fince you fet up with fo great a stock of good fenfe, judgment, and wit, that your judgment enfures all: that your wit ventures at. The falt of your wit has been enough to give a relish to the whole infipid hotchpotch it is mingled with; and you will make Jacob's Ladder to raise you to immortality, by which others are turn'd off shamefully to their damnation (for poetic thieves as they are) who think to be faved by others good works, how faulty foever their own are: but the coffee-house wits, or rather anti-wits the critics, prove their judgments by approving your wit; and even the news-mongers and poets will own, you have more invention than they; nay, the detractors or the envious, who never speak well of any body (not even of those they think well of in their abfence) yet will give you even in your abfence their good word; and the critics only hate you, for being forced to speak well of you whether they will or no: All this is true upon the word of

Your, &c.

Μ'

LETTER XXI.

From Mr WY CHERLEY.

Aug. 11. 1700.

yours, can only by their number

Y letters, fo much inferior to make up their scarcity of fenfe of lines; which is like the Spaniards paying a debt of gold with a load of brafs moncy. But to be a plain-dealer, I must tell you, I will revenge the raillery of your letters by printing them (as Dennis did

mine) without your knowledge too, which wou'd be a revenge upon your judgment for the raillery of your wit; for fome dull rogues, (that is the most in the world) might be fuch fools as to think what you have faid of me was in earnest : It is not the first time, your great wits have gain'd reputation by their paradoxical or ironical praises; your forefathers have done it, Erafmus and others.

For all mankind who

know me must confefs, he must be no ordinary genius, or little friend, who can find out any thing to commend in me seriously; who have given no fign of my judgment but my opinion of yours, nor mark of my wit, but by leaving off writing to the public, now you are beginning to fhew the world what you can do by yours: whofe wit is as fpiritual as your judgment infallible; in whofe judgment I have an implicit faith, and fhall always fubfcribe to it to fave my works, in this world, from the flames and damnation.-Pray, prefent my most humble fervice to Sir William Trumbull; for whom and whose judgment I have so profound a refpect, that his example had almost made me marry, more than my Nephew's ill carriage to me; having once refolved to have revenged myself upon him by my marriage, but now am refolved to make my revenge greater upon him by His marriage.

I

LETTER XXII.

From Mr WY CHERLEY,

April 1. 1710.

Have had yours of the 30th of the last month, which is kinder than I defire it should be, fince it tells me you cou'd be better pleas'd to be fick again in Town in my company, than to be well in the Country without it; and that you are more impatient to be deprived of happiness than of health. Yet, my dear friend, fet raillery or compliment afide, I can bear your abfence (which procures your health and ease) better than I can your company when you are in pain: for I cannot fee you fo without being fo too. Your love to the Country I do not doubt, nor do you, (I hope) my love to it or you, fince there I can enjoy your company without feeing you in pain to give me fatisfaction and pleasure; there I can have you without rivals or disturbers; without the too civil, or the too rude without the noise of the loud, or the cenfure of the filent and would rather have you abuse me there with the truth, than at this diftance with your compliment: fince now, your business of a friend, and kindness to a friend, is by finding fault with his faults, and mending them with your obliging severity. I hope (in point of your good nature) you will have no cruel charity for thofe papers of mine, you are so willing to be troubled with; which I take most infinitely kind of you, and shall acknowledge with gratitude, as long as I live. No friend can do more for his friend

than preferving his reputation (nay, not by preferving his life) fince by preferving his lite he can only make him live about threefcore or fourfcore years; but by preferving his reputation, he can make him live as long as the world lafts; fo fave him from damning, when he is gone to the devil. Therefore, I pray, condemn me in private, as the Thieves do the accomplices in Newgate, to fave them from condemnation by the public. Be moft kindly merciful to my poetical faults, and do with my papers, as you country gentlemen do with your trees, flash, cut, and lop off the excrefcencies and dead parts of my wither'd 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 fays you take the trouble kindly: fuch is your generofity to your friends, that you take it kindly to be desired by them to do them a kindnefs; and you think it done to you, you an opportunity to do it them. may be fure to be troubled with my interest, if not kindness; fince mine to cure yours to me: fo that I write to you more for my own fake than yours; lefs to make you think I write well, than to learn from you to write better. Thus you fee intereft in my kindness, which is like the friendthip of the world, rather to make a friend than be a friend; but I am yours, as a true Flain-dealer.

when they give Wherefore you letters out of

you will pro

LTTER XXIII.

From Mr WY CHERLEY.

April 11. 1710.

FI can do part of my business at Shrewsbury in a

If

fortnight's time (which I propofe to do) I will be foon after with you, and trouble you with my company, for the remainder of the fummer: in the mean time I beg you to give yourself the pains of altering, or leaving out what you think fuperfluous in my pa

pers, that I may endeavour to print such a number of

them as you and I fhall think fit, about Michaelinas next. In order to which (my dear friend) I beg you to be fo kind to me, as to be fevere to them, that the critics may be lefs fo; for I had rather be condemn'd by my friend in private, than expofed to my foes in public, the critics or common judges, who are made fuch by having been old offenders themselves. Pray, believe I have as much faith in your friendship and fincerity, as I have deference to your judgment, and as the best mark of a friend is telling his friend his faults in private, fo the next is concealing them from the public, 'till they are fit to appear. In the mean time I am not a little fenfible of the great kindness you do me, in the trouble you take for me, in putting my Rhimes in tune, fince good founds fet off often i fenfe, as the Italian fongs, whofe good airs with the worst words or meaning, make the best mu. fic; fo by your tuning my Welch-harp, my rough fenfe may be the lefs offenfive to the nicer ears of thofe critics, who deal more in found than fenfe. Pray then