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clitch? Pray when did you eat a crust with lord Peter is Jack as mad stiil as ever? I hear that, since you published the history of his case, the poor fellow, by more gentle usage, is almost got weil. If he had but more food, he would be as much in his senses as brother Martin himself. But Martin, they tell me, has lately spawned a strange brood of Methodists, Moravians, Hutchinsonians, who are madder than ever Jack was in his worst days. It is a great pity you are not alive again, to make a new edition of your Tale of the Tub for the use of these fellows.-Mr. Addison, I beg your pardon: I should have spoken to you sooner; but I was so struck with the sight of my old friend the doctor, that I forgot for a time the respects due to you.

Swift. Addison, I think our dispute is decided, before the judge has heard the cause.

Add. I own it is, in your favour;-but

Mer. Do not be discouraged, friend Addison. Apollo perhaps would have given a different judgment. I am a wit, and a rogue, and a foe to all dignity. Swift and I naturally like one another. He worships me more than Jupiter, and I honour him more than Homer. But yet, I assure you, I have great value for you.-Sir Roger de Coverley, Will Honeycomb, Will Wimble, the country gentleman in the Freeholder, and twenty more characters, drawn with the finest strokes of unaffected wit and humour in your admirable writings, have obtained for you a high place in the class of my authors, though not quite so high a one as that of the dean of St. Patrick's. Perhaps you might have got before him, if the decency of your nature

and the cautiousness of your judgment would have given you leave. But, allowing that, in the force and spirit of his wit he has really the advantage, how much does he yield to you in all the elegant graces; in the fine touches of delicate sentiment; in developing the secret springs of the soul; in showing the mild lights and shades of a character; in distinctly marking each line, and every soft gradation of tints, which would escape the common eye! Who ever painted like you the beautiful parts of human nature, and brought them out from under the shade even of the greatest simplicity, or the most ridiculous weaknesses; so that we are forced to admire, and feel that we venerate, even while we are laughing! Swift was able to do nothing that approaches to this.-He could draw an ill face, or caricature a good one, with a masterly hand: but there was all his power; and, if I be to speak as a god, a worthless power it is. Yours is divine. It tends to exalt human nature.

Swift. Pray, good Mercury, (if I may have liberty to say a word for myself) do you think that my talent was not highly beneficial to correct human nature? is whipping of no use, to mend naughty boys?

Mer. Men are generally not so patient of whipping as boys; and a rough satirist is seldom known to mend them. Satire, like antimony, if it be used as a medicine, must be rendered less corrosive. Yours is often rank poison. But I will allow that you have done some good in your way, though not half so much as Addison did in his.

Add. Mercury, I am satisfied. It matters little what rank you assign me as a wit, if you giye me

the precedence as a friend and benefactor to mankind.

Mer. I pass sentence on the writers, not the men. And my decree is this. When any hero is brought hither, who wants to be humbled, let the task of lowering his arrogance be assigned to Swift. The same good office may be done to a philosopher vain of his wisdom and virtue, or to a biggot puffed up with spiritual pride. The doctor's discipline will soon convince the first, that, with all his boasted morality, he is but a yahoo ; and the latter, that to be holy, he must necessarily be humble. I would also have him apply his anticosmetic wash to the painted face of female vanity; and his rod, which draws blood at every stroke, to the hard back of insolent folly or petulant wit. But Addison should be employed to comfort those, whose delicate minds are dejected with too painful a sense of some infirmities in their nature. To them he should hold his fair and charitable mirror; which would bring to their sight their hidden excellences, and put them in a temper fit for Elysium.-Adieu: continue to esteem and love each other, as you did in the other world, though you were of opposite parties, and (what is still more wonderful) rival wits. This alone is sufficient to entitle you both to Elysiumi.

Lord Lyttelton.

OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH POETS.

BOILEAU AND POPE.

Boil. MR. Pope, you have done me great honour. I am told, that you made me your model in poe

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try, and walked on Parnassus in the same paths which I had trod,

Pope. We both followed Horace: but in our manner of imitation, and in the turn of our natural genius, there was, I believe, much resemblance. We both were too irritable, and too easily hurt by offences even from the lowest of men. The keen edge of our wit was frequently turned against those whom it was more a shame to contend with, than an honour to vanquish.

Boil. Yes-But in general we were the champions of good morals, good sense, and good learning. If our love of these were sometimes heated into anger against those who offended them no less than us, is that anger to be blamed?

Pope. It would have been nobler, if we had not been parties in the quarrel. Our enemies observe, that neither our censure nor our praise was always impartial.

Boil. It might perhaps have been better, if in some instances we had not praised or blamed so much. But in panegyric and satire moderation

is insipid.

Pope. Moderation is a cold unpoetical virtue. Mere historical truth is better written in prose. And therefore I think you did judiciously, when you threw into the fire your history of Louis le Grand, and trusted his fame to your poems.

Boil. When those poems were published, that monarch was the idol of the French nation. If you and I had not known, in our occasional compositions, how to speak to the passions as well as to the sober reason of mankind, we should not have acquired that despotic authority in the empire of

wit, which made us so formidable to all the inferior tribe of poets in England and France. Beside, sharp satirists want great patrons.

Pope. All the praise which my friends received from me was unbought. In this, at least, I may boast a superiority over the pensioned Boileau. Boil. A pension in France was an honourable distinction. Had you been a Frenchman, you would have ambitiously sought it; had I been an Englishman, I should have proudly declined it. If our merit in other respects be not unequal, this difference will not set me much below you in the temple of virtue or of fame.

Pope. It is not for me to draw a comparison between our works. But, if I may believe the best critics, who have talked to me on the subject, my Rape of the Lock is not inferior to your Lutrin ; and my Art of Criticism may well be compared with your Art of Poetry: my Ethic Epistles are esteemed at least equal to yours, and my Satires much better.

Boil. Hold, Mr. Pope.-If there be really such a sympathy in our natures as you supposed, there may be reason to fear, that, if we go on in this manner comparing our works, we shall not part in good friendship.

Pope. No, no-the mild air of the Elysian fields has mitigated my temper, as I presume it has yours. But in truth our reputations are nearly on a level. Our writings are admired almost equally (as I hear) for energy and justness of thought. We both of us carried the beauty of our diction, and the harmony of our numbers, to the highest perfection that our languages would admit.

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