothing of yours to come abroad; which in this age, wherein wit and true fenfe is more scarce than money, is a piece of fuch cruelty as your best friends can hardly pardon. I hope you will repent and amend; I could offer many reasons to this purpose, and fuch as you cannot answer with any fincerity; but that I dare not enlarge, for fear of ingaging in a ftyle of Compliment, which has been so abused by fools and knaves, that it is become almoft fcandalous. I conclude therefore with an affurance which fhall never vary, of my being ever, &c. LETTER II. Sir WILLIAM TRUMBULL to Mr. POPE. I April 9, 1708. Have this moment received the favour of yours of the 8th inftant; and will make you a true excufe (tho' perhaps no very good one) that I deferred the troubling you with a letter, when I fent back your papers, in hopes of seeing you at Binfield before this time. If I had met with any fault in your performance, I fhould freely now (as I have done too prefumptuously in converfation with you) tell you my opinion; which I have frequently ventured to give you, rather in compliance with your defires than that I could think it reasonable. For I am not yet fatisfied upon what grounds I can pretend to judge of poetry, who never have been practifed in the art. There may poffibly be fome happy genius's, who may judge of fome of the natural beauties of a poem, as a man may of the proportions of a building, without having read Vitruvius, or knowing any thing of the rules of architecture; but this, tho' it may fometimes be in the right, must be subject to many mistakes, and is certainly but a superficial knowledge; without entring into the art, the methods, and the particular excellencies of the whole compofure, in all the parts of it. Befides my want of skill, I have another reafon why I ought to fufpect myfelf, by reafon of the great affection I have for you; which might give too much bias to be kind to every thing that comes from you. But after all, I muft fay (and I do it with an old-fashioned fincerity) that I entirely approve of your tranflation of thofe pieces of Homer, both as to the verfification and the true fenfe that fhines thro' the whole: Nay I am confirmed in my former application to you, and give me leave to renew it upon this occafion, that you would proceed in tranflating that incomparable Poet, to make him speak good English, to drefs his admirable characters in your proper, fignificant, and expreffive conceptions, and to make his works as ufeful and inftructive to this degenerate age, as he was to our friend Horace, 5 |