Sick of the world, fhe quits the painful scene, And calls thee thence, if yet fhe calls, thy

queen.

Mr. DE ST. EVREMOND.

O, ftill my fovereign! whofe unrivaled fway, "Tis yet my pride, my pleasure to obey. I come-I fly-No !-Death that duty ends, Deprived of thee, the laft, the best of friends!

A a 2

LETTER XXXIX.

ST. EVREMOND to WALLER.

THERE are two fetts of men against

They treat you like You no fooner fall in

than their own stands but an ill chance of preferving his reputation. These are Dutch authors and Dutch bookfellers. They divide you, body and foul, between them. The authors publish your writings as their own productions: the bookfellers publifh the productions of others as yours. the pirates of Algiers. to their hands, than they strip you naked, and fet you to hard labour. I speak of their cruelty by experience. An honeft bookseller of Rotterdam has not only published several of my pieces in the names of his day-labouring authors, but has fet me to work on fubjects, of which I am at least as ignorant as the people that wrote in my name. He has made me

author of a treatife on the longitude, though there are not above two stars in the sky that I know by name. I stand on the title-page of chemical aphorifms, though I do not know an alembic from a dark-lantern. I am author of a treatise against the Antinomians, of whom I know as much as I do of the antediluvians: but what is most provoking, he has introduced me in the character of field-marshal of France, and has made me write a narrative of a battle, in which I was forced to run away.

This is certainly worse treatment than that which made Diagoras turn atheist. We are told, that when a plagiary had ftoln and fathered his book, he would no longer believe there were any Gods, because they did not punish the thief with a thunderbolt. For my own part, I do not find that the impunity of these caitiffs has made any alteration in my faith. All I am afraid of is, that the devil has too much fenfe to let bookfellers come into his dominions; for as he has the character of a genius, it would not be long before they gave him the fool's cap of an author.

I am very confident that my honeft friend

at Rotterdam, were he to carry on trade in his kingdoms, would have no manner of scruple to make him author of a treatise on original fin. This publication would foon be followed by a differtation on the medical effects of brimftone, Auctore Sereniffimo Diabolo, M. D. or, a narative of the battle between himself and Michael, in which, like the poor marshal De St. Evremond, he was put to the rout.

I

LETTER XL.

WALLER to ST. EVREMOND.

HAVE often thought that there is a great

fimilarity of genius between Ovid and our Mr. Cowley. They have the fame fondness for pointed expreffion, and minute painting. Their enthusiasm and their fancy, and their turn of verse, which is sometimes easy, clean, and natural, and fometimes quaint, have all of them the greatest resemblance of each other. And, what is no lefs obfervable, their difpo

fitions and tempers are, in many inftances, alike. Mr. Cowley's Complaint has the very fame spirit and features with Ovid's melancholy Elegies written during his exile; and I am afraid, too, that it will have no better effect.

It always gives me pleasure to obferve the coincidence of genius, and tafte. For this purpose, when I have the favour of Mr. Cowley company, I very often take up Ovid's Metamorphofes, and read fuch paffages to him. as I think will strike him most. What he principally admires in the ftory of the rape of Proferpine, was her grief for the lofs of the flowers fhe had gathered.

Collecti flores tunicis cecidere remiffis. Tentaque fimplicitas puerilibus adfuit annis; Hæc quoque virgineum movit jactura dolorem.

Had he writ on the same subject, I verily believe that he would have had the fame thought.

In reading the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, we both concluded that there must be fomething wrong in the following paffage :