ERRAT A. Page 84 1. 4 for Borez r. Borea. 89 1. 2 for cætera reliquo ordine ducam x. certo re- 132 1. 24 r. either according to the Ptolemaic 224 1. 8 after little add tender LETTERS OF Mr. POPE, AND Several of his FRIENDS. Quo Defiderio veteres revocamus Amores, CATULL. B LETTERS TO AND FROM Mr. WYCHERLEY. From the Year 1704 to 1710. I LETTER I. Binfield in Windfor Foreft, Dec. 26, 1704. T was certainly a great fatisfaction to me to fee and converse with a Man, whom in his writings I had fo long known with pleafure; but it was a high addition to it, to hear * If one were to judge of this fet of Letters by the manner of thinking and turn of expreffion, one should conclude they had been all mif-titled; and that the Letters given to the boy of fixteen, were written by the man of seventy, and so on the contrary: fuch fober fenfe, fuch gravity of manners, and fo much judgment, and knowledge of compofition, enlivened with the fprightliness of manly wit, B 2 diftinguish thofe of Mr.Pope: P. you, you, at our very firft meeting, doing justice to your dead friend Mr. Dryden. I was not fo happy as to know him: Virgilium tantum vidic. Had I been born early enough, I must have known and lov'd him: For I have been affured, not only by yourself, but by Mr. Congreve and Sir William Trumbul, that his perfonal Qualities were as amiable as his Poetical, notwithstanding the many libellous mifrepresentations of them, against which the former of these Gentlemen has told me he will one day vindicate him. I fuppofe thofe injuries were begun by the violence of Party, but 'tis no doubt they were continued by envy at his fuccefs and fame: And those Scriblers who attacked him in his latter times, were only like gnats in a fummer's evening, which are never very troublesome but in the finest and most glorious season; for his fire, like the fun's, fhined clearest towards its fetting. You must not therefore imagine, that when you told me my own performances were duodecimo Edition of Dryden's Plays, 1717 When a very young Boy, he prevailed with a friend to carry him to a Coffee-houfe which Dryden frequented; where he had the fatisfaction he speaks of. He fince did fo, in his dedication to the Duke of ·Newcastle, prefix'd to the P. e The fact feems to have been just the reverse. One of the firft Satires against him was the Duke of Buckingham's Rehear fal; and one of the laft, Montague's parody of his Hind and Panther. above |