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rendered me a suspected Whig to some of the violent; but (as old Dryden said before me) 'tis not the violent I design to please".

I generally employ the mornings in painting with Mr. Jervas, and the evenings in the conversation of such as I think can most improve my mind, of whatever denomination they are. I ever must set the highest value upon men of truly great, that is honest principles, with equal capacities. The best way I know of overcoming calumny and misconstruction, is by a vigorous perseverance in every thing we know to be right, and a total neglect of all that can ensue from it. 'Tis partly from this maxim that I depend upon your friendship, because I believe it would do justice to my intention in every thing; and give me leave to tell you, that (as the world goes) this is no small assurance I repose in you. I am

LETTER XIV.

TO MR. ADDISON.

Your, etc.

December 14, 1713.

I HAVE been lying in wait for my own imagination, this week, and more, and watching what thoughts came up in the whirl of the fancy, that were worth communicating to you in a letter. But I am at length

$ But poor Dryden could not say this with truth. How much did he write to please the violent!

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See the Epistle to him in verse, writ about this time. P.

convinced that my rambling head can produce nothing of that sort; so I must e'en be contented with telling you the old story, that I love you heartily. I have often found by experience, that nature and truth, though never so low or vulgar, are yet pleasing when openly and artlessly represented: it would be diverting to me to read the very letters of an infant, could it write its innocent inconsistencies and tautologies just as it thought them. This makes me hope a letter from me will not be unwelcome to you, when I am conscious I write with more unreservedness than ever man wrote, or perhaps talked to another. I trust your good-nature with the whole range of my follies, and really love you so well, that I would rather you should pardon me than esteem me; since one is an act of goodness and benevolence, the other a kind of constrained deference.

You can't wonder my thoughts are scarce consistent, when I tell you how they are distracted. Every hour of my life my mind is strangely divided; this minute perhaps I am above the stars, with a thousand systems round about me, looking forward into a vast abyss, and losing my whole comprehension in the boundless space of Creation, in dialogues with Whiston and the Astronomers; the next moment I am below all trifles groveling with T * in the very centre of nonsense: now I am recreated with the brisk sallies and quick turns of wit which Mr. Steele in his liveliest and freest humours darts about him; and now levelling my application to the insignificant observations and quirks of Grammar of C and D *. Good God! what an incongruous animal is man!

how unsettled in his best part, his soul; and how changing and variable in his frame and body! the constancy of the one shook by every notion, the temperament of the other affected by every blast of wind! What is he altogether but one mighty inconsistency; sickness and pain is the lot of one half of him; doubt and fear the portion of the other! What a bustle we make about passing our time, when all our space is but a point! what aims and ambitions are crowded into this little instant of our life, which (as Shakespear finely words it) is rounded with a sleep! Our whole extent of being is no more in the eye of him who gave it, than a scarce perceptible moment of duration. Those animals whose circle of living is limited to three or four hours, as the naturalists tell us, are yet as long-lived and possess as wide a scene of action as man, if we consider him with a view to all Space, and all eternity. Who knows what plots, what achievements a mite may perform in his kingdom of a grain of dust, within his life of some minutes; and of how much less con

7 Addison must have smiled at receiving a letter so full of solemn declamation, and so many trite moralities!

"Addison," says Johnson, "never outsteps the modesty of nature, nor raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. His figures neither divert by distortion, nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with so much fidelity, that he can hardly be said to invent, yet his exhibitions have an air so much original, that it is difficult to suppose them not merely the product of imagination. His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal; on light occasions not grovelling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration." Very different, therefore, from the style of Dr. Johnson himself.

sideration than even this, is the life of man in the sight of God, who is from ever and for ever.

Who that thinks in this train, but must see the world, and its contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? 'Tis enough to make one remain stupified in a poize of inaction, void of all desires, of all designs, of all friendships.

But we must return (through our very condition of being) to our narrow selves, and those things that affect ourselves: our passions, our interests flow in upon us, and unphilosophize us into mere mortals. For my part, I never return so much into myself, as when I think of you, whose friendship is one of the best comforts I have for the insignificancy of myself. I am

LETTER XV,

TO MR. ADDISON.

Your, etc.

January 30, 1713-14.

YOUR letter found me very busy in my grand undertaking, to which I must wholly give myself up for some time, unless when I snatch an hour to please myself with a distant conversation with you and a few others, by writing. 'Tis no comfortable prospect to be reflecting, that so long a siege as that of Troy lies upon my hands, and the campaign above half over, before I have made any progress.

Indeed the

Greek fortification, upon a nearer approach, does not appear so formidable as it did, and I am almost apt to flatter myself, that Homer secretly seems inclined to a correspondence with me, in letting me into a good part of his intentions. There are, indeed, a sort of underling auxiliars to the difficulty of a work, called Commentators and Critics, who would frighten many people by their number and bulk, and perplex our progress under pretence of fortifying their author. These lie very low in the trenches and ditches they themselves have digged, encompassed with dirt of their own heaping up; but, I think, there may be found a method of coming at the main works by a more speedy and gallant way than by mining under ground, that is, by using the poetical engines, wings, and flying over their heads.

9 While I am engaged in the fight, I find you are concerned how I shall be paid, and are solicitous that I may not have the ill fate of many discarded Generals, to be first envied and maligned, then perhaps praised, and lastly neglected. The former (the con

There is a strange confusion in this long-continued metaphor: sometimes the fortifications spoken of are to keep the ignorant out; sometimes to let them in; and sometimes only to quibble with; as in the words [under pretence of fortifying their author.] But it is no matter. The Critics and Commentators are to be abused, and, on such an occasion, any thing serves the turn.

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W.

• Throughout all the letters of Pope to Addison, methinks there is a stiffness and study, that seem to shew they did not contain sentiments that flowed freely and unreservedly from his heart. How did Addison feel while he was reading this letter relating to the translation of Homer, if the supposition mentioned above, in the twelfth letter, was well-founded!

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