LETTERS

TO AND FROM

MR. GAY,

From the Year 1712 to 1732.

LETTER I.

Binfield, Nov. 13, 1712.

You writ me a very kind letter some months ago, and told me you were then upon the point of taking a journey into Devonshire. That hindered my answering you, and I have since several times inquired of you, without any satisfaction; for so I call the knowledge of your welfare, or of any thing that concerns you. I passed two months in Sussex, and since my return have been again very ill. I writ to Lintot in hopes of hearing of you, but had no answer to that point. Our friend Mr. Cromwell too has been silent all this year; I believe he has been displeased at some or other of my freedoms, which I very innocently take, and most with those I think most my friends. But this I know nothing of; perhaps he may have opened to you; and if I know you right,

We see by the letters to Mr. Cromwell, that Mr. Pope was wont to rally him on his turn for trifling and pedantic criticism. So he lost his two early friends, Cromwell and Wycherley, by his zeal to correct the bad poetry of the one, and the bad taste of the other. W.

you are of a temper to cement friendships, and not
to divide them. I really much love Mr. Cromwell,
and have a true affection for yourself, which, if I
had any interest in the world, or power with those
who have, I should not be long without manifesting
to you.
I desire you will not, either out of modesty,
or a vicious distrust of another's value for you (those
two eternal foes to merit), imagine that your letters
and conversation are not always welcome to me.
There is no man more entirely fond of good-nature
or ingenuity than myself, and I have seen too much
of those qualities in you to be any thing less than
Your, etc.

LETTER II.

Dec. 24, 1712.

IT has been my good fortune within this month past to hear more things that have pleased me than (I think) almost in all my time beside. But nothing upon thy word has been so home-felt a satisfaction as the news you tell me of yourself: and you are not in the least mistaken, when you congratulate me upon your own good success: for I have more people out of whom to be happy, than ill-natured man can boast of. I may with honesty affirm to you, that notwithstanding the many inconveniencies and disadvantages they commonly talk of in the res angusta domi, I have never found any other, than the inability of giving people of merit the only certain proof of our value for them, in doing them some real service. For after

any

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all, if we could but think a little, self-love might make us philosophers, and convince us quantuli indiget Natura! Ourselves are easily provided for; 'tis nothing but the circumstantials, and the Apparatus or equipage of human life, that costs so much the furnishing. Only what a luxurious man wants for horses and footmen, a good-natured man wants for his friends or the indigent.

I shall see you this winter with much greater pleasure than I could the last; and, I hope, as much of your time, as your attendance on the Dutchess' will allow you to spare to any friend, will not be thought lost upon one who is as much so as any man. I must also put you in mind, though you are now Secretary to this Lady, that you are likewise Secretary to nine other Ladies, and are to write sometimes for them too. He who is forced to live wholly upon those Ladies' favours is indeed in as precarious a condition as any He who does what Chaucer says for sustenance; but they are very agreeable companions, like other Ladies, when a man only passes a night or so with them at his leisure, and away. I am

Your, etc.

LETTER III.

Aug. 23, 1713.

JUST as I received yours, I was set down to write with some shame that I had so long deferred

to you,

* Dutchess of Monmouth, to whom he was just then made Secretary. P.

it. But I can hardly repent my neglect, when it gives me the knowledge how little you insist upon ceremony, and how much a greater share in your memory I have, than I deserve. I have been near a week in London, where I am like to remain, till I become, by Mr. Jervas's help, Elegans Formarum Spectator. I begin to discover beauties that were till now imperceptible to me. Every corner of an eye, or turn of a nose or ear, the smallest degree of light or shade on a cheek, or in a dimple, have charms to distract me. I no longer look upon Lord Plausible as ridiculous, for admiring a Lady's fine tip of an ear and pretty elbow (as the Plain Dealer has it), but am in some danger even from the ugly and disagreeable, since they may have their retired beauties in one trait or other about them. You may guess in how uneasy a state I am, when every day the performances of others appear more beautiful and excellent, and my own more despicable. I have thrown away three Dr. Swifts, each of which was once my vanity, two Lady Bridgwaters, a Dutchess of Montague, besides half a dozen Earls, and one Knight of the Garter. I have crucified Christ over-again in effigie, and made a Madona as old as her mother St. Anne. Nay, what is yet more miraculous, I have rivalled St. Luke himself in painting, and as, 'tis said, an angel came and finished his piece, so, you would swear, a devil put the last hand to mine, 'tis so begrim'd and smutted. However I comfort myself with a Christian reflection, that I have not broken the commandment, for my pictures are not the likeness of any thing in heaven above, or in earth below, or

in the water under the earth. Neither will any body adore or worship them, except the Indians should have a sight of them, who, they tell us, worship certain idols purely for there ugliness.

I am very much recreated and refreshed with the news of the advancement of the Fans, which, I doubt not, will delight the eye and sense of the fair, as long as that agreeable machine shall play in the hands of posterity. I am glad your fan is mounted so soon, but I would have you varnish and glaze it at your leisure, and polish the sticks as much as you You may then cause it to be borne in the hands of both sexes, no less in Britain, than it is in China; where it is ordinary for a Mandarine to fan himself cool after a debate, and a Statesman to hide his face. with it when he tells a grave lie.

can.

LETTER IV.

I am, etc.

DEAR MR. GAY, Sept. 23, 1714. WELCOME to your native soil! welcome to your friends! thrice welcome to me! whether returned in glory, blest with court-interest, the love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agreeable hopes; or melancholy with dejection, contemplative of the

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A Poem of Mr. Gay's, so entitled, not very striking or interesting.

" In the beginning of this year Mr. Gay went over to Hanover with the Earl of Clarendon, who was sent thither by Q. Anne. On her death they returned to England: and it was on this occasion that Mr. Pope met him with this friendly welcome. W.