no reason to complain that men of either party shun my company. I have never been an impudent beggar at the doors of noblemen: my visits have indeed been too rare to be unacceptable; and but just enough to testifie my gratitude for their bounty, which I have frequently received, but always unasked, as themselves will witness. I have written more than I needed to you on this subject; for I dare say you justifie me to your self. As for that which I first intended for the principal subject of this letter, which is my friend's passion and his design of marriage, on better consideration I have chang'd my mind: for having had the honour to see my dear friend Wycherly's letter to him on that occasion, I find nothing to be added or amended. But as well as I love Mr. Wycherly, I confess I love my self. so well, that I will not shew how much I am inferiour to him in wit and judgment, by undertaking any thing after him. There is Moses and the Prophets in his council. Jupiter and Juno, as the poets tell us, made Tiresias their umpire in a certain merry dispute, which fell out in heaven betwixt them. Tiresias, you know, had been of both sexes, and therefore was a proper judge; our friend Mr. Wycherly is full as competent an arbitrator: he has been a bachelor, and marry'd man, and is now a widower. Virgil says of Ceneus, Nunc vir, nunc fœmina, Ceneus, Yet I suppose he will not give any large commendations to his middle state: nor as the sailor said, will be fond after a shipwrack to put to sea again. If my friend will adventure after this, I can but wish him a good wind, as being his, and My dear Mr. Dennis Your most affectionate and most faithful Servant JOHN DRYDEN. XCIII. Miss Thomas was the daughter of a barrister, and had become acquainted with Dryden by sending him some of her verses that she might have his opinion on them. Though labouring under a complication of diseases and on the verge of the grave, the old poet politely replied in words of high praise. The fol lowing was written within three months of his death. It would have been well had 'Corinna,' as he gallantly called her, always remembered his wise and solemn words. John Dryden to Elizabeth Thomas. November, 1699. Madam, The great desire which I observe in you to write well, and those good parts which God Almighty and Nature have bestow'd on you, make me not to doubt, that by application to study, and the reading of the best authors, you may be absolute mistress of poetry. 'Tis an unprofitable art, to those who profess it; but you, who write only for your diversion, may pass your hours with pleasure in it, and without prejudice; always avoiding (as I know you will,) the licence which Mrs. Behn allow'd herself, of writing loosely, and giving, if I may have leave to say so, some scandall to the modesty of her sex. I confess, I am the last man who ought, in justice, to arraign her, who have been my self too much a libertine in most of my poems; which I should be well contented I had time either to purge, or to see them fairly burn'd. But this I need not say to you, who are too well born, and too well principled, to fall into that mire. In the mean time, I would advise you not to trust too much to Virgil's Pastorals; for as excellent as they are, yet Theocritus is far before him, both in softness of thought, and simplicity of expression. Mr. Creech has translated that Greek poet, which I have not read in English. If you have any considerable faults, they consist chiefly in the choice of words, and the placing them so as to make the verse run smoothly; but I am at present so taken up with my own studies, that I have not leisure to descend to particulars; being, in the mean time, the fair Corinna's Most humble and most faithful Servant JOHN DRYDEN. P.S. I keep your two copies, till you want them, and are pleas'd to send for them. XCIV. 'The unquestioned founder of the analytical philosophy of mind,' for so John Stuart Mill dubbed John Locke, was no mere grave psychologist, but a rather facetious companion who believed implicitly in La Rochefoucauld's maxim that 'gravity is a mystery of the body invented to conceal the defects of the mind.' It was an article of faith with the author of the Essay on the Human Understanding,' that in order properly to employ a part of this life in serious occupations it is necessary to devote another part to entertaining pastimes. There is much in Locke's familiar correspondence that betrays a vein of pleasantry and a courtierlike demeanour which explains his popularity among friends. John Locke to Lady Calverley. 1703. Madam,-Whatever reason you have to look on me, as one of the slow men of London, you have this time given me an excuse for being so; for you cannot expect a quick answer to a letter, which took me up a good deal of time to get to the beginning of it. I turned and turned it on every side; looked at it again and again, at the top of every page; but could not get into the sense and secret of it, till I applied myself to the middle. You, madam, who are acquainted with all the skill and methods of the ancients, have not, I suppose, taken up with this hieroglyphical way of writing for nothing; and since you were going to put into your letter things that might be the reward of the highest merit, you would, by this mystical intimation, put me into the way of virtue, to deserve them. But whatever your ladyship intended, this is certain, that, in the best words in the world, you gave me the greatest humiliation imaginable. Had I as much vanity as a pert citizen, that sets up as a wit in his parish, you have said enough in your letter to content me; and if I could be swoln that way, you have taken a great deal of pains to blow me up, and make me the finest gaudy bubble in the world, as I am painted by your colours. I know the emperors of the East suffer not strangers to appear before them, till they are dressed up out of their own wardrobes; is it so too in the empire of wit and must you cover me with your own embroidery, that I may be a fit object for your thoughts and conversation? This, madam, may suit your greatness, but doth not at all satisfy my ambition. He, who has once flattered himself with the hopes of your friendship, knows not the true value of things, if he can content himself with these splendid ornaments. As soon as I had read your letter, I looked in my glass, felt my pulse, and sighed; for I found, in neither of those, the promises of thirty years to come. For at the rate I have hitherto advanced, and at the distance, I see, by this complimental way of treatment, I still am, I shall not have time enough in this world to get to you. I do not mean to the place where you now see the pole elevated, as you say, 54 degrees. A post-horse, or a coach, would quickly carry me thither. But when shall we be acquainted at this rate? Is that happiness reserved to be completed by the gossiping bowl, at your granddaughter's lying-in? If I were sure that, when you leave this dirty place, I should meet you in the same star where you are to shine next, and that you would then admit me to your conversation, I might perhaps have a little more patience. But, methinks, it is much better to be sure of something, than to be put off to expectations of so much uncertainty. If there be different elevations of the pole here, that keep you at so great a distance from those who languish in your absence; who knows but, in the other world, there are different elevations of persons? And you, perhaps, will be out of sight, among the seraphims, while we are left behind in some dull planet. This the high flights of your elevated genius give us just augury of, whilst you are here. But yet, pray take not your place there before your time; nor keep not us poor mortals at a greater distance than you need. When you have granted me all the nearness that acquaintance and friendship can give, you have other advantages enough still to make me see how much I am beneath you. This will be only an enlargement of your goodness, without lessening the adoration due to your other excellences. You seem to have some thoughts of the town again. If the parliament, or the term, which draw some by the name and appearance of business; or if company, and music meetings, and other such entertainments, which have the attractions of pleasure and delight, were of any consideration with you; you would not have much to say for Yorkshire, at this time of the year. But these are no arguments to you, who carry your own satisfaction, and I know not how many worlds always about you. I would be glad you would think of putting all these up in a coach and bringing them this way. For though you should be never the better; yet there be a great many here that would, and amongst them The humblest of your Ladyship's servants JOHN LOCKE. XCV. Sir Isaac Newton found time for a good deal of correspondence with members of foreign and English Universities, notably with the learned Dr. Bentley, of Cambridge; but his letters are for the most part long, and attain the dimensions and form of scientific tracts. The following is an interesting specimen of the few shorter epistles. Sir Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley. Cambridge: February 11, 1693. Sir,-The Hypothesis of deriving the frame of the world by mechanical principles from matter evenly spread through the heavens being inconsistent with my system, I had considered it very little before your letters put me upon it, and therefore trouble you with a line or two more, if this come not too late for your use. In my former I represented that the diurnal rotations of the Planets could not be derived from gravity, but required a divine power to impress them. And though gravity might give the Planets a motion of descent towards the sun, either directly or with some little obliquity, yet the transverse motions by which they revolve in their several orbs required the Divine Arm to impress them according to the tangents of their orbs. I would now add, that the Hypothesis of matters being at first evenly spread through the heavens is, in my opinion, inconsistent with the Hypothesis of innate gravity, without a supernatural power to reconcile them, and therefore it infers a Deity. For if there be innate gravity, it's impossible now for the matter of the earth and all the planets and stars to fly up from them, and become evenly spread throughout the heavens, without a supernatural power; and certainly that which can never be hereafter without a supernatural power, could never be heretofore without the same power. |