requisite simplicity, however loftily the poet should express the beast's raised neck, majestic pace, and venerable countenance. But from the moment he began to mention claws and courage, as the camel's attributes, his deviation from the rules of true simplicity would justly call for the reproach of too magnificently adorned; not because camels ought not to be spoken of magnificently, but because there should not be assigned them a magnificence repugnant to their nature.

Long as this letter is already, I have something still to add, relating to a prose piece I informed you I should want your judgment on. It is my tract of new improvements in the art of war, by sea and land. This piece is very full of novelty, and possibly will have much future consequence. And yet the supercilious narrowness in vogue may make it be supposed, that nothing of this nature can be worth regard, nor authorised by a commission,

te

to think rationally. To such heads it were of little influence to say, how much I saw and learned in armies of three different nations at the outset of my life (too soon engaged in foreign ramblings). A still less effect would follow, if I went about to make them sensible, how preferable to whole lives of mill-horse rounds in practical contractions, an extended theory may · be, when exercising a not-unadapted genius, long and obstinately bent on all examinations proper to that study.—Would it not be better I should spare myself the trouble of these undeserved apologies, to such a war-defaming race as we know where to look for? and, instead of a dry dissertation on what might be done in arms, present it to the entertained imagination, as what had already been; laying the scene, at some pretended time, in some imaginary country; and uniting, in a lively story, all the use, surprise, and pleasure, of historical narration, filled with warlike

132 CORRESPONDENCE WITH A. HILL.

and political events, of a new turn and species to the active demonstrations of a theory, that else might pass for project only. I persuade myself that one might make a piece of this kind very pleasing; and will throw it into such a form, if you conceive it would do better.

Are you to hope no end to this long, long, long, nervous persécution? But, it is the tax you pay your genius; and I rather wonder you have spirits to support such mixture of prodigious weights, such an effusion of the soul, with such confinement of the body, than that it has overstrained your nerves to bear your spirit's agitation!-God Almighty bless you! I should never end at all, if I writ on till I had nothing left that I still wished to tell you, from your (beyond his power of tell

ing),

Most obliged and

grateful humble servant,

A. HILL.

LETTER

LETTER

FROM

MR. WARBURTON

ΤΟ

MR. RICHARDSON.

TO MR. RICHARDSON.

GOOD SIR,

Dec. 28, 1742.

THIS very day, on receiving my things from London, I had the pleasure to find in the box an obliging letter from you, of the 17th past, with a very kind and valuable present of a fine edition of your excellent work, which no one can set a higher rate upon. I find they have both lain all this time at Mr. Bowyer's.

I have so true an esteem for you, that

you

you may depend on any thing in my power, that you think may be of any service to you.

Mr. Pope and I, talking over your work when the two last volumes came out, agreed, that one excellent subject of Pamela's letters in high life, would have been to have passed her judgment, on first stepping into it, on every thing she saw there, just as simple nature (and no one ever touched nature to the quick, as it were, more certainly and surely than you) dictated. The effect would have been this, that it would have produced, by good management, a most excellent and useful satire on all the follies and extravagancies of high life; which to one of Pamela's low station and good sense would have appeared as absurd and unaccountable as European polite vices and customs to an Indian. You easily conceive the effect this must have added to the entertainment of the book; and for the use, that is incontestable. And

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