gòut, and, alas! you know I am by trade a grocer *. Scandal (if I had any) is a mercandise you do not profess dealing in; now and then, indeed, and to oblige a friend, you may perhaps slip a little out of your pocket, as a decayed gentlewoman would a piece of right mecklin, or a little quantity of run tea, but this only now and then, not to make a practice of it. Monsters appertaining to this climate you have seen already, both wet and dry. So you perceive within how narrow bounds my pen is circumscribed, and the whole contents of my share in our correspondence may be reduced under the two heads of 1st, You, 2dly, I; the first is, indeed, a subject to expatiate upon, but you might laugh at me for talking about what I do not understand; the second is so tiny, so tiresome, that you shall hear no more of it than that it is ever

Peterhouse, Dec. 23, 1736.

Yours.

* i. e. A man who deals only in coarse and ordinary wares: to these he compares the plain sincerity of his own friendship, undisguised by flattery; which, had he chosen to carry on the allusion, he might have termed the trade of a Confectioner.

LETTER VII.

MR. WEST TO MR. GRAY.

I Have been very ill, and am still hardly recovered.

Do you remember Elegy 5th, Book the 3d, of Tibullus, Vos tenet, &c. and do you remember a letter of Mr. Pope's, in sickness, to Mr. Steele? This melancholy elegy and this melancholy letter I turned into a more melancholy epistle of my own, during my sickness, in the way of imitation; and this I send to you and my friends at Cambridge, not to divert them, for it cannot, but merely to shew them how sincere I was when sick I hope my sending it to them now may convince them I am no less sincere, though perhaps more simple, when well.

AD AMICOS.*

Yes, happy youths, on Camus' sedgy side,
You feel each joy that friendship can divide;
Each realm of science and of art explore,
And with the ancient blend the modern lore.

* Almost all Tibullus's elegy is imitated in this little piece, from whence his transition to Mr. Pope's letter is very artfully contrived, and bespeaks a degree of judgment much beyond Mr.West's

years.

Studious alone to learn whate'er may tend
To raise the genius or the heart to mend;
Now pleas'd along the cloister'd walk you rove,
And trace the verdant mazes of the grove,
Where social oft, and oft alone, ye chuse
To catch the zephyr and to court the muse.
Mean time at me (while all devoid of art
These lines give back the image of my heart)
At me the pow'r that comes or soon or late,
Or aims, or seems to aim, the dart of fate;
From you remote, methinks, alone I stand
Like some sad exile in a desert land;

Around no friends their lenient care to join

In mutual warmth, and mix their heart with mine.
Or real pains, or those which fancy raise,
For ever blot the sunshine of my days;
To sickness still, and still to grief a prey,
Health turns from me her rosy face away.

Just heav'n! what sin, ere life begins to bloom, Devotes my head untimely to the tomb;

Did e'er this hand against a brother's life

Drug the dire bowl or point the murd'rous knife? Did e'er this tongue the slanderer's tale proclaim, Or madly violate my Maker's name?

Did e'er this heart betray a friend or foe,

Or know a thought but all the world might know?

As yet just started from the lists of time,

My growing years have scarcely told their prime;
Useless, as yet, through life I've idly run,

No pleasures tasted, and few duties done.

* Ah, who, ere autumn's mellowing suns appear,
Would pluck the promise of the vernal year;
Or, ere the grapes their purple hue betray,
Tear the crude cluster from the mourning spray.
Stern Power of Fate, whose ebon sceptre rules
The Stygian deserts and Cimmerian pools,
Forbear, nor rashly smite my youthful heart,
A victim yet unworthy of thy dart;

Ah, stay
till age shall blast my withering face,
Shake in my head, and falter in my pace;
Then aim the shaft, then meditate the blow,
+ And to the dead my willing shade shall go.

How weak is Man to Reason's judging eye!
Born in this moment, in the next we die;
Part mortal clay, and part ethereal fire,
Too proud to creep, too humble to aspire.

* Quid fraudare juvat vitem crescentibus uvis?
Et modo nata mala vellere poma manu?

So the original. The paraphrase seems to me infinitely more beautiful. There is a peculiar blemish in the second line, arising from the synonimes mala and poma.

+Here he quits Tibullus; the ten following verses have but a remote reference to Mr. Pope's letter.

In vain our plans of happiness we raise,
Pain is our lot, and patience is our praise;
Wealth, lineage, honours, conquest, or a throne,
Are what the wise would fear to call their own.
Health is at best a vain precarious thing,
And fair-fac'd youth is ever on the wing;

* 'Tis like the stream, beside whose watʼry bed
Some blooming plant exalts his flow'ry head,
Nurs'd by the wave the spreading branches rise,
Shade all the ground and flourish to the skies;
The waves the while beneath in secret flow,
And undermine the hollow bank below;
Wide and more wide the waters urge their
Bare all the roots and on their fibres prey.
Too late the plant bewails his foolish pride,
And sinks, untimely, in the whelming tide.

way,

But why repine, does life deserve my sigh? Few will lament my loss whene'er I die.

*❝ Youth, at the very best, is but the betrayer of human life in

a gentler and smoother manner than age; 'tis like the stream "that nourishes a plant upon a bank, and causes it to flourish and "blossom to the sight, but at the same time is undermining it at "the root in secret." Pope's Works, vol. 7, page 254, 1st edit. Warburton..---Mr. West, by prolonging his paraphrase of this simile, gives it additional beauty from that very circumstance, but he ought to have introduced it by Mr. Pope's own thought. "Youth "is a betrayer;" his couplet preceding the simile conveys too general a reflection.