LETTERS TO AND FROM THE HON. JAMES CRAGGS. LETTER I. TO THE HON. JAMES CRAGGS. June 15, 1711. I SEND you Dennis's remarks on the Essay ;* which equally abound in just criticisms and fine railleries. The few observations in my hand in the margins, are what a morning's leisure permitted me to make, purely for your perusal. For I am of opinion that such a critic, as you will find him by the latter part of his book, is but one way to be properly answered, and that way I would not take after what he informs me in his preface, that he is at this time persecuted by fortune. This I knew not before; if I had, his name had been spared in the Essay, for that only reason. I cannot conceive what ground he has for so excessive a resentment; nor imagine how these * On Criticism. + But Appius reddens at each word you speak, three lines can be called a reflection on his person, which only describe him subject a little to anger on some occasions. I have heard of combatants so very furious, as to fall down themselves with that very blow which they designed to lay heavy on their antagonist. But if Mr. Dennis's rage proceeds only from a zeal to discourage young and unexperienced writers from scribbling, he should frighten us with his verse, not prose: for I have often known, that, when all the precepts in the world would not reclaim a sinner, some very sad example has done the business. Yet to give this man his due, he has objected to one or two lines with reason, and I will alter them in case of another edition; I will make my enemy do me a kindness where he meant an injury, and so serve instead of a friend. What he observes at the bottom of page 20 of his reflections, was objected to by yourself, and had been mended but for the haste of the press. I confess it is what the English call a bull, in the expression, though the sense be manifest enough. Mr. Dennis's bulls are seldom in the expression, they are generally in the sense. I shall certainly never make the least reply to him; not only because you advise me, but because I have ever been of opinion, that, if a book cannot answer for itself to the public, it is to no sort of purpose for its author to do it.* If I am wrong * In works of poetry and amusement, and generally in whatever concerns the composition of a book, this rule is a very good in any sentiment of that Essay, I protest sincerely, I do not desire all the world should be deceived (which would be of very ill consequence) merely that I myself may be thought right (which is of very little consequence). I would be the first to recant, for the benefit of others, and the glory of myself; for (as I take it) when a man owns himself to have been in an error, he does but tell you in other words, that he is wiser than he was. But I have had an advantage by the publishing that book, which otherwise I never should have known; it has been the occasion of making me friends and open abettors, of several gentlemen of known sense and wit; and of proving to me what I have till now doubted, that my writings are taken some notice of by the world, or I should never be attacked thus in particular. I have read that it was a custom among the Romans, while a general rode in triumph to have the common soldiers in the streets that railed at him and reproached him; to put him in mind, that though his services were in the main approved and rewarded, yet he had faults enough to keep him humble. You will see by this, that whoever sets up for wit in these days ought to have the constancy of a primitive Christian, and be prepared to suffer martyrdom in the cause of it. But sure this is one. In controverted opinions the case is different. The advancement of truth, or the defence of an author's honest fame, may sometimes make it necessary, or expedient for him, to answer the objections made to his book. Warburton. the first time that a wit was attacked for his religion, as, you will find, I am most zealously in this treatise; and, you know, Sir, what alarms I have had from the opposite side on this account. Have I not reason to cry out with the poor fellow in Virgil, Quid jam misero mihi denique restat? Cui neque apud Danaos usquam locus, et super ipsi It is however my happiness that you, Sir, are impartial: Jove was alike to Latian and to Phrygian, For you well know, that wit's of no religion. The manner in which Mr. D. takes to pieces several particular lines, detached from their natural places, may shew how easy it is to a caviller to give a new sense, or a new nonsense to any thing. And indeed his constructions are not more wrested from the genuine meaning, than theirs who objected to the heterodox parts, as they call them. Our friend the Abbé is not of that sort, who with the utmost candour and freedom has modestly told me what others thought, and shewn himself one (as he very well expresses it) rather of a number than a party. The only difference between us in relation to the Monks, is, that he thinks most sorts of learning flourished among them, and I am of opinion, that only some sort of learning was barely kept alive by them: he believes that in the most natural and obvious sense, that line Warburton. * See the ensuing letter. (A second deluge learning over-run) will be understood of learning in general; and I fancy it will be understood only (as it is meant) of polite learning, criticism, poetry, &c., which is the only learning concerned in the subject of the Essay. It is true, that the monks did preserve what learning there was, about Nicholas the Fifth's time;* but those who succeeded fell into the depth of barbarism, or at least stood at a stay while others arose from thence, insomuch that even Erasmus and Reuchlin could hardly laugh them out of it. I am * Notwithstanding the praises lavished on Leo the Tenth, yet was the restoration of polite literature in the West, chiefly owing to Pope Nicholas the Fifth; who has not met with encomiums equal to his merits. It was he who first ransacked all the Byzantine libraries, and the monasteries of Germany and Britain, for Greek manuscripts. Hence, in the space of eight years, he filled a library with more than five thousand volumes. To him were we indebted for the first translations of Xenophon, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Homer; and also of the best parts of Plato and Aristotle. See Tiraboschi, tom. vi. p. 109; and in Hody's entertaining account De Græcis Illustribus, read pages 55 and 105. Warton. + It is impossible to admit that with respect to polite learning, criticism, poetry, &c., those who succeeded Nicholas the Fifth "fell into the depth of barbarism," or even "stood at a stay" till they were better informed by Erasmus and Reuchlin. On the contrary, the influx of the Greek scholars who took refuge in Italy, on the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, gave a new impulse to those studies; and the progress that was made in them, from that period to the time of Leo the Tenth, comprising the latter half of the fifteenth century, is unexampled in the history of literature, and may emphatically be styled, the Restoration of learning. In the former part of that period the Italian scholars were laudably employed in discovering, editing, and commenting upon the ancient authors; but in the latter part of it, from being their admirers, |