rection, he will give them to the publick as he proposes, without the name of an author, and with his own, after the epistle to recommend them. It will do me a great deal of honour, and I will take care it shall do him no manner of mischief. If he neglect publishing them, I shall have the mortification of believing the present I took the liberty to make him not worth his while, or that my present liberty of speech is offensive to him. This must not be. We are all brethren in fact: and no man should be angry at another, for using him with all the intmiacy of a friend, and opening his whole heart to him without malice or disguise. I beg pardon of Mentor, and of all those great names he mentions, for my censures upon rhyme and raillery, which he may soften or expunge entirely, according to his better judgment. I should be very sorry to make enemies of those, whom, of all mankind, I would choose to make my friends. Mr. Pope and I lived in perfect union and familiarity for two or three summers, before he entered upon the stage of the world; where he has since gained so great and so just an applause. The other geniuses have a right to all my regard, by the merit of sharing the affection and esteem of Mentor, who will do me a great deal of honour, if he allow me any place in so learned and polite a society. Without any compliment, they are fitter for the Augustan age than for this. They are at home, and endeavour to give the world a sense of its follies with great humour and gayety. The cheerfulness of my temper is, in a great measure, sunk under a long and a hopeless exile, which has given it a serious, or, if you will, a supercilious turn. I lash the world with indignation and grief, in the strain of Jeremy. But the
world
