exhibit infinitely too much of that contemptuous and malevolent spirit, which she was apt to display against several illustrious authors of her own time, a failing, for which she has been censured with great justice and eloquence by a female writer of the present age, who may be regarded as greatly superior to Lady Mary, not only in the graceful virtues most suited to her sex, but in her poetical talents. The candid, elegant, and animated biographer of Richardson (Mrs. Barbauld) has admirably vindicated the mental dignity of that enchanting moralist against the sarcastic detraction of Lady Mary.

But let us return to the letters of Pope. If they have sunk in the estimation of the public, there certainly was a time when they contributed not a little to his renown. Even his unfriendly biographer, Johnson, says on this subject-" Pope's private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation with praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship."

This is probably the truth, though the Doctor seems to contradict himself in the course of a few pages, and says with remarkable inconsistency, in speaking of the letters published by Pope"The book never became much the subject of conversation. Some read it, as a contemporary history; and some perhaps as a model of epistolary language. But those who read it, did not talk of it. Not much, therefore was added by it to fame, or envy."

If the surreptitious edition of Pope's letters produced such a striking effect in the poet's favour, as the Doctor at first asserted, it is very improbable that Pope's authentic publication of his own correspondence should be so little regarded. There is also great improbability in the Doctor's conjecture, that Pope himself, with a very mean artifice, contrived the first clandestine appearance of his own letters. Had he previously wished to print them, he might have pleaded the precedent of Howel's Letters, a popular book of our own country, and of merit sufficient to attract the notice and applause of foreigners; for the learned Morhoff, in his History of Literature, expresses a wish, that Howel's Letters may be translated into Latin or German. If Pope wished for higher authority among the poets of other nations, he might have found such an authority in the elder Tasso, who, in writing to his friend Claudio Tolomei, praises him with enthusiastic admiration for having published one of the earliest collections of familiar letters in the Italian language, which the poet considers as worthy of being regarded as models; and in friendly emulation of which he avows a design of imparting to the world two books of his own private letters.

It is but just, however, to observe, on the other side, that Erasmus, a favourite author in the estimation of Pope, has said in one of his letters, that he would by no means advise any writer to publish his own letters in his life time:-"Nulli velim_autor esse, ut ipse vivus edat." The mild Erasmus confessed he wanted courage

himself for such a display of his talents; and declares, he wondered that St. Bernard not only published letters of his own, but letters, in which he had not scrupled to stigmatize the names of many.

Let us revert to the letters of Pope." His epistolary excellence (says Johnson) had an.open field; he had no English rival living or dead." The biographer, before he made this remark, enumerated a few English writers of letters, who had preceded Pope; but he forgot Sir William Temple, whose celebrated letter to Lady Essex on the death of her daughter, is a masterpiece of tender reproof, and friendly admonition, against the indulgence of intemperate sorrow; a letter admirable for its eloquence, and worthy of perpetual commendation, as medicinal to every suffering parent, whom tenderness of heart may expose to the pitiable excesses of natural affliction.

If the English are inferior to other nations of the modern world in the multitude of collected letters, we may certainly produce single examples of excellence not surpassed by foreigners, in letters of diversified description.

In a consolatory letter, Sir William Temple has no rival to apprehend in a letter of manly application to the mercy of a tyrant (perhaps the kind of letter which it may be most difficult to write simply and gracefully) the poet Cleveland, addressing Oliver Cromwell, appears entitled to a similar encomium: and for a letter of laconic dignity we may produce, without a fear of seeing her surpassed, the high-born, and high-spirited Anne, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery."

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Lord Bacon has expressed his very high esteem of epistolary writing, in the following terms :-" Letters, such as are written from wise men, are, of all the words of men, in my judgment, the best." Yet this wonderful man is himself very far from appearing to such advantage in his letters as in his Moral Essays-the latter contain the pure essence of his powerful mind, the former are debased by the dregs of it. His Essays are an exquisite production of knowledge, wisdom, and piety-his letters, a coarse tissue of artifice, adulation, and servility.

In a letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Davies, who was gone to compliment James the First on his accession to the throne of England, Bacon says "I commend myself to your love, and the well-using my name-in imprinting a good conceit and opinion of me, chiefly in the King-so desiring you to be good to concealed poets, I continue your assured friend."

These remarkable words seem to imply, that Bacon wished Davies to represent him to the King, as privately devoted to poetry; and so he sometimes was. If he had this intention, it proves that he very early understood the various modes of obtaining favour with the new monarch; for when James saw Davies, he asked if he was Nosce teipsum, alluding to the title of his celebrated poem, and

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being informed that his new attendant was indeed the author of that admirable work, he gave him expectations of future promotion, which he soon fulfilled. There is a letter of Bacon to James, on being created Viscount St. Alban's, which enumerates the various favours he had received from that sovereign; but instead of displaying the genuine eloquence of manly gratitude, it contains a very poor conceit. Even in writing to the King's daughter, the Queen of Bohemia, on the occasion of presenting to her his History of Henry the Seventh, Bacon is far from producing a graceful letter. But it is painful to dwell on the imperfections of so great a genius-let us return to the moral poet, who described him truly and energetically, in a single verse.

One of the most interesting and manly letters of the collection addressed to Pope is the last of Arbuthnot's, containing the dying advice of that genuine, accomplished friend, to the too irritable poet. Pope, in his reply, assigns his reasons for not adhering exactly to the admonition, of which he acknowledges the kindness: but, as Warton has very justly observed on the occasion, his reasons are not so solid as the admonition; and indeed the poet's letter is by no means so gracefully written as that of the friendly physician, a man equally distinguished by the moral gaiety of his life, and by his serene preparation for death-a man so happily free from all flagrant misconduct, that his greatest fault seems to have been an inattention to the due preservation of his own admirable writings; for some of them, it is said, he suffered his children to destroy, in the shape of playthings.

Of Pope's letters taken altogether, it may be justly asserted, that they tend to confirm that brief but honourable eulogy, which Bolingbroke, in a season of awful veracity, pathetically pronounced over his expiring friend: "O great God! what is man!-I never knew a person that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a warmer benevolence for all mankind!"

Perhaps the most admirable of Pope's letters is his farewell to Atterbury: it displays both the tenderness and the dignity of true friendship; for the writer was perfectly sincere in his enthusiastic attachment both to Atterbury and to Bolingbroke; two extraordinary men, whose social accomplishments were so powerfully brilliant, that they seem to have rendered the moral and penetrating poet absolutely blind to that pestilent ambition which spotted the character both of the statesman and of the prelate.

Johnson speaks candidly of Pope, in saying, "he is seen in the collection of his letters, as connected with the other contemporary wits; and certainly suffers no disgrace in the comparison." This is undoubtedly true, in the important articles of strong sense and lively fancy; but he frequently appears inferior to his correspondents in the lighter graces of epistolary language; particularly, inferior to Bolingbroke, whose style is remarkable for the happiest union of ease, vivacity, and vigour.

The letters of Bolingbroke, lately printed (in Mr. Coxe's elaborate and candid Life of Sir Robert Walpole) from the Egremont papers, are admirably written; and I may assist some future biographer of Bolingbroke, by observing, that the private collection from which the letters I speak of were selected, contains one very memorable letter, though properly omitted by the historian of Walpole, as not connected with his design: it is a letter of great pathos and eloquence, dated Argeville, July 7, 1740, and addressed to the son of Sir William Wyndham, on the death of his father; a letter highly honorable to the writer, in the character of a friend!

Bolingbroke and Swift have both spoken of the most eminent letter-writers, in their correspondence with Pope; let us observe how each expresses himself on the talent in which they both excelled.

"I believe," says Swift to Pope (October 21, 1735), " my letters have escaped being published, because I writ nothing but nature, and friendship, and particular incidents, which could make no figure in writing: I have observed, that not only Voiture, but likewise Tully and Pliny, writ their letters for the public view more than for the sake of their correspondents; and I am glad of it, on account of the entertainment they have given me."

"I seek no epistolary fame," says Bolingbroke, in the postscript of an earlier letter from Pope to Swift (April 14, 1730), "but am a good deal pleased to think, that it will be known hereafter that you and I lived in the most friendly intimacy together. Pliny writ his letters for the public; so did Seneca, so did Balzac, Voiture, &c. Tully did not; and therefore these give us more pleasure than any which have come down to us from antiquity. When we read them, we pry into a secret which was intended to be kept from us-that is a pleasure we see Cato, and Brutus, and Pompey, and others, such as they really were; and not such as the gaping multitude of their own age took them to be; or as historians and poets have represented them to ours; that is another pleasure. I remember to have seen a procession at Aix-la-Chapelle, wherein an image of Charlemagne is carried on the shoulders of a man who is hid by the long robe of the imperial saint; follow him into the vestry, you see the bearer slip from under the robe, and the gigantic figure dwindles into an image of the ordinary size, and is set by among other lumber."

The noble author has very happily illustrated his just idea concerning the ostentatious display of public characters imperfectly known; but the opposite intentions which he ascribes to Cicero and to Pliny, concerning their letters, were not, I apprehend, exactly the intentions of the two illustrious Romans, whose names have derived so much lustre from their epistolary talents. All the letters of Cicero were certainly not intended for the eye of the public, but many most probably were so. The great orator had so fervent a passion for fame, that he was eager to spread every sail by which a breath of glory could be caught.

The more succinct, but less powerful Pliny very candidly confesses a similar passion. He takes a pride in the elegance of his letters:-"Habeant nostræ quoque literæ aliquid non humile, nec sordidum, nec privatis rebus inclusum." Yet Pliny seems not to have intended that the world should see such of his letters as relate only to the little circumstances of his private and domestic life. He is a gainer, however, by the perfect knowledge of his character which these letters afford; for, in various points of view, he appears interesting and amiable.

Montaigne is uncommonly severe, in describing the letters of Cicero and Pliny as proofs of their inordinate vanity; but if that pleasant essayist should excite a frown by the severity of his remarks on these favourite authors, he may lead his reader to smile again, at the honest vanity he displays himself, while he is censuring the vanity of the two Roman consuls; since, in the same chapter, he commends his own talents for epistolary composition.

It may be regretted, that in the rich mass of ancient Grecian literature we find no collections of familiar letters, to be compared with those of Cicero and Pliny. Indeed, there are hardly any written by men of eminence, and entitled to the name of familiar letters, if we except a few of Æschines, the orator; who seems, in his epistolary talent, to have been the Bolingbroke of Athens. In one of his letters he relates with vivacity a ludicrous and licentious adventure of a young fellow-traveller, with whom he visited the plain of Troy. As it seems to have been the intention of Æschines, in these travels, to compare the scenery around him with the descriptions of it exhibited by Homer, it may be wished, that this eloquent Athenian (whose command of language was in some points, perhaps, superior to that of his triumphant rival Demosthenes) had made his intended comparison the subject of another letter.

Although the letters of philosophers and rhetoricians to princes are scarcely to be classed with such epistolary composition as arises from familiarity and friendship, I am tempted to notice two remarkable letters included in the works of Plato and Isocrates. The first may be fairly considered as a private letter, since the philosopher entreats his correspondent, the younger Dionysius, to read it repeatedly, and then to burn it. In truth, he had abundant reason for such a request; as the letter contains a singular confession, that this admired instructor had never published his own genuine sentiments on some abstruse points of philosophy, but contented himself with delivering the opinions of his master.-Vide Platonis, vol. xi. p. 72, edit. Biponti.

The letter of Isocrates, to which I have alluded, is addressed to Alexander of Macedon, during the life of his father, Philip. It is a brief, benevolent, and graceful compliment, from an illustrious veteran of literature, to a highly promising youth.-Vide Isocrates, vol. i, p. 454, edit. Auger.

When we consider the passion for news which animated the