and for enjoying the sweets of that life, which can only be tasted by people of good-will. They from all shades the darkness can exclude, And from a desert banish solitude. Torbay is a paradise, and a storm is but an amusement to such people. If you drink Tea upon a promontory that overhangs the sea, it is preferable to an assembly: And the whistling of the wind better music to contented and loving minds, than the Opera to the spleenful, ambitious, diseased, distasted, and distracted souls which this world affords; nay, this world affords no other. Happy they, who are banished from us! but happier they, who can banish themselves; or more properly banish the world from them! Alas! I live at Twickenham! I take that period to be very sublime, and to include more than a hundred sentences that might be writ to express distraction, hurry, multiplication of nothings, and all the fatiguing perpetual business of having no business to do. You will wonder I reckon translating the Odyssey as nothing. But whenever I think seriously (and of late I have met with so many occasions of thinking seriously, that I begin never to think otherwise) I cannot but think these things very idle; as idle as if a beast of burden should go on jingling his bells, without bearing any thing valuable about him, or ever serving his master. Life's vain amusements, amidst which we dwell; said a heathen poet; as he is translated by a Christian Bishop, who has, first by his exhortations, and since by his example, taught me to think as becomes a reasonable creature-but he is gone! I remember I promised to write to you as soon as I should hear you were got home. You must look on this as the first day I have been myself, and pass over the mad interval unimputed to me. How punctual a correspondent I shall henceforward be able or not able to be, God knows: But He knows, I shall ever be a punctual and grateful friend, and all the good wishes of such an one will ever attend you. LETTER XIV. Twickenham, June 2, 1725. You shew yourself a just man and a friend in those guesses and suppositions you make at the possible reasons of my silence; every one of which is a true one. As to forgetfulness of you or yours, I assure you, the promiscuous conversations of the town serve only to put me in mind of better, and more quiet, to be had in a corner of the world (undisturbed, innocent, serene, and sensible) with such as you. Let no access of any distrust make you think of me differently in a cloudy day from what you do in the most sunshiny weather. Let the young ladies be assured I make nothing new in my gardens without wishing to see the print of their fairy steps in every part of them. I have put the last hand to my works of this kind, in happily finishing the subterraneous way and grotto: I there found a spring of the clearest water, which falls in a perpetual rill, that echoes through the cavern day and night. From the river Thames, you see through my arch up a walk of the wilderness, to a kind of open Temple, wholly composed of shells in the rustic manner; and from that distance under the temple you look down through a sloping arcade of trees, and see the sails on the river passing suddenly and vanishing, as through a perspective glass. When you shut the doors of this grotto, it becomes on the instant, from a luminous room, a Camera obscura; on the walls of which all the objects of the river, hills, woods, and boats, are forming a moving picture in their visible radiations; and when you have a mind to light it up, it affords you a very different scene; it is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of looking-glass in angular I wish he had made a full description of his garden and grounds, as Horace has done in his sixteenth Epistle. The Abbé Cap. de Chaupy has written a long dissertation concerning the spot where the Villa of Horace stood, which he fixes in the Valley of Licenza, belonging to the Prince Borghese, fourteen miles from Tivoli and five from Vico Varo. Dr. Johnson, who had no taste for rural scenes, nor knowledge of laying out grounds, speaks with an unreasonable contempt of this romantic grotto, and of the pains taken to embellish it. This is a clear and picturesque description of this celebrated spot. Our Poet's good taste in gardening was unquestionable. "For the honour of this art," Lord Bacon says, "a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately, sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection." forms; and in the ceiling is a star of the same material, at which when a lamp (of an orbicular figure of thin alabaster) is hung in the middle, a thousand pointed rays glitter, and are reflected over the place. There are connected to this grotto by a narrower passage two porches, one towards the river of smooth stones, full of light, and open; the other towards the Garden shadowed with trees, rough with shells, flints, and iron-ores. The bottom is paved with simple pebble, as is also the adjoining walk up the wilderness to the temple, in the natural taste, agreeing not ill with the little dripping murmur, and the aquatic idea of the whole place. It wants nothing to complete it but a good statue with an inscription, like that beautiful antique one which you know I am so fond of: Hujus Nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis, Nymph of the grot, these sacred springs I keep, Ah spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave! And drink in silence, or in silence lave! The simplicity of this ancient inscription is indeed eminently beautiful; so also is the following imitation of it by a late writer of true taste, and lover of the ancients: SUB IMAGINE PANIS RUDI LAPIDE. Hic stans vertice montium supremo Non totum invideo tibi racemum. Quin si fraude mala quid hinc reportes, You'll think I have been very poetical in this description', but it is pretty near the truth. I wish you were here to bear testimony how little it owes to Art, either the place itself, or the image I give of it. I am, etc. Our author wrote the following lines on a grotto adorned with shell-work, at Crux Easton, Hants, which ought to be preserved : Here shunning idleness at once and praise, But Fate dispos'd them in this humble sort, ' I shall here insert two Letters to Sir Hans Sloane, on the ornaments of this grotto. TO SIR HANS SLOANE. SIR, Twickenham, March 30, 1742. I am extremely obliged to you for your intended kindness of furnishing my grotto with that surprising natural curiosity, which indeed I have ardently sought some time. But I would much rather part with every thing of this sort, which I have collected, than deprive your most copious collection of one thing that may be wanting to it. If you can spare it, I shall be doubly pleased, in having it, and in owing it to you. The farther favour you offer me, of a review of your curiosities, deserves my acknowledgment. Could I hope that among the minerals and fossils which I have gathered, there was any thing you could like, it would be esteemed an obligation (if you have time as the season improves) to look upon them and command any. I shall take the first favourable opportunity to inquire when it may be least inconvenient to wait on you, which will be a true satisfaction to, Sir, Your most obliged, And most humble Servant, A. POPE. |