mendation, as medicinal to every suffering parent, whom tenderness of heart may expose to the pitiable excesses of natural affliction.

If the English are inferior to other nations of the modern world, in the multitude of collected Letters, we may certainly produce single examples of exellence, not surpassed by foreigners, in Letters of diversified description.

In a consolatory Letter, Sir William Temple has no rival to apprehend: in a Letter of manly application to the mercy of a tyrant, (perhaps the kind of Letter, which it may be most difficult to write simply, and gracefully!) the poet Cleveland, addressing Oliver Cromwell, appears entitled to a similar encomium and for a Letter of laconic dignity, we may produce, without a fear of seeing her surpassed, the "high-born, and high-spirited Anne, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery."

:

Lord Bacon has expressed his very high esteem of epistolary writing in the following terms:-" Letters, such as are written from wise men, are, of all the words of men, in my judgment, the best." Yet this wonderful man is himself very far from appearing to such advantage in his Letters, as in his Moral Essays-the latter contain the pure essence of his powerful mind, the former are debased by the dregs of it: His Essays are an exquisite production of knowledge, wisdom, and piety-his Letters, a coarse tissue of artifice, adulation, and servility.

In a Letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Davies, who was gone to compliment James the First, on his accession to

the throne of England, Bacon says" I commend myself to

your love, and the well-using my name in imprinting a "good conceit and opinion of me, chiefly in the King-so "desiring you to be good to concealed Poets, I continue your "assured friend."

These remarkable words seem to imply that Bacon wished Davies to represent him to the King as privately devoted to poetry, and so he sometimes was. If he had this intention, it proves that he very early understood the various modes of obtaining favour with the new monarch, for when James saw Davies, he asked if he was Nosce teipsum, alluding to the title of his celebrated poem, and being informed that his new attendant was indeed the author of that admirable work, he gave him expectations of future promotion, which he soon fulfilled. There is a Letter of Bacon to James, on being created Viscount St. Albans, which enumerates the various favours he had received from that sovereign; but instead of displaying the genuine eloquence of manly gratitude, it contains a very poor conceit. Even in writing to the King's daughter, the Queen of Bohemia, on the occasion of presenting to her, his History of Henry the Seventh, Bacon is far from producing a graceful Letter.-But it is painful to dwell on the imperfections of so great a geniuslet us return to the moral poet, who described him truly and energetically, in a single verse.

One of the most interesting, and manly Letters, of the collection addressed to Pope, is the last of Arbuthnot's, containing the dying advice of that genuine, accomplished friend, to the too irritable poet. Pope, in his reply, assigns his reasons

for not adhering exactly to admonition, of which he acknowledges the kindness: but, as Warton has very justly observed, on the occasion, his reasons are not so solid as the admonition ; and indeed the poet's Letter is by no means so gracefully written, as that of the friendly physician, a man equally distinguished by the moral gaiety of his life, and by his serene preparation for death-a man so happily free from all flagrant misconduct, that his greatest fault seems to have been an inattention to the due preservation of his own admirable writings; for some of them, it is said, he suffered his children to destroy, in the shape of playthings.

Of Pope's Letters, taken altogether, it may be justly asserted, that they tend to confirm that brief, but honorable eulogy, which Bolingbroke, in a season of awful veracity, pathetically pronounced over his expiring friend: "O great God! what is

man -I never knew a person, that had so tender a heart for "his particular friends, or a warmer benevolence for all man"kind!"

Perhaps the most admirable of Pope's Letters is his farewell to Atterbury: it displays both the tenderness, and the dignity of true friendship; for the writer was perfectly sincere in his enthusiastic attachment both to Atterbury, and to Bolingbroke, two extraordinary men, whose social accomplishments were so powerfully brilliant, that they seem to have rendered the moral and penetrating poet absolutely blind to that pestilent ambition, which spotted the character both of the statesman and of the prelate.

Johnson speaks candidly of Pope in saying, " He is seen

in the collection of his Letters, as connected with the other contemporary wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the comparison." This is undoubtedly true in the important articles of strong sense, and lively fancy, but he frequently appears inferior to his correspondents in the lighter graces of epistolary language, particularly inferior to Bolingbroke, whose stile is remarkable for the happiest union of ease, vivacity, and vigor.

The Letters of Bolingbroke lately printed, (in Mr. Coxe's elaborate and candid Life of Sir Robert Walpole) from the Egremont Papers, are admirably written; and I may assist some future biographer of Bolingbroke by observing, that the private collection, from which the Letters I speak of, were selected, contains one very memorable Letter, though properly omitted by the historian of Walpole, as not connected with his design :-it is a Letter of great pathos and eloquence, dated Argeville, July 7, 1740, and addressed to the Son of Sir William Wyndham, on the death of his father; a Letter highly honorable to the writer, in the character of a friend!

Bolingbroke and Swift, have both spoken of the most eminent Letter-writers, in their correspondence with Pope; let us observe how each expresses himself on the talent, in which they both excelled..

"I believe" says Swift to Pope, (October 21, 1735,) "my Letters have escaped being published, because I writ no"thing but nature, and friendship, and particular incidents, "which could make no figure in writing: I have observed, that "not only Voiture, but likewise Tully, and Pliny, writ their "Letters for the public view, more than for the sake of their

"correspondents, and I am glad of it, on account of the enter"tainment they have given me."

"I seek no epistolary fame," says Bolingbroke, in the postscript of an earlier Letter from Pope to Swift, (April 14, 1730,) "but am a good deal pleased to think, that it will be "known hereafter, that you and I lived in the most friendly in"timacy together. Pliny writ his Letters for the public, so did "Seneca, so did Balzac, Voiture, &c. Tully did not; and "therefore these give us more pleasure, than any which have come down to us from antiquity. When we read them, we pry into a secret, which was intended to be kept from us-that "is a pleasure-we see Cato, and Brutus, and Pompey, and "others, such as they really were; and not such, as the gaping "multitude of their own age took them to be; or as historians "and poets have represented them to ours; that is another plea

sure. I remember to have seen a procession at Aix-la-Cha"pelle, wherein an image of Charlemagne is carried on the "shoulders of a man, who is hid by the long robe of the impe"rial saint; follow him into the vestry, you see the bearer slip "from under the robe, and the gigantic figure dwindles into an 66 image of the ordinary size, and is set by among other lum"ber."

The noble author has very happily illustrated his just idea, concerning the ostentatious display of public characters, imperfectly known; but the opposite intentions, which he ascribes to Cicero and to Pliny, concerning their Letters, were not, I apprehend, exactly the intentions of the two illustrious Romans, whose names have derived so much lustre from their