LETTER XVI.

TO DR. ARBUTHNOT.

September 10.

I AM glad your travels delighted you; improve you, I am sure, they could not; you are not so much a youth as that, though you run about with a King of sixteen, and, (what makes him still more a child) a King of Frenchmen. My own time has been more melancholy, spent in attendance upon death, which has seized one of our family: my mother is something better, though at her advanced age every day is a climacteric. There was joined to this an indisposition of my own, which I ought to look upon as a slight one compared with my mother's, because my life is not of half the consequence to any body that her's is to me. All these incidents have hindered my more speedy reply to your obliging letter.

The article you enquire of, is of as little concern to me as you desire it should; namely the railing papers about the Odyssey. If the book has merit, it will extinguish all such nasty scandal; as the Sun puts an end to stinks, merely by coming out.

I wish I had nothing to trouble me more; an honest mind is not in the power of any dishonest one. To break its peace, there must be some guilt or consciousness, which is inconsistent with its own principles. Not but malice and injustice have their day, like some poor short-lived vermin that die in shooting

their own stings. Falsehood is Folly (says Homer), and liars and culumniators at last hurt none but themselves, even in this world in the next, 'tis charity to say, God have mercy on them! they were the devil's vicegerents upon earth, who is the father of lies, and, I fear, has a right to dispose of his children.

I have had occasion to make these reflections of late more justly than from any thing that concerns my writings, for it is one that concerns my morals, and (which I ought to be as tender of as my own) the good character of another very innocent person, who I am sure shares your friendship no less than I do. No creature has better natural dispositions, or would act more right or reasonably in every duty, did she act by herself, or from herself; but you know it is the misfortune of that family to be governed like a ship, I mean the Head guided by the Tail, and that by every wind that blows in it.

LETTER XVII.

MR. POPE TO THE EARL OF OXFORD.

MY LORD,

October 21, 1721.

YOUR Lordship may be surprized at the liberty I take in writing to you; though you will allow me al

If he had not been released from his imprisonment in the Tower, and had been brought to a trial, he would have produced strong and undeniable proofs, that many of his persecutors, particularly the D. of M-h, were engaged in intrigues with the

ways to remember, that you once permitted me that honour in conjunction with some others who better deserved it. I hope you will not wonder I am still desirous to have you think me your grateful and faithful servant; but I own, I have an ambition yet farther, to have others think me so, which is the occasion I give your Lordship the trouble of this. Poor Parnelle, before he died, left me the charge of publishing these few remains of his: I have a strong desire to make them, their author, and their publisher, more considerable, by addressing and dedicating them all to you. There is a pleasure in bearing testimony to truth, and a vanity perhaps, which at least is as excusable as any vanity can be. I beg you, my Lord, to allow me to gratify it in prefixing this paper of honest verses to the book. I send the book itself, which I dare say you'll receive more satisfaction in perusing, than you can from any thing written upon the subject of yourself. Therefore I am a good deal in doubt whether you will care for such an addition to it. All I shall say for it is, that it is the only dedication I ever writ, and shall be the only one, whether you accept of it or not: for I will not bow the knee to a less man than my Lord Oxford, and I expect to see no greater in my time9.

Pretender and his party. His friends had in their custody a letter that irrefragably would have proved this fact, which they shewed to the Dutchess. Lord Oxford was released soon after this letter had been shewn to her.

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Bolingbroke had a very different, and indeed unjust, opinion of Lord Oxford, whom he calls, a man of whom Nature meant to make a spy, or, at most, a captain of miners; and whom Fortune, in one of her whimsical moods, made a General." This

After all, if your Lordship will tell my Lord Harley that I must not do this, you may depend upon a suppression of these verses (the only copy whereof I send you); but you never shall suppress that great, sincere, and entire respect, with which I am always, My Lord,

Your, etc.

SIR,

LETTER XVIII.

THE EARL OF OXFORD TO MR. POPE.

Brampton-Castle, Nov. 6, 1721.

I RECEIVED your packet, which could not but give me great pleasure, to see you preserve an old friend in your memory; for it must needs be very agreeable to be remembered by those we highly value. But then how much shame did it cause me, when I read your very fine verses enclosed? My mind reproached me how far short I came of what your great friendship and delicate pen would partially describe

me.

You ask my consent to publish it: to what straits doth this reduce me? I look back indeed to those evenings I have usefully and pleasantly spent, with Mr. Pope, Mr. Parnelle, Dean Swift, the Doctor, etc. I should be glad the world knew You admitted me to your friendship, and since your affection is too

was written in a letter to Swift, 1719. And the words must have been mortifying to Swift, who thought highly of Lord Oxford's abilities.

hard for your Judgment, I am contented to let the world know how well Mr. Pope can write upon a barren subject. I return you an exact copy of the verses, that I may keep the Original, as a testimony of the only error you have been guilty of. I hope very speedily to embrace you in London, and to assure you of the particular esteem and friendship wherewith I am

Your, etc.

SIR,

LETTER XIX.

TO MR. HOLDSWORTH'.

Twitenham, Dec. 1737. As I am not so happy (though I have long desired it) to be known to you otherwise than in my poetical capacity, so you will see, it is in the merit of that only that I take the liberty of applying to you, in what I think the cause of poetry. I understand that the Poetry-Professorship in Oxford will be vacant, and that Mr. Harte, of St. Mary Hill, is willing to succeed in it. I think it a condescension in one who practises the art of poetry so well, to stoop to be a critick, and hope the University will do itself the credit to accept of him. Your interest is what I would beg for him as a favour to myself. You, who have used the Muses so ill as to cast them off when they

1 Author of Muscipule.