with him, and who has wit enough to be half mad; nor him, who atones for a scanty imagination by an ample fund of oddnesses and singularity. If good sense and real knowledge prevail a little too much in any character, I desire there may be at least some latent ridicule, which may be called forth upon occasion, and render the person a tolerable companion. By this sketch you may judge of my acquaintance. The dead friends with whom I pass my time you know. The living ones are of the same sort, and therefore few.
I pass over that paragraph of your letter, which is a kind of an elegy on a departed minister[1]; and I promise you solemmly neither to mention him, nor think of him more, till I come to do him justice in a history of the first twenty years of this century, which I believe I shall write if I live three or four years longer. But I must take a little more notice of the paragraph which follows. The verses I sent you are very bad, because they are not very good: mediocribus esse poëtis, non dî, non homines, &c. I did not send them to be admired; and you would do them too much honour, if you criticised them. Pope took the best party; for he said not one word to me about them. All I desire of you is to consider them as a proof, that you have never been out of my thoughts, though you have been so long out of my sight; and, if I remember you upon paper for the future, it shall be in prose.
I must on this occasion set you right, as to an opinion, which I should be very sorry to have you entertain concerning me. The term esprit fort, in
- ↑ The earl of Oxford, who died in June 1724.
