hear of, and must e'en be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own.

Mr. Congreve is entirely yours, and has writ twice to you; he is not in town, but well. I am in great health, and sit up all night; a just reward for a fever I just come out of, that kept me in bed seven days.

How may I send a large bundle to you ?

I beg you will put dates to your letters; they are not long enough.

FROM POPE.

[October, 1716.]

MADAM,-After having dreamed of you several nights, besides a hundred reveries by day, I find it necessary to relieve myself by writing; though this is the fourth letter I have sent, two by Mr. Methuen,2 and one by Lord James Hay, who was to be your convoy from Leghorn. In all I can say, I only make you a present in many words of what can do you no manner of good, but only raises my own opinion of myself,-all the good wishes and hearty dispositions I am capable of forming or feeling for a deserving object; but mine are indeed so warm, that I fear they can proceed from nothing but what I can't very decently own to you, much less to any other; yet what if a man has, he can't help it.

For God's sake, madam, let not my correspondence be but like a traffic with the grave, from whence there is no return. Unless you write to me, my wishes must be like a poor papist's devotions to separate spirits, who, for all they know or hear from them, either may or may not be sensible of their addresses. None but your guardian angels can have you more constantly in mind than I; and if they have, it is only because they can see you always. If ever you think of those fine beaux of heaven, I beg you young to reflect, that you have just as much consolation from them as I at present have from you.

1 Addison's marriage to the Countess of Warwick took place August 2, 1716.-T.

2 That is, through Mr. Methuen, the secretary of state, who corresponded with Mr. Wortley Montagu on the affairs of the embassy.-T.

While all people here are exercising their speculations upon the affairs of the Turks, I am only considering them as they may concern a particular person; and, instead of forming prospects of the general tranquillity of Europe, am hoping for some effect that may contribute to your greater ease: above all, I would fain indulge an imagination, that the nearer view of the unquiet scene you are approaching to may put a stop to your farther progress. I can hardly yet relinquish a faint hope I have ever had, that Providence will take some uncommon care of one who so generously gives herself up to it; and I can't imagine God Almighty so like some of his vicegerents, as absolutely to neglect those who surrender to his mercy. May I thus tell you the truth of my heart? or must I put on a more unconcerned person, and tell you gaily, that there is some difference between the court of Vienna and the camps in Hungary; that scarce a basha living is so inoffensive a creature as Count Volkra; that the wives of ambassadors are as subject to human accidents, and as tender as their shins; that it is not more natural for glass to cut, than for Turks and Tartars to plunder (not to mention ravishing, against which I am told beauty is no defence in those parts); that you are strangely in the wrong to forsake a nation that but last year toasted Mrs. Walpole, for one that has no taste of beauty after twenty, and where the finest woman in England will be almost superannuated? Would to God, madam, all this might move either Mr. Wortley or you; and that I may soon apply to you both what I have read in one of Harlequin's comedies: he sees Constantinople in a raree-show, vows it is the finest thing upon earth, and protests it is prodigiously like. "Ay, sir," says the man of the show, "you have been at Constantinople, I perceive." "No, indeed," says Harlequin, "I was never there myself, but I had a brother I loved dearly, who had the greatest mind in the world to have gone thither.'

This is what I really wish from my soul, though it would ruin the best project I ever laid, that of obtaining, through your means, my fair Circassian slave; she whom my imagination had drawn more amiable than angels, as beautiful as the lady who was to choose her by a resemblance to so divine a face; she whom my hopes had already transported

over so many seas and lands, and whom my eager wishes had already lodged in my arms and heart; she, I say, upon this condition, may remain under the cedars of Asia, and weave a garland of palms for the brows of a Turkish tyrant, with those hands which I had destined for the soft offices of love, or at worst for transcribing amorous madrigals; let that breast, I say, be now joined to some savage heart, that never beat but with lust or rage; that breast, inhabited by far more truth, fidelity, and innocence, than those that heave with pride and glitter with diamonds; that breast, whose very conscience would have been love, where duty and rapture made but one thought, and honour must have been the same with pleasure.

I can't go on in this style: I am not able to think of you without the utmost seriousness; and, if I did not take a particular care to disguise it, my letters would be the most melancholy things in the world. I believe you see my concern through all this affectation of gaiety, which is but like a fit of laughing in the deepest spleen or vapours. just alarmed with a piece of news, that Mr. Wortley thinks of passing through Hungary, notwithstanding the war there. If ever any man loved his wife, or any mother her child, this offers you the strongest reason imaginable for staying at Vienna, at least this winter. For God's sake, value yourself a little more; and don't give us cause to imagine that such extravagant virtue can exist any where else than in a romance. I tremble for you the more, because (whether you'll believe it or not) I am capable myself of following one I love, not only to Constantinople, but to those parts of India, where, they tell us, the women best like the ugliest fellows, as the most admirable productions of nature, and look upon deformities as the signatures of divine favour. But (so romantic as I am) I should scarce take these rambles, without greater encouragement than I fancy any one who has been long married can expect. You see what danger I shall be in, if ever I find a fair one born under the same planet with Astolfo's wife. If, instead of Hungary, you passed through Italy, and I had any hopes that lady's climate might give a turn to your inclinations, it is but your sending me the least notice, and I'll certainly meet you in Lombardy, the scene

of those celebrated amours between the fair princess and her dwarf. From thence, how far you might draw me, and I might run after you, I no more know than the spouse in the Song of Solomon: this I know, that I could be so very glad of being with you in any pleasure, that I could be content to be with you in any danger. Since I am not to partake either, adieu: but may God, by hearing my prayers and preserving you, make me a better Christian than any modern poet is at present. I am, madam, Most faithfully yours.

FROM POPE.2

Nov. the 10th, O.S. [1716].

Sure

THE more I examine my own mind, the more romantic I find myself. Methinks it is a noble spirit of contradiction to fate and fortune, not to give up those that are snatched from us, but follow them with warmer zeal, the farther they are removed from the sense of it. flattery never travelled so far as three thousand miles: it is now only for truth, which overtakes all things, to reach you at this distance. 'Tis a generous piece of popery that pursues even those who are to be eternally absent, into another world; let it be right or wrong, the very extravagance is a sort of piety. I cannot be satisfied with strewing flowers over you, and barely honouring you as a thing lost; but must consider you as a glorious though remote being, and be sending addresses and prayers after you. You have carried away so much of my esteem, that what remains of it is3 daily languishing and dying over my acquaintance here; and, I believe, in three or four months more, I shall think Aurat-bassar as good a place as Covent

This story forms the subject of a tale in verse entitled "Woman," published in 1709, in Jacob Tonson's Miscellany, to which Pope contributed some of his early poems.-T.

2 This letter first appeared anonymously in the edition of Pope's Letters, published in 1737 by Cooper, with whom Pope confessed to have had secret relations; but the copy so published has several variations and omissions, the principal of which will be found mentioned in the notes, post.-T.

3 "Of me, that what remains is," &c.-Pope's published version.-T.

garden. You may imagine this but raillery, but I am really so far gone as to take pleasure in reveries of this kind. Let them say I am romantic, so is every one said to be that either admires a fine thing, or praises one: 'tis no wonder such people are thought mad, for they are as much out of the way of common understanding as if they were mad, because they are in the right. On my conscience, as the world goes, 'tis never worth any body's while to do a noble thing for the honour of it; glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill-paid as other just debts are; and neither Mrs. Macfarland [sic] for immolating her lover, nor 2 Lady Mary for sacrificing herself, must hope to be ever compared with Lucretia or Portia.

I write this in some anger; for having frequented those people most, since you went, who seemed most in your favour, I heard nothing that concerned you talked of so often, as that you went away in a black full-bottom; which I did but assert to be a bob, and was answered,—love is blind. I am persuaded your wig had never suffered this criticism, but on the score of your head, and the two fine eyes that are in it.

3

For God's sake, madam, when you write to me, talk of yourself, there is nothing I so much desire to hear of; talk a great deal of yourself, that she who I always thought talked best, may speak upon the best subject. The shrines and relics you tell me of, no way engage my curiosity; I had ten times rather go on pilgrimage to see your face, than St. John Baptist's head: I wish you had not only all those fine statues you talk of, but even the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar set up, provided you were to travel no farther than you could carry

it.

The court of Vienna is really very edifying: the ladies, with respect to their husbands, seem to understand that text very literally, that commands us to bear one another's burthens but I fancy many a man there is, like Issachar,

1 Mrs. Macfarlane shot Captain Cayley for an attempt upon her chastity at Edinburgh, October 2, 1716, as appears by the narrative published in the Weekly Journal of October 13.-T.

2" Nor you for constancy to your lord," &c.-Pope's published version.-T.

3 "The two eyes," &c.—Pope's published version.-T.