LETTERS

TO AND FROM

H. CROMWELL, ESQ.

LETTER I.

TO MR. CROMWELL.

March 18, 1708.

I BELIEVE it was with me when I left the town, as it is with a great many men when they leave the world, whose loss itself they do not so much regret, as that of their friends whom they leave behind in it. For I do not know one thing for which I can envy London, but for your continuing there. Yet I guess you will expect me to recant this expression, when I tell you that Sappho (by which heathenish name you have christened a very orthodox lady*) did not accompany me into the country. Well, you have your lady in the. town still, and I have my heart in the country still, which being wholly unemployed as yet, has the more room in it for my friends, and does not want a corner at your service. You have extremely obliged me by your frankness and kind* Probably Mrs. Eliz. Thomas.

ness; and, if I have abused it by too much freedom on my part, I hope you will attribute it to the natural openness of my temper, which hardly knows how to shew respect, where it feels affection. I would love my friend, as my mistress, without ceremony: and hope a little rough usage sometimes may not be more displeasing to the one, than it is to the other.

If you have any curiosity to know in what manner I live, or rather lose a life, Martial will inform you in one line:

Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lego, cœno, quiesco.

Every day with me is literally another yesterday, for it is exactly the same. It has the same business, which is poetry, and the same pleasure, which is idleness. A man might indeed pass his time much better, but I question if any man could pass it much easier. If you will visit our shades this spring, which I very much desire, you may perhaps instruct me to manage my game more wisely; but at present I am satisfied to trifle away my time any way, rather than let it stick by me; as shop-keepers are glad to be rid of those goods at any rate, which would otherwise always be lying upon their hands.

you

Sir, if will favour me sometimes with your letters, it will be a great satisfaction to me on several accounts; and on this in particular, that it will show me (to my comfort) that even a wise man is sometimes very idle; for so you must needs be when you can find leisure to write to Your, &c.

LETTER II.

TO MR. CROMWELL.

April 27, 1708.

I

HAVE nothing to say to you in this letter; but I was resolved to write to tell you so. Why should not I content myself with so many great examples of deep divines, profound casuists, grave philosophers, who have written, not letters only, but whole tomes and voluminous treatises about nothing? Why should a fellow like me, who all his life does -nothing, be ashamed to write nothing; and that to one who has nothing to do but to read it? But perhaps you will say, the whole world has something to do, something to talk of, something to wish for, something to be employed about: but pray, Sir, cast up the account, put all these somethings together, and what is the sum total but just nothing? I have no more to say, but to desire you to give my service (that is nothing) to your friends, and to believe that I am nothing more than

Your, &c.

Ex nihilo nil fit.

LUCR.

LETTER III.

TO MR. CROMWELL.

May 10, 1708.

You talk of fame and glory, and of the great men of antiquity: pray, tell me, what are all your great dead men, but so many little living letters? What a vast reward is here for all the ink wasted by writers, and all the blood spilt by princes? There was in old time one-Severus, a Roman Emperor. I dare say you never called him by any other name in your life: and yet in his days he was styled Lucius, Septimius, Severus, Pius, Pertinax, Augustus, Parthicus, Adiabenicus, Arabicus, Maximus, and what not? What a prodigious waste of letters has time made! what a number have here dropt off, and left the poor surviving seven unattended! For my own part, four are all I have to take care for; and I will be judged by you if any man could live in less compass. Well, for the future I will drown all high thoughts in the Lethe of cowslip-wine: as for fame, renown, reputation, take them, critics!

Tradam protervis in mare criticum

Ventis.

If ever I seek for immortality here, may I be damned, for there's not so much danger in a poet's being damned:

Damnation follows death in other men,

But your damn'd poet lives and writes again.

LETTER IV.

TO MR. CROMWELL.

Nov. 1, 1708,

I HAVE been so well satisfied with the country ever since I saw you, that I have not once thought of the town, or inquired of any one in it besides Mr. Wycherley and yourself. And from him I understand of your journey this summer into Leicestershire; from whence 1 guess you are returned by this time, to your old apartment in the widow's corner, to your old business of comparing critics, and reconciling commentators, and to your old diversions of a losing game at piquet with the ladies, and half a play, or a quarter of a play at the theatre: where you are none of the malicious audience, but the chief of amorous spectators; and for the infirmity of one sense,* which there, for the most part, could only serve to disgust you, enjoy the vigour of another, which ravishes you.

[You know, when one sense is suppress'd,+

It but retires into the rest.

according to the poetical, not the learned, Dod

+ Omitted by the author in his own edition.

Pope.

Alluding to Mr. Henry Dodwell, the celebrated nonjuror, a man of very great and extensive learning, author of the Dissertations on Cyprian, Irenæus, of the Annals of Dionysius Halicarnassus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Velleius Paterculus, of a curious volume of Camdenian Lectures, and the Greek and Roman Cycles, of a Dissertation on the Paucity of Martyrs in the Pri