Your doctor is gone the way of all his patients, and was hard put to it how to dispose of an estate miserably unwieldy, and splendidly unuseful to him. Sir Samuel Garth says, that for Radcliffe to leave a library,* was as if a eunuch should found a seraglio. Dr. S*** lately told a lady, he wondered she could be alive after him: she made answer, she wondered at it for two reasons, because Dr. Radcliffe was dead, and because Dr. S*** was living. I am your, &c.

LETTER XXVII.

FROM MRS. MARTHA BLOUNT.

SIR,

Sunday Morning.

My sister and I shall be at home all day. If any company come that you do not like, I'll go

"On Thursday I went to Stonor, which I have long had a mind to see since the romantic description you gave me of it. The melancholy which my wood and this place have spread over me, will go near to cast a cloud upon the rest of my letter, if I do not make haste to conclude it here. I know you wish my happiness so much, that I would not have you think I have any other reason to be melancholy: and after all, he must be a beast that is so, with two such fine women for his friends. It is enough to make any creature easy, even such an one as your humble Servant." What follows in the printed Letter, appears to have been added by Pope for publication. C. Bowles.

* Because it was notorious that he had little learning; but he possessed what was better, wonderful sagacity and penetration in judging of diseases. Dr. Young has the same simile in his second satire :

Unlearned men of books assume the care,
As Eunuchs are the guardians of the Fair.

Warton.

up

into any room with you. I hope we shall see

PRAY think me sensible of your civility and good meaning, in asking me to come to you.

You will please to consider, that my coming or not is a thing indifferent to both of you. But God knows it is far otherwise to me with respect to one of you.

I scarce ever come but one of two things hap

* This letter, it has been observed, is short, but very much to the purpose. Bowles.

In the foregoing note Mr. Bowles has ventured to throw out an insinuation which will be rejected by every candid mind. But what shall we say when we find in Mr. Bowles's edition of Pope, vol. vii. p. 200, the same letter thus referred to:

"In a note signed Teresa and Martha, Pope is invited to meet them; and they say, if there is any company he disliked, they will retire with him into any room. Pope, in answer, requests they will write their surnames, as he says Teresa and Martha may be two saints for what he knows to the contrary."

The note from Miss Blount yet exists in the British Museum, written on by Pope in his translation of Homer. Of the existence of any other note of a similar tenor, signed Teresa and Martha, I am not aware, but if there be such a one, it certainly is not so much to the purpose so significantly pointed out by Mr. Bowles as he would have us believe.

From the date of this letter, it can scarcely be an answer to the preceding one of Sunday; but, if not, it refers at least to some invitation of a similar nature.

VOL. VIII.

pens, which equally afflicts me to the soul: either I make her uneasy, or I see her unkind.

If she has any tenderness, I can only give her every day trouble and melancholy. If she has none, the daily sight of so undeserved a coldness must wound me to death.

It is forcing one of us to do a very hard and very unjust thing to the other.

My continuing to see you will, by turns, teaze all of us. My staying away can at worst be of ill consequence only to myself.

And if one of us is to be sacrificed, I believe we are all three agreed who shall be the person.

LETTER XXIX.

TO MRS. MARTHA BLOUNT.

THIS is a day of wishes for you, and I hope you have long known, there is not one good one which I do not form in your behalf. Every year that passes, I wish some things more for my friends, and some things less for myself. Yet were I to tell you what I wish for you in particular, it would be only to repeat in prose, what I told you last year in rhyme (so sincere is my poetry): I can only add, that as I then wished you a friend,* I now wish that friend were Mrs.

* To Mrs. Blount on her birth-day.

"O be thou blest with all that Heaven can send,

Long health, long youth, long pleasures, and a friend."

Warburton.

Absence is a short kind of death; and in either, one can only wish, that the friends we are separated from, may be happy with those that are left them. I am therefore very solicitous that you may pass much agreeable time together. I am sorry to say I envy you no other companion; though I hope you have others that you like; and I am always pleased in that hope, when it is not attended with any fears on your own account.

I was troubled to leave you both,* just as I fancied we should begin to live together in the country. It was a little like dying the moment one had got all one desired in this world. Yet I go away with one generous sort of satisfaction, that what I part with, you are to inherit.

I know you would both be pleased to hear some certain news of a friend departed; to have the adventures of his passage, and the new regions through which he travelled, described; and, upon the whole, to know that he is as happy where he now is, as while he lived among you. But indeed I (like many a poor unprepared soul) have seen nothing I like so well as what I left: no scenes of Paradise, no happy bowers, equal to those on the banks of the Thames. Wherever I wander, one

* In a note signed, Teresa and Martha, Pope is invited to meet them; and they say, if there is any company he disliked, they will retire with him into any room.

Pope in answer requests they will write their surnames, as he says, Teresa and Martha may be two saints, for what he knows to the contrary. The conclusion of the note is too gross to be published. Bowles.

reflection strikes me: I wish you were as free as I; or at least had a tie as tender, and as reasonable as mine, to a relation that as well deserved your constant thought, and to whom you would be always pulled back (in such a manner as I am) by the heart-string. I have never been well since I set out but do not tell my mother so; it will trouble her too much: and as probably the same reason may prevent her sending a true account of her health to me, I must desire you to acquaint me. I would gladly hear the country air improves your own; but do not flatter me when you are ill, that I may be the better satisfied when you say you are well: for these are things in which one may be sincerer to a reasonable friend, than to a fond and partial parent. Adieu.

LETTER XXX.

TO MRS. TERESA BLOUNT.

DEAR MADAM,

Chiswick, 4 o'clock, Tuesday,
Dec. 31.

It is really a great concern to me, that you mistook me so much this morning. I have sincerely an extreme esteem for you; and, as you know I am distracted in one respect, for God's sake do not judge and try me by the methods of unreasonable people. Upon the faith of a man who thinks himself not dishonest, I meant no disrespect to you. I have been ever since so troubled