After this Heat is a little over, our Poet pretending to magnify his former Patience, feems in cool Blood to give Correction to feveral, and most deservedly on Mr. Budgell, Welfted, and the other Poetafter who turn'd Plagiary: What he fays of poor Dennis is light, he, though he thought him too proud, did not think him unworthy his Regard, when in Diftrefs, and here he only acknowledges, that he has been fo intimate with Mr. Theobald, as to feek him at his own House. He had drank with Cibber, very well! And fo have moft ingenious Men of his Time, this hurts them nothing, but the other Imputations are home. WELSTED'S LYE; (and he was a Parfon) three thousand Suns went down on it. Mr.. Budgell, he let him charge him with Grub-street, and write what he would, except his WILL: The Affair of Mr. ToLAND'S WILL was then recent. As to the Plagiary, Mr. Pope owns he had rhym'd for him, which was to be fure a very great Favour; but Mr. Pope's Father and Mother had been abus'd, for which he very juftly demands Reafon; his Father being a Man fo innocent and fo harmless of Tongue, that he accounted it Sin to call his Neighbour a Fool: But now comes the Rod for the Fool's Back: That Harmless Mother thought no Wife a Whore; Hear this, and fpare his Family, James Moor. When we read this Epiftle over and, over again, after fresh Admiration, a melancholy Thought arifes, that we are without Hope of fuch another Genius, fo expreffive, fo compact, fo affecting, and fo very full of Light and Brightness. The Vanity which fome have charged the Beginning of this Epiftle with, where our Author intimates the Impoffibility almost of hiding himself from im pertinent pertinent Vifitors, if it be really fo, will be eafily pardoned, no Man but what has (at least, we believe fo) greater Foibles. What Walls can guard me, or what Shades can hide? Sweetly intimating, fay the Enemies of our Author, that he did not want the Conveniency of a Barge or a Chariot, that he had Gardens with fine Thickets, and an elegant Grotto. We dare be perfwaded that Mr. Pope had no Vanity in the Mention of either Barge or Chariot, for his Gardens we cannot fo well anfwer; he had fpent" a great deal of Money and Time in them, and laboured to have every Thing there as great (that is as to Tafte, not to Compafs of Ground) as poffibly. might be, He afk'd Counsel with all he knew, who were likely to give him any good Advice; but at dalt he was forc'd chiefly to depend on his own good Senfe and natural Tafte, for in laying out of Gardens as in all other Things, different People have different Defigns and Opinions, and one admires what is entirely difagreeable to another; one declares, he would not have too much Art in it, for my Notion (fays he) of Gardening is, that it is only sweeping Nature; another declares, that Gravel Walks are not of a good Tafte, for all the finest abroad are of loofe Sand; a third advises peremptorily, there fhould not be one Lime Tree in the whole Plantation; a fourth makes the fame exclufive Claufe extend to Horfe Chefnuts, which he affirms not to be Trees, but Weeds; Dutch Elms are condemn'd by a fifth, and about half the Trees are profcrib❜d. Some Some cannot bear Ever-greens, and call them Never-greens; fome who are only angry at them when they are cut in Shapes, and give the modern Gardiners the Name of Ever-green Taylors; fome have no Diflike to Cones and Cubes, but would have them cut in Foreft-Trees; fome are in a Paffion against any Thing in Shape, even against chipp'd Hedges, which they call green Walls. We have the fame Sort of Criticks in Poetry; one is fond of nothing but Heroicks; another can't relifh Tragedy; another hates Paftorals, but delights mightily (as all little Wits do) in Epigrams. Let me add there are the fame in Divinity, where many leading Criticks are for rooting up more than they plant, and would leave the Lord's Vineyard either very thinly furnish'd, or very oddly trimm'd: But Mr. Pope had the Happiness to like all that was good, and excluded no beautiful Tree or Flower his Garden, It is natural for a Man, when he has taken a great Deal of Pains about any Thing, to be fond of it, efpecially if it answers to the Idea of Beauty which he first intended it fhould: This was Mr. Pope's Cafe in his Gardens and Grotto, of which laft fee his own Defcription to Mr. Blount, dated June 2, 1725. OU fhew yourself a just Man and a Friend, in thofe Gueffes and Suppofitions you make at the poffible Reasons of my Silence; every one of which is a true one. As to Forgetfulness of you and yours, I affure you the promifcuous Converfations of the Town ferve only to put me in Mind of better, and more quiet, to be had in a Corner of the World (undifturb'd, innocent, ferene, and fenfible) with fuch as you. Let no Accefs of any Diftruft make you think of me differently in a cloudy Day from what you do in the moft fun-fhiny Wea ther. ther. Let the young Ladies be affured I make nothing new in my Gardens, without wishing to fee the Print of their fairy Steps in every Part of 'em. I have put the last Hand to my Works of this Kind, in happily finishing the fubterraneous Way and Grotto I there found a Spring of the clearest Water, which falls in a perpetual Rill, that ecchoes thro' the Cavern Day and Night, From the River Thames, you fee thro' my Arch up a Walk of the Wilderness to a Kind of open Temple, wholly compos'd of Shells in the ruftick Manner; and from that Distance under the Temple you look down thro❜ a floping Arcade of Trees, and fee the Sails on the River paffing fuddenly and vanishing, as through a perfpective Glafs. When you shut the Doors of this Grotto, it becomes on the Inftant, from a luminous Room, a Camera obfcura; on the Walls of which all the Objects of the River, Hills, Woods, and Boats, are forming a moving Picture in their vifible Radiations; and when you have a Mind to light it up, it affords you a very different Scene; it is finifhed with Shells interspersed with Pieces of Lookingglafs in angular Forms; and in the Cieling is a Star of the fame Material, at which when a Lamp (of an orbicular Figure of thin Alabafter) 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 Paffage two Porches, one towards the River of smooth Stones full of Light and open; the other toward the Garden fhadow'd with Trees, rough with Shells, Flints, and Iron-ore. The Bottom is paved with fimple Pebble, as is alfo the adjoining Walk up the Wildernefs to the Temple, in the natural Tafte, agreeing not ill with the little dripping Murmur, and the aquatick Idea of the whole Place. It wants nothing to compleat it but a good good Statue with an Infcription, 'like' that beautiful Nymph of the Grot, thefe facred Springs I keep, You'll think I have been very poetical in this Defcription, but it is pretty near the Truth. I wish you were here to bear Teftimony how little it owes to Art, either the Place itself, or the Defcription I give of it. "I am, &c. Here is no great Matter of Wonder, if what feem'd a little Vanity fhould appear, though in Reality there might be none; but wearied out with the Impertinence of troublesome Vifitants, which prevented him from enjoying that Privacy and Retirement he lov'd, might make him fpeak in Terms feeming to fay, that he was indeed above thofe Intrufions, and those bemus'd Parfons (as he calls them) and maudlin Poeteffes fhould have known it, have waited his Leifure, and not have behav'd with fo little Decency, as to stop his Chariot, or rufh into his House and Gardens, without knowing whether it would incommode him or no. Here, in all Likelihood, the Vein of Satire had stopp'd, had not many Perfons, taking Shame to themselves, made a great Stir about thefe Epiftles; and a certain Lady of Quality and a great Wit took Offence; |