LETTER V. TO THE HON. JAMES CRAGGS May 28, 1712. It is not only the disposition I always have of conversing with you, that makes me so speedily answer your obliging letter, but the apprehension lest your charitable intent of writing to my lady A. on Mrs. W.'s affair should be frustrated, by the short stay she makes there. She went thither on the 25th with that mixture of expectation and anxiety, with which people usually go into unknown or half-discovered countries, utterly ignorant of the disposition of the inhabitants, and the treatment they are to meet with. The unfortunate, of all people, are the most unfit to be left alone: yet, we see, the world generally takes care they shall be so; whereas, if we took a considerate prospect of the world, the business and study of the happy and easy should be to divert and humour, as well as comfort and pity, the distressed. I cannot therefore excuse some near allies of mine for their conduct of late towards this lady, which has given me a great deal of anger as well as sorrow all I shall say to you of them at present is, that they have not been my relations these two months. The consent of opinions in our minds, is certainly a nearer tie than can be contracted by all the blood in our bodies; and I am proud of finding I have something congenial with you. Will you permit me to confess to you, that all the favours and kind offices you have shown towards me, have not so strongly cemented me yours, as the discovery of that generous and manly compassion you manifested in the case of this unhappy lady? I am afraid to insinuate you how much I esteem you. Flatterers have taken up the style which was once peculiar to friends, and an to honest man has now no way left to express himself besides the common one of knaves: so that true friends now-a-days differ in their address from flatterers, much as right mastiffs do from spaniels, and show themselves by a dumb surly sort of fidelity, rather than by a complaisant and open kindness.Will you never leave commending my poetry? In fair truth, Sir, I like it but too well myself already: expose me no more, I beg you, to the great danger of vanity, (the rock of all men, but most of young men,) and be kindly content for the future, when you would please me thoroughly, to say only you like what I write. Your, &c. LETTER VI. TO THE HON. JAMES CRAGGS. December 5, 1712. You have at length complied with the request I have often made you, for you have shown me, I must confess, several of my faults in the sight of those letters. Upon a review of them, I find many things that would give me shame, if I were not more desirous to be thought honest than prudent; so many things freely thrown out, such lengths of unreserved friendship, thoughts just warm from the brain, without any polishing or dress, the very dishabille of the understanding. You have proved yourself more tender of another's embryos than the fondest mothers are of their own, for you have preserved every thing that I miscarried of. Since I know this, I shall in one respect be more afraid of writing to you than ever, at this careless rate, because I see my evil works may again rise in judgment against me; yet in another respect I shall be less afraid, since this has given me VOL. VI. such a proof of the extreme indulgence you afford to my slightest thoughts. The revisal of these letters has been a kind of examination of conscience to me; so fairly and faithfully have I set down in them from time to time the true and undisguised state of my mind. But, I find, that these, which were intended as sketches of my friendship, give as imperfect images of it, as the little landscapes we commonly see in black and white do of a beautiful country; they can represent but a very small part of it, and that deprived of the life and lustre of nature. I perceived that the more I endeavoured to render manifest the real affection and value I ever had for you, I did but injure it by representing less and less of it: as glasses which are designed to make an object very clear, generally contract it. Yet, as when people have a full idea of a thing first upon their own knowledge, the least traces of it serve to refresh the remembrance, and are not displeasing on that score; so, I hope, the foreknowledge you had of my esteem for you, is the reason that you do not dislike my letters. They will not be of any great service (I find) in the design I mentioned to you: I believe I had better steal from a richer man, and plunder your letters (which I have kept as carefully as I would Letters Patents, since they entitle me to what I more value than titles of honour). You have some cause to apprehend this usage from me, if what some say be true, that I am a great borrower; however, I have hitherto had the luck that none of my creditors have challenged me for it and those who say it are such, whose writings no man ever borrowed from, so have the least reason to complain; and whose works are granted on all hands to be too much their own. Another has been pleased to declare, that my verses are corrected by other men: I verily believe theirs were never corrected by any man; but indeed if mine have not, it was not my fault; I have endeavoured my utmost that they should. But these things are only whispered, and I will not encroach upon Bays's province and pen-whispers, so hasten to conclude, Your, &c. LETTER VII. TO THE HON. JAMES CRAGGS. June 8, 1714. THE question you ask in relation to Mr. Addison and Philips, I shall answer in a few words. Mr. Philips did express himself with much indignation against me one evening at Button's Coffee-house (as I was told), saying, that I was entered into a cabal with Dean Swift and others to write against the Whig interest, and in particular to undermine his own reputation, and that of his friends Steele and Addison: but Mr. Philips never opened his lips to my face, on this or any like occasion, though I was almost every night in the same room with him, nor ever offered me any indecorum 2. Mr. Addison came to me a night or two after Philips had talked in this idle manner, and assured me of his disbelief of what had been said, of the friendship we should always maintain, and desired I would say nothing further of it. My Lord Halifax did me the honour to stir in this matter, by speaking to several people to obviate a false aspersion, which might have done me no small prejudice with one party. However Philips did all he could secretly to continue the report with the Hanover Club, and kept in his hands the subscriptions paid for me to him, as Secretary to that Club. The heads of it have since given him to under 2 This seems to allude to a ridiculous report that Philips had hung up a rod at Button's with which he threatened to chastise Pope. Mr. stand, that they take it ill; but (upon the terms I ought to be with such a man) I would not ask him for this money, but commissioned one of the players, his equals, to receive it. This is the whole matter; but as to the secret grounds of this malignity, they will make a very pleasant history when we meet. Congreve and some others have been much diverted with it, and most of the gentlemen of the Hanover Club have made it the subject of their ridicule on their Secretary. It is to this management of Philips that the world owes Mr. Gay's Pastorals. The ingenious author is extremely your servant, and would have complied with your kind invitation, but that he is just now appointed Secretary to my Lord Clarendon 3, in his embassy to Hanover. I am sensible of the zeal and friendship with which, I am sure, you will always defend your friend in his absence, from all those little tales and calumnies, which a man of any genius or merit is born to. I shall never complain while I am happy in such noble defenders, and in such contemptible opponents. May their envy and ill-nature ever increase, to the glory and pleasure of those they would injure; may they represent me what they will, as long as you think me, what I am, Your, &c. LETTER VIII. TO THE HON. JAMES CRAGGS. July 13, 1714. You mention the account I gave you some time ago of the things which Philips said in his foolishness: but I cannot tell from any thing in your letter, whether you received a long one from me about a fortnight 3 Gay was appointed to attend Lord Clarendon to Hanover, to announce to the elector the illness of the queen.-Bowles. |