Epistle X. Pliny to Octavius.
by
A. Z.
[_]
Upon Learning and Bashfulness.
YOU a Man of Patience and Deliberation? Take my Word for't, your truer Character is Hard-heartedness and downright Cruelty;
to go to smother and bury such Performances, as you are Author of, in so tedious and faulty a Privacy! How far will this envious and malicious Modesty of yours,
against your self
and us, proceed; this niggardly grudging of universal Applauses to your own Merit,
and of exquisite Pleasure to all Mankind?
Out with your Works, in the Name of Goodness! and let 'em take their full Tour,
and range thro' every Nation and Country, where the Roman Language has march'd before 'em as their Harbinger.
Let it have due Effect upon you, that a general Expectation is rais'd and has a great while been so! nor can you in Decency disappoint the World any longer.
Nay! I can tall you; several of your Poems are already abroad,
having broken Prison, unknown perhaps to their Goaler; and except you your self take special Care to recollect 'em into a profess'd Volume of your own;
I likewise assure you, That they'll soon find childless Fumblers enough,
ready to Father such beautiful Stragglers.
Set methinks, before your Eyes, the State of our Mortality! against the Desolation of which,
you have no other Countermine in Nature, but this sole and single sort of Monument;
all manner of other Things being like our selves, frail, finite, and transitory.
I expect, I own, your usual Answer; That you'll refer this Matter to your Executors! I therefore wish to those doughty Trustees,
Fidelity enough, Learning enough, and Industry enough, for the Discharge of so accurate and laborious a Task;
and that having so notable
an Example before 'em! they mayn't fail of punctually performing what they'll then remember,
even your self to have been so indifferent about, and so negligent of.
I shou'd not indeed be thus pressing for an immediate Edition, would you be but perswaded to recite in Form;
and by that means perhaps grow less averse to a Publication afterwards.
You would then taste the Satisfaction, which I have long and confidently presaged for you,
of standing encompass'd by the best of Hearers, and of seeing your self justly complemented,
not only with loud Admirations and resounding Applauses, but by an eager,
profound, and attentive Silence; the latter of which Encouragements, in all like Cases of my own,
I have ever preferred to the more noisy Acclamations.
Rob not therefore your elaborate Studies of so plentiful and promising a Harvest of Fame,
by that endless and evasive Delay of yours! which, if once extended beyond Bounds,
may be lyable to the Imputation of sloth and Indolence, if not of Pusillanimity.
Adieu.
