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and Clarendon: Is it not the latter, the disgraced part of their lives, which you most envy, and which you would choose to have lived?

I am tenderly sensible of the wish you express, that no part of your misfortune may pursue me. But God knows, I am every day less and less fond

of

my native country (so torn as it is by Party-rage), and begin to consider a friend in Exile as a friend in death; one gone before, where I am not unwilling nor unprepared to follow after; and where (however various or uncertain the roads and voyages of another world may be) I cannot but entertain a pleasing hope that we may meet again.

I faithfully assure you, that in the mean time there is no one, living or dead, of whom I shall think oftener or better than of you. I shall look upon you as in a state between both, in which you will have from me all the passions and warm wishes that can attend the living, and all the respect and tender sense of loss, that we feel for the dead. And I shall ever depend upon your constant friendship, kind memory, and good offices, though I were never to see or hear the effects of them like the trust we have in benevolent spirits, who, though we never see or hear them, we think, are constantly serving us, and praying for us.

Whenever I am wishing to write to you, I shall conclude you are intentionally doing so to me.

And

• Clarendon indeed wrote his best works in his banishment: but the best of Bacon's were written before his disgrace; and the best of Cicero's after his return from exile. W.

every time that I think of you, I will believe you are thinking of me. I never shall suffer to be forgotten (nay to be but faintly remembered) the honour, the pleasure, the pride I must ever have, in reflecting how frequently you have delighted me, how kindly you have distinguished me, how cordially you have advised me! In conversation, in study, I shall always want you, and wish for you: in my most lively, and in my most thoughtful hours, I shall equally bear about me, the impressions of you: and perhaps it will not be in this life only, that I shall have cause to remember and acknowledge the friendship of the Bishop of Rochester.

LETTER XXIII.

TO THE SAME.

May 17, 1723.

ONCE more I write to you as I promised, and this once I fear, will be the last! the curtain will

There is an anecdote, so uncommon and remarkable, lately mentioned in Dr. Maty's Memoirs of the Earl of Chesterfield, and which he gives in the very words of that celebrated nobleman, that I cannot forbear repeating it in this place :-" I went," said Lord Chesterfield, "to Mr. Pope, one morning at Twickenham, and found a large folio Bible, with gilt clasps, lying before him upon his table; and, as I knew his way of thinking upon that book, I asked him, jocosely, if he was going to write an answer to it? It is a present, said he, or rather a legacy, from my old friend the Bishop of Rochester. I went to take my leave of him yesterday in the Tower, where I saw this Bible upon his table. After the first compliments, the Bishop said to me,' My friend Pope, considering your infirmities, and my age and exile,

soon be drawn between my friend and me, and nothing left but to wish you a long good-night.

it is not likely that we should ever meet again; and therefore I give you this legacy to remember me by it.'-' Does your Lordship abide by it yourself?' I do.' If you do, my Lord, it is but lately. May I beg to know what new light or arguments have prevailed with you now, to entertain an opinion so contrary to that which you entertained of that Book all the former part of your life?'-The Bishop replied, 'We have not time to talk of these things; but take home the Book: I will abide by it, and I recommend you to do so too, and so, God bless you!' -Charity and justice call on us, not hastily to credit so marvellous a tale, without the strongest testimony for its truth. And, for the sake of justice, I here insert a Letter, from a very respectable man, which I received on this subject.

"REV. SIR,

South Moulton, Devonshire, May 28, 1782. "You will be surprised at this address from a person who hath not the honour of being known to you, even by name; but the occasion of my writing will, I trust, plead for my freedom. "I have this week had the long-wished-for satisfaction of reading your . Essay on the Works of Pope. Mine will add nothing to the applause, which your writings have received from readers of taste and judgment. But the design of this Letter is not to pay you a compliment. You need it not: And I have something to communicate to you, which I am sure you will be better pleased with.

"In quoting a certain uncommon anecdote,' respecting Bishop Atterbury, from Dr. Maty's Memoirs of Lord Chesterfield, you very candidly acknowledge that it ought not to be credited too hastily. When I first read it in the Work from whence- you have extracted it, I was much startled at it: But recollecting from what source it issued, I was led to suspect its truth. The story is a very insidious one: and perfectly in Lord Chesterfield's manner!—It is airy, and gay, and arch: But no disguise can cover an Infidel's malignity. I would not judge hastily of any man's motives; nor call the veracity of any man in question without the clearest evidence. But it is on the clearest evidence, and with the fullest conviction, that I scruple not to pronounce this story, concerning Bishop Atterbury's infidelity, to be groundless.

May you enjoy a state of repose in this life, not unlike that sleep of the soul which some have believed

"The anecdote relates, that this remarkable conversation between Atterbury and Pope took place but a few days before the Bishop went into exile; whereas it appears from a Letter, dated nine months before this event, that the Bishop had, with equal piety and generosity, interested himself so far in the spiritual welfare of his friend Mr. Pope, as to recommend to him the study of the Holy Scriptures; and softening his zeal by his urbanity, had so won on the esteem and affection of Pope, as to draw from him the most grateful and liberal acknowledgments. The Letter I refer to is the 19th, of the collection of those between Atterbury and Pope. At the conclusion is the following very remarkable passage: I ought first,' says Mr. Pope, to prepare my mind for a better knowledge, even of good profane writers, especially the moralists, etc. etc. before I can be worthy of tasting that supreme of books, and sublime of all writings, in which (as in all the intermediate ones) you may, if your friendship and charity towards me continue so far, be the best guide to Yours, etc.'

"This Letter bears date July 27, 1722: The Bishop did not go into exile till nearly three quarters of a year afterwards. The last Letter of Pope to that Bishop previous to his exile, is dated April 20, 1723. It must have been about this time that Pope paid him a visit in the Tower: But whether such a conversation took place as hath been pretended, may be safely, for the Bishop's credit, submitted to the determination of every man of common sense, after reading the above extract.

"I communicated these hints last winter to my very esteemed friend Mr. Moore, one of the Canons of the Church of Exeter, and he wished me to communicate them to the Public, in order to check the insolence of certain gentlemen, who, arrogating all the good sense in the world to themselves, would insinuate that a man of genius, if he professes to be a Christian, must be a Hypocrite! I had an intention of complying with Mr. Moore's request; but a variety of other engagements put it quite out of my head, till the remembrance was recalled by your publication. I would not presume to dictate to you: Your better judgment will decide whether it would be proper for you to take notice of those hints, and to mould them into a form that may be worthy of the public eye, in the next edition of your ingenious Essay.

is to succeed it, where we lie utterly forgetful of that world from which we are gone, and ripening for that to which we are to go. If you retain any memory of the past, let it only image to you what has pleased you best; sometimes present a dream of an absent friend, or bring you back an agreeable conversation. But upon the whole, I hope you will think less of the time past than of the future; as the former has been less kind to you than the latter infallibly will be. Do not envy the world your studies; they will tend to the benefit of men against whom you can have no complaint, I mean of all Posterity: and perhaps, at your time of life, nothing else is worth your care. What is every year of a wise man's life, but a censure or critic on the past? Those whose date is the shortest, live long enough to laugh at one half of it: the boy despises the infant, the man the boy, the philosopher both, and the Christian all. You may now begin to think your manhood was too much a puerility; and you'll never suffer your age to be

but a second infancy. The toils and baubles of your childhood are hardly now more below you, than those toys of our riper and of our declining years, the drums and rattles of Ambition, and the dirt and

My motive in thus simply offering them to your notice, arose from an honest wish to remove unmerited obloquy from the dead.

"I should sincerely rejoice if it was in my power to remove, with equal ease and success, the cloud which, in some other respects, still obscures the lustre of the Bishop's memory.

"I have the honour to be, with great esteem,

"Reverend Sir,

"Your very humble Servant,

"S. BADCOCK."