"I received a letter from you with satisfaction, having long been desirous of any occasion of testifying my regard for you, and particularly of acknowledging the pleasure your Version of Vida's Poetick had afforded me. I had it not indeed from your bookseller, but read it with eagerness, and think it both a correct and a spirited translation. I am pleased to have been (as you tell me) the occasion of your undertaking that work: that is some sort of merit; and, if I have any in me, it really consists in an earnest desire to promote and produce, as far as I can, that of others. [...] I am obliged to you, Sir, for expressing a much higher opinion of me than I know I deserve: the freedom with which you write is yet what obliges and pleases me more; and it is with sincerity that I say, I would rather be thought by every ingenious man in the world, his servant, than his rival."
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Original Language: English
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Alexander Pope, letter to Christopher Pitt (dated 23 July 1726); in The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., in Nine Volumes, Complete, Vol. VII (1797), Letters, pp. 381–382.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christopher_Pitt
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Christopher Pitt
Christopher Pitt (1699 – 13 April 1748) was an English poet and translator.
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