Conversation With The Dead

Letter from Alexander Pope to Mr. Gay, October 1, 1730:

 

I AM something like the sun at this season, withdrawing from the world, but meaning it mighty well, and resolving to shine whenever I can again. But I fear the clouds of a long winter will overcome me to such a degree, that any body will take a farthing candle for a better guide, and more serviceable company. My friends may remember my brighter days, but will think (like the Irish-man) that the moon is a better thing when once I am gone. I do not say this with any allusion to my poetical capacity as a son of Apollo, but in my companionable one, (if you will suffer me to use a phrase of the Earl of Clarendon's,) for I shall see or be seen of few of you this winter. I am grown too faint to do any good, or to give any pleasure. I not only, as Dryden finely says, feel my notes decay as a poet, but feel my spirits flag as a companion, and shall return again to where I first began, my books. I have been putting my library in order, and enlarging the chimney in it, with equal intention to warm my mind and body, if I can, to some life. A friend (a woman friend, God help me!) with whom I have spent three or four hours a day these fifteen years, advised me to pass more time in my studies: I reflected, she must have found some reason for this admonition, and concluded she would complete all her kindnesses to me by returning me to the employment I am fittest for; conversation with the dead, the old, and the worm-eaten.