the weakness of another: but I am sure I very rarely laugh with that view, nor do I believe children have any fuch confideration in their heads, when they exprefs their pleasure this way: I laugh full as innocently as they, for the most part, and as fillily. There is a difference too betwixt laughing about a thing and laughing at a thing one may find the inferior man (to make a kind of cafuiftical diftinction) provoked to folly at the fight or obfervation of fome circumftance of a thing, when the thing itself appears folemn and auguft to the superior man, that is, our judgment and reafon. Let an ambassador speak the best sense in the world, and deport himself in the most graceful manner before a Prince, yet if the tail of his shirt happen (as I have known it happen to a very wife man) to hang out behind, more people will laugh at that than attend to the other; till they recollect themselves, and then they will not have a jot the less respect for the minifter. 1 muft confefs the iniquity of my countenance before you; feveral muscles of my face fometimes take an impertinent liberty with my judgment, but then my judgment foon rifes, and fets all right again about my mouth: and I find I value no man fo much, as him in whose fight I have been playing the fool. I cannot be fub perfona before a man I love; and not to laugh with honesty, when nature prompts, or folly (which is more a second nature than any thing I know) is but a knavish hypocritical way of making a mafk of one's own face.-To conclude, thofe that are my friends I laugh with, and those that are not I laugh at; fo am merry in company, and if ever I am wife, it is all by myself. You take just another course, and to thofe that are not your friends, are very civil; and to those that are, very endearing and complaifant; thus when you and I meet, there will be the Rifus et Blanditiæ united together in converfation, as they commonly are in a verfe. But without laughter on the one fide, or compliment on the other, I affure you I am, with real efteem, Your, etc. LETTER LETTER XXVII. From Mr. CROMWELL. O&. 26, 1711. MR. Wycherly vifited me at Bath in my fickness, and exprefs'd much affection to me: hearing from me how welcome his letters would be, he prefently writ to you; in which I inferted my fcrawl, and after, a fecond. He went to Gloucester in his way to Salop, but was disappointed of a boat, and fo return'd to the Bath; then he fhewed me your answer to his letters, in which you fpeak of my good-nature, but, I fear, you found me very froward at Reading; yet you allow for my illness. I could not poffibly be in the fame house with Mr. Wycherley, tho' I fought it earnestly: nor come up to town with him, he being engaged with others; but, whenever we met, he talk'd of you. He praises your * Poem, and even outvies me in kind expreffions of you. As if he had not wrote two letters to you, he was for writing every poft; I put him in mind he had already. Forgive me this wrong; I know not whether my talking fo much of your great humanity and tenderness to me, and love to him; or whether the return of his natural difpofition to you, was the caufe; but certainly you are now highly in his favour now he will come this winter to your houfe, and I must go with him; but firft he will invite you speedily to town.- I arrived on Saturday laft much wearied, yet had wrote fooner, but was told by Mr. Gay (who has writ a pretty poem to Lintot, and who gives you his fervice) that you was gone from home. Lewis fhewed me your Letter, which fet me right, and your next Letter is impatiently expected from me. Mr. Wycherley came to town on Sunday laft, and kindly furprized me with a vifit on Monday morning. We dined and drank together; and I faying, To our Loves, he reply'd, 'Tis Mr. Pope's health: He faid he would * Essay on Criticism. Ccc 2 go t go to Mr. Thorold's, and leave a letter for you. Tho LETTER XXIX. Nov. 12, 1711, Received the entertainment of your letter the day af ter I have fent you one of mine, and I am but this morning returned hither. The news you tell me of the many difficulties you found in your return from Bath, gives me fuch a kind pleasure as we usually take in accompanying our friends in their mix'd adventures; for, methinks, I fee you labouring thro' all your inconveniencies of the rough roads, the hard faddle, the trotting horse, and what not? What an agreeable furprizę would it have been to me, to have met you by pure accident (which I was within an ace of doing) and to have carried you off triumphantly, fet you on an eafier pad, and relieved the wandering knight with a night's lodging and ural repaft, at our caftle on the foreft? But these are only the pleafing imaginations of a disappointed lover, who muft fuffer in a melancholy abfence yet these two months. In the mean time, I take up with the Mufes for want of your better company; the Muses, quæ nobifcum pernoant, peregrinantur, rufticantur. Thofe aerial ladies. juft difcover enough to me of their beauties to urge my purfuit, and draw me on in a wandering maze of thought, ftill in hopes (and only in hopes) of attaining those favours from them, which they confer on their more happy admirers. We grafp fome more beautiful idea in our own brain, than our endeavours to exprefs it can set to the view of others; and ftill do but labour to fall fhort of our firft imagination. The gay colouring which fancy gave at the the firft tranfient glance we had of it, goes off in the execution like thofe various figures in the gilded clouds, which, while we gaze long upon, to feparate the parts of each imaginary image, the whole faints before the eye, and decays into confufion, I am highly pleased with the knowledge you give me of Mr. Wycherley's present temper, which feems so favourable to me. I fhall ever have fuch a fund of affection for him as to be agreeable to myself when I am so to him, and cannot but be gay when he is in good humour, as the furface of the earth (if you will pardon a poetical fimilitude) is clearer orgloomier, juft as the fun is brighter or more over-caft.—I should be glad to see the verses to Lintot which you mention, for, methinks, fomething oddly agreeable may be produced from that fubject-For what remains, I am so well, that nothing but the affurance of your being fo, can make me better; and if you would have me live with any fatisfaction thefe dark days in which I cannot fee you, it must be by your writing fometimes to Your, etc, LETTER XXX. From Mr. CROMWELL. Dec. 7, 1711. MR. Wycherley has, I believe, fent you two or three letters of invitation; but you, like the fair, will be long folicited before you yield, to make the favour the more acceptable to the lover. He is much yours by his talk; for that unbounded genius which has rang'd at large like a libertine, now feems confined to you; and I fhould take him for your miftrefs too by your fimile of the fun and earth: 'Tis very fine, but inverted by the application; for the gaiety of your fancy, and the droop ing of his by the withdrawing of your luftre, perfuades me it would be jufter by the reverfe. Oh happy favou site of the Mufes! how pernoctare, all night long with them? but alas! you do but toy, but fkirmish with them, and decline a close engagement. Leave Elegy and Tranflation to the inferior clafs, on whom the Mufes only glance now and then like our winter-fun, and then leave them in the dark. Think on the dignity of Tragedy, which is of the greater poetry, as Dennis fays, and foil him at his other weapon, as you have done in Criticifm. Every one wonders that a genius like yours will not support the finking Drama: and Mr Wilks (tho, I think, his talent is Comedy) has exprefs'd a furious ambition to fwell in your bufkins. We have had a poor Comedy of Johnfon's (not Ben) which held feven nights, and has got him three hundred pounds, for the town is fharp fet on new plays. In vain would I fire you by intereft or ambition, when your mind is not fufceptible of either; tho' your authority (arifing from the general efteem, like that of Pompey) muft infallibly affure you of success; for which in all your wishes you will be attended with those of Your, etc. IF LETTER XXXI. Dec. 21, 1711. F I have not writ to you fo foon as I ought, let my writing now atone for the delay; as it will infallibly do, when you know what a facrifice I make you at this time, and that every moment my eyes are employ'd upon this paper, they are taken off from two of the fineft faces in the univerfe. But indeed 'tis fome confolation to me to reflect, that while I but write this period, I escape some hundred fatal darts from thofe unerring eyes, and about a thoufand deaths or better. Now you, that delight in dying, would not once have dreamt of an absent friend in thefe circumftances; you that are fo nice an admirer of beauty, or (as a Critic would fay after Terence) so elegant a jpectator of forms; you must have a fober dish of coffee, |