veniency concur to set them a writing, as at present, a sociable meeting, a good dinner, warm fire, and an easy situation do, to the joint labour and pleasure of this epistle.
Wherein if I should say nothing I should say much (much being included in my love, though my love be such, that if I should say much, I should say nothing, it being (as Cowley says) equally possible either to conceal or to express it.
If I were to tell you the thing I wish above all things, it is to see you again; the next is, to see here your treatise of Zoilus, with the Batrachomuomachia, and the Pervigilium Veneris, both which poems are master-pieces in several kinds; and I question not the prose is as excellent in its sort, as the Essay on Homer. Nothing can be more glorious to that great author, than that the same hand which raised his best statue, and decked it with its old laurels, should also hang up the scare-crow of his miserable critic, and gibbet up the carcass of Zoilus, to the terror of the writings of posterity. More, and much more, upon this and a thousand other subjects will be the matter of my next letter, wherein I must open all the friend to you. At this time I must be content with telling you, I am, faithfully, your most affectionate and humble servant,
