you see, which makes peace in Westminster-Hall, makes it likewise in the camp or field, throughout the world. Peace then be to you, and to me, who am now grown peaceful, and will have no contest with any man, but him who says he is more your friend or humble servant, than Your, &c. LETTER XX. TO MR. WYCHERLEY. May 20, 1709. I AM glad you received the Miscellany,* if it were only to shew you that there are as bad poets in this nation as your servant. This modern custom of appearing in miscellanies, is very useful to the poets, who, like other thieves, escape by getting into a crowd, and herd together like banditti, safe only in their multitude. Methinks Strada has given a good description of these kind of collections: Nullus hodie mortalium aut nascitur, aut moritur, aut præliatur, aut rusticatur, aut abit peregrè, aut redit, aut nubit, aut est, aut non est, (nam etiam mortuis isti canunt) cui non illi extemplò cudant Epicadia, Genethliaca, Protreptica, Panegyrica, Epithalamia, Vaticinia, Propemptica, Soterica, Parænetica, Nanias, Nugas. As to the success, which, you say, my part has met with, it is to be attributed to what you ⚫ Jacob Tonson's sixth volume of Miscellany Poems. Pope. was pleased to say of me to the world; which you do well to call your prophecy, since whatever is said in my favour, must be a prediction of things that are not yet; you, like a true godfather, engage on my part for much more than ever I can perform. My pastoral muse, like other country girls, is but put out of countenance, by what you courtiers say to her; yet I hope you would not deceive me too far, as knowing that a young scribbler's vanity needs no recruits from abroad: for Nature, like an indulgent mother, kindly takes care to supply her sons with as much of their own, as is necessary for their satisfaction. If my verses should meet with a few flying commendations, Virgil has taught me, that a young author has not too much reason to be pleased with them, when he considers that the natural consequence of praise is envy and calumny : - Si ultra placitum laudarit, baccare frontem When once a man has appeared as a poet, he may bare saving game, without being thought an eminent hand (with which title Jacob has graciously dignified his adventurers and volunteers in poetry.) Jacob creates poets, as kings sometimes do knights, not for their honour, but for their money. Certainly he ought to be esteemed a worker of miracles, who is grown rich by poetry. What authors lose, their booksellers have won ; I am your, etc. LETTER XXI. FROM MR. WYCHERLEY. May 26, 1709. THE last I received from you was dated the 22d of May. I take your charitable hint to me very kindly, wherein you do, like a true friend, and a true christian, and I shall endeavour to follow your advice, as well as your example.—As for your wishing to see your friend a hermit with you, I cannot be said to leave the world, since I shall enjoy in your conversation all that I can desire of it; nay, can learn more from you alone, than from my long experience of the great, or little vulgar in it. As to the success of your poems in the late Miscellany, which I told you of in my last, upon my word I made you no compliment, for you may be assured that all sort of readers like them, except they are writers too; but for them (I must needs say) the more they like them, they ought to be the less pleased with them: so that you do not come off with a bare saving game (as you call it) but have gained so much credit at first, that you must needs support it to the last: since you set up with so great a stock of good sense, judgment, and wit, that your judgment ensures all that your wit ventures at. The salt of your wit has been enough to give a relish to the whole insipid hotch-potch it is mingled with; and you will make Jacob's ladder* raise you to immortality, by which others are turned off shamefully to their damnation (for poetic thieves as they are), who think to be saved by others good works, how faulty soever their own are but the coffee-house wits, or rather anti-wits, the critics, prove their judgments by approving your wit; and even the news-mongers and poets will own you have more invention than they; nay, the detractors or the envious, who never speak well of any body (not even of those they think well of) in their absence, yet will give you even in your absence their good word; and the critics only hate you, for being forced to speak well of you whether they will or no. All this is true upon the word of Your, &c. * If any thing profane can be witty, this allusion is so; but Boileau would never allow that such an union was possible. Jacob Tonson, whose Miscellany is here meant, was Dryden's favourite printer. Warton. LETTER XXII. FROM MR. WYCHERLEY. Aug. 11, 1709. My letters, so much inferior to yours, can only make up their scarcity of sense by their number of lines, which is like the Spaniards paying a debt of gold with a load of brass money. But to be a Plain Dealer,* I must tell you, I will revenge the raillery of your letters by printing them (as Dennis did mine t); without your knowledge too, which would be a revenge upon your judgment for the raillery of your wit; for some dull rogues (that is, the most in the world) might be such fools as to think what you said of me was in earnest: It is not the first time your great wits have gained reputation by their paradoxical or ironical praises; your forefathers have done it, Erasmus and others. For all mankind who know me must confess, he must be no ordinary genius, or little friend, who can find out any thing to commend in me seriously; who have given no sign of my judgment but my opinion of yours, nor mark of my wit, but my leaving off writing to the public now * Alluding to his own play, so called. Bowles. + Dennis published his correspondence with Wycherley, Dryden, Congreve, &c. These letters may be found in the second volume of Tom Brown. What is singular, Dryden speaks of Dennis as the only person who could write a Pindaric ode! Bowles. |