Surely the sins of one poet can hardly be so heavy as to bring an old house over the heads of so many painters. In a word, your house is falling; but what of that? I am only a lodger.1

TO THE HON. ROBERT DIGBY.2

June 2, 1717.

I had pleased myself sooner in writing to you, but that I have been your successor in a fit of sickness, and am not so much recovered but that I have thoughts of using your physicians. They are as grave persons as any of the Faculty, and (like the Ancients) carry their own medicaments about with them. But, indeed, the Moderns are such lovers of raillery, that nothing is grave enough to escape them. Let them laugh, but people will still have their opinions. As they think our doctors asses to them, we will think them asses to our doctors. glad you are so much in a better state of health allow me to jest about it. My concern when I heard of your danger was so very serious, that I almost take it ill Dr. Evans should tell you of it, or you mention it. I tell you fairly,

1 Alluding to the story of the Irishman.-Warburton.

I am

as to

2 Mr. Digby, the second son of Lord Digby, of about the same age as Pope, was born at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford-the College of the family, it seems. He represented Warwick in the House of Commons during ten years. He was of a very feeble constitution, and, after long lingering, he died in 1732, and was buried at Sherborne, where an epitaph, in memory of himself and his sister, by his friend, was placed in the Abbey.

3 Asses [whose milk Digby used].-Roscoe. Pope seems not to have held with his friend Homer, or Idomeneus :

“ Ιητρὸς γαρ άνηρ πολλῶν ἀντάξιος ἄλλων,”

which may be translated: "The physician is worth fifty laymen.”

4 The well-known Epigrammatist, of St. John's College, Oxford. It appears from the letters in the British Museum, that Evans was much in the conti. dence of Pope, as, indeed, were all who looked up to him.-Bowles.

if you and a few more such people were to leave the world, I would not give sixpence to stay in it. I am not so much concerned as to the point, whether you are to live fat or lean. Most men of wit or honesty are usually decreed to live very lean. So I am inclined to the opinion it is decreed you shall. However, be comforted, and reflect that you will make the better busto for it.

It is something particular in you, not to be satisfied with sending me your own books, but to make your acquaintance continue the frolic. Mr. Warton forced me to take Gorboduc,1 who has since done me great credit with several people, as it has done Dryden and Oldham some diskindness, in showing there is as much difference between their Gorboduc and this as between Queen Anne and King George. It is truly a scandal, that men should write with contempt of a piece which they never once saw as those two poets did, who were ignorant even of the sex, as well as sense, of Gorboduc.

Adieu! I am going to forget you. This minute you took up all my mind; the next I shall think of nothing but the reconciliation with Agamemnon, and the recovery of Briseis. I shall be Achilles's humble servant these two months (with the good leave of all my friends). I have no ambition so strong at present as that noble one of Sir Salathiel Lovel, Recorder of London, to furnish out a decent and plentiful execution of

2

1 Gorboduc was the first drama in our language that was like a regular tragedy. It was first exhibited in the Hall of the Temple, and afterwards betore Queen Elizabeth, 1561. It was written by Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, the original contriver of the Mirror of Magistrates. He was assisted in it by Thomas, a translator of some of the Psalms. Mr. Spence, who succeeded my father as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, printed an edition of Gorborduc from this very copy of Pope, 1736. For a full account of Gorborduc see the History of English Poetry (III., 536), by Mr. Thomas Warton. Warton. It is alluded to by Shakspeare in Twelfth Night.

2 This allusion, whether in jest or earnest, is obscure. Sir Salathiel Lovel was made Recorder in 1692, and held that office till 170s, when he was promoted to be a Baron of the Exchequer. During his time the laws against the Papists were frequently enforced.-B.

Greeks and Trojans. It is not to be expressed how heartily I wish the death of all Homer's heroes, one after another. The Lord preserve me in the day of battle, which is just approaching! Join in your prayers for me, and know me to be always yours, &c.

TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

June, 1717.

If to live in the memory of others have anything desirable in it, it is what you possess with regard to me in the highest sense of the words. There is not a day in which your figure does not appear before me, your conversation return to my thoughts, and every scene, place, or occasion, where I have enjoyed them, are as vividly painted as an imagination, equally warm and tender, can be capable to represent them. Yet how little accrues to you from all this, when not only my wishes, but the very expressions of them, can hardly ever arrive to be known to you! I cannot tell whether you have seen half the letters I have writ, but, if you have, I have not said in them half what I designed to say; and you have seen but a faint, slight, timorous échantillon of what my spirit suggests, and my hand follows slowly and imperfectly, indeed unjustly, because discreetly and reservedly. When you told me there was no way left for our correspondence but by merchant ships, I watched ever since for any that set out, and this is the first I could learn of. I owe the knowledge of it to Mr. Congreve (whose letters, with my Lady Rich's, accompany this). However, I was impatient enough to venture to enquire from Mr. Methuen's office. If they have miscarried, you have lost nothing but such

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

425

words and wishes as I repeat every day in your memory and for your welfare. I have had thoughts of causing what I write for the future to be transcribed, and to send copies by more ways than one, that one at least might have a chance to reach you.

My eyesight is grown so bad, that I have left off all correspondence, except with yourself; in which, methinks, I am like those people who abandon and abstract themselves from all that are about them (with whom they might have business and intercourse), to employ their address as only to invisible and distant beings, whose good offices and favours cannot reach them in a long time, if at all. If I hear from you, I look upon it as little less than a miracle, an extraordinary visitation from another world; it is a sort of dream of an agreeable thing, which subsists no more to me. But, however, it is such a dream as exceeds most of the dull realities of my life. Indeed, what with ill-health and ill-fortune, I am grown so stupidly philosophical as to have no thought about me that deserves the name of warm or lively, but that which sometimes awakens me into an imagination that I may yet see you again. Compassionate a poet, who has lost all manner of romantic ideas, except a few that hover about the Bosphorus and Hellespont-not so much for the fine sound of their names as to raise up images of Leander, who was drowned in crossing the sea to kiss the hand of fair Hero. This were a destiny less to be lamented than what we are told of the poor Jew, one of your interpreters, who was beheaded at Belgrade as a spy. I confess such a

1 See the charming poem of Hero and Leander, of Musæus, and Ovid's Epistle.

2 Mr. Wortley, in a letter dated Pera, 2 August, 1716 (O.S.), among the Official papers of the Embassy in the State-Paper Office, alludes to this circumstance as follows: "It is said, in a Dutch Gazette, that a Jew, who came with me to Belgrade, was there hanged as a spy. The Jew was not only very well with the Basha of Belgrade that knew him, but at Adrianople, where he lived. He went often to the houses of those that were in the greatest employ. ments, and was well received by them."-C. W. D.

death would have been a great disappointment to me; and believe Jacob Tonson will hardly venture to visit you, after this news.

I make not the least question but you could give me great éclaircissements upon many passages in Homer, since you have been enlightened by the same sun that inspired the father of poetry. You are now glowing under the climate that animated him you may see his images rising more boldly about you, in the very scenes of his story and action: you may lay the immortal work on some broken column of a hero's sepulchre, and read the Fall of Troy in the shade of a Trojan ruin. But if, to visit the tomb of so many heroes, you have not the heart to pass over that sea where once a lover perished, you may, at least, at ease in your own window contemplate the fields of Asia, in such a dim and remote prospect as you have of Homer in my translation. I send you, therefore, with this the third volume of the Iliad, and as many other things as fill a wooden box, directed to Mr. Wortley. Among the rest, you have all I am worth—that is, my Works. There are few things in them but what you have already seen, except the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, in which you will find one passage that I cannot tell whether to wish you should understand or not.

For the news in London, I will sum it up in short. We have masquerades in the theatre in the Haymarket, of Mr. Heideker's institution. They are very frequent, yet the adventures are not so numerous but that of my Lady Mohun 2 still makes the chief figure. Her marriage to young Mordaunt, and all its circumstances, I suppose you will have from Lady Rich or Miss Griffith. The political state is under great divisions-the 1 Heydegger, the celebrated introducer of Masquerades. He is alluded to in the Dunciad.-C. W. D.

2 Widow of Lord Mohun, who was killed in a duel with the Duke of Hamilton in 1712. [See Letters of Swift to Esther Johnson.] She married Colonel Charles Mordaunt, a nephew of Pope's friend, Lord Peterborough. Mordaunt was her third husband, and was much younger than his wife.C. W. D.