he goes on to tell you, that the Pilgrim's Progress being mentioned to be the eighth edition, makes the reflection evident, the Tragedy of Cato having just eight times (as he quaintly expresses it) visited the press. He has also endeavoured to show, that every particular passage of the play alludes to some fine part of tragedy, which, he says, I have injudiciously and profanely abused3. Sir Samuel Garth's poem upon my Lord Clare's house, I believe, will be published in Easter-week. Thus far Mr. Gay, who has in his letter forestalled all the subjects of diversion; unless it should be one to you to say, that I sit up till two a clock over Burgundy and Champagne; and am become so much a rake that I shall be ashamed in a short time to be thought to do any sort of business. I fear I must get the gout by drinking; purely for a fashionable pretence to sit still long enough to translate four books of Homer. I hope you'll by that time be up again, and I may succeed to the bed and couch of my predecessor: pray cause the stuffing to be repaired, and the crutches shortened for me. The calamity of your gout is what all your friends, that is to say, all that know you, must share in; we desire you in your return to condole with us; who are under a persecution, and much afflicted with a distemper which proves mortal to many poets, a Criticism. We have indeed some relieving intervals of laughter, (as you know there are in some diseases,) This curious piece was entitled, A compleat Key to the What-d'ye-call-it, written by one Griffin a player, assisted by Lewis Theobald. P. and it is the opinion of divers good guessers, that the last fit will not be more violent than advantageous; for poets assailed by critics, are like men bitten by Tarantula's, they dance on so much the faster. Mr. Thomas Burnet hath played the precursor to the coming of Homer, in a treatise called Homerides. He has since risen very much in his criticisms, and after assaulting Homer, made a daring attack upon the What-d'ye-call-it. Yet is there not a Proclamation issued for the burning of Homer and the Pope by the common hangman; nor is the What-d'ye-callit yet silenced by the Lord Chamberlain. Your, etc. LETTER XXX. FROM MR. CONGREVE. May 6. I HAVE the pleasure of your very kind letter. I have always been obliged to you for your friendship and concern for me, and am more affected with it than I will take upon me to express in this letter. I do assure you there is no return wanting on my part, and am very sorry I had not the good luck to see the Dean before I left the town: it is a great pleasure to me, and not a little vanity to think that he misses me. As to my health, which you are so kind to enquire after, it is not worse than in London: I am almost afraid yet to say that it is better, for I cannot reason In one of his papers called The Grumbler. P. ably expect much effect from these waters in so short a time; but in the main they seem to agree with me. Here is not one creature that I know, which next to the few I would chuse, contributes very much to my satisfaction. At the same time that I regret the want of your conversation, I please myself with thinking that you are where you first ought to be, and engaged where you cannot do too much. Pray, give my humble service and best wishes to your good mother. I am sorry you don't tell me how Mr. Gay does in his Health: I should have been glad to have heard he was better. My young Amanuensis, as you call him, I am afraid, will prove but a wooden one: and you know ex quovis ligno, etc. You will pardon Mrs. R-'s pedantry, and believe me to be Your, etc. P. S. By the inclosed you will see I am like to be impressed, and enrolled in the List of Mr. Curl's Authors; but I thank God! I shall have your company. I believe it high time you should think of administering another Emetics. 5 We cannot but wish for more of Mr. Congreve's Letters written with the true and proper ease of an epistolary style, and, therefore, totally different from those of his master, Wycherley, whom he too closely imitated in his Comedies. Congreve is said to have written nothing in the Tatler, Spectator, or Guardian, but the well-drawn character of Aspasia, in the forty-second number of the Tatler. 305 LETTERS TO AND FROM SEVERAL PERSONS. From 1714 to 1721. LETTER I. THE REV. DEAN BERKELEY® TO MR. POPE. Leghorn, May 1, 1714. As I take ingratitude to be a greater crime than impertinence, I choose rather to run the risk of being thought guilty of the latter, than not to return you my thanks for a very agreeable entertain 6 We may with justice apply to this truly great man, Berkeley, what he himself so finely says of his favourite Plato ; "That he hath joined with an Imagination the most splendid and magnificent, an Intellect not less deep and clear." A morsel of poetry from such a writer ought to be preserved as a literary curiosity, and a proof of the great variety of his talents; especially as it was written, almost with a prophetic spirit, above seventy years ago, and consequently before the events, in the country alluded to, could possibly have been foreseen. He entitled them, On the Prospect of planting Arts and Learning in America. In distant lands now waits a better time, I have accidentally met ment you just now gave me. with your Rape of the Lock here, having never seen it before. Style, painting, judgment, spirit, I had already admired in other of your writings; but in this I am charmed with the magic of your invention, with all those images, allusions, and inexplicable beauties, which you raise so surprisingly, and at the same time so naturally, out of a trifle. And yet I cannot say that I was more pleased with the reading of it, than I am with the pretext it gives me to renew in your thoughts, the remembrance of one who values no happiness beyond the friendship of men of wit, learning, and good-nature. I remember to have heard you mention some halfformed design of coming to Italy. What might we In happy climes, where, from the genial sun The force of Art by Nature seems outdone, In happy climes, the seat of innocence, There shall be sung another golden age, Westward the course of empire takes its way; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day; |