Maecenas did not care for such a noise, it seems, and built him a house (which they also carry one to see) so situated that it sees nothing at all of the matter, and for anything he knew there might be no such river in the world.  Horace had another house on the other side of the Teverone, opposite to Maecenas’s; and they told us there was a bridge of communication, by which andava il detto Signor per trastullarsi coll’ istesso Orazio.  In coming hither we crossed the Aquae Albulae, a vile little brook that stinks like a fury, and they say it has stunk so these thousand years.  I forgot the Piscina of Quintilius Varus, where he used to keep certain little fishes.  This is very entire, and there is a piece of the aqueduct that supplied it too; in the garden below is old Rome, built in little, just as it was, they say.  There are seven temples in it, and no houses at all; they say there were none.

TO THE SAME

A poet’s melancholy

London, 27 May, 1742.

Mine, you are to know is a white Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy for the most part; which, though it seldom laughs or dances, nor ever amounts to what one called Joy or Pleasure, yet is a good easy sort of a state, and ca ne laisse que de s’amuser. The only fault is its insipidity; which is apt now and then to give a sort of Ennui, which makes one form certain little wishes that signify nothing.  But there is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and then felt, that has somewhat in it like Tertullian’s rule of faith, Credo quia impossibile est; for it believes, nay, is sure of everything that is unlikely, so it be but frightful; and on the other hand excludes and shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and everything that is pleasurable; from this the Lord deliver us! for none but he and sunshiny weather can do it.  In hopes of enjoying this kind of weather I am going into the country for a few weeks, but shall be never the nearer any society; so, if you have any charity, you will continue to write.  My life is like Harry the Fourth’s supper of Hens, ’Poulets a la broche, Poulets en Ragout, Poulets en Hachis, Poulets en Fricassees ’.  Reading here, Reading there; nothing but books with different sauces.  Do not let me lose my desert then; for though that be Reading too, yet it has a very different flavour.  The May seems to be come since your invitation; and I propose to bask in her beams and dress me in her roses.

  Et caput in verna semper habere rosa.

I shall see Mr. ——­ and his Wife, nay, and his Child, too, for he has got a Boy.  Is it not odd to consider one’s Cotemporaries in the grave light of Husband and Father?  There is my lords Sandwich and Halifax, they are Statesmen:  Do not you remember them dirty boys playing at cricket?  As for me, I am never a bit the older, nor the bigger, nor the wiser than I was then:  no, not for having been beyond sea.  Pray, how are you?...