No friend can do more for his friend than preserving his reputation (nay, not by preserving his life), since by preserving his life he can only make him live about threescore or fourscore years; but by preserving his reputation he can make him live as long as the world lasts; so save 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 save 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, slash, cut, and lop off, the excrescences 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 says you take the trouble kindly such is your generosity to your friends, that you take it kindly to be desired by them to do them a kindness; and you think it done to you, when they give you an opportunity to do it them. Wherefore you may be sure to be troubled with my letters out of interest, if not kindness; since mine to you will procure yours to me so that I write to you more for my own sake than yours; less to make you think I write well, than to learn from you to write better. Thus you see interest in my kindness, which is like the friendship of the world, rather to make a friend than be a friend; but I am yours, as a true Plain-dealer.

LETTER XXIII.

FROM MR. WYCHERLEY.

April 11, 1710.

IF I can do part of my business at Shrewsbury in a fortnight's time (which I propose to do) I will be soon after with you, and trouble you with my company for the remainder of the summer: In the mean time I beg you to give yourself the pains of altering or leaving out what you think superfluous in my papers, that I may endeavour to print such a number of them as you and I shall think fit, about Michaelmas next. In order to which (my dear friend) I beg you to be so kind to me, as to be severe to them: that the critics may be less so; for I had rather be condemned by my friend in private, than exposed to my foes in public, the critics, or common judges, who are made such by having been old offenders themselves. Pray believe I have as much faith in your friendship and sincerity, as I have deference to your judgment; and as the best mark of a friend is telling his friend his faults in private, so the next is concealing them from the public, till they are fit to appear. In the mean time I am not a little sensible of the great kindness you do me, in the trouble you take for me, in putting my Rhimes in tune, since good sounds set off often ill sense, as the Italian songs, whose good airs, with the worst words or meaning, make the best music; so by your tuning my Welsh harp, my rough sense may be the less offen

sive to the nicer ears of those critics, who deal more in sound than sense. Pray then take pity at once both of my readers and me, in shortening my barren abundance, and increasing their patience by it, as well as the obligations I have to you: And since no madrigaller can entertain the head unless he pleases the ear; and since the crowded Operas have left the best Comedies with the least audiences, it is a sign sound can prevail over sense; therefore soften my words, and strengthen my sense, and

Eris mihi magnus Apollo.

LETTER XXIV.

April 15, 1710.

I RECEIVED your most extreme kind letter but just now. It found me over those papers you mention, which have been my employment ever since Easter-Monday: I hope before Michaelmas to have discharged my task; which, upon the word of a friend, is the most pleasing one I could be put upon. Since you are so near going into Shropshire, (whither I shall not care to write of this matter, for fear of the miscarriage of any letters,) I must desire your leave to give you a plain and sincere account of what I have found from a more serious application to them. Upon comparison with the former volume, I find much more repeated than I till now imagined, as well as in the present volume, which, if (as you told me last) you would have me dash over with a

line, will deface the whole copy extremely, and to a degree that (I fear) may displease you. I have every where marked in the margins the page and line, both in this and the other part. But if you order me not to cross the lines, or would any way else limit my commission, you will oblige me by doing it in your next letter; for I am at once equally fearful of sparing you, and of offending you by too impudent a correction. Hitherto however I have crossed them so as to be legible, because you bade me. When I think all the repetitions are struck out in a copy, I sometimes find more upon dipping in the first volume, and the number increases so much, that, I believe, more shortening will be requisite than you may be willing to bear with, unless you are in good earnest resolved to have no thought repeated. Pray forgive this freedom3, which as I must be sincere in this case, so I could not but take; and let me know if I am to go on at this rate, or if you could prescribe any other method.

I am very glad you continue your resolution of seeing me in my hermitage this summer; the sooner you return, the sooner I shall be happy, which indeed my want of any company that is entertaining

Which Wycherley could never bring himself to do. His whole behaviour reminds one of what Voltaire has said of his intercourse with the King of Prussia, and the employment he undertook; "Tout ce que j'ai fait, pendant deux ans, pour mettre ses ouvrages de prose et de vers en état de paraitre, a été un service dangereux qui deplaisit dans le temps même qu'il affectait de m'en remercier avec effusion de cœur." He therefore wishes himself far removed from "les griffes des Rois qui font des vers et de la prose."

or esteemable, together with frequent infirmities and pains, hinder me from being in your absence. 'Tis (I am sure) a real truth, that my sickness cannot make me quite weary of myself when I have you with me; and I shall want no company but yours, when you are here.

You see how freely, and with how little care, I talk rather than write to you: this is one of the many advantages of friendship, that one can say to one's friend the things that stand in need of pardon, and at the same time be sure of it. Indeed I do not know whether or no the letters of friends are the worse for being fit for none else to read. 'Tis an argument of the trust reposed in a friend's good-nature, when one writes such things to him as require a good portion of it. I have experienced yours so often and so long, that I can now no more doubt of the greatness of it, than I hope you do of the greatness of my affection, or of the sincerity with which I am, etc.

LETTER XXV.

FROM MR. WYCHERLEY.

April 27, 1710.

1

You give me an account in your letter of the trouble you have undergone for me, in comparing my papers you took down with you, with the old printed volume, and with one another, of that bundle you have in your hands; amongst which (you say) you find numerous repetitions of the same thoughts and