concerned for your Mothes Indisposition, and prayes she may have a speedy recovery, what I am further to add, is yt her hearty wishes upon all attends your ffath, Mothere, and your Selfe, and what else can be thought on, is not awanting in her. My Cousin Marie LETTER XXXVII. TO POPE. DEAR SIR, I have yours, and thank you for the care of my picture. I will not be used like an old good for nothing, by Mrs. Patty. The handsome thing would have been to have taken away my picture and sent me her own, now to return the compliment I must pay for hers. I hope she is well, & if I can make her so, it will be a sensible pleasure to me. I know nobody has a better right to a Lady's good looks in a picture than her physician, if he can procure them. I was with my Lord Peterborrow when I receaved yours. he was spick & span new just come ffrom ffrance, you was the first man he ask'd for. 1 din'd with him & the Mrs. Robin sons on Tuesday, & supp'd with him last night with the same company he had been employd all that day in Removing the Robinsons' Gun* for them, which he executed with great conduct. I cannot tell how much I am obliged to him, he delivered a memorial from me to the Regent wh his own hand. He is mightily enamoured of my brother Robert, he is indeed a Knight errant like himself. I am now going to Langley, not that master is in any danger, but to order some things after the small Pox. I am heartily glad Mrs. Pope keeps her health this Summer, She has been better than any body; I wish * I can make nothing else of this passage; in the additions to Pope's Works it is copied thus:— "In taming the Robinson's Genius for them. and this line from Pope is absurdly given in support of it ;"And tames the stubborn genius of the soil." But, exclusively of its being nonsense, the manuscript has no similitude to the words; for the word called taming,' begins with an 'R' in the original, and that represented by 'Genius' is not longer than four letters. Probably this letter was written by Dr. Radcliffe, who died in 1714, upon which Pope says in a letter to Martha Blount, "You know your Doctor is gone the way of all his patients, LETTER XXXVIII. MR. CORBIERE TO POPE. Saturday. SIR, Mrs. Newsham * will be glad to see you tomorrow morning at 11. If you will be pleas'd to call upon me by that time; I shall wait on you thither, being always, Sir, Your most obedient humble Servt. ANT. CORBIERE. and was hard put to it to dispose of an estate miserably unwieldly and splendidly unuseful to him." Not a very just reflection, when it is considered that a great part of his property was left for the furtherance and support of learning and science. *This lady afterwards married John Knight, Esquire, and lastly Robert Nugent, Lord Clare; of whom Walpole gives this amusing character. Sir John Barnard presented the Gin Bill in 1752, which Nugent treated with the most contemptuous and irresistible ridicule. "Sir John Barnard was as little ready to reply to banter, as Nugent was inferior to him in reasoning. The citizen with the most acute head for figures, made that sort of speaking still more unpleasant by the paltriness of his language, as the arro LETTER XXXIX. MR. CARYLL TO POPE. Lady Holt. June 29. DEAR ST. The favour of your last followed me about ye Country till att last itt overtook me att Par gance of his honesty clouded the merit of it. The Irishman's style was floridly bombast, his impudence as great as if he had been honest. Sir John's moroseness looked like ill-nature, and may be was so. Nugent affected unbounded good humour, and it was unbounded by much secret malice, which sometimes broke out in boisterous railing, oftener vented itself in stillborn satires. Sir John Barnard had been attached to Lord Granville, but had been flattered from him by Mr. Pelham. Nugent's attachments were to Lord Granville; but all his flattery was addressed to Mr. Pelham, whom he mìmicked in candour, as he often resembled Lord Granville in ranting. Sir John Barnard meant honestly, and preserved his disinterestedness; he would probably have sunk in his character of a great genius, if he had not come into business with Sandys and the others,—as they did. **Nugent * * * * had lost the reputation of a great poet, by writing works of his own after he had acquired fame by an ode1 that was the joint production of several others. One would have thought his speeches had as different an origin; sometimes nothing finer, generally crowded with absurdities. * Pope describes Caryll as "A gentleman who was secretary 1 It was addressed to Lord Bath upon the author's change of his religion; but was universally believed to be written by Mallet, who was tutor to Newsham, Mrs. Nugent's son, and improved by Mr. Pulteney himself, and Lord Chesterfield. M ham (S' Cecill Bishop's) where I had been neer a weeke agreably entertained by the good Sence of the Lady and wonderfully diverted with the knights inimitable manner of thinking & talking. Y' Homer came down whilst I was there, upon which he ran severall extempore divisions, and I believe, had you been privy to them, you would have preferr'd 'em before some of Rapin's or Mde. Dacier's more deliberate Remarks. I am now returned, as you see by the date of my letter, and after a Weekes stay here, I hope I shall be att liberty to goe to Staple-durham, you shall be sure to hear from me after I gett thither, in hopes of seeing you there. In the mean time 1 must tell you that I was truly overjoy'd that the Indisposition I left you under att London went off so well, and to find by y' Letter that you are like to be againe a man of this World. I to Queen Mary, wife of James II. whose fortunes he followed into France; author of the comedy of Sir Solomon Single, and of several translations in Dryden's Miscellanies." Pope must have thought highly of him, since he dedicated his best poem to him. "This Verse to Caryll, Muse, is due: |