left, namely, to serve learning and merit, and by that means distinguish themselves from their prede

cessors.

I am, etc.

LETTER VIII.

FROM THE SAME.

March 6.

I THANK YOU very kindly for yours. I am sure we shall meet with the same hearts we ever met; and I could wish it were at Twickenham, though only to see you and Mrs. Allen twice there instead of once. But, as matters have turned out, a decent obedience to the government has since obliged me to reside here, ten miles out of the capital; and therefore I must see you here or no where. Let that be an additional reason for your coming and staying what time you can.

The utmost I can do, I will venture to tell you in your ear. I may slide along the Surrey side (where no Middlesex justice can pretend any cognizance) to Battersea, and thence cross the water for an hour or two, in a close chair, to dine with you, or so. But to be in town, I fear, will be imprudent, and thought insolent. At least, hitherto, all comply with the proclamation®.

I write thus early, that you may let me know if

* On the invasion, at that time threatened from France and the Pretender.

W.

your day continues, and I will have every room in my house as warm for you as the owner always would be. It may possibly be, that I shall be taking the secret flight I speak of to Battersea, before you come, with Mr. Warburton, whom I have promised to make known to the only great man in Europe, who knows as much as He. And from thence we may return the 16th, or any day, hither, and meet you, without fail, if you fix your day.

I would not make ill health come into the scale, as to keeping me here (though, in truth, it now bears very hard upon me again, and the least accident of cold, or motion almost, throws me into a very dangerous and suffering condition). God send you long life, and an easier enjoyment of your breath than I now can expect, I fear, etc.

He brought these two eminent men together, but they soon parted in mutual disgust with each other.

302

LETTERS

OF

MR. POPE TO MR. WARBURTON.

LETTER I.

April 11, 1739.

I HAVE just received from Mr. R. two more of your Letters. It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write this, but I cannot help thanking you in particular for your Third Letter, which is so extremely clear, short, and full, that I think Mr. Crouzaz9 ought never to have another answer, and deserved not so good an one. I can only say, you do him too much honour, and me too much right, so odd as the expression seems, for you have made my system as clear as I ought to have done and could not. It is indeed the same system as mine, but illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say our natural body is the same still when it is glorified'. I am sure I like

• Commentaries on the Essay on Man. W.

A Swiss professor who wrote remarks upon the philosophy of that Essay. W.

1 From Cowley to Sir W. Davenant;

So will our God re-build man's perish'd frame,
And raise him up much better, yet the same!

A very outrageous compliment indeed!

it better than I did before, and so will every man else. I know I meant just what you explain, but I did not explain my own meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself, but you express me better than I could express myself. Pray accept the sincerest acknowledgments. I cannot

but wish these letters were put together in one book, and intend (with your leave) to procure a translation of part, at least, or of all of them into French; but I shall not proceed a step without your consent and opinion, etc.

LETTER II.

May 26, 1739.

THE dissipation in which I am obliged to live through many degrees of civil obligation, which ought not to rob a man of himself who passes for an independent one, and yet make me every body's servant more than my own: this, Sir, is the occasion of my silence to you, to whom I really have more obligation than to almost any man. By writing, indeed, I proposed no more than to tell you my sense of it as to any corrections of your Letters, I could make none, but what resulted from inverting the Order of them, and those expressions relating to myself which I thought exaggerated. I could not find a word to alter in the last Letter, which I returned immediately to the Bookseller. I must particularly thank you for the mention you have made of me in

your Postscript to the last Edition' of the Legation of Moses. I am much more pleased with a compliment that links me to a virtuous Man, and by the best similitude, that of a good mind (even a better and a stronger tie than the similitude of studies), than I could be proud of any other whatsoever. May that independency, charity, and competency attend you, which sets a good priest above a Bishop, and truly makes his Fortune; that is, his happiness in this life as well as in the other.

* He means, a Vindication of the Author of the Divine Legation, against some papers in the Weekly Miscellany in which the Editor applied to himself those lines in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,

Me let the tender office long engage, etc. W.

With respect to the chief argument in the Divine Legation, that Moses omitted to inculcate the doctrine of a Future State, and to the inferences made from such omission, Archbishop Secker argues very acutely, "that future Recompenses were not directly and expressly either promised to good persons, or threatened to bad, in the Law of Moses; yet that might be, not because they were unknown, but because God thought them sufficiently known.-A life to come is not mentioned in the Laws of our own nation neither; though we know, they were made by such as professed firmly to believe it." LECTURE XVI.

With this passage, I am well informed, Warburton was much displeased; and after reading it, was accustomed to speak slightingly of Secker, and in terms very different from the encomiums he before passed on this truly learned Prelate.