LETTER XXI. FROM MR. HILL. DEAR SIR, Dec. 17, 1731. I OUGHT Sooner to have thanked you for the pleasure you have given me, by that excellent Letter to Lord Burlington. If the title had been Of False Taste, would it not have been properer? We have poets whom heaven visits with a taste, as well as planters and builders. What other inducement could provoke some of them to mistake your epistolary relaxation of numbers for an involuntary defect in your versification? We have printers, too, of better taste than morals, who like you so well that they cannot endure you should be made a monopoly. The hawker's wind is upon you already; and your last incense to the muses is blown about the streets in thinner and less fragrant expansions. The pictures of your mind, like those of other great men's persons, are to be multiplied and extended, that we may have you at whole length and in miniature. I send you a piece that is safe enough from this danger. Athelwold will have nothing to fear from the pirates; I believe I need not inform you how it dragged itself along, for two lean nights, after the first, as lame and as wounded as the snake in your poem; but not half so delightfully. It would be affectation, not modesty, to deny that I am nettled at the monstrous reception which the town has given this tragedy. But I find there is a two-fold obligation upon a tragic writer, if he would engage attention at our theatres. He must make audiences as well as plays. He must become the solicitor of his own commendation. That is, in other words, if he desires to be known, he must deserve to be forgotten. Bating the reverence due to fashion, this is putting the poet upon the foot of the prize-fighter. He must not only submit himself to be wounded for the public diversion, but must also march about with his drum, from one end of the town to the other, to stir up fools' curiosity, and draw together the company. I should feel the liveliest indignation upon such an occasion as this in the cause of another: but as the case is my own, I think,-and smile,--and am satisfied. I had rather be neglected to my mortification, than become popular to my infamy. It is possible, after all, that some persons of rank and distinction to bespeak plays, and compel audiences, may be kind enough to Athelwold, to introduce him, now and then, into civiler company, for the sake of the players. It were a downright shame, if these good people who gave the tragedy all its merit of fine dressing and scening, should be suffered to lose their money, while the good for nothing author, who was guilty of the dull part of the entertainment, has lost nothing but his labour. But enough of this subject. I hope the good lady whose illness hastened you home, found a recovery in your return. Who can blame her for missing you in a world so few are like you? Believe me, with much acknowledgment and esteem, Dear Sir, Your faithful and obedient servant, A. HILL. DEAR SIR, LETTER XXII. TO MR. HILL. Twickenham, Dec. 22, 1731. I THANK you for your tragedy', which I have now read over a sixth time, and of which I not only preserve, but increase, my esteem. You have been kind to this age, in not telling the next, in your preface, the ill taste of the town, of which the reception you describe it to have given of your play (worse, indeed, than I had heard, or could have imagined,) is a more flagrant instance than any of those trifles mentioned in my Epistle; which yet, I hear, the sore vanity of our pretenders to taste flinches at extremely. The title you mention had been a properer to that Epistle. I have heard no criticisms about it, nor do I listen after them. Nos hæc novimus esse nihil; I mean, I think the verses to be so. But as you are a man of tender sentiments of honour, I know it will grieve you to hear another undeservedly charged with a crime his heart is free from: for, if there be truth in the world, I declare to you, I never imagined the least application of what I said of Timon could be made to the Duke of Chandos, than whom there is scarce a more blameless, worthy, and generous, beneficent character, among all our nobility: and if I have not lost my senses, the town has lost them, by what I heard so late, as but two days ago, of the 7 This is the tragedy of which Hill speaks in his letter to Dodington; to whom he appeals from the bad taste of the town.-Bowles. 8" If there be truth in the world!" This is strong language indeed: but we remember with pain, that Pope, in his first edition of Epistle to the Ladies, declared, "upon his honour," no one person in particular was intended. When the sale was found not so great as was expected, it was considered that this declaration was the cause.-Bowles. This declaration was made before the pointed characters of Philomedé, Atossa, and Cloe, were introduced into the Epistle, and was afterwards omitted. uproar on this head. I am certain, if you calmly read every particular of that description, you will find almost all of them point blank the reverse of that person's villa. It is an awkward thing for a man to print, in defence of his own work, against a chimera: you know not who, or what you fight against: the objections start up in a new shape, like the armies and phantoms of magicians, and no weapon can cut a mist or a shadow. Yet it would have been a pleasure to me, to have found some friend saying a word in my justification, against a most malicious falsehood. I speak of such as have known by their own experience, these twenty years, that I always took up their defence, when any stream of calumny ran upon them. If it gives the Duke one moment's uneasiness, I should think myself ill paid, if the whole earth admired the poetry; and believe me, would rather never have written a verse in my life, than that any one of them should trouble a truly good man. It was once my case before, but happily reconciled; and among generous minds nothing so endears friends, as the having offended one another. I lament the malice of the age, that studies to see its own likeness in every thing; I lament the dulness of it, that cannot see an excellence: the first is my unhappiness, the second yours. I look upon the fate of your piece, like that of a great treasure, which is buried as soon as brought to light; but it is sure to be dug up the next age, and enrich posterity. I have been very sensible, on these two occasions, to feel them as I have done at a time, when I daily feared the loss of what is, and ought to be dearer to me than any reputation, but that of a friend, or than any thing of my own, except my morals; the loss of a most This Mr. Cleland did for him, or Pope in Cleland's name.-Bowles, tender parent. She is alive, and that is all! I have perceived my heart in this, and you may believe me sincerely, dear Sir, LETTER XXIII. FROM MR. HILL. Your, &c. Dec. 23, 1731. YOUR letter, dear Sir, which I have this moment received, occasions me a double pain. The fear which yours ends with, ought to give a beginning to mine; because I am too sincerely your friend not to feel myself first moved by what concerns you most nearly. I hope, however, your joy for that good lady's recovery, will be the next of your passions that will be touched upon this occasion. Concerning your Epistle, it is no wonder that the malice of a little herd of censurers, whom your wit has made your enemies, would awaken a resentment of more consequence than their own. They are glad to mistake, if they can make others mistake you: or, perhaps, they do not misunderstand you themselves, but are conscious they must seem to believe, what they would fix on the belief of others. I am doubtful which of these is the case, because I confess at the first and second reading, I was myself mistaken in your purpose, and fell into the general construction that has been put upon the character of Timon; but upon a more deliberate examination of the particulars, discerned those disagreeing circumstances which have been remarked for your justification with very good success in yesterday's Daily Journal, and the Daily Post-boy of Wednesday, by a hand most able to do you justice. That unguarded absence of caution, which is a mark |