Not but we now and then meet with people of greater
perspicuity, who are in search for particular applications in every
leaf; and it is highly probable we shall have keys published to
give light into Gulliver's design.
perspicuity, who are in search for particular applications in every
leaf; and it is highly probable we shall have keys published to
give light into Gulliver's design.
Selection of English Letters
SHERIDAN
_News from the country_
25 _Jan. _ 1724-5.
I have a packet of letters, which I intended to send by Molly, who has
been stopped three days by the bad weather; but now I will send them
by the post to-morrow to Kells, and enclosed to Mr. Tickell there is
one to you, and one to James Stopford.
I can do no work this terrible weather; which has put us all seventy
times out of patience. I have been deaf nine days, and am now pretty
well recovered again.
Pray desire Mr. Stanton and Worral to continue giving themselves some
trouble with Mr. Pratt; but let it succeed or not, I hope I shall be
easy.
Mrs. Johnson swears it will rain till Michaelmas. She is so pleased
with her pick-axe, that she wears it fastened to her girdle on her
left side, in balance with her watch. The lake is strangely overflown,
and we are desperate about turf, being forced to buy it three miles
off: and Mrs. Johnson (God help her! ) gives you many a curse. Your
mason is come, but cannot yet work upon your garden. Neither can I
agree with him about the great wall. For the rest, _vide_ the letter
you will have on Monday, if Mr. Tickell uses you well.
The news of this country is, that the maid you sent down, John
Farelly's sister, is married; but the portion and settlement are yet a
secret. The cows here never give milk on midsummer eve.
You would wonder what carking and caring there is among us for small
beer and lean mutton, and starved lamb, and stopping gaps, and driving
cattle from the corn. In that we are all-to-be-Dingleyed.
The ladies' room smokes; the rain drops from the skies into the
kitchen; our servants eat and drink like the devil, and pray for rain,
which entertains them at cards and sleep; which are much lighter than
spades, sledges, and crows. Their maxim is,
Eat like a Turk,
Sleep like a dormouse;
Be last at work,
At victuals foremost.
Which is all at present; hoping you and your good family are well, as
we are all at this present writing &c.
Robin has just carried out a load of bread and cold meat for
breakfast; this is their way; but now a cloud hangs over them, for
fear it should hold up, and the clouds blow off.
I write on till Molly comes in for the letter. O, what a draggletail
will she be before she gets to Dublin! I wish she may not happen to
fall upon her back by the way.
I affirm against Aristotle, that cold and rain congregate homogenes,
for they gather together you and your crew, at whist, punch, and
claret. Happy weather for Mrs. Maul, Betty, and Stopford, and all true
lovers of cards and laziness.
THE BLESSINGS OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
Far from our debtors,
No Dublin letters,
Not seen by our betters.
THE PLAGUES OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
A companion with news,
A great want of shoes;
Eat lean meat, or choose;
A church without pews.
Our horses astray,
No straw, oats, or hay;
December in May,
Our boys run away,
All servants at play.
Molly sends for the letter.
TO ALEXANDER POPE
_Mostly about Gulliver_
Dublin, 17 _Nov. _ 1726.
I am just come from answering a letter of Mrs. Howard's, writ in such
mystical terms, that I should never have found out the meaning, if a
book had not been sent me called _Gulliver's Travels_, of which you
say so much in yours. I read the book over, and in the second volume
observed several passages which appear to be patched and altered, and
the style of a different sort, unless I am mistaken. Dr. Arbuthnot
likes the projectors least; others, you tell me, the flying island;
some think it wrong to be so hard upon whole bodies or corporations,
yet the general opinion is, that reflections on particular persons are
most to be blamed; so that in these cases, I think the best method is
to let censure and opinion take their course. A bishop here said, that
book was full of improbable lies, and for his part, he hardly believed
a word of it; and so much for Gulliver.
Going to England is a very good thing, if it were not attended with
an ugly circumstance of returning to Ireland. It is a shame you do not
persuade your ministers to keep me on that side, if it were but by a
court expedient of keeping me in prison for a plotter; but at the same
time I must tell you, that such journeys very much shorten my life,
for a month here is very much longer than six at Twickenham.
How comes friend Gay to be so tedious? Another man can publish fifty
thousand lies sooner than he can publish fifty fables. . . . Let me add,
that if I were Gulliver's friend, I would desire all my acquaintance
to give out that his copy was basely mangled and abused, and added to,
and blotted out by the printer; for so to me it seems in the second
volume particularly.
Adieu.
TO JOHN GAY
_Enquiries into Mr. Gay's pursuits_
Dublin, 4 _May_, 1732.
I am now as lame as when you writ your letter, and almost as lame as
your letter itself, for want of that limb from my lady duchess, which
you promised, and without which I wonder how it could limp hither. I
am not in a condition to make a true step even on Amesbury Downs, and
I declare that a corporeal false step is worse than a political one:
nay, worse than a thousand political ones, for which I appeal to
courts and ministers, who hobble on and prosper without the sense of
feeling. To talk of riding and walking is insulting me, for I can
as soon fly as do either. It is your pride or laziness, more than
chair-hire, that makes the town expensive. No honour is lost by
walking in the dark; and in the day you may beckon a blackguard
boy under a gate, near your visiting place, (experto crede,) save
elevenpence, and get half-a-crown's worth of health. The worst of my
present misfortune is, that I eat and drink, and can digest neither
for want of exercise; and, to increase my misery, the knaves are
sure to find me at home, and make huge void spaces in my cellars. I
congratulate with you for losing your great acquaintance; in such a
case, philosophy teaches that we must submit, and be content with good
ones. I like Lord Cornbury's refusing his pension, but I demur at his
being elected for Oxford; which, I conceive, is wholly changed; and
entirely devoted to new principles; so it appeared to me the two last
times I was there. I find by the whole cast of your letter, that you
are as giddy and as volatile as ever: just the reverse of Mr. Pope,
who has always loved a domestic life from his youth. I was going to
wish you had some little place that you could call your own, but, I
profess I do not know you well enough to contrive any one system
of life that would please you. You pretend to preach up riding and
walking to the duchess, yet from my knowledge of you after twenty
years, you always joined a violent desire of perpetually shifting
places and company, with a rooted laziness, and an utter impatience of
fatigue. A coach and six horses is the utmost exercise you can bear;
and this only when you can fill it with such company as is best suited
to your taste, and how glad would you be if it could waft you in the
air to avoid jolting; while I, who am so much later in life, can,
or at least could, ride five hundred miles on a trotting horse. You
mortally hate writing, only because it is the thing you chiefly ought
to do; as well to keep up the vogue you have in the world, as to make
you easy in your fortune. You are merciful to everything but money,
your best friend, whom you treat with inhumanity. Be assured I will
hire people to watch all your motions, and to return me a faithful
account. Tell me, have you cured your absence of mind? can you attend
to trifles? can you at Amesbury write domestic libels to divert the
family and neighbouring squires for five miles round? or venture so
far on horseback, without apprehending a stumble at every step? can
you set the footmen a-laughing as they wait at dinner? and do the
duchess's women admire your wit? in what esteem are you with the vicar
of the parish? can you play with him at backgammon? have the farmers
found out that you cannot distinguish rye from barley, or an oak from
a crab-tree? You are sensible that I know the full extent of your
country skill is in fishing for roaches or gudgeons at the highest.
I love to do you good offices with your friends, and therefore desire
you will show this letter to the duchess, to improve her grace's good
opinion of your qualifications, and convince her how useful you are
likely to be in the family. Her grace shall have the honour of my
correspondence again when she goes to Amesbury. Hear a piece of Irish
news; I buried the famous General Meredyth's father last night in my
cathedral, he was ninety-six years old; so that Mrs. Pope may live
seven years longer. You saw Mr. Pope in health, pray is he generally
more healthy than when I was among you? I would know how your own
health is, and how much wine you drink in a day? My stint in company
is a pint at noon, and half as much at night; but I often dine at home
like a hermit, and then I drink little or none at all. Yet I differ
from you, for I would have society, if I could get what I like, people
of middle understanding, and middle rank.
Adieu.
JOSEPH ADDISON
1672-1719
TO ALEXANDER POPE
_Translation of Homer_
26 _Oct. _ 1713.
I was extremely glad to receive a letter from you, but more so upon
reading the contents of it. The work you mention will, I dare say,
very sufficiently recommend itself when your name appears with the
proposals: and if you think I can any way contribute to the forwarding
of them, you cannot lay a greater obligation upon me, than by
employing me in such an office. As I have an 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 those 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 besides yourself.
I am at present wholly immersed in country business, and begin to take
a 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.
TO MR. SECRETARY CRAGGS
_A bequest_
_June_ 1719.
DEAR SIR,
I cannot wish that any of my writings should last longer than the
memory of our friendship, and therefore I thus publicly bequeath them
to you, in return for the many valuable instances of your affection.
That they may come to you with as little disadvantage as possible,
I have left the care of them to one, whom, by the experience of some
years, I know well-qualified to answer my intentions. He has already
the honour and happiness of being under your protection; and as he
will very much stand in need of it, I cannot wish him better than
that he may continue to deserve the favour and countenance of such a
patron.
I have no time to lay out in forming such compliments as would but ill
suit that familiarity between us which was once my greatest pleasure,
and will be my greatest honour hereafter. Instead of them, accept of
my hearty wishes that the great reputation you have acquired so early,
may increase more and more, and that you may long serve your country
with those excellent talents and unblemished integrity, which have so
powerfully recommended you to the most gracious and amiable monarch
that ever filled a throne. May the frankness and generosity of your
spirit continue to soften and subdue your enemies, and gain you many
friends, if possible, as sincere as yourself. When you have found
such, they cannot wish you more true happiness than I, who am with the
greatest zeal, dear sir,
Your most entirely affectionate friend
and faithful obedient servant.
SIR RICHARD STEELE
1672-1729
TO MARY SCURLOCK
_An explicit declaration_
11 _Aug. _ 1707.
Madam,--I writ you on Saturday, by Mrs. Warren, and give you this
trouble to urge the same request I made then; which was, that I may be
admitted to wait upon you. I should be very far from desiring this if
it were a transgression of the most severe rules to allow it. I know
you are very much above the little arts which are frequent in your
sex, of giving unnecessary torment to their admirers; I therefore hope
you will do so much justice to the generous passion I have for you, as
to let me have an opportunity of acquainting you upon what motives
I pretend to your good opinion. I shall not trouble you with my
sentiments till I know how they will be received; and as I know no
reason why the difference of sex should make our language to each
other differ from the ordinary rules of right reason, I shall affect
plainness and sincerity in my discourse to you, as much as other
lovers do perplexity and rapture. Instead of saying 'I shall die for
you', I profess I should be glad to lead my life with you. You are
as beautiful, as witty, as prudent, and as good-humoured as any woman
breathing; but, I must confess to you, I regard all these excellences
as you will please to direct them for my happiness or misery. With me,
madam, the only lasting motive to love, is the hope of its becoming
mutual. I beg of you to let Mrs. Warren send me word when I may attend
you. I promise you, I will talk of nothing but indifferent things;
though, at the same time, I know not how I shall approach you in the
tender moment of first seeing you after this declaration which has
been made by, madam,
Your most obedient and most faithful
humble servant.
TO THE SAME
_A pleasing transport_
Smith Street, Westminster, 1707.
Madam,--I lay down last night with your image in my thoughts, and
have awakened this morning in the same contemplation. The pleasing
transport with which I am delighted has a sweetness in it attended
with a train of ten thousand soft desires, anxieties, and cares.
The day arises on my hopes with new brightness; youth, beauty, and
innocence are the charming objects that steal me from myself, and give
me joys above the reach of ambition, pride, or glory. Believe me, fair
one, to throw myself at your feet is giving myself the highest bliss
I know on earth. Oh, hasten, ye minutes! bring on the happy morning
wherein to be ever hers will make me look down on thrones! Dear Molly,
I am tenderly, passionately, faithfully thine.
TO THE SAME
_A lover betrays himself_
St. James's Coffee House, 1 _Sept. _ 1707
Madam,--It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet to
attend to business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I
must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me.
A gentleman asked me this morning, 'What news from Lisbon? ' and I
answered, 'She's exquisitely handsome. ' Another desired to know when I
had been last at Hampton Court. I replied, 'It will be on Tuesday come
se'nnight. ' Pr'ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before that
day, that my mind may be in some composure. O love!
A thousand torments dwell about thee!
Yet who would live to live without thee?
Methinks I could write a volume to you; but all the language on earth
would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, I
am ever yours.
TO HIS WIFE
_He proposes an outing_
Lord Sunderland's Office, 19 May, 1708.
Eleven o'clock.
Dear Prue,--I desire you to get the coach and yourself ready as soon
as you can conveniently, and call for me here, from whence we will go
and spend some time together in the fresh air in free conference. Let
my best periwig be put in the coach-box, and my new shoes, for it is
a great comfort to be well dressed in agreeable company. You are vital
life to your obliged, affectionate husband, and humble servant.
TO THE SAME
_His greatest affliction_
12 _Aug. _ 1708.
Madam,--I have your letter, wherein you let me know that the little
dispute we have had is far from being a trouble to you; nevertheless
I assure you, any disturbance between us is the greatest affliction to
me imaginable. You talk of the judgement of the world; I shall never
govern my actions by it, but by the rules of morality and right
reason. I love you better than the light of my eyes or the life-blood
in my heart; but you are also to understand that neither my sight
shall be so far enchanted, nor my affection so much master of me,
as to make me forget our common interest. To attend my business as
I ought, and improve my fortune, it is necessary that my time and
my will should be under no direction but my own. . . . I write all this
rather to explain my own thoughts to you, than to answer your letter
distinctly. I enclose it to you, that upon second thoughts, you may
see the disrespectful manner in which you treat
Your affectionate, faithful husband.
TO THE SAME
_Four characteristic notes_
I
From the Press, one in the morning, 30 _Sept. _ 1710.
Dear Prue,--I am very sleepy and tired, but could not think of closing
my eyes till I had told you I am, dearest creature,
Your most affectionate and faithful husband.
II
Bloomsbury Square, 24 _Dec. _ 1713.
Dear Prue,--I dine with Lord Halifax and shall be at home half hour
after six. For thee I die, for thee I languish.
III
16 _Feb. _ 1716-17.
Dear Prue,--Sober or not, I am ever yours.
IV
Thursday, 3 in the afternoon, 2 _May_, 1717.
I had a very painful night last night; but, after a little chocolate
an hour or two ago, and a chicken for dinner, am much more at ease.
TO THE SAME
_The natural slave of beauty_.
20 _June_, 1717.
Dear Prue,--I have yours of the 14th, and am infinitely obliged to you
for the length of it. I do not know another whom I could commend for
that circumstance; but where we entirely love, the continuance of
anything they do to please us is a pleasure. As for your relations,
once for all, pray take it for granted, that my regard and conduct
towards all and singular of them shall be as you direct.
I hope, by the grace of God, to continue what you wish me, every
way, an honest man. My wife and my children are the objects that have
wholly taken up my heart; and as I am not invited or encouraged in
anything which regards the public, I am easy under that neglect or
envy of my past actions, and cheerfully contract that diffusive spirit
within the interests of my own family. You are the head of us; and I
stoop to a female reign as being naturally made the slave of beauty.
But to prepare for our manner of living when we are again together,
give me leave to say, while I am here at leisure, and come to lie at
Chelsea, what I think may contribute to our better way of living.
I very much approve Mrs. Evans and her husband; and if you take my
advice, I would have them a being in our house, and Mrs. Clark the
care and inspection of the nursery. I would have you entirely
at leisure to pass your time with me in diversions, in books, in
entertainments, and no manner of business intrude upon us but at
stated times. For, though you are made to be the delight of my eyes,
and food of all my senses and faculties, yet a turn of care
and housewifery, and I know not what prepossession against
conversation-pleasures, robs me of the witty and the handsome woman
to a degree not to be expressed. I will work my brains and fingers to
procure us plenty of all things, and demand nothing of you but to take
delight in agreeable dresses, cheerful discourses, and gay sights,
attended by me. This may be done by putting the kitchen and the
nursery in the hands I propose; and I shall have nothing to do but to
pass as much time at home as I possibly can, in the best company in
the world. We cannot tell here what to think of the trial of my Lord
Oxford; if the ministry are in earnest in that, and I should see it
will be extended to a length of time, I will leave them to themselves,
and wait upon you. Miss Moll grows a mighty beauty, and she shall be
very prettily dressed, as likewise shall Betty and Eugene: and if
I throw away a little money in adorning my brats, I hope you will
forgive me: they are, I thank God, all very well; and the charming
form of their mother has tempered the likeness they bear to their
rough sire, who is, with the greatest fondness,
Your most obliged and obedient husband.
JOHN GAY
1685-1732
TO JONATHAN SWIFT
_Concerning Gulliver_
17 _Nov. _ 1726.
About ten days ago a book was published here of the travels of one
Gulliver, which has been the conversation of the whole town ever
since: the whole impression sold in a week: and nothing is more
diverting than to hear the different opinions people give of it,
though all agree in liking it extremely. It is generally said that you
are the author; but I am told the bookseller declares, he knows
not from what hand it came. From the highest to the lowest it is
universally read, from the cabinet-council to the nursery. The
politicians to a man agree, that it is free from particular
reflections, but that the satire on general societies of men is
too severe.
Not but we now and then meet with people of greater
perspicuity, who are in search for particular applications in every
leaf; and it is highly probable we shall have keys published to
give light into Gulliver's design. Lord ---- is the person who least
approves it, blaming it as a design of evil consequence to depreciate
human nature, at which it cannot be wondered that he takes most
offence, being himself the most accomplished of his species, and so
losing more than any other of that praise which is due both to the
dignity and virtue of a man. Your friend, my Lord Harcourt, commends
it very much, though he thinks in some places the matter too far
carried. The Duchess Dowager of Marlborough is in raptures at it; she
says she can dream of nothing else since she read it: she declares
that she has now found out that her whole life has been lost in
caressing the worst part of mankind, and treating the best as her
foes: and that if she knew Gulliver, though he had been the worst
enemy she ever had, she should give up her present acquaintance for
his friendship. You may see by this, that you are not much injured
by being supposed the author of this piece. If you are, you have
disobliged us, and two or three of your best friends, in not giving
us the least hint of it while you were with us; and in particular Dr.
Arbuthnot, who says it is ten thousand pities he had not known it, he
could have added such abundance of things upon every subject. Among
lady critics, some have found out that Mr. Gulliver had a particular
malice to maids of honour. Those of them who frequent the church, say
his design is impious, and that it is depreciating the works of the
Creator.
Notwithstanding, I am told the princess has read it with great
pleasure. As to other critics, they think the flying island is the
least entertaining; and so great an opinion the town have of the
impossibility of Gulliver's writing at all below himself, it is agreed
that part was not writ by the same hand, though this has its defenders
too. It has passed lords and commons, _nemine contradicente_; and the
whole town, men, women, and children, are quite full of it.
Perhaps I may all this time be talking to you of a book you have never
seen, and which has not yet reached Ireland; if it has not, I believe
what we have said will be sufficient to recommend it to your reading,
and that you will order me to send it to you.
But it will be much better to come over yourself, and read it here,
where you will have the pleasure of variety of commentators, to
explain the difficult passages to you.
We all rejoice that you have fixed the precise time of your coming to
be _cum hirundine prima_; which we modern naturalists pronounce,
ought to be reckoned, contrary to Pliny, in this northern latitude of
fifty-two degrees, from the end of February, Styl. Greg. , at furthest.
But to us, your friends, the coming of such a black swallow as you
will make a summer in the worst of seasons. We are no less glad at
your mention of Twickenham and Dawley; and in town you know, you have
a lodging at court.
The princess is clothed in Irish silk; pray give our service to the
weavers. We are strangely surprised to hear that the bells in Ireland
ring without your money. I hope you do not write the thing that is
not. We are afraid that B---- hath been guilty of that crime, that you
(like a houyhnhnm) have treated him as a yahoo, and discarded him your
service. I fear you do not understand these modish terms, which every
creature now understands but yourself.
You tell us your wine is bad, and that the clergy do not frequent your
house, which we look upon to be tautology. The best advice we can give
you is, to make them a present of your wine, and come away to better.
You fancy we envy you, but you are mistaken; we envy those you are
with, for we cannot envy the man we love. Adieu.
ALEXANDER POPE
1688-1744
TO WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
_Dryden and his critics_
Binfield in Windsor Forest, 26 _Dec_. 1704.
It was certainly a great satisfaction to me to see and converse with
a man, whom in his writings I had so long known with pleasure; but
it was a high addition to it, to hear you, at our very first meeting,
doing justice to your dead friend Mr. Dryden. I was not so happy as to
know him: _Virgilium tantum vidi_. Had I been born early enough I
must have known and loved him: for I have been assured, not only
by yourself, but by Mr. Congreve and Sir William Trumbul, that his
personal qualities were as amiable as his poetical, notwithstanding
the many libellous misrepresentations of them, against which the
former of these gentlemen has told me he will one day vindicate him. I
suppose those injuries were begun by the violence of party, but it
is no doubt they were continued by envy at his success and fame. And
those scribblers who attacked him in his latter times, were only like
gnats in a summer's evening, which are never very troublesome but in
the finest and most glorious season; for his fire, like the sun's,
shined clearest towards its setting.
You must not therefore imagine, that when you told me my own
performances were above those critics, I was so vain as to believe it;
and yet I may not be so humble as to think myself quite below their
notice. For critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural
inclination to carrion: and though such poor writers as I are but
beggars, no beggar is so poor but he can keep a cur, and no author
is so beggarly but he can keep a critic. I am far from thinking the
attacks of such people any honour or dishonour even to me, much less
to Mr. Dryden. I agree with you that whatever lesser wits have arisen
since his death are but like stars appearing when the sun is set, that
twinkle only in his absence, and with the rays they have borrowed
from him. Our wit (as you call it) is but reflection or imitation,
therefore scarce to be called ours. True wit, I believe, may be
defined a justness of thought, and a facility of expression. . . .
However, this is far from a complete definition; pray help me to a
better, as I doubt not you can.
TO JOSEPH ADDISON
_A few thoughts from a rambling head_
14 _Dec_. 1713.
I have been lying in wait for my own imagination, this week and more,
and watching what thoughts came up in the whirl of the fancy, that
were worth communicating to you in a letter. But I am at length
convinced that my rambling head can produce nothing of that sort; so
I must e'en be content with telling you the old story, that I love
you heartily. I have often found by experience, that nature and
truth, though never so low or vulgar, are yet pleasing when openly and
artlessly represented: it would be diverting to me to read the very
letters of an infant, could it write its innocent inconsistencies and
tautologies just as it thought them. This makes me hope a letter from
me will not be unwelcome to you, when I am conscious I write with more
unreservedness than ever man wrote, or perhaps talked, to another. I
trust your good nature with the whole range of my follies, and really
love you so well, that I would rather you should pardon me than esteem
me; since one is an act of goodness and benevolence, the other a kind
of constrained deference.
You cannot wonder my thoughts are scarce consistent, when I tell you
how they are distracted. Every hour of my life my mind is strangely
divided; this minute perhaps I am above the stars, with a thousand
systems round about me, looking forward into a vast abyss, and
losing my whole comprehension in the boundless space of creation, in
dialogues with Whiston and the astronomers; the next moment I am below
all trifles, grovelling with T---- in the very centre of nonsense: now
I am recreated with the brisk sallies and quick turns of wit, which
Mr. Steele, in his liveliest and freest humours, darts about him; and
now levelling my application to the insignificant observations and
quirks of grammar of C---- and D----.
Good God! what an incongruous animal is man! how unsettled in his best
part, his soul; and how changing and variable in his frame of body!
the constancy of the one shook by every notion, the temperament of the
other affected by every blast of wind! What is he, altogether, but a
mighty inconsistency; sickness and pain is the lot of one half of him,
doubt and fear the portion of the other! What a bustle we make about
passing our time when all our space is but a point! what aims and
ambitions are crowded into this little instant of our life, which
(as Shakespeare finely worded it) is rounded with a sleep! Our whole
extent of being is no more, in the eye of Him who gave it, than a
scarce perceptible moment of duration. Those animals whose circle of
living is limited to three or four hours, as the naturalists tell us,
are yet as long-lived, and possess as wide a field of action as man,
if we consider him with a view to all space and all eternity. Who
knows what plots, what achievements a mite may perform in his kingdom
of a grain of dust, within his life of some minutes; and of how much
less consideration than even this, is the life of man in the sight of
God, who is for ever and ever?
Who that thinks in this train, but must see the world, and its
contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is
enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of
all desires, of all designs, of all friendships.
But we must return (through our very condition of being) to our narrow
selves, and those things that affect ourselves: our passions, our
interests flow in upon us and unphilosophize us into mere mortals. For
my part, I never return so much into myself, as when I think of
you, whose friendship is one of the best comforts I have for the
insignificancy of myself.
TO JONATHAN SWIFT
_Friends to posterity_
23 _March_, 1727-8.
I send you a very odd thing, a paper printed in Boston, in New
England, wherein you will find a real person, a member of their
parliament, of the name of Jonathan Gulliver. If the fame of that
traveller has travelled thither, it has travelled very quick, to have
folks christened already by the name of the supposed author. But if
you object that no child so lately christened could be arrived at
years of maturity to be elected into parliament, I reply (to solve the
riddle) that the person is an Anabaptist, and not christened till
full age, which sets all right. However it be, the accident is very
singular that these two names should be united.
Mr. Gay's opera has been acted near forty days running, and will
certainly continue the whole season. So he has more than a fence about
his thousand pounds; he will soon be thinking of a fence about his two
thousand. Shall no one of us live as we would wish each other to live?
Shall he have no annuity, you no settlement on this side, and I
no prospect of getting to you on the other? This world is made for
Caesar,--as Cato said, for ambitious, false, or flattering people to
domineer in; nay, they would not, by their good will, leave us our
very books, thoughts, or words in quiet. I despise the world yet, I
assure you, more than either Gay or you, and the court more than all
the rest of the world. As for those scribblers for whom you apprehend
I would suppress my _Dulness_ (which, by the way, for the future you
are to call by a more pompous name, the _Dunciad_), how much that nest
of hornets are my regard will easily appear to you when you read the
_Treatise of the Bathos_.
At all adventures, yours and mine shall stand linked as friends
to posterity, both in verse and prose, and (as Tully calls it) _in
consuetudine studiorum_. Would to God our persons could but as well
and as surely be inseparable! I find my other ties dropping from me;
some worn off, some torn off, some relaxing daily: my greatest, both
by duty, gratitude, and humanity, time is shaking every moment, and
it now hangs but by a thread! I am many years the older for living so
much with one so old; much the more helpless for having been so long
helped and tendered by her; much the more considerate and tender, for
a daily commerce with one who required me justly to be both to her;
and consequently the more melancholy and thoughtful; and the less fit
for others, who want only in a companion or a friend to be amused or
entertained. My constitution too has had its share of decay as well as
my spirits, and I am as much in the decline at forty as you at sixty.
I believe we should be fit to live together could I get a little more
health, which might make me not quite insupportable. Your deafness
would agree with my dulness; you would not want me to speak when
you could not hear. But God forbid you should be as destitute of the
social comforts of life as I must when I lose my mother; or that ever
you should lose your more useful acquaintance so utterly, as to turn
your thoughts to such a broken reed as I am, who could so ill supply
your wants. I am extremely troubled at the return of your deafness;
you cannot be too particular in the accounts of your health to me;
everything you do or say in this kind obliges me, nay, delights me,
to see the justice you do me in thinking me concerned in all your
concerns; so that though the pleasantest thing you can tell me be that
you are better or easier; next to that it pleases me that you make me
the person you would complain to.
As the obtaining the love of valuable men is the happiest end I
know of this life, so the next felicity is to get rid of fools and
scoundrels; which I cannot but own to you was one part of my design in
falling upon these authors, whose incapacity is not greater than their
insincerity, and of whom I have always found (if I may quote myself),
That each bad author is as bad a friend.
This poem will rid me of these insects.
Cedite, Romani scriptores, cedite, Graii;
_Nescio quid_ maius nascitur Iliade.
I mean than _my Iliad_; and I call it _Nescio quid_, which is a degree
of modesty; but however, if it silence these fellows, it must be
something greater than any _Iliad_ in Christendom. Adieu.
TO THE SAME
_A farming friend, and the Dunciad_
Dawley, 28 _June_, 1728.
I now hold the pen for my Lord Bolingbroke, who is reading your
letter between two haycocks, but his attention is somewhat diverted by
casting his eyes on the clouds, not in admiration of what you say,
but for fear of a shower. He is pleased with your placing him in the
triumvirate between yourself and me: though he says, that he doubts he
shall fare like Lepidus, while one of us runs away with all the power,
like Augustus, and another with all the pleasures, like Anthony. It is
upon a foresight of this that he has fitted up his farm, and you will
agree that his scheme of retreat at least is not founded upon weak
appearances. Upon his return from the Bath, all peccant humours, he
finds, are purged out of him; and his great temperance and economy are
so signal, that the first is fit for my constitution, and the latter
would enable you to lay up so much money as to buy a bishopric in
England. As to the return of his health and vigour, were you here, you
might inquire of his haymakers; but as to his temperance, I can answer
that (for one whole day) we have had nothing for dinner but mutton
broth, beans, and bacon, and a barn-door fowl.
Now his lordship is run after his cart, I have a moment left to myself
to tell you, that I overheard him yesterday agree with a painter
for £200, to paint his country hall with trophies of rakes, spades,
prongs, &c. , and other ornaments, merely to countenance his calling
this place a farm--now turn over a new leaf.
He bids me assure you, he should be sorry not to have more schemes of
kindness for his friends than of ambition for himself; there, though
his schemes may be weak, the motives at least are strong; and he
says farther, if you could bear as great a fall and decrease of your
revenues, as he knows by experience he can, you would not live in
Ireland an hour.
The _Dunciad_ is going to be printed in all pomp, with the
inscription, which makes me proudest. It will be attended with
_proeme, prolegomena, testimonia scriptorum, index authorum_, and
notes _variorum_. As to the latter, I desire you to read over the
text, and make a few in any way you like best; whether dry raillery,
upon the style and way of commenting of trivial critics; or humourous,
upon the authors in the poem; or historical, of persons, places,
times; or explanatory, or collecting the parallel passages of the
ancients. Adieu. I am pretty well, my mother not ill, Dr. Arbuthnot
vexed with his fever by intervals; I am afraid he declines, and we
shall lose a worthy man: I am troubled about him very much.
TO THE SAME
_An invitation to England_
23 _March_, 1736-7.
Though you were never to write to me, yet what you desired in your
last, that I would write often to you, would be a very easy task: for
every day I talk with you, and of you, in my heart; and I need only
set down what that is thinking of. The nearer I find myself verging to
that period of life which is to be labour and sorrow, the more I prop
myself upon those few supports that are left me. People in this state
are like props indeed; they cannot stand alone, but two or more of
them can stand, leaning and bearing upon one another. I wish you and I
might pass this part of life together. My only necessary care is at
an end. I am now my own master too much; my house is too large; my
gardens furnish too much wood and provision for my use. My servants
are sensible and tender of me; they have intermarried, and are become
rather low friends than servants; and to all those that I see here
with pleasure, they take a pleasure in being useful. I conclude this
is your case too in your domestic life, and I sometimes think of your
old housekeeper as my nurse, though I tremble at the sea, which only
divides us. As your fears are not so great as mine, and I firmly hope
your strength still much greater, is it utterly impossible it might
once more be some pleasure to you to see England? My sole motive in
proposing France to meet in, was the narrowness of the passage by sea
from hence, the physicians having told me the weakness of my breast,
&c. , is such, as a sea-sickness might endanger my life. Though one or
two of our friends are gone since you saw your native country, there
remain a few more who will last so till death; and who I cannot but
hope have an attractive power to draw you back to a country which
cannot quite be sunk or enslaved, while such spirits remain. And let
me tell you, there are a few more of the same spirit, who would awaken
all your old ideas, and revive your hopes of her future recovery and
virtue. These look up to you with reverence, and would be animated by
the sight of him at whose soul they have taken fire in his writings,
and derived from thence as much love of their species as is consistent
with a contempt for the knaves in it.
I could never be weary, except at the eyes, of writing to you; but my
real reason (and a strong one it is) for doing it so seldom, is fear;
fear of a very great and experienced evil, that of my letters being
kept by the partiality of friends, and passing into the hands and
malice of enemies, who publish them with all their imperfections on
their head, so that I write not on the common terms of honest men.
Would to God you would come over with Lord Orrery, whose care of you
in the voyage I could so certainly depend on; and bring with you your
old housekeeper and two or three servants. I have room for all, a
heart for all, and (think what you will) a fortune for all. We could,
were we together, contrive to make our last days easy, and leave some
sort of monument, what friends two wits could be in spite of all the
fools in the world. Adieu.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
1689-1761
TO MISS MULSO
_A discussion on love_
3 _Sept_. 1751.
In another place, you are offended with the word gratitude; as if your
idea of love excluded gratitude.
And further on, you are offended that I call this same passion 'a
little selfish passion'.
And you say that you have known few girls, and still fewer men, whom
you have thought 'capable of being in love'.
'By this', proceed you, 'you will see that my ideas of the word love
are different from yours, when you call it a little selfish passion. '
Now, madam, if that passion is not little and selfish that makes two
vehement souls prefer the gratification of each other, often to a
sense of duty, and always to the whole world without them, be pleased
to tell me what is? And pray be so good as to define to me what the
noble passion is, of which so few people of either sex are capable.
Give me your ideas of it.
I put not this question as a puzzler, a bamboozler, but purely for
information; and that I may make my Sir Charles susceptible of the
generous (may I say generous? ) flame, and yet know what he is about,
yet be a reasonable man.
Harriet's passion is founded in gratitude for relief given her in a
great exigence. But the man who rescued her is not, it seems, to have
such a word as gratitude in his head, in return for her love.
I repeat, that I will please you if I can; please you, Miss Mulso,
I here mean (before I meant not you particularly, my dear, but your
sex), in Sir Charles's character; and I sincerely declare, that I
would rather form his character to your liking, than to the liking of
three parts out of four of the persons I am acquainted with.
You are one of my best girls, and best judges. Of whom have I the
opinion that I have of Miss Mulso on these nice subjects? --I ask
therefore repeatedly for your definition of the passion which you
dignify by the word noble; and from which you exclude everything mean,
little, or selfish.
And you really think it marvellous that a young woman should find a
man of exalted merit to be in love with? Why, truly, I am half of your
mind; for how should people find what, in general, they do not seek?
Yet what good creatures are many girls! They will be in love for all
that.
Why, yes, to be sure, they would be glad of a Sir Charles Grandison,
and prefer him even to a Lovelace, were he capable of being terribly
in love. And yet, I know one excellent girl who is afraid 'that ladies
in general will think him too wise'. --Dear, dear girls, help me to a
few monkey-tricks to throw into his character, in order to shield him
from contempt for his wisdom.
'It is one of my maxims,' you say, 'that people even of bad hearts
will admire and love people of good ones. ' Very true! --and yet
admiration and love, in the sense before us, do not always shake
hands, except at parting, and with an intention never to meet again. I
have known women who professed to admire good men, but have chosen
to marry men--not so good, when lovers of both sorts have tendered
themselves to their acceptance. There is something very pretty in the
sound of the word wild, added to the word fellow; and good sense is
a very grateful victim to be sacrificed on the altar of love. Fervour
and extravagance in expressions will please. How shall a woman,
who, moreover, loves to be admired, know a man's heart, but from
his lips? --Let him find flattery, and she will find credulity. Sweet
souls! can they be always contradicting?
You believe it is not in human nature, however depraved, to prefer
evil to good in another, whatever people may do in themselves. Why, no
one would really think so, did not experience convince us that many,
very many young women, in the article of marriage, though not before
thought to be very depraved, are taken by this green sickness of the
soul, and prefer dirt and rubbish to wholesome diet. The result of the
matter is this, with very many young women: they will admire a good
man, but they will marry a bad one. Are not rakes pretty fellows?
But one thing let me add, to comfort you in relation to Harriet's
difficulties: I intend to make her shine by her cordial approbation,
as she goes along, of every good action of her beloved. She is
humbled by her love (suspense in love is a mortifier) to think herself
inferior to his sisters; but I intend to raise her above them, even
in her own just opinion; and when she shines out the girl worthy of
a man, not exalt, but reward her, and at the same time make him think
himself highly rewarded by the love of so frank and so right an heart.
There now! --Will that do, my Miss Mulso?
I laid indeed a heavy hand on the good Clarissa. But I had begun with
her, with a view to the future saint in her character; and could she,
but by sufferings, shine as she does?
Do you, my dear child, look upon me as your paternal friend.
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
1689-1762
TO THE COUNTESS OF MAR
_The Viennese court_
Vienna, 14 _Sept_. o. s. [1716].
Though I have so lately troubled you, my dear sister, with a long
letter, yet I will keep my promise in giving you an account of my
first going to court.
In order to that ceremony, I was squeezed up in a gown, and adorned
with a gorget and the other implements thereunto belonging: a dress
very inconvenient, but which certainly shews the neck and shape
to great advantage. I cannot forbear in this place giving you some
description of the fashions here, which are more monstrous and
contrary to all common sense and reason, than 'tis possible for you
to imagine. They build certain fabrics of gauze on their heads about
a yard high, consisting of three or four stories, fortified with
numberless yards of heavy ribbon. The foundation of this structure is
a thing they call a _Bourle_, which is exactly of the same shape
and kind, but about four times as big, as those rolls our prudent
milk-maids make use of to fix their pails upon. This machine they
cover with their own hair, which they mix with a great deal of false,
it being a particular beauty to have their heads too large to go into
a moderate tub. Their hair is prodigiously powdered, to conceal the
mixture, and set out with three or four rows of bodkins (wonderfully
large, that stick two or three inches from their hair), made of
diamonds, pearls, red, green, and yellow stones, that it certainly
requires as much art and experience to carry the load upright, as to
dance upon May-day with the garland. Their whalebone petticoats outdo
ours by several yards circumference, and cover some acres of ground.
You may easily suppose how much this extraordinary dress sets off and
improves the natural ugliness with which God Almighty has been pleased
to endow them all generally. Even the lovely empress herself is
obliged to comply, in some degree, with these absurd fashions, which
they would not quit for all the world. I had a private audience
(according to ceremony) of half an hour, and then all the other ladies
were permitted to come make their court. I was perfectly charmed
with the empress: I cannot, however, tell you that her features are
regular; her eyes are not large, but have a lively look, full of
sweetness; her complexion the finest I ever saw; her nose and forehead
well-made, but her mouth has ten thousand charms that touch the
soul. When she smiles, 'tis with a beauty and sweetness that force
adoration. She has a vast quantity of fine fair hair; but then her
person! --one must speak of it poetically to do it rigid justice; all
that the poets have said of the mien of Juno, the air of Venus, comes
not up to the truth. The Graces move with her; the famous statue of
Medicis was not formed with more delicate proportion; nothing can be
added to the beauty of her neck and hands. Till I saw them, I did not
believe there were any in nature so perfect, and I was almost sorry
that my rank here did not permit me to kiss them; but they are kissed
sufficiently; for every body that waits on her pays that homage at
their entrance, and when they take leave.
_News from the country_
25 _Jan. _ 1724-5.
I have a packet of letters, which I intended to send by Molly, who has
been stopped three days by the bad weather; but now I will send them
by the post to-morrow to Kells, and enclosed to Mr. Tickell there is
one to you, and one to James Stopford.
I can do no work this terrible weather; which has put us all seventy
times out of patience. I have been deaf nine days, and am now pretty
well recovered again.
Pray desire Mr. Stanton and Worral to continue giving themselves some
trouble with Mr. Pratt; but let it succeed or not, I hope I shall be
easy.
Mrs. Johnson swears it will rain till Michaelmas. She is so pleased
with her pick-axe, that she wears it fastened to her girdle on her
left side, in balance with her watch. The lake is strangely overflown,
and we are desperate about turf, being forced to buy it three miles
off: and Mrs. Johnson (God help her! ) gives you many a curse. Your
mason is come, but cannot yet work upon your garden. Neither can I
agree with him about the great wall. For the rest, _vide_ the letter
you will have on Monday, if Mr. Tickell uses you well.
The news of this country is, that the maid you sent down, John
Farelly's sister, is married; but the portion and settlement are yet a
secret. The cows here never give milk on midsummer eve.
You would wonder what carking and caring there is among us for small
beer and lean mutton, and starved lamb, and stopping gaps, and driving
cattle from the corn. In that we are all-to-be-Dingleyed.
The ladies' room smokes; the rain drops from the skies into the
kitchen; our servants eat and drink like the devil, and pray for rain,
which entertains them at cards and sleep; which are much lighter than
spades, sledges, and crows. Their maxim is,
Eat like a Turk,
Sleep like a dormouse;
Be last at work,
At victuals foremost.
Which is all at present; hoping you and your good family are well, as
we are all at this present writing &c.
Robin has just carried out a load of bread and cold meat for
breakfast; this is their way; but now a cloud hangs over them, for
fear it should hold up, and the clouds blow off.
I write on till Molly comes in for the letter. O, what a draggletail
will she be before she gets to Dublin! I wish she may not happen to
fall upon her back by the way.
I affirm against Aristotle, that cold and rain congregate homogenes,
for they gather together you and your crew, at whist, punch, and
claret. Happy weather for Mrs. Maul, Betty, and Stopford, and all true
lovers of cards and laziness.
THE BLESSINGS OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
Far from our debtors,
No Dublin letters,
Not seen by our betters.
THE PLAGUES OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
A companion with news,
A great want of shoes;
Eat lean meat, or choose;
A church without pews.
Our horses astray,
No straw, oats, or hay;
December in May,
Our boys run away,
All servants at play.
Molly sends for the letter.
TO ALEXANDER POPE
_Mostly about Gulliver_
Dublin, 17 _Nov. _ 1726.
I am just come from answering a letter of Mrs. Howard's, writ in such
mystical terms, that I should never have found out the meaning, if a
book had not been sent me called _Gulliver's Travels_, of which you
say so much in yours. I read the book over, and in the second volume
observed several passages which appear to be patched and altered, and
the style of a different sort, unless I am mistaken. Dr. Arbuthnot
likes the projectors least; others, you tell me, the flying island;
some think it wrong to be so hard upon whole bodies or corporations,
yet the general opinion is, that reflections on particular persons are
most to be blamed; so that in these cases, I think the best method is
to let censure and opinion take their course. A bishop here said, that
book was full of improbable lies, and for his part, he hardly believed
a word of it; and so much for Gulliver.
Going to England is a very good thing, if it were not attended with
an ugly circumstance of returning to Ireland. It is a shame you do not
persuade your ministers to keep me on that side, if it were but by a
court expedient of keeping me in prison for a plotter; but at the same
time I must tell you, that such journeys very much shorten my life,
for a month here is very much longer than six at Twickenham.
How comes friend Gay to be so tedious? Another man can publish fifty
thousand lies sooner than he can publish fifty fables. . . . Let me add,
that if I were Gulliver's friend, I would desire all my acquaintance
to give out that his copy was basely mangled and abused, and added to,
and blotted out by the printer; for so to me it seems in the second
volume particularly.
Adieu.
TO JOHN GAY
_Enquiries into Mr. Gay's pursuits_
Dublin, 4 _May_, 1732.
I am now as lame as when you writ your letter, and almost as lame as
your letter itself, for want of that limb from my lady duchess, which
you promised, and without which I wonder how it could limp hither. I
am not in a condition to make a true step even on Amesbury Downs, and
I declare that a corporeal false step is worse than a political one:
nay, worse than a thousand political ones, for which I appeal to
courts and ministers, who hobble on and prosper without the sense of
feeling. To talk of riding and walking is insulting me, for I can
as soon fly as do either. It is your pride or laziness, more than
chair-hire, that makes the town expensive. No honour is lost by
walking in the dark; and in the day you may beckon a blackguard
boy under a gate, near your visiting place, (experto crede,) save
elevenpence, and get half-a-crown's worth of health. The worst of my
present misfortune is, that I eat and drink, and can digest neither
for want of exercise; and, to increase my misery, the knaves are
sure to find me at home, and make huge void spaces in my cellars. I
congratulate with you for losing your great acquaintance; in such a
case, philosophy teaches that we must submit, and be content with good
ones. I like Lord Cornbury's refusing his pension, but I demur at his
being elected for Oxford; which, I conceive, is wholly changed; and
entirely devoted to new principles; so it appeared to me the two last
times I was there. I find by the whole cast of your letter, that you
are as giddy and as volatile as ever: just the reverse of Mr. Pope,
who has always loved a domestic life from his youth. I was going to
wish you had some little place that you could call your own, but, I
profess I do not know you well enough to contrive any one system
of life that would please you. You pretend to preach up riding and
walking to the duchess, yet from my knowledge of you after twenty
years, you always joined a violent desire of perpetually shifting
places and company, with a rooted laziness, and an utter impatience of
fatigue. A coach and six horses is the utmost exercise you can bear;
and this only when you can fill it with such company as is best suited
to your taste, and how glad would you be if it could waft you in the
air to avoid jolting; while I, who am so much later in life, can,
or at least could, ride five hundred miles on a trotting horse. You
mortally hate writing, only because it is the thing you chiefly ought
to do; as well to keep up the vogue you have in the world, as to make
you easy in your fortune. You are merciful to everything but money,
your best friend, whom you treat with inhumanity. Be assured I will
hire people to watch all your motions, and to return me a faithful
account. Tell me, have you cured your absence of mind? can you attend
to trifles? can you at Amesbury write domestic libels to divert the
family and neighbouring squires for five miles round? or venture so
far on horseback, without apprehending a stumble at every step? can
you set the footmen a-laughing as they wait at dinner? and do the
duchess's women admire your wit? in what esteem are you with the vicar
of the parish? can you play with him at backgammon? have the farmers
found out that you cannot distinguish rye from barley, or an oak from
a crab-tree? You are sensible that I know the full extent of your
country skill is in fishing for roaches or gudgeons at the highest.
I love to do you good offices with your friends, and therefore desire
you will show this letter to the duchess, to improve her grace's good
opinion of your qualifications, and convince her how useful you are
likely to be in the family. Her grace shall have the honour of my
correspondence again when she goes to Amesbury. Hear a piece of Irish
news; I buried the famous General Meredyth's father last night in my
cathedral, he was ninety-six years old; so that Mrs. Pope may live
seven years longer. You saw Mr. Pope in health, pray is he generally
more healthy than when I was among you? I would know how your own
health is, and how much wine you drink in a day? My stint in company
is a pint at noon, and half as much at night; but I often dine at home
like a hermit, and then I drink little or none at all. Yet I differ
from you, for I would have society, if I could get what I like, people
of middle understanding, and middle rank.
Adieu.
JOSEPH ADDISON
1672-1719
TO ALEXANDER POPE
_Translation of Homer_
26 _Oct. _ 1713.
I was extremely glad to receive a letter from you, but more so upon
reading the contents of it. The work you mention will, I dare say,
very sufficiently recommend itself when your name appears with the
proposals: and if you think I can any way contribute to the forwarding
of them, you cannot lay a greater obligation upon me, than by
employing me in such an office. As I have an 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 those 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 besides yourself.
I am at present wholly immersed in country business, and begin to take
a 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.
TO MR. SECRETARY CRAGGS
_A bequest_
_June_ 1719.
DEAR SIR,
I cannot wish that any of my writings should last longer than the
memory of our friendship, and therefore I thus publicly bequeath them
to you, in return for the many valuable instances of your affection.
That they may come to you with as little disadvantage as possible,
I have left the care of them to one, whom, by the experience of some
years, I know well-qualified to answer my intentions. He has already
the honour and happiness of being under your protection; and as he
will very much stand in need of it, I cannot wish him better than
that he may continue to deserve the favour and countenance of such a
patron.
I have no time to lay out in forming such compliments as would but ill
suit that familiarity between us which was once my greatest pleasure,
and will be my greatest honour hereafter. Instead of them, accept of
my hearty wishes that the great reputation you have acquired so early,
may increase more and more, and that you may long serve your country
with those excellent talents and unblemished integrity, which have so
powerfully recommended you to the most gracious and amiable monarch
that ever filled a throne. May the frankness and generosity of your
spirit continue to soften and subdue your enemies, and gain you many
friends, if possible, as sincere as yourself. When you have found
such, they cannot wish you more true happiness than I, who am with the
greatest zeal, dear sir,
Your most entirely affectionate friend
and faithful obedient servant.
SIR RICHARD STEELE
1672-1729
TO MARY SCURLOCK
_An explicit declaration_
11 _Aug. _ 1707.
Madam,--I writ you on Saturday, by Mrs. Warren, and give you this
trouble to urge the same request I made then; which was, that I may be
admitted to wait upon you. I should be very far from desiring this if
it were a transgression of the most severe rules to allow it. I know
you are very much above the little arts which are frequent in your
sex, of giving unnecessary torment to their admirers; I therefore hope
you will do so much justice to the generous passion I have for you, as
to let me have an opportunity of acquainting you upon what motives
I pretend to your good opinion. I shall not trouble you with my
sentiments till I know how they will be received; and as I know no
reason why the difference of sex should make our language to each
other differ from the ordinary rules of right reason, I shall affect
plainness and sincerity in my discourse to you, as much as other
lovers do perplexity and rapture. Instead of saying 'I shall die for
you', I profess I should be glad to lead my life with you. You are
as beautiful, as witty, as prudent, and as good-humoured as any woman
breathing; but, I must confess to you, I regard all these excellences
as you will please to direct them for my happiness or misery. With me,
madam, the only lasting motive to love, is the hope of its becoming
mutual. I beg of you to let Mrs. Warren send me word when I may attend
you. I promise you, I will talk of nothing but indifferent things;
though, at the same time, I know not how I shall approach you in the
tender moment of first seeing you after this declaration which has
been made by, madam,
Your most obedient and most faithful
humble servant.
TO THE SAME
_A pleasing transport_
Smith Street, Westminster, 1707.
Madam,--I lay down last night with your image in my thoughts, and
have awakened this morning in the same contemplation. The pleasing
transport with which I am delighted has a sweetness in it attended
with a train of ten thousand soft desires, anxieties, and cares.
The day arises on my hopes with new brightness; youth, beauty, and
innocence are the charming objects that steal me from myself, and give
me joys above the reach of ambition, pride, or glory. Believe me, fair
one, to throw myself at your feet is giving myself the highest bliss
I know on earth. Oh, hasten, ye minutes! bring on the happy morning
wherein to be ever hers will make me look down on thrones! Dear Molly,
I am tenderly, passionately, faithfully thine.
TO THE SAME
_A lover betrays himself_
St. James's Coffee House, 1 _Sept. _ 1707
Madam,--It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet to
attend to business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I
must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me.
A gentleman asked me this morning, 'What news from Lisbon? ' and I
answered, 'She's exquisitely handsome. ' Another desired to know when I
had been last at Hampton Court. I replied, 'It will be on Tuesday come
se'nnight. ' Pr'ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before that
day, that my mind may be in some composure. O love!
A thousand torments dwell about thee!
Yet who would live to live without thee?
Methinks I could write a volume to you; but all the language on earth
would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, I
am ever yours.
TO HIS WIFE
_He proposes an outing_
Lord Sunderland's Office, 19 May, 1708.
Eleven o'clock.
Dear Prue,--I desire you to get the coach and yourself ready as soon
as you can conveniently, and call for me here, from whence we will go
and spend some time together in the fresh air in free conference. Let
my best periwig be put in the coach-box, and my new shoes, for it is
a great comfort to be well dressed in agreeable company. You are vital
life to your obliged, affectionate husband, and humble servant.
TO THE SAME
_His greatest affliction_
12 _Aug. _ 1708.
Madam,--I have your letter, wherein you let me know that the little
dispute we have had is far from being a trouble to you; nevertheless
I assure you, any disturbance between us is the greatest affliction to
me imaginable. You talk of the judgement of the world; I shall never
govern my actions by it, but by the rules of morality and right
reason. I love you better than the light of my eyes or the life-blood
in my heart; but you are also to understand that neither my sight
shall be so far enchanted, nor my affection so much master of me,
as to make me forget our common interest. To attend my business as
I ought, and improve my fortune, it is necessary that my time and
my will should be under no direction but my own. . . . I write all this
rather to explain my own thoughts to you, than to answer your letter
distinctly. I enclose it to you, that upon second thoughts, you may
see the disrespectful manner in which you treat
Your affectionate, faithful husband.
TO THE SAME
_Four characteristic notes_
I
From the Press, one in the morning, 30 _Sept. _ 1710.
Dear Prue,--I am very sleepy and tired, but could not think of closing
my eyes till I had told you I am, dearest creature,
Your most affectionate and faithful husband.
II
Bloomsbury Square, 24 _Dec. _ 1713.
Dear Prue,--I dine with Lord Halifax and shall be at home half hour
after six. For thee I die, for thee I languish.
III
16 _Feb. _ 1716-17.
Dear Prue,--Sober or not, I am ever yours.
IV
Thursday, 3 in the afternoon, 2 _May_, 1717.
I had a very painful night last night; but, after a little chocolate
an hour or two ago, and a chicken for dinner, am much more at ease.
TO THE SAME
_The natural slave of beauty_.
20 _June_, 1717.
Dear Prue,--I have yours of the 14th, and am infinitely obliged to you
for the length of it. I do not know another whom I could commend for
that circumstance; but where we entirely love, the continuance of
anything they do to please us is a pleasure. As for your relations,
once for all, pray take it for granted, that my regard and conduct
towards all and singular of them shall be as you direct.
I hope, by the grace of God, to continue what you wish me, every
way, an honest man. My wife and my children are the objects that have
wholly taken up my heart; and as I am not invited or encouraged in
anything which regards the public, I am easy under that neglect or
envy of my past actions, and cheerfully contract that diffusive spirit
within the interests of my own family. You are the head of us; and I
stoop to a female reign as being naturally made the slave of beauty.
But to prepare for our manner of living when we are again together,
give me leave to say, while I am here at leisure, and come to lie at
Chelsea, what I think may contribute to our better way of living.
I very much approve Mrs. Evans and her husband; and if you take my
advice, I would have them a being in our house, and Mrs. Clark the
care and inspection of the nursery. I would have you entirely
at leisure to pass your time with me in diversions, in books, in
entertainments, and no manner of business intrude upon us but at
stated times. For, though you are made to be the delight of my eyes,
and food of all my senses and faculties, yet a turn of care
and housewifery, and I know not what prepossession against
conversation-pleasures, robs me of the witty and the handsome woman
to a degree not to be expressed. I will work my brains and fingers to
procure us plenty of all things, and demand nothing of you but to take
delight in agreeable dresses, cheerful discourses, and gay sights,
attended by me. This may be done by putting the kitchen and the
nursery in the hands I propose; and I shall have nothing to do but to
pass as much time at home as I possibly can, in the best company in
the world. We cannot tell here what to think of the trial of my Lord
Oxford; if the ministry are in earnest in that, and I should see it
will be extended to a length of time, I will leave them to themselves,
and wait upon you. Miss Moll grows a mighty beauty, and she shall be
very prettily dressed, as likewise shall Betty and Eugene: and if
I throw away a little money in adorning my brats, I hope you will
forgive me: they are, I thank God, all very well; and the charming
form of their mother has tempered the likeness they bear to their
rough sire, who is, with the greatest fondness,
Your most obliged and obedient husband.
JOHN GAY
1685-1732
TO JONATHAN SWIFT
_Concerning Gulliver_
17 _Nov. _ 1726.
About ten days ago a book was published here of the travels of one
Gulliver, which has been the conversation of the whole town ever
since: the whole impression sold in a week: and nothing is more
diverting than to hear the different opinions people give of it,
though all agree in liking it extremely. It is generally said that you
are the author; but I am told the bookseller declares, he knows
not from what hand it came. From the highest to the lowest it is
universally read, from the cabinet-council to the nursery. The
politicians to a man agree, that it is free from particular
reflections, but that the satire on general societies of men is
too severe.
Not but we now and then meet with people of greater
perspicuity, who are in search for particular applications in every
leaf; and it is highly probable we shall have keys published to
give light into Gulliver's design. Lord ---- is the person who least
approves it, blaming it as a design of evil consequence to depreciate
human nature, at which it cannot be wondered that he takes most
offence, being himself the most accomplished of his species, and so
losing more than any other of that praise which is due both to the
dignity and virtue of a man. Your friend, my Lord Harcourt, commends
it very much, though he thinks in some places the matter too far
carried. The Duchess Dowager of Marlborough is in raptures at it; she
says she can dream of nothing else since she read it: she declares
that she has now found out that her whole life has been lost in
caressing the worst part of mankind, and treating the best as her
foes: and that if she knew Gulliver, though he had been the worst
enemy she ever had, she should give up her present acquaintance for
his friendship. You may see by this, that you are not much injured
by being supposed the author of this piece. If you are, you have
disobliged us, and two or three of your best friends, in not giving
us the least hint of it while you were with us; and in particular Dr.
Arbuthnot, who says it is ten thousand pities he had not known it, he
could have added such abundance of things upon every subject. Among
lady critics, some have found out that Mr. Gulliver had a particular
malice to maids of honour. Those of them who frequent the church, say
his design is impious, and that it is depreciating the works of the
Creator.
Notwithstanding, I am told the princess has read it with great
pleasure. As to other critics, they think the flying island is the
least entertaining; and so great an opinion the town have of the
impossibility of Gulliver's writing at all below himself, it is agreed
that part was not writ by the same hand, though this has its defenders
too. It has passed lords and commons, _nemine contradicente_; and the
whole town, men, women, and children, are quite full of it.
Perhaps I may all this time be talking to you of a book you have never
seen, and which has not yet reached Ireland; if it has not, I believe
what we have said will be sufficient to recommend it to your reading,
and that you will order me to send it to you.
But it will be much better to come over yourself, and read it here,
where you will have the pleasure of variety of commentators, to
explain the difficult passages to you.
We all rejoice that you have fixed the precise time of your coming to
be _cum hirundine prima_; which we modern naturalists pronounce,
ought to be reckoned, contrary to Pliny, in this northern latitude of
fifty-two degrees, from the end of February, Styl. Greg. , at furthest.
But to us, your friends, the coming of such a black swallow as you
will make a summer in the worst of seasons. We are no less glad at
your mention of Twickenham and Dawley; and in town you know, you have
a lodging at court.
The princess is clothed in Irish silk; pray give our service to the
weavers. We are strangely surprised to hear that the bells in Ireland
ring without your money. I hope you do not write the thing that is
not. We are afraid that B---- hath been guilty of that crime, that you
(like a houyhnhnm) have treated him as a yahoo, and discarded him your
service. I fear you do not understand these modish terms, which every
creature now understands but yourself.
You tell us your wine is bad, and that the clergy do not frequent your
house, which we look upon to be tautology. The best advice we can give
you is, to make them a present of your wine, and come away to better.
You fancy we envy you, but you are mistaken; we envy those you are
with, for we cannot envy the man we love. Adieu.
ALEXANDER POPE
1688-1744
TO WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
_Dryden and his critics_
Binfield in Windsor Forest, 26 _Dec_. 1704.
It was certainly a great satisfaction to me to see and converse with
a man, whom in his writings I had so long known with pleasure; but
it was a high addition to it, to hear you, at our very first meeting,
doing justice to your dead friend Mr. Dryden. I was not so happy as to
know him: _Virgilium tantum vidi_. Had I been born early enough I
must have known and loved him: for I have been assured, not only
by yourself, but by Mr. Congreve and Sir William Trumbul, that his
personal qualities were as amiable as his poetical, notwithstanding
the many libellous misrepresentations of them, against which the
former of these gentlemen has told me he will one day vindicate him. I
suppose those injuries were begun by the violence of party, but it
is no doubt they were continued by envy at his success and fame. And
those scribblers who attacked him in his latter times, were only like
gnats in a summer's evening, which are never very troublesome but in
the finest and most glorious season; for his fire, like the sun's,
shined clearest towards its setting.
You must not therefore imagine, that when you told me my own
performances were above those critics, I was so vain as to believe it;
and yet I may not be so humble as to think myself quite below their
notice. For critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural
inclination to carrion: and though such poor writers as I are but
beggars, no beggar is so poor but he can keep a cur, and no author
is so beggarly but he can keep a critic. I am far from thinking the
attacks of such people any honour or dishonour even to me, much less
to Mr. Dryden. I agree with you that whatever lesser wits have arisen
since his death are but like stars appearing when the sun is set, that
twinkle only in his absence, and with the rays they have borrowed
from him. Our wit (as you call it) is but reflection or imitation,
therefore scarce to be called ours. True wit, I believe, may be
defined a justness of thought, and a facility of expression. . . .
However, this is far from a complete definition; pray help me to a
better, as I doubt not you can.
TO JOSEPH ADDISON
_A few thoughts from a rambling head_
14 _Dec_. 1713.
I have been lying in wait for my own imagination, this week and more,
and watching what thoughts came up in the whirl of the fancy, that
were worth communicating to you in a letter. But I am at length
convinced that my rambling head can produce nothing of that sort; so
I must e'en be content with telling you the old story, that I love
you heartily. I have often found by experience, that nature and
truth, though never so low or vulgar, are yet pleasing when openly and
artlessly represented: it would be diverting to me to read the very
letters of an infant, could it write its innocent inconsistencies and
tautologies just as it thought them. This makes me hope a letter from
me will not be unwelcome to you, when I am conscious I write with more
unreservedness than ever man wrote, or perhaps talked, to another. I
trust your good nature with the whole range of my follies, and really
love you so well, that I would rather you should pardon me than esteem
me; since one is an act of goodness and benevolence, the other a kind
of constrained deference.
You cannot wonder my thoughts are scarce consistent, when I tell you
how they are distracted. Every hour of my life my mind is strangely
divided; this minute perhaps I am above the stars, with a thousand
systems round about me, looking forward into a vast abyss, and
losing my whole comprehension in the boundless space of creation, in
dialogues with Whiston and the astronomers; the next moment I am below
all trifles, grovelling with T---- in the very centre of nonsense: now
I am recreated with the brisk sallies and quick turns of wit, which
Mr. Steele, in his liveliest and freest humours, darts about him; and
now levelling my application to the insignificant observations and
quirks of grammar of C---- and D----.
Good God! what an incongruous animal is man! how unsettled in his best
part, his soul; and how changing and variable in his frame of body!
the constancy of the one shook by every notion, the temperament of the
other affected by every blast of wind! What is he, altogether, but a
mighty inconsistency; sickness and pain is the lot of one half of him,
doubt and fear the portion of the other! What a bustle we make about
passing our time when all our space is but a point! what aims and
ambitions are crowded into this little instant of our life, which
(as Shakespeare finely worded it) is rounded with a sleep! Our whole
extent of being is no more, in the eye of Him who gave it, than a
scarce perceptible moment of duration. Those animals whose circle of
living is limited to three or four hours, as the naturalists tell us,
are yet as long-lived, and possess as wide a field of action as man,
if we consider him with a view to all space and all eternity. Who
knows what plots, what achievements a mite may perform in his kingdom
of a grain of dust, within his life of some minutes; and of how much
less consideration than even this, is the life of man in the sight of
God, who is for ever and ever?
Who that thinks in this train, but must see the world, and its
contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is
enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of
all desires, of all designs, of all friendships.
But we must return (through our very condition of being) to our narrow
selves, and those things that affect ourselves: our passions, our
interests flow in upon us and unphilosophize us into mere mortals. For
my part, I never return so much into myself, as when I think of
you, whose friendship is one of the best comforts I have for the
insignificancy of myself.
TO JONATHAN SWIFT
_Friends to posterity_
23 _March_, 1727-8.
I send you a very odd thing, a paper printed in Boston, in New
England, wherein you will find a real person, a member of their
parliament, of the name of Jonathan Gulliver. If the fame of that
traveller has travelled thither, it has travelled very quick, to have
folks christened already by the name of the supposed author. But if
you object that no child so lately christened could be arrived at
years of maturity to be elected into parliament, I reply (to solve the
riddle) that the person is an Anabaptist, and not christened till
full age, which sets all right. However it be, the accident is very
singular that these two names should be united.
Mr. Gay's opera has been acted near forty days running, and will
certainly continue the whole season. So he has more than a fence about
his thousand pounds; he will soon be thinking of a fence about his two
thousand. Shall no one of us live as we would wish each other to live?
Shall he have no annuity, you no settlement on this side, and I
no prospect of getting to you on the other? This world is made for
Caesar,--as Cato said, for ambitious, false, or flattering people to
domineer in; nay, they would not, by their good will, leave us our
very books, thoughts, or words in quiet. I despise the world yet, I
assure you, more than either Gay or you, and the court more than all
the rest of the world. As for those scribblers for whom you apprehend
I would suppress my _Dulness_ (which, by the way, for the future you
are to call by a more pompous name, the _Dunciad_), how much that nest
of hornets are my regard will easily appear to you when you read the
_Treatise of the Bathos_.
At all adventures, yours and mine shall stand linked as friends
to posterity, both in verse and prose, and (as Tully calls it) _in
consuetudine studiorum_. Would to God our persons could but as well
and as surely be inseparable! I find my other ties dropping from me;
some worn off, some torn off, some relaxing daily: my greatest, both
by duty, gratitude, and humanity, time is shaking every moment, and
it now hangs but by a thread! I am many years the older for living so
much with one so old; much the more helpless for having been so long
helped and tendered by her; much the more considerate and tender, for
a daily commerce with one who required me justly to be both to her;
and consequently the more melancholy and thoughtful; and the less fit
for others, who want only in a companion or a friend to be amused or
entertained. My constitution too has had its share of decay as well as
my spirits, and I am as much in the decline at forty as you at sixty.
I believe we should be fit to live together could I get a little more
health, which might make me not quite insupportable. Your deafness
would agree with my dulness; you would not want me to speak when
you could not hear. But God forbid you should be as destitute of the
social comforts of life as I must when I lose my mother; or that ever
you should lose your more useful acquaintance so utterly, as to turn
your thoughts to such a broken reed as I am, who could so ill supply
your wants. I am extremely troubled at the return of your deafness;
you cannot be too particular in the accounts of your health to me;
everything you do or say in this kind obliges me, nay, delights me,
to see the justice you do me in thinking me concerned in all your
concerns; so that though the pleasantest thing you can tell me be that
you are better or easier; next to that it pleases me that you make me
the person you would complain to.
As the obtaining the love of valuable men is the happiest end I
know of this life, so the next felicity is to get rid of fools and
scoundrels; which I cannot but own to you was one part of my design in
falling upon these authors, whose incapacity is not greater than their
insincerity, and of whom I have always found (if I may quote myself),
That each bad author is as bad a friend.
This poem will rid me of these insects.
Cedite, Romani scriptores, cedite, Graii;
_Nescio quid_ maius nascitur Iliade.
I mean than _my Iliad_; and I call it _Nescio quid_, which is a degree
of modesty; but however, if it silence these fellows, it must be
something greater than any _Iliad_ in Christendom. Adieu.
TO THE SAME
_A farming friend, and the Dunciad_
Dawley, 28 _June_, 1728.
I now hold the pen for my Lord Bolingbroke, who is reading your
letter between two haycocks, but his attention is somewhat diverted by
casting his eyes on the clouds, not in admiration of what you say,
but for fear of a shower. He is pleased with your placing him in the
triumvirate between yourself and me: though he says, that he doubts he
shall fare like Lepidus, while one of us runs away with all the power,
like Augustus, and another with all the pleasures, like Anthony. It is
upon a foresight of this that he has fitted up his farm, and you will
agree that his scheme of retreat at least is not founded upon weak
appearances. Upon his return from the Bath, all peccant humours, he
finds, are purged out of him; and his great temperance and economy are
so signal, that the first is fit for my constitution, and the latter
would enable you to lay up so much money as to buy a bishopric in
England. As to the return of his health and vigour, were you here, you
might inquire of his haymakers; but as to his temperance, I can answer
that (for one whole day) we have had nothing for dinner but mutton
broth, beans, and bacon, and a barn-door fowl.
Now his lordship is run after his cart, I have a moment left to myself
to tell you, that I overheard him yesterday agree with a painter
for £200, to paint his country hall with trophies of rakes, spades,
prongs, &c. , and other ornaments, merely to countenance his calling
this place a farm--now turn over a new leaf.
He bids me assure you, he should be sorry not to have more schemes of
kindness for his friends than of ambition for himself; there, though
his schemes may be weak, the motives at least are strong; and he
says farther, if you could bear as great a fall and decrease of your
revenues, as he knows by experience he can, you would not live in
Ireland an hour.
The _Dunciad_ is going to be printed in all pomp, with the
inscription, which makes me proudest. It will be attended with
_proeme, prolegomena, testimonia scriptorum, index authorum_, and
notes _variorum_. As to the latter, I desire you to read over the
text, and make a few in any way you like best; whether dry raillery,
upon the style and way of commenting of trivial critics; or humourous,
upon the authors in the poem; or historical, of persons, places,
times; or explanatory, or collecting the parallel passages of the
ancients. Adieu. I am pretty well, my mother not ill, Dr. Arbuthnot
vexed with his fever by intervals; I am afraid he declines, and we
shall lose a worthy man: I am troubled about him very much.
TO THE SAME
_An invitation to England_
23 _March_, 1736-7.
Though you were never to write to me, yet what you desired in your
last, that I would write often to you, would be a very easy task: for
every day I talk with you, and of you, in my heart; and I need only
set down what that is thinking of. The nearer I find myself verging to
that period of life which is to be labour and sorrow, the more I prop
myself upon those few supports that are left me. People in this state
are like props indeed; they cannot stand alone, but two or more of
them can stand, leaning and bearing upon one another. I wish you and I
might pass this part of life together. My only necessary care is at
an end. I am now my own master too much; my house is too large; my
gardens furnish too much wood and provision for my use. My servants
are sensible and tender of me; they have intermarried, and are become
rather low friends than servants; and to all those that I see here
with pleasure, they take a pleasure in being useful. I conclude this
is your case too in your domestic life, and I sometimes think of your
old housekeeper as my nurse, though I tremble at the sea, which only
divides us. As your fears are not so great as mine, and I firmly hope
your strength still much greater, is it utterly impossible it might
once more be some pleasure to you to see England? My sole motive in
proposing France to meet in, was the narrowness of the passage by sea
from hence, the physicians having told me the weakness of my breast,
&c. , is such, as a sea-sickness might endanger my life. Though one or
two of our friends are gone since you saw your native country, there
remain a few more who will last so till death; and who I cannot but
hope have an attractive power to draw you back to a country which
cannot quite be sunk or enslaved, while such spirits remain. And let
me tell you, there are a few more of the same spirit, who would awaken
all your old ideas, and revive your hopes of her future recovery and
virtue. These look up to you with reverence, and would be animated by
the sight of him at whose soul they have taken fire in his writings,
and derived from thence as much love of their species as is consistent
with a contempt for the knaves in it.
I could never be weary, except at the eyes, of writing to you; but my
real reason (and a strong one it is) for doing it so seldom, is fear;
fear of a very great and experienced evil, that of my letters being
kept by the partiality of friends, and passing into the hands and
malice of enemies, who publish them with all their imperfections on
their head, so that I write not on the common terms of honest men.
Would to God you would come over with Lord Orrery, whose care of you
in the voyage I could so certainly depend on; and bring with you your
old housekeeper and two or three servants. I have room for all, a
heart for all, and (think what you will) a fortune for all. We could,
were we together, contrive to make our last days easy, and leave some
sort of monument, what friends two wits could be in spite of all the
fools in the world. Adieu.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
1689-1761
TO MISS MULSO
_A discussion on love_
3 _Sept_. 1751.
In another place, you are offended with the word gratitude; as if your
idea of love excluded gratitude.
And further on, you are offended that I call this same passion 'a
little selfish passion'.
And you say that you have known few girls, and still fewer men, whom
you have thought 'capable of being in love'.
'By this', proceed you, 'you will see that my ideas of the word love
are different from yours, when you call it a little selfish passion. '
Now, madam, if that passion is not little and selfish that makes two
vehement souls prefer the gratification of each other, often to a
sense of duty, and always to the whole world without them, be pleased
to tell me what is? And pray be so good as to define to me what the
noble passion is, of which so few people of either sex are capable.
Give me your ideas of it.
I put not this question as a puzzler, a bamboozler, but purely for
information; and that I may make my Sir Charles susceptible of the
generous (may I say generous? ) flame, and yet know what he is about,
yet be a reasonable man.
Harriet's passion is founded in gratitude for relief given her in a
great exigence. But the man who rescued her is not, it seems, to have
such a word as gratitude in his head, in return for her love.
I repeat, that I will please you if I can; please you, Miss Mulso,
I here mean (before I meant not you particularly, my dear, but your
sex), in Sir Charles's character; and I sincerely declare, that I
would rather form his character to your liking, than to the liking of
three parts out of four of the persons I am acquainted with.
You are one of my best girls, and best judges. Of whom have I the
opinion that I have of Miss Mulso on these nice subjects? --I ask
therefore repeatedly for your definition of the passion which you
dignify by the word noble; and from which you exclude everything mean,
little, or selfish.
And you really think it marvellous that a young woman should find a
man of exalted merit to be in love with? Why, truly, I am half of your
mind; for how should people find what, in general, they do not seek?
Yet what good creatures are many girls! They will be in love for all
that.
Why, yes, to be sure, they would be glad of a Sir Charles Grandison,
and prefer him even to a Lovelace, were he capable of being terribly
in love. And yet, I know one excellent girl who is afraid 'that ladies
in general will think him too wise'. --Dear, dear girls, help me to a
few monkey-tricks to throw into his character, in order to shield him
from contempt for his wisdom.
'It is one of my maxims,' you say, 'that people even of bad hearts
will admire and love people of good ones. ' Very true! --and yet
admiration and love, in the sense before us, do not always shake
hands, except at parting, and with an intention never to meet again. I
have known women who professed to admire good men, but have chosen
to marry men--not so good, when lovers of both sorts have tendered
themselves to their acceptance. There is something very pretty in the
sound of the word wild, added to the word fellow; and good sense is
a very grateful victim to be sacrificed on the altar of love. Fervour
and extravagance in expressions will please. How shall a woman,
who, moreover, loves to be admired, know a man's heart, but from
his lips? --Let him find flattery, and she will find credulity. Sweet
souls! can they be always contradicting?
You believe it is not in human nature, however depraved, to prefer
evil to good in another, whatever people may do in themselves. Why, no
one would really think so, did not experience convince us that many,
very many young women, in the article of marriage, though not before
thought to be very depraved, are taken by this green sickness of the
soul, and prefer dirt and rubbish to wholesome diet. The result of the
matter is this, with very many young women: they will admire a good
man, but they will marry a bad one. Are not rakes pretty fellows?
But one thing let me add, to comfort you in relation to Harriet's
difficulties: I intend to make her shine by her cordial approbation,
as she goes along, of every good action of her beloved. She is
humbled by her love (suspense in love is a mortifier) to think herself
inferior to his sisters; but I intend to raise her above them, even
in her own just opinion; and when she shines out the girl worthy of
a man, not exalt, but reward her, and at the same time make him think
himself highly rewarded by the love of so frank and so right an heart.
There now! --Will that do, my Miss Mulso?
I laid indeed a heavy hand on the good Clarissa. But I had begun with
her, with a view to the future saint in her character; and could she,
but by sufferings, shine as she does?
Do you, my dear child, look upon me as your paternal friend.
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
1689-1762
TO THE COUNTESS OF MAR
_The Viennese court_
Vienna, 14 _Sept_. o. s. [1716].
Though I have so lately troubled you, my dear sister, with a long
letter, yet I will keep my promise in giving you an account of my
first going to court.
In order to that ceremony, I was squeezed up in a gown, and adorned
with a gorget and the other implements thereunto belonging: a dress
very inconvenient, but which certainly shews the neck and shape
to great advantage. I cannot forbear in this place giving you some
description of the fashions here, which are more monstrous and
contrary to all common sense and reason, than 'tis possible for you
to imagine. They build certain fabrics of gauze on their heads about
a yard high, consisting of three or four stories, fortified with
numberless yards of heavy ribbon. The foundation of this structure is
a thing they call a _Bourle_, which is exactly of the same shape
and kind, but about four times as big, as those rolls our prudent
milk-maids make use of to fix their pails upon. This machine they
cover with their own hair, which they mix with a great deal of false,
it being a particular beauty to have their heads too large to go into
a moderate tub. Their hair is prodigiously powdered, to conceal the
mixture, and set out with three or four rows of bodkins (wonderfully
large, that stick two or three inches from their hair), made of
diamonds, pearls, red, green, and yellow stones, that it certainly
requires as much art and experience to carry the load upright, as to
dance upon May-day with the garland. Their whalebone petticoats outdo
ours by several yards circumference, and cover some acres of ground.
You may easily suppose how much this extraordinary dress sets off and
improves the natural ugliness with which God Almighty has been pleased
to endow them all generally. Even the lovely empress herself is
obliged to comply, in some degree, with these absurd fashions, which
they would not quit for all the world. I had a private audience
(according to ceremony) of half an hour, and then all the other ladies
were permitted to come make their court. I was perfectly charmed
with the empress: I cannot, however, tell you that her features are
regular; her eyes are not large, but have a lively look, full of
sweetness; her complexion the finest I ever saw; her nose and forehead
well-made, but her mouth has ten thousand charms that touch the
soul. When she smiles, 'tis with a beauty and sweetness that force
adoration. She has a vast quantity of fine fair hair; but then her
person! --one must speak of it poetically to do it rigid justice; all
that the poets have said of the mien of Juno, the air of Venus, comes
not up to the truth. The Graces move with her; the famous statue of
Medicis was not formed with more delicate proportion; nothing can be
added to the beauty of her neck and hands. Till I saw them, I did not
believe there were any in nature so perfect, and I was almost sorry
that my rank here did not permit me to kiss them; but they are kissed
sufficiently; for every body that waits on her pays that homage at
their entrance, and when they take leave.
