hand, I have read as much of them, as ever I fhall read while I live. Indeed they do not please my taste: they are writ with so romantick an air, and, allowing for the difference of eaftern manners, are yet, upon any supposition that can be made, of fo wild and abfurd a contrivance (at least to my northern understanding) that I have not only no pleasure, but no patience, in perufing them. They are to me like the odd paintings on Indian fcreens, which at first glance may furprize and please a little : but, when you fix your eye intently upon them, they appear fo extravagant, difproportion'd, and monftrous, that they give a judicious eye pain, and make him feek for relief from fome other object. They may furnish the mind with fome new images: but I think the purchase is made at too great an expence for to read those two volumes through, liking them as little as I do, would be a terrible penance, and to read them with pleasure would be dangerous on the other fide, because of the infection. I will never believe, that you have any keen relish of them, till I find you write worse than you do, which, I dare fay, I never fhall. Who that Petit de la Croife is, the pretended author of them 2, I Not the pretended Au- | from an Arabic MS of the ther, but the real tranflator, tales, which is in the French cannot cannot tell but obferving how full they are in the descriptions of drefs, furniture, &c. I cannot help thinking them the product of some Woman's imagination: and, believe me, I would do any thing but break with you, ra King's library. What was tranflated in ten fmall Volumes, is not more than the tenth part of the Original. The Eastern people have been always famous for this fort of Composition : in which much fine morality is frequently conveyed; not in deed in a story always representing real life, but what the eastern fuperftitions made pafs for fuch amongst the people. Their great genius for this kind of writing appears from thefe very tales. But the policy of fome of the Later princes of the Eaft greatly hurt the task, by fetting all men upon compofing them, to furnish matter for their coffee-houses and places of refort; which were enjoined to give this entertainment to the people, with defign to divert them from politics, and matters of ftate. This Collection is fo ftrange a medley of sense and nonfenfe, that one would be tempted to think it was the work of fome Coffee-man, who gathered indifferently from good and bad. The contrivance he has invented of tying them together has led him into fuch a blunder, that after that, one could not be furprized at any thing. The tales are fuppofed to be told to one of the Kings of Perfia of the Dynafty of the Saffanides, an ancient race before Mahomet, and yet the fcene of fome of them is laid in the Court of Harown Alrafchid the 26th Chalif, and the 5th of the Race of the Abbafides. These are amongst the beft, and, indeed, it is no wonder. He was one of the moft magnificent of the Chalifs, and the greatest encourager of Letters; fo that it was natural for men of genius in after times, to do this honour to his memory. But the Bishop talks of Petit de la Croife. M. Galland was the translator of the Arabian tales. The name of the other is to the collection, called the Perfian tales, of which I have nothing to fay. ther ther than be bound to read them over with at tention. I am forry that I was fo true a prophet in refpect of the S. Sea, forry, I mean, as far as your lofs is concern'd: for in the general I ever was and still am of opinion, that had that project taken root and flourish'd, it would by degrees have overturn'd our conftitution. Three or four hundred millions was fuch a weight, that whichfoever way it had leaned, must have born down all before it---But of the dead we must speak gently; and therefore, as Mr. Dryden fays fomewhere, Peace be to its Manes! your Let me add one reflection, to make you easy in ill luck. all that you Had you got all that have loft beyond what you ventur'd, confider that your fuperfluous gains would have sprung from the ruin of feveral families that now want neceffaries! a thought, under which a good and good-natured man that grew rich by fuch means, could not, I perfuade myself, be perfectly eafy. Adieu, and believe me, ever Your, &c. LETTER LETTER VII. From the Bishop of ROCHESTER. YOU OU are not yourself gladder you are well, than I am; especially fince I can please myself with the thought that when you had loft your health elsewhere, you recovered it here. May these lodgings never treat you worse, nor you at any time have lefs reason to be fond of them! I thank you for the fight of your a Verses, and with the freedom of an honeft, tho' perhaps injudicious friend, muft tell you, that tho' I could like fome of them, if they were any body's else but yours, yet as they are yours and to be own'd as fuch, I can scarce like any of them. Not but that the four firft lines are good, especially the second couplet; and might, if followed by four others as good, give reputation to a writer of a less established fame: but from you I expect fomething of a more perfect kind, and which the oftener it is read, the more it will be admired. When you barely exceed other writers, you fall much beneath yourself: 'tis your misfortune now to write a Epitaph on Mr. Harcourt. P. VOL. VIII. without without a rival, and to be tempted by that means to be more careless, than you would otherwise be in your compofures. Thus much I could not forbear faying, tho' I have a motion of confequence in the House of Lords to day, and muft prepare for it. I am even with you for your ill paper; for I write upon worse, having no other at hand. I wish you the continuance of your health most heartily; and am ever Yours, &c. I have fent Dr. Arbuthnot b the Latin MS. which I could not find when you left me; and I am fo angry at the writer for his defign, and his manner of executing it, that I could hardly forbear fending him a line of Virgil along with it. The chief Reafoner of that philofophic farce is a Gallo-Ligur, as he is call'd--what that means in English or French, I can't fay--but all he fays, is in fo loofe and flippery and b Written by Huetius, [ delivered (by the allowance bifhop of Avranches. He of all) in good latin. This not was a mean reafoner; as may being received for what he be feen by a vaft collection would give it, he composed of fanciful and extravagant a treatife of the weakness of the conjectures, which he called human understanding: a poor a Demonflration; mixed up fyftem of fcepticism; inwith much reading, which his deed little other than an abffriends called learning, and tract from Sextus Empiricus. trickifh |