LETTER XXVII.

TO MR. CONGREVE.

January 16, 1714-15.

METHINKS when I write to you, I am making a confession; I have got (I can't tell how) such a custom of throwing myself out upon paper without reserve. You were not mistaken in what you judged

of

my temper of mind when I writ last. My faults will not be hid from you, and perhaps it is no dispraise to me that they will not: the cleanness and purity of one's mind is never better proved, than in discovering its own fault at first view; as when a stream shews the dirt at its bottom, it shews also the transparency of the water.

My spleen was not occasioned, however, by any thing an abusive angry critic could write of me. I take very kindly your heroic manner of congratulation upon this scandal; for I think nothing more honourable than to be involved in the same fate with all the great and the good that ever lived; that is, to be envied and censured by bad writers.

You do more than answer my expectations of you, in declaring how well you take my freedom, in sometimes neglecting, as I do, to reply to your letters so soon as I ought. Those who have a right taste of the substantial part of friendship, can wave the ceremonial a friend is the only one that will bear the omission; an one may find who is not so by the very trial of it.

As to any anxiety I have concerning the fate of my Homer, the care is over with me: the world must be the judge, and I shall be the first to consent to the justice of its judgment, whatever it be. I am not so arrant an author as even to desire, that if I am in the wrong, all mankind should be so.

I am mightily pleased with a saying of Monsieur Tourreil; "when a man writes he ought to animate himself with the thoughts of pleasing all the world : but he is to renounce that desire or hope, the very moment the book goes out of his hands."

I write this from Binfield, whither I came yesterday, having passed a few days in my way with my Lord Bolingbroke; I go to London in three days time, and will not fail to pay a visit to Mr. Mwhom I saw not long since at my Lord Hallifax's. I hoped from thence he had some hopes of advantage from the present administration: for few people (I think) but I, pay respects to great men without any prospects. I am in the fairest way in the world of being not worth a groat, being born both a Papist and a Poet. This puts me in mind of re-acknowledging your continued endeavours to enrich me. But, I can tell you, 'tis to no purpose, for without the Opes, æquum mi animum ipse parabo.

LETTER XXVIII.

TO MR. CONGREVE.

March, 19, 1714-15.

THE Farce of the What-d'ye-call-it' has occasioned many different speculations in the town. Some looked upon it as a mere jest upon the Tragic poets, others as a satire upon the late War. Mr. Cromwell hearing none of the words, and seeing the action to be tragical, was much astonished to find the audience laugh; and says the Prince and Princess must doubtless be under no less amazement on the same account. Several templars and others of the more vociferous kind of critics, went with a resolution to hiss, and confessed they were forced to laugh so much, that they forgot the design they came with. The Court in general has in a very particular manner come into the jest, and the three first nights (notwithstanding two of them were court-nights) were distinguished by very full audiences of the first Quality. The common people of the pit and gallery received it at first with great gravity and sedateness, some few with tears; but after the third day they also took the hint, and have ever since been very loud in their claps. There are still some sober men who cannot be of the general opinion; but the laughers are so much the majority, that one or two critics seem determined to undeceive the town at their proper cost, by

• Written by Mr. Gay. W.

sorry

writing grave dissertations against it; to encourage them in which laudable design, it is resolved a Preface shall be prefixed to the Farce, in vindication of the nature and dignity of this new way of writing. Yesterday Mr. Steele's affair was decided I am I can be of no other opinion than yours1, as to his whole carriage and writings of late. But certainly he has not only been punished by others, but suffered much even from his own party in the point of character, nor (I believe) received any amends in that of interest, as yet, whatever may be his prospects for the future.

This gentleman, among a thousand others, is a great instance of the fate of all who are carried away by party-spirit, of any side. I wish all violence may succeed as ill: but am really amazed that so much of that sour and pernicious quality should be joined with so much natural good humour as, I think, Mr. Steele is possessed of.

LETTER XXIX.

TO MR. CONGREVE.

I

am, etc.

April 7, 1715.

MR. POPE is going to Mr. Jervas's, where Mr. Addison is sitting for his picture; in the mean time, amidst clouds of tobacco at a coffee-house, I write

1 Hence it appears that Congreve was candid and moderate in his political opinions.

this letter. There is a grand revolution at Will's; Morrice has quitted for a coffee-house in the city, and Titcomb is restored, to the great joy of Cromwell, who was at a great loss for a person to converse with upon the fathers and church-history; the knowledge I gain from him is entirely in painting and poetry; and Mr. Pope owes all his skill in astronomy to him and Mr. Whiston, so celebrated of late for his discovery of the longitude in an extraordinary copy of verses. Mr. Rowe's Jane Gray is to be played in Easter-week, when Mrs. Oldfield is to personate a character directly opposite to female nature; for what woman ever despised Sovereignty? You know Chaucer has a tale where a knight saves his head, by discovering it was the thing which all women most coveted. Mr. Pope's Homer is retarded by the great rains that have fallen of late, which causes the sheets to be long a drying: this gives Mr. Lintot great uneasiness, who is now endeavouring to corrupt the Curate of his parish to pray for fair weather, that his work may go on. There is a six-penny Criticism lately published upon the tragedy of the What-d'ye-call-it, wherein he with much judgment and learning calls me a blockhead, and Mr. Pope a knave. His grand charge is against the Pilgrim's Progress being read, which he says, is directly levelled at Cato's reading Plato; to back this censure,

2 Called, An Ode on the Longitude, in Swift and Pope's Miscellanies. P.

A very flat and feeble attack truly, on a man respectable for integrity, simplicity of manners, and extensive learning, though his opinions may be erroneous!