Pope to Jervas.November 1716.
The best amends you can make for' saying nothing to me, is, by saying all the good you can of me, which is, that I heartily love and esteem the Dean and Dr. Parnelle. Gay is yours and theirs. His spirit is awakened very much in the cause of the Dean, which has broke forth in a courageous couplet or two upon Sir Richard Blackmore. He has printed it with his name to it, and bravely assigns no other reason than that the said Sir Richard has abused Dr. Swift. I have also suffered in the like cause, and shall suffer more, unless Parnelle sends me his Zoilus and Bookworm (which the Bishop of Clogher, I hear, greatly extols), &c.
Pope to Jervas.
Having named the latter piece (The Batrachom of Homer), give me leave to ask what has become of Dr. Parnelle and his Frogs? 'Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis,' might be Horace's wish, but will never be mine, while I have such meorums as Dr. Parnelle and Dr. Swift. If you have begun to be historical, I recommend to your hand the story which every pious Irishman ought to begin with, that of St. Patrick; to the end you may be obliged (as Dr. Parnelle was when he translated the Batrachomuomachia) to come into Eng-
