pertinence of weak admirers, the malice of low enemies, the avarice of mercenary booksellers, or the silly curiosity of people in general; you will confess I have small reason to indulge correspondences; in which too I want materials, as 1 live altogether out of town, and have abstracted my mind (I hope) to better things than common news. I wish my friends would send me back those forfeitures of my discretion, commit to my justice what I trusted only to their indulgence, and return me at the year's end those trifling letters, which can be to them but a day's amusement, but to me may prove a discredit as lasting and extensive, as the aforesaid weak admirers, mean enemies, mercenary scribblers, or curious simpletons, can make it. 1 come now to a particular you complain of, my not answering your question about some partypapers, and their authors. This indeed I could not tell you, because I never was, or will be privy to such papers: and if by accident, through my acquaintance with any of the writers, I had known a thing they concealed, I should certainly never be the reporter of it. For my waiting on you at your country-house, I have often wished it; it was my compliance to a superior duty that hindered me, and one which you are too good a Christian to wish I should have broken, having never ventured to leave my mother (at her great age) for more than a week, which is too little for such a journey. Upon the whole, I must acquit myself of any act or thought, in prejudice of the regard I owe you, as so long and obliging an acquaintance and correspondent. I am sure I have all the good wishes for yourself and your family that become a friend: there is no accident that can happen to your advantage, and no action that can redound to your credit, which I should not be ready to extol, or to rejoice in. And therefore I beg you to be assured, I am in disposition and will, though not so much as I would be in testimonies or writYour, &c. .ing, LETTERS TO AND FROM SEVERAL NOBLEMEN. LETTER I. TO LORD LANSDOWN.* Binfield, Jan. 10, 1712. I THANK you for having given my poem of Windsor Forest its greatest ornament, that of bearing your name in the front of it. It is one thing when a person of true merit permits us to have the honour of drawing him as like as we can; and another, when we make a fine thing at random, and persuade the next vain creature we can find that it is his own likeness; which is the case every day of my fellow-scribblers. Yet, my lord, this honour has given me no more pride than your honours have given you; but it af * George Granville, Lord Lansdown, to whom Pope inscribed his Windsor Forest, and whom he has celebrated also on other occasions : And knowing Walsh would tell me I could write." VOL. VIII. V. ante, vol. iii. p. 5, note. S |