your critical capacity, from the innocent air and tranquillity of our Forest, when you do me the favour to visit it. In the mean time, it would do well by way of preparative, if you would duly and constantly every morning read over a pastoral of Theocritus or Virgil; and let the lady Isabella put your Macrobius and Aulus Gellius somewhere out of your way, for a month or so. Who knows but travelling and long airing in an open field, may contribute more successfully to the cooling a critic's severity, than it did to the assuaging of Mr. Cheek's anger of old? In these fields, you will be secure of finding no enemy, but the most faithful and affectionate of your friends, etc. LETTER XIII. May 17, 1710. AFTER I had recovered from a dangerous illness, which was first contracted in town about a fortnight after my coming hither, I troubled you with a letter and paper inclosed which you had been so obliging as to desire a sight of when last I saw you, promising me in return some translations of yours from Ovid. Since when I have not had a syllable from your hands, so that 'tis to be feared that though I have escaped death, I have not oblivion. I should at least have expected you to have finished that elegy upon • Verses on Silence, in imitation of the Earl of Rochester's poem on Nothing; done at fourteen years old. P. me, which you told me you was upon the point of beginning when I was sick in London; if you will but do so much for me first, I will give you leave to forget me afterward; and for my own part will die at discretion, and at my leisure. But I fear I must be forced, like many learned authors, to write my own epitaph, if I would be remembered at all. Monsieur de la Fontaine's would fit me to a hair, but it is a kind of sacrilege (do you think it is not?) to steal epitaphs. In my present living dead condition nothing would be properer than Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis, but that unluckily I can't forget my friends, and the civilities I received from yourself, and some others. They say indeed 'tis one quality of generous minds to forget the obligation they have conferred, and perhaps too it may be so to forget those on whom they conferred 'em: then indeed I must be forgotten to all intents and purposes! I am, it must be owned, dead in a natural capacity, according to Mr. Bickerstaff; dead in a poetical capacity, as a damned author; and dead in a civil capacity, as a useless member of the Commonwealth. But reflect, dear Sir, what melancholy effects may ensue, if dead men are not civil to one another! If he who has nothing to do himself will not comfort and support another in his idleness: if those who are to die themselves, will not now and then pay the charity of visiting a tomb and a dead friend, and strowing a few flowers over him: in the shades where I am, the inhabitants have a mutual compassion for each other; being all alike Inanes; we saunter to one another's habitations, and daily assist each other in doing nothing at all. This I mention for your edification and example, that all alive as you are, you may not sometimes disdain-desipere in loco. Though you are no Papist, and have not so much regard to the dead as to address yourself to them, (which I plainly perceive by your silence,) yet I hope you are not one of those heterodox, who hold them to be totally insensible of the good offices and kind wishes of their living friends, and to be in a dull state of sleep without one dream of those they left behind them. If you are, let this letter convince you to the contrary, which assures you, I am still, though in a state of separation, Your, etc. P. S. This letter of deaths, puts me in mind of poor Mr. Betterton's1: over whom I would have this 'This excellent man, and excellent actor, hastened his death by repelling a fit of the gout, which he did to enable himself to act, for his own benefit, the part of Melantius, in the Maid's Tragedy. This was on the 25th of April 1710; and though he performed this his favourite part with great spirit, yet the distemper seized his head, and he died on the 28th of May following. The best paper that Steele wrote in the Tatler, No. 167, contains an account of his death, and the splendid ceremony of his interment in Westminster Abbey. Voltaire speaks in high terms of the good sense of the English in paying such honours to deceased actors; and seriously animadverts on his countrymen, for their bigoted and illiberal practice of even denying them Christian burial. Mr. Garrick merited, and obtained, the same funeral honours, and was followed to Westminster Abbey by a great concourse of those friends and spectators, whom he had so often moved and delighted. An old frequenter of the theatre informed me, that the last time Betterton appeared on the stage, the curiosity of the public was so much excited, that many spectators got into the playhouse by nine o'clock in the morning, and carried with them provisions for the day. Pire po Br. 2.14 sentence of Tully for an epitaph, which will serve him as well in his Moral, as his Theatrical capacity. Vitæ bene actæ jucundissima est recordatio. LETTER XIV. June 24, 1710. "Tis very natural for a young friend, and a young lover, to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them; when perhaps they, for their parts, had twenty other engagements before. This was my case when I wondered I did not hear from you; but I no sooner received your short letter, but I forgot your long silence: and so many fine things as you said of me could not but have wrought a cure on my own sickness, if it had not been of the nature of that which is deaf to the voice of the charmer. Twas impossible you could have better timed your compliment on my philosophy; it was certainly properest to commend me for it just when I most needed it, and when I could be least proud of it; that is, when I was in pain. 'Tis not easy to express what an exaltation it gave to my spirits, above all the cordials of my doctor; and 'tis no compliment to tell you, that your compliments were sweeter than the sweetest of his juleps and syrups. But if you will not believe so much, Pour le moins, votre compliment J'ai chassé mon apoticaire, Nevertheless I would not have you entirely lay aside the thoughts of my epitaph, any more than I do those of the probability of my becoming (ere long) the subject of one. For death has of late been very familiar with some of my size: I am told my Lord Lumley and Mr. Litton are gone before me; and though I may now, without vanity, esteem myself the least thing like a man in England, yet I can't but be sorry, two heroes of such a make should die inglorious in their beds; when it had been a fate more worthy our size, had they met with theirs from an irruption of cranes, or other warlike animals, those ancient enemies to our pygmæan ancestors! You of a superior species little regard what befals us homunciones sesquipedales; however, you have no reason to be so unconcerned, since all physicians agree there is no greater sign of a plague among men, than a mortality among frogs. I was the other day in company with a lady, who rallied my person so much, as to cause a total subversion of my countenance: some days after, to be revenged on her, I presented her, among other company, the following Rondeau on that occasion, which I desire you to show Sappho. You know where you did despise You know where. You, 'tis true, have fine black eyes, Is a thing of little size, You know where. |