mere publisher. I am apprehensive I shall be nothing that's of any value long, except, Madam, Your most obliged,

and most faithful humble servant,

A. POPE.

I long for your return to town; a place I am unfit for, but shall not be long out of, as soon as I know I may be permitted to wait on you there.

LETTER III.

MADAM, Thursday night. IT was an agreeable surprize to me, to hear of your settlement in town. Ilye at my Lord Peterborow's in Bolton-street, where any commands of yours will reach me to-morrow, only on Saturday evening I am pre-engaged. If Mrs. H be to be engaged (and if she is by any creature, it is by you), I hope she will join us. I am, with great truth, Madam,

Your most faithful friend,

and obliged servant,

A. POPE.

MADAM,

news Mrs. H

LETTER IV.

I COULD not play the impertinent so far as to write to you, till I was encouraged to it by a piece of tells me, which ought to be the most agreeable in the world to any author, That you are determined to write no more. It is now the time then, not for me only, but for every body, to write without fear, or wit: and I shall give you the first

example here. But for this assurance, it would be every way too dangerous to correspond with a lady, whose very first sight and very first writings had such an effect upon a man used to what they call fine sights, and what they call fine writings. Yet he has been dull enough to sleep quietly, after all he has seen, and all he has read; till yours broke in upon his stupidity and indolence, and totally destroyed it. But, God be thanked, you will write no more; so I am in no danger of increasing my admiration of you one way; and as to the other, you will never (I have too much reason to fear) open these eyes again with one glimpse of you.

I am told, you named lately in a letter a place called Twitenham with particular distinction. That you may not be mis-construed, and have your meaning mistaken for the future, I must acquaint you, Madam, that the name of the place where Mrs. His, is not Twitenham, but Richmond; which your ignorance in the geography of these parts has made you confound together. You will unthinkingly do honour to a paltry hermitage (while you speak of Twitenham) where lives a creature altogether unworthy your memory or notice, because he really wishes he had never beheld you, nor yours. You have spoiled him for a solitaire, and a book, all the days of his life; and put him into such a condition, that he thinks of nothing, and inquires of nothing but after a person who has nothing to say to him, and has left him for ever without hope of ever again regarding, or pleasing, or entertaining him, much less of seeing him.

He has been so mad with the idea of her, as to steal her pic ture, and passes whole days in sitting before it, talking to himself, and (as some people imagine) making verses; but it is no such matter; for as long as he can get any of hers, he can never turn his head to his own, it is so much better entertained.

MADAM,

LETTER V.

I AM touched with shame when I look on the date
of your letter. I have answered it a hundred times
in my own mind, which I assure you has few thoughts,
either so frequent or so lively, as those relating to you.
I am sensibly obliged by you, in the comfort you en-
deavour to give me upon the loss of a friend. It is
like the shower we have had this morning, that just
makes the drooping trees hold up their heads, but they
remain checked and withered at the root: the bene-
diction is but a short relief, though it comes from
Heaven itself. The loss of a friend is the loss of life;
after that is gone from us, it is all but a gentler decay,
and wasting and lingering a little longer. I was the
other day forming a wish for a lady's happiness, upon
her birth-day; and thinking of the greatest climax of
felicity I could raise, step by step, to end in this,-
a friend. I fancy I have succeeded in the gradation,
and send you the whole copy to ask your opinion, or
(which is much the better reason) to desire you to
alter it to your own wish: for I believe you are a
woman that can wish for yourself more reasonably,
than I can for you. Mrs. H- made me promise
her a copy; and to the end she may value it, I beg it
may be transcribed, and sent her by you.

To a Lady, on her Birth-day,
1723.

Oh! be thou blest with all that Heaven can send :
Long life, long youth, long pleasure—and a friend!
Not with those toys the woman-world admire,
Riches that vex, and vanities that tire:
Let joy, or ease; let affluence, or content;
And the gay conscience of a life well-spent,

Calm every thought, inspirit every grace,
Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face!
Let day improve on day, and year on year;
Without a pain, a trouble, or a fear!

And ah! (since death must that dear frame destroy,)
Die by some sudden extacy of joy :

In some soft dream may thy mild soul remove,
And be thy latest gasp, a sigh of love!

Pray, Madam, let me see this mended in your copy to Mr. H- ; and let it be an exact scheme of happiness drawn, and I hope enjoyed, by yourself. To whom I assure you I wish it all, as much as you wish I am always, with true respect, Madam,

it her.

Your most faithful friend,

and most humble servant,

MADAM,

A. POPE.

LETTER VI.

Twitenham, Aug. 29.

YOUR last letter tells me, that if I do not write in

less than a month, you will fancy the length of yours frighted me. A consciousness that I had upon me of omitting too long to answer it, made me look (not without some fear and trembling) for the date of it, but there happened to be none; and I hope, either that you have forgot how long it is, or at least that you cannot think it so long as I do, since I writ to you. Indeed a multitude of things (which singly seem trifles, and yet altogether make a vast deal of business, and wholly take up that time which we ought to value above all such things) have from day to day made me wanting, as well to my own greatest pleasure in this, as to my own greatest concerns in other points. If I seem to neglect any friend I have, I do more than seem to neglect myself, as I find daily by the increasing ill constitution of my body and mind.

I still resolve this course shall not, nay I see it cannot, be long; and I determine to retreat within myself to the only business I was born for, and which I am only good for (if I am entitled to use that phrase for any thing). It is great folly to sacrifice one's self, one's time, one's quiet (the very life of life itself), to forms, complaisances, and amusements, which do not inwardly please me, and only please a sort of people who regard me no farther than a mere instrument of their present idleness, or vanity. To say truth, the lives of those we call great and happy, are divided between those two states; and in each of them, we poetical fiddlers make but part of their pleasure, or of their equipage. And the misery is, we, in our turns, are so vain (at least I have been so) as to choose to pipe without being paid, and so silly to be pleased with piping to those who understand music less than ourselves. They have put me of late upon a task before I was aware, which I am sick and sore of: and yet engaged in honour to some persons whom I must neither disobey nor disappoint (I mean two or three in the world only) to go on with it. They make me do as mean a thing as the greatest man of them could do; seem to depend, and to solicit, when I do not want; and make a kind of court to those above my rank, just as they do to those above theirs, when we might much more wisely and agreeably live of ourselves, and to ourselves. You will easily find I am talking of my translating the Odyssey by subscription: which looks, it must needs look, to all the world as a design of mine both upon fame and money, when in truth I believe I shall get neither; for one I go about without any stomach, and the other I shall not go about at all.

This freedom of opening my mind upon my own situation will be a proof of trust, and of an opinion your goodness of nature has made me entertain, that you never profess any degree of good-will without

VOL. VIII.

BB