ambition of having it known that you are my friend, I shall be very proud of showing it by this or any other instance. I question not but your translation will enrich our tongue, and do honour to our country; for I conclude of it already from these performances with which you have obliged the public. I would only have you consider how it may most turn to your advantage. Excuse my impertinence in this particular, which proceeds from my zeal for your ease and happiness. The work would cost you a great deal of time, and, unless you undertake it, will, I am afraid, never be executed by any other; at least I know none of this age that is equal to it beside yourself.

I am at present wholly immersed in country business, and begin to take delight in it. I wish I might hope to see you here some time; and will not despair of it when you engage in a work that will require solitude and retirement. I am your, &c.

LETTER XXXVI.

MR. POPE TO MR. ADDISON.

Oct. 10, 1714.

I HAVE been acquainted by one of my friends, who omits no opportunities of gratifying me, that you have lately been pleased to speak of me in a manner which nothing but the real respect I have for you can deserve. May I hope that some late malevolencies have lost their effect? Indeed it is neither for me nor my enemies, to pretend to tell

you whether I am your friend or not; but if you would judge by probabilities, I beg to know which of your poetical acquaintance has so little interests in pretending to be so? Methinks no man should question the real friendship of one who desires no real service. I am only to get as much from the whigs as I got from the tories, that is to say, civility, being neither so proud as to be insensible of any good office, nor so humble as not to dare heartily to despise any man who does me an injustice.

I will not value myself upon having ever guarded all the degrees of respect for you: for (to say the truth) all the world speaks well of you, and I should be under a necessity of doing the same, whether I cared for you or not.

As to what you have said of me, I shall never believe that the author of Cato can speak one thing and think another. As a proof that I account you sincere, I beg a favour of you: it is, that you would look over the two first books of my translation of Homer, which are in the hands of my lord Halifax. I am sensible how much the reputation of any poetical work will depend upon the character you give it: it is therefore some evidence of the trust I repose in your good-will, when I give you this opportunity of speaking ill of me with justice; and yet expect you will tell me your truest thoughts, at the same time that you tell others your most favourable ones.

I have a further request, which I must press with earnestness. My bookseller is reprinting the Essay on Criticism, to which you have done too much honour in your Spectator of No. 253. The

period in that paper where you say, "I have admitted some strokes of ill-nature into that Essay," ,"is the only one I could wish omitted of all you have written; but I would not desire it should be so, unless I had the merit of removing your objection. I beg you but to point out those strokes to me, and you may be assured they shall be treated without mercy.

Since we are upon proofs of sincerity (which I am pretty confident will turn to the advantage of us both in each other's opinion) give me leave to name another passage in the same Spectator, which I wish you would alter. It is where you mention an observation upon Homer's verses of Sisyphus's stone, as never having been made before by any of the critics. I happened to find the same in Dionysius of Halicarnassus's treatise, Пgl συνθέσεωςόνοματων, who treats very largely upon these verses. I know you will think fit to soften your expression when you see the passage, which you must needs have read, though it be since slipped out of your memory. I am, with the utmost esteem, your, &c.

LETTER XXXVII.

MR. POPE TO THE HONOURABLE

July 13, 1714. I CANNOT tell from any thing in your letter, whether you received a long one from me about a fortnight since. It was principally intended to thank you for the last obliging favour you did me;

and perhaps for that reason you pass it in silence. I there launched into some account of my temporal affairs; and I intend now to give you some hints of my spiritual. The conclusion of your letter, in which you tell me you prayed for me, draws this upon me. Nothing can be more kind than the hint you give me of the vanity of human sciences, which, I assure you, I am daily more convinced of; and indeed I have, for some years past, looked upon all of them as no better than amusements. To make them the ultimate end of our pursuit, is a miserable and short ambition, which will drop from us at every little disappointment here; and even, in case of no disappointments here, will infallibly desert us hereafter. The utmost fame they are capable of bestowing, is never worth the pains they cost us, and the time they lose us. If you attain the summit of your desires that way, those who envy you will do you harm; and of those who admire you, few will do you good. And at the upshot, after a life of perpetual application, you reflect that you have been doing nothing for yourself: and that the same or less industry might have gained you a friendship, that can never deceive or end; a satisfaction, which praise cannot bestow, nor vanity feel; and a glory, which though, in one respect like fame, not to be had till after death, yet shall be felt and enjoyed to eternity. These, dear sir, are unfeignedly my sentiments, whenever I think at all: for half the things that employ our heads deserve not the name of thoughts; they are only stronger dreams of impressions upon the imagination. Our schemes of government, our systems

of philosophy, our golden worlds of poetry, are all but so many shadowy images, and airy prospects, which arise to us so much the livelier and more frequent, as we are more overcast with the darkness, and disturbed with the fumes, of human vanity.

The same thing that makes old men willing to leave this world, makes me willing to leave poetry; long habit and weariness of the same track. I should be sorry and ashamed, to go on jingling to the last step, like a waggoner's horse, in the same road; and so leave my bells to the next silly animal that will be proud of them. That man makes a mean figure in the eyes of reason, who is measuring syllables and coupling rhymes, when he should be mending his own soul, and securing his own immortality. If I had not this opinion, I should be unworthy even of those small and limited parts which God has given me; and unworthy of the friendship of such a man as you. I am your, &c.

LETTER XXXVIII.

MR. POPE TO MR. JERVAS.

Aug. 16, 1714.

I THANK you for your good offices, which are numberless. Homer advances so fast, that he begins to look about for the ornaments he is to appear in, like a modish modern author;

Picture in the front,

With bays and wicked rhyme upon't.

I have the greatest proof in nature at present of