no more to say, but to defire you to give my fervice (that is nothing) to your friends, and to believe that I am nothing more than

Your, &c.

Ex nihilo nil fit.

LUCR.

LETTER III.

May 10, 1708.

OU talk of fame and glory, and of the

You great men of Antiquity: Pray, tell me, what are all your great dead men, but so many little living letters? What a vast reward is here for all the ink wafted by Writers, and all the blood fpilt by Princes? There was in old time one Severus a Roman Emperor. I dare fay you never call'd him by any other name in your life and yet in his days he was styled Lucius, Septimius, Severus, Pius, Pertinax, Auguftus, Parthicus, Adiabenicus, Arabicus, Maximus, and what not? What a prodigious wafte of letters has time made! what a number have here dropt off, and left the poor furviving feven unattended! For my own part, four are all I have to take care for; and I'll be judg'd by you if any man cou'd live in lefs compass? Well, for the future I'll drown all high

thoughts

thoughts in the Lethe of cowflip-wine; as for Fame, Renown, Reputation, take 'em, Critics! Tradam protervis in Mare Criticum

Ventis.

If ever I feek for Immortality here, may I be damn'd, for there's not so much danger in a Poet's being damn'd:

Damnation follows death in other men,
But your damn'd Poet lives and writes agen.

I

LETTER IV.

Nov. 1, 1708..

Have been so well fatisfy'd with the Country ever fince I faw you, that I have not once thought of the Town, or enquir'd of any one in it befides Mr. Wycherley and yourself. And from him I understand of your journey this summer into Leicestershire; from whence I guess you are return'd by this time, to your old apartment in the widow's corner, to your old business of comparing Critics, and reconciling Commentators, and to your old diverfions of a losing game at picquet with the ladies, and half a play, or a quarter of a play, at the theatre: where you are none of the malicious audience, but the chief of amorous spectators; and

for

for the infirmity of one a sense, which there, for the moft part, could only ferve to disgust you enjoy the vigour of another, which ravishes you. [b You know, when one fenfe is fuppreft,

It but retires into the reft.

according to the poetical, not the learned, Dodwell; who has done one thing worthy of eternal memory; wrote two lines in his life that are not nonfenfe!] So you have the advantage of being entertain'd with all the beauty of the boxes, without being troubled with any of the dulnefs of the ftage. You are fo good a critic, that 'tis the greatest happiness of the modern Poets that you do not hear their works: and next, that you are not fo arrant a critic, as to damn them (like the reft) without hearing. But now I talk of those critics, I have good news to tell you concerning myself, for which I expect you should congratulate with me: It is that, beyond all my expectations, and far above my demerits, I have been most mercifully repriev'd by the fovereign power of Jacob Tonfon, from being brought forth to public punishment; and refpited from time to time from the hands of those barbarous executioners of the Muses, whom I was just now speaking

a His hearing.

P.

Omitted by the Author in his own edition.

P.

of. It often happens, that guilty Poets, like other guilty Criminals, when once they are known and proclaim'd, deliver themselves into the hands of justice, only to prevent others from doing it more to their disadvantage; and not out of any ambition to spread their fame, by being executed in the face of the world, which is a fame but of short continuance. That Poet were a happy man who could but obtain a grant to preserve his for ninety-nine years; for those names very rarely last so many days, which are planted either in Jacob Tonfon's, or the Ordinary of Newgate's Mifcellanies.

I have an hundred things to say to you, which shall be deferr'd till I have the happiness of seeing you in town, for the feafon now draws on, that invites every body thither. Some of them I had communicated to you by letters before this, if I had not been uncertain where you pass'd your time the last season: So much fine weather, I doubt not, has given you all the pleasure you could defire from the country, and your own thoughts the best company in it. But nothing could allure Mr. Wycherley to our foreft, he continued (as you told me long fince he would) an obftinate lover of the town, in spite of friendship and fair weather. Therefore henceforward, to all thofe confiderable qualities I know you poffefs'd of, I shall add

that

that of Prophecy. But I ftill believe Mr. Wycherley's intentions were good, and am fatiffy'd that he promises nothing, but with a real design to perform it: how much foever his other excellent qualities are above my imitation, his fincerity, I hope, is not; and it is with the utmost that I am,

Sir, &c.

I

LETTER V.

Jan. 22, 1708-9.

a

papers

before

Had fent you the inclos'd this time, but that I intended to have brought them myself, and afterwards could find no opportunity of fending them without fufpicion of their miscarrying; not, that they are of the leaft value, but for fear fome body might be foolish enough to imagine them fo, and inquifitive enough to discover those faults which I (by your help) would correct. I therefore beg the favour of you to let them go no farther than your chamber, and to be very free of your remarks in the margins, not only in regard to the

a This was a translation of the first book of Statius, done when the author was but fourteen years old, as

G

appears by an advertisement before the first edition of it in a miscellany publish'd by B. Lintot. 8° 1711. P.

accuracy,