you had been more explicit if your leg be quite well. You say no more than that you got home well. I expect a more particular account of you when you have reposed yourself a while at your own fire-side, I shall inquire as soon as I am in London, which of my friends have seen you? There are two or three who know how to value you: I wish I was as sure they would study to serve you.-A project has arisen in my head to make you, in some measure, the Editor of this new edition of the Dunciad3, if you have no scruple of owning some of the graver notes, which are now added to those of Dr. Arbuthnot. I mean it as a kind of prelude, or advertisement to the public of your Commentaries, on the Essay on Man, and on Criticism, which I propose to print next in another volume proportioned to this. I only doubt whether an avowal of these notes to so ludicrous a poem be suitable to a character so established as yours for more serious studies. It was a sudden thought since we parted; and I would have you treat it as no more; and tell me if it is not better to be suppressed; freely and friendly. I have a particular reason to make you interest yourself in me and my writings. It will cause both them and me

his Lordship had divided himself into two personages of Editor and Author. This Letter, written with all the respect due to his rank and character, he thought fit to ascribe to the Author of the Divine Legation; so that you need not wonder if it exposed the suspected writer to all his Lordship's rage, and to all the ribaldry of his sycophants, of which some, that was said to pass through this great man's hands, was in language bad enough to disgrace even jails and garrets."

* That is, of the four books complete. W.

to make the better figure to posterity. A very mediocre poet, one Drayton, is yet taken some notice of because Selden writ a few notes on one of his

poems.

Adieu. May every domestic happiness make you unwilling to remove from home; and may every friend, you do that kindness for, treat you so as to make you forget you are not at home!

I am, etc.

LETTER XVII.

December 28, 1742.

I HAVE always so many things to take kindly of you, that I dont know which to begin to thank you for. I was willing to conclude our whole account of the Dunciad, at least, and therefore staid till it was finished. The encouragement you gave me to add the fourth book first determined me to do so; and the approbation you seemed to give it was what singly determined me to print it. Since that, your Notes and your Discourse in the name of Aristarchus have given its last finishings and ornaments.I am glad you will refresh the memory of such readers as have no other faculty to be readers, especially of

• Drayton deserves a much higher character. He abounds in many beautiful and natural descriptions, and some very harmonious lines. And Selden's notes are full of curious antiquarian researches. Pope was as much superior to Drayton, as Selden was to Warburton.

such works as the Divine Legations. But I hope you will not take too much notice of another and a

* One of the most shrewd and acute objections ever urged against the reasoning of the Divine Legation, is in the following Letter of Dr. Middleton to Warburton.

"When I was last in London, I met with a little Piece, written with the same view and on the same plan with yours; an anonymous Letter from Geneva, evincing the divine Mission of Moses, from the Institution of the Sabbatic year. The author sets out, like you, from this single Postulatum, that Moses was a consummate Lawgiver; and shews that he could never have enjoined a Law so whimsical, impolitic, and hazardous, exposing the people to certain famine, as oft as the preceding or following year proved barren, if he, who has all Nature at command, had not warranted the success of it. The letter is ingenious and sprightly, and dresses out, in a variety of colours, the absurdity of the institution, on the supposition of its being human. It is in French, and published in Bibliothéque Germanique, tom. xxx.

"But will not this gaiety of censuring the Law be found too adventurous, and expose your Postulatum itself to some hazard? especially when there is a fact generally allowed by the learned, that seems to overturn all this specious reasoning at once; viz. that this Law of the Sabbatic year was never observed. For, if So, it may be objected, with some shew of reason, that Moses had charged himself with the issue of events too delicate, and beyond his reach, and imprudently enjoined what use and experience shewed to be impracticable. I am apprehensive likewise that your work will not stand wholly clear of objections: your scheme, as I take it, is to shew, that so able a man as Moses could not possibly have omitted the doctrine of a future state, thought so necessary to government by all other Legislators, had he not done it by express direction of the Deity; and that under the miraculous dispensations of the Theocracy, he could neither want it himself for the inforcing a respect to his laws, nor yet the people, for the encouragement of their obedience. But what was the consequence? Why the people were perpetually apostatizing either to the Superstitions of Egypt or the Idolatries of Canaan; and, tired with the load of their Ceremonies, wholly dropped them at last, and sunk into all kinds of vice and profaneness; till the Prophets, in order to revive and preserve a sense of Religion amongst them, began to preach up the

duller sort; those who become writers through malice, and must die whenever you please to shine out in the completion of the Work: which I wish were now your only answer to any of them except you will make use of that short and excellent one you gave me in the story of the reading-glass.

:

The world here grows very busy. About what time is it you think of being amongst us? My health, I fear, will confine me, whether in town or here, so that I may expect more of your company as one good resulting out of evil.

I write, you know, very laconically. I have but one formula which says every thing to a friend, "I am yours, and beg you to continue mine." Let me not be ignorant (you can prevent my being so of any thing, but first and principally) of your health and well being; and depend on my sense of all the Kindness over and above all the Justice you shall ever do

me.

I never read a thing with more pleasure than an additional sheet to Jervas's preface to Don Quixote.

rational duties of Morality, and insinuate the doctrine of a future state."-Letter to Mr. Warburton, Sept. 11, 1736.

Our author did not perhaps know that his learned and excellent friend, Bishop Berkeley, had remarked, long before the Divine Legation was published, "That Moses, indeed, doth not insist on a future state, the common basis of all political Institutions; nor do other Lawgivers make a particular mention of all things necessary, but suppose some things as generally known and believed. The belief of a future state, (which it is manifest the Jews were possessed of long before the coming of Christ) seems to have obtained among the Hebrews from primæval Tradition; which might render it unnecessary for Moses to insist on that article."-A Discourse addressed to Magistrates.

On the origin of the books of Chivalry. W.

Before I got over two paragraphs I cried out, Aut Erasmus aut Diabolus! I knew you as certainly as the ancients did the Gods by the first pace and the very gait. I have not a moment to express myself in, but could not omit this which delighted me so greatly.

My Law-suit with L. is at an end.-Adieu! Believe no man can be more yours. Call me by any title you will but a Doctor of Oxford; Sit tibi cura

mei, sit tibi cura tui.

LETTER XVIII.

January 18, 1742.

I AM forced to grow every day more laconic in my letters, for my eyesight grows every day shorter and dimmer. Forgive me then that I answer you summarily. I can even less bear an equal part in a correspondence than in a conversation with you. But be assured once for all, the more I read of you, as the more I hear from you, the better I am instructed and pleased. And this misfortune of my own dulness, and my own absence, only quickens my ardent wish that some good fortune would draw you nearer, and enable me to enjoy both, for a greater part of our lives in this neighbourhood; and in such a situation, as might make more beneficial friends, than I, esteem and enjoy you equally. I have again heard from Lord ** and another hand, that