appointed, so that I am in a blessed condition. You remember you were advising me to go into Newgate to finish my scenes the more correctly. I now think I shall, for I have no attendance to hinder me; but my opera[1] is already finished. I leave the rest of this paper to Mr. Pope.
Gay is a free man, and I wrote him a long congratulatory letter upon it. Do you the same: it will mend him, and make him a better man than a court could do. Horace might keep his coach in Augustus's time, if he pleased; but I will not in the time of our Augustus. My poem[2] (which it grieves me that I dare not send you a copy of, for fear of the Curlls and Dennises of Ireland, and still more for fear of the worst of traitors, our friends and admirers) my poem, I say, will show you what a distinguished age we lived in? Your name is in it, with some others, under a mark of such ignominy as you will not much grieve to wear in that company. Adieu, and God bless you, and give you health and spirits.
Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air;
Or laugh and shake in Rab'lais' easy chair,
Or in the graver gown instruct mankind,
Or, silent, let thy morals tell thy mind.
These two verses are over and above what I have said of you in the poem[3]. Adieu.
- ↑ The Beggar's Opera.
- ↑ The Dunciad.
- ↑ We see by this, with what judgment Pope corrected and erased.
