I have written more than I needed to you on this subject; for I dare say you justifie me to yourself. As for that which I first intended for the principal subject of this letter, which is my friend’s passion and his design of marriage, on better consideration I have changed my mind; for having had the honour to see my dear friend Wycherly’s letter to him on that occasion, I find nothing to be added or amended. But as well as I love Mr Wycherly, I confess I love myself so well, that I will not shew how much I am inferiour to him in wit and judgment, by undertaking any thing after him. There is Moses and the Prophets in his council. Jupiter and Juno, as the poets tell us, made Tiresias their umpire in a certain merry dispute, which fell out in heaven betwixt them. Tiresias, you know, had been of both sexes, and therefore was a proper judge; our friend Mr Wycherly is full as competent an arbitrator; he has been a bachelor, and marryed man, and is now a widower. Virgil says of Ceneus, ----_Nunc vir, nunc fœmina, Ceneus, Rursus et in veterem fato revoluta figuram._ Yet I suppose he will not give any large commendations to his middle state: nor, as the sailer said, will be fond after a shipwrack to put to sea again.[105] If my friend will adventure after this, I can but wish him a good wind, as being his, and, My dear Mr Dennis, Your most affectionate and most faithful Servant, JOHN DRYDEN. LETTER XII. TO MR JACOB TONSON. _The copy money for translating the Æneid was fifty pounds for each Book. The rising of the second subscription seems, to allude to the practice of fixing a day, after which no subscriptions were to be received except on payment of an advanced price. The first subscribers to Dryden’s Virgil paid five guineas; a plate was dedicated to each of them, and ornamented with his arms. A second class paid two guineas only, and were not so honoured. In the subsequent letters there occur several allusions to these arrangements, and to the transference of names from the higher to the lower class._ Wednesday morning. MR TONSON, [Probably written in April 1695.]