nas is possible. Inform me also upon it terms I am to deal with the booker, and whether you design the copy ey for Gay, as you formerly talked; t number of books you would have Delf, &c. I scarce see anything to be red in this whole piece; in the poems sent I will take the liberty you allow The story of Pandora and the Eclogue Health are two of the most beauI things I ever read. I do not say this he prejudice of the rest, but as I have I these oftener. Let me know how my commission is to extend, and be vient of my punctual performance of tever you enjoin. I must add a parah on this occasion in regard to Mr. d, whose verses have been a great sure to me. I will contrive they shall > to the world, whenever I can find a er opportunity of publishing them. I shall very soon print an entire colon of my own madrigals, which I upon as making my last will and ment, since in it I shall give all I intend to give (which I'll beg yours he Dean's acceptance of). You must on me no more a poet, but a plain noner, who lives upon his own, and and flatters no man. I hope, before to discharge the debt I owe to er, and get upon the whole just fame gh to serve for an annuity for my time, though I leave nothing to rity.

beg our correspondence may be more ent than it has been of late. I am sure steem and love for you never more ved it from you, or more prompted n you. I desired our friend Jervas e greatest hurry of my business) to great deal in my name, both to elf and the Dean, and must once repeat the assurances to you both unchanging friendship and unaltersteem.-I am, dear sir, most entirely, affectionate, faithful, obliged friend ervant, "A. POPE."

om these letters to Parnell we may ude, as far as their testimony can go, he was an agreeable, a generous, and ere man. Indeed, he took care that iends should always see him to the

best advantage; for, when he found his fits of spleen and uneasiness, which sometimes lasted for weeks together, returning, he returned with all expedition to the remote parts of Ireland, and there made out a gloomy kind of satisfaction, in giving hideous descriptions of the solitude to which he retired. It is said of a famous painter, that, being confined in prison for debt, his whole delight consisted in drawing the faces of his creditors in caricatura. It was just so with Parnell. From many of his unpublished pieces which I have seen, and from others that have appeared, it would seem that scarcely a bog in his neighbourhood was left without reproach, and scarcely a mountain reared its head unsung. "I can easily," says Pope, in one of his letters, in answer to a dreary description of Parnell's,-"I can easily image to my thoughts the solitary hours of your eremitical life in the mountains, from some parallel to it in my own retirement at Binfield:" and in another place, "We are both miserably enough situated, God knows; but of the two evils, I think the solitudes of the South are to be preferred to the deserts of the West." this manner Pope answered him in the tone of his own complaints: and these descriptions of the imagined distress of his situation served to give him a temporary relief; they threw off the blame from himself, and laid upon fortune and accident a wretchedness of his own creating.

In

But though this method of quarreling in his poems with his situation served to relieve himself, yet it was not easily endured by the gentlemen in the neighbourhood, who did not care to confess themselves his fellow-sufferers. He received many

mortifications upon that account among them; for, being naturally fond of company, he could not endure to be without even theirs, which, however, among his English friends he pretended to despise. In fact, his conduct in this particular was rather splenetic than wise; he had either lost the art to engage, or did not employ his skill in securing those more permanent, though more humble, connections, and sacrificed for a month or two in England a whole year's happiness by his country fireside at home.

However, what he permitted the world to see of his life was elegant and splendid: his fortune (for a poet) was very considerable, and it may be easily supposed he lived to the very extent of it. The fact is, his expenses were greater than his income, and his successor found the estate somewhat impaired at his decease. As soon as ever he had collected in his annual revenues, he immediately set out for England, to enjoy the company of his dearest friends, and laugh at the more prudent world that were minding business and gaining money. The friends to whom during the latter part of his life he was chiefly attached were Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Jervas, and Gay. Among these he was particularly happy, his mind was entirely at ease, and gave a loose to every harmless folly that came uppermost. deed, it was a society in which, of all others, a wise man might be most foolish, without incurring any danger or contempt. Perhaps the reader will be pleased to see a letter to him from a part of this junto, as there is something striking even in the levities of genius. It comes from Gay, Jervas, Arbuthnot, and Pope, assembled at a chophouse near the Exchange, and is as follows:

In

"MY DEAR SIR,-I was last summer in Devonshire, and am this winter at Mrs. Bonyer's. In the summer I wrote a poem, and in the winter I have published it, which I have sent to you by Dr. Elwood. In the summer I ate two dishes of toadstools of my own gathering, instead of mushrooms; and in the winter I have been sick with wine, as I am at this time, blessed be God for it! as I must bless God for all things. In the summer I spoke truth to damsels; in the winter I told lies to ladies. Now you know where I have been, and what I have done, I shall tell you what I intend to do the ensuing summer: I propose to do the same thing I did last, which was to meet you in any part of England you would appoint; don't let me have two disappointments. I have longed to hear from you, and to that intent I teased you with three or four letters; but, having no answer, I feared both yours and my letters might have miscarried. I hope my per

formance will please the Dean, whom often wished for, and to whom I woul have often wrote, but for the same reason I neglected writing to you. I hope I not tell you how I love you, and how I shall be to hear from you, which, to the seeing you, would be the great satisfaction to your most affectionate tr and humble servant, "J. G.

"DEAR MR. ARCHDEACON,-The my proportion of this epistle should but a sketch in miniature, yet I take this half page, having paid my club wi the good company both for our dinner chops and for this paper. The poets wi give you lively descriptions in their wa I shall only acquaint you with that whi is directly my province. I have just s the last hand to a couplet, for sim call two nymphs in one piece. The a Pope's favourites, and though fes, y will guess must have cost me more i than any nymphs can be worth. : h been so unreasonable as to expect ar should have made them as beautim ap canvas, as he has done upon pe this same Mr. Pshould om for the dear frogs and the Fergus I must entreat you not to let me s for them, as I have done ever sathe crossed the seas: remember by wh lects, &c. we missed them when you, and therefore I have not yet kive any of those triflers that let the and run those hazards. I am the old rate, and want you and th prodigiously, and am in hopes of nak you a visit this summer, and of from you both, now you are he Fortescue, I am sure, will be o that he is not in Cornhill, to set th to these presents, not only as a s but as a serviteur très humble,

"C. JERYS

"It is so great an honour to 17 Scotchman to be remembered at th of day, especially by an inhabitar Glacialis Ierne, that I take it very r fully, and have, with my good t remembered you at our table in the house in Exchange Alley. There nothing to complete our happine

* company, and our dear friend the n's. I am sure the whole entertaint would have been to his relish. Gay got so much money by his Art of king the Streets, that he is ready to ip his equipage; he is just going to ank to negotiate some exchange bills. Pope delays his second volume of his ner till the martial spirit of the rebels ate quelled, it being judged that the part did some harm that way. Our again and again to the dear Dean. us Tories, I can say no more.

"ARBUTHNOT."

When a man is conscious that he does od himself, the next thing is to cause s to do some. I may claim some this way, in hastening this testial from your friends above writing: love to you indeed wants no spur, ink wants no pen, their pen wants ind, their hand wants no heart, and rth (after the manner of Rabelais, 1 is betwixt some meaning and no ing); and yet it may be said, when at thought and opportunity is wantheir pens want ink, their hands want their hearts want hands, &c. till place, and conveniency concur to em writing, as at present a sociable ng, a good dinner, warm fire, and sy situation do, to the joint labour leasure of this epistle.

Wherein if I should say nothing I I say much (much being included y love), though my love be such, if I should say much, I should yet tothing, it being (as Cowley says) ly impossible either to conceal or to

ss it.

f I were to tell you the thing I wish all things, it is to see you again; ext is to see here your treatise of s, with the Batrachomuomachia, he Pervigilium Veneris, both which 5 are masterpieces in several kinds; question not the prose is as excelits sort as the Essay on Homer. ing can be more glorious to that author, than that the same hand aised his best statue, and decked it its old laurels, should also hang up arecrow of his miserable critic, and

gibbet up the carcass of Zoilus, to the terror of the witlings of posterity. More, and much more, upon this and a thousand other subjects, will be the matter of my next letter, wherein I must open all the friend to you. At this time I must be content with telling you I am faithfully your most affectionate and humble servant,

"A. POPE."

If we regard this letter with a critical eye, we must find it indifferent enough; if we consider it as a mere effusion of friendship, in which every writer contended in affection, it will appear much to the honour of those who wrote it. To be mindful of an absent friend in the hours of mirth and feasting, when his company is least wanted, shows no slight degree of sincerity. Yet probably there was still another motive for writing thus to him in conjunction. The above-named, together with Swift and Parnell, had some time before formed themselves into a society, called the Scribblerus Club, and I should suppose they commemorated him thus, as being an absent member.

It is past a doubt that they wrote many things in conjunction, and Gay usually held the pen. And yet I do not remember any productions which were the joint effort of this society as doing it honour. There is something feeble and quaint in all their attempts, as if company repressed thought, and genius wanted solitude for its boldest and happiest exertions. Of those productions in which Parnell had a principal share, that of the Origin of the Sciences from the Monkeys in Ethiopia is particularly mentioned by Pope himself, in some manuscript anecdotes which he left behind him. The Life of Homer also, prefixed to the translation of the Iliad, is written by Parnell, and corrected by Pope; and, as that great poet assures us in the same place, this correction was not effected without great labour. "It is still stiff," says he, and was written still stiffer; as it is, I verily think it cost me more pains in the correcting, than the writing it would have done." All this may be easily credited; for every thing of Parnell's that has appeared in prose is written in a very awkward, inelegant