dies and my amufements in writing; yet, after all, this humdrum way of life might be paffable enough, if you would let me alone. I fhall not be able to relish my wine, my parfons, my horses, nor my garden for three months, until the fpirit you have raised shall be difpoffeffed. I have fometimes wondered that I have not vifited you, but I have been ftopt by too many reafons, befides years and laziness, and yet these are very good ones. Upon my return after half a year amongst you, there would be to me Defiderio nec pudor ncc modus. I was three years reconciling myself to the scene, and the business, to which fortune hath condemned me, and ftupidity was what I had recourse to. Befides, what a figure fhould I make in London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, distress, or imprisonment, and my enemies with rods of iron? Yet I often threaten myself with the journey, and am every fummer practifing to get health to bear it: The only inconvenience is, that I grow old in the experiment. Although I care not to talk to you as a Divine, yet I hope you have not been author of your colic: do you drink bad wine, or keep bad company? Are you not as many years older as I? It will not be always Et tibi quos mihi dempferit Apponet annos. I am heartily forry you have any dealings with that ugly distemper, and I believe our friend Arbuthnot will recommend you to temperance and exercife. I wifh they could have as good an effect upon the giddiness I am fubject to,. and which this moment I am not free from. F fhould have been glad if you had lengthened your letter by telling me the prefent condition of many of my old acquaintance, Congreve, Arbuthnot, Lewis, &c. but you mention only Mr. Pope, who I believe is lazy, or else he might have added three lines of his own. I am extremely glad he is not in your cafe of needing great mens favour, and could

could heartily wish that you were in his. I have been confidering why Poets have fuch ill fuccefs in making their Court, fince they are allowed to be the greatest and beft of all flatterers: The defect is, that they flatter only in print or in writing, but not by word of mouth: They will give things under their hand which they make a conscience of speaking. Befides, they are too libertine to haunt antichambers, too poor to bribe Porters and footmen, and too proud to cringe to fecond-hand favourites in a great family. Tell me, are you not under Original fin by the dedication of your Eclogues to Lord Bolingbroke? I am an ill Judge at this distance; and befides, am, for my eafe, utterly ignorant of the commoneft things that pafs in the world; but if all Courts have a fameness in them (as the Parfons phrafe it) things may be as they were in my time, when all employments went to Parliament-mens Friends, who had been useful in Elections, and there was always a huge Lift of names in arrears at the Treafury, which would at least take up your feven years expedient to discharge even one half. I am of opinion, if you will not be offended, that the fureft courfe would be to get your Friend who lodgeth in your house to recommend you to the next chief Governor who comes over here for a good civil employment, or to be one of his Secretaries, which your Parliament-men are fond enough of, when there is no room at home. The wine is good and reasonable; you may dine twice a week at the Deanery-houfe; there is a fett of company in this town fufficient for one man ; folks will admire you, because they have read you, and read of you; and a good employment will make you live tolerably in London, or fumptuously here; or if you divide between both places, it will be for your health.

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I wish I could do more than say I love you. I left you in a good way both for the late Court, and the Succeffors; and by the force of too much honefty or too little fublunary wisdom, you fell between two ftools. Take care of your health and money; be lefs modeft and more active; or else turn Parfon and get a Bifhoprick here: Would to God they would fend us as good ones from your fide! I am ever, &c.

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LETTER VII.

Mr. POPE to Dr. SWIFT.

Jan. 12, 1723.

Find a rebuke in a late Letter of yours, that both fings and pleafeth me extremely, Your faying that I ought to have writ a Postscript to my friend Gay's, makes me not content to write less than a whole Letter; and your feeming to take his kindly, gives me hopes you will look upon this as a fincere effect of Friendship. Indeed as I cannot but own the Laziness with which you tax me, and with which I may equally charge you, for, both of us have had (and one of us hath both had and given *) a Surfeit of writing; fo I really. thought you would know your felf to be fo certainly intitled to my Friendship, that it was a poffeffion you could not imagine ftood in need of further Deeds or Writings to affure you of it. Whatever you feem to think of your withdrawn and separate state at this diftance, and in this Ab-. fence, Dean Swift lives ftill in England, in every

I

Alluding to his large work on Homer.

any

place

place and company where he would chufe to live, and I find him in all the converfations I keep, and in all the Hearts in which I defire any fhare.

We have never met these many years without mention of you. Befides my old Acquaintance, I have found that all my friends of a later date are fuch as were yours before: Lord Oxford, Lord Harcourt, and Lord Harley may look upon me as one entailed upon them by you: Lord Bolingbroke is now returned (as I hope) to take Me with all his other Hereditary Rights: and, indeed, he feems grown fo much a Philofopher, as to fet his heart upon fome of them as little, as upon the Poet you gave him. It is fure my ill fate, that all thofe I moft loved, and with whom I moft lived, must be banifhed: After both of you left England, my conftant Hoft was the Bishop of Rochester. Sure this is a nation that is curfedly afraid of being over-run with too much Politenefs, and cannot regain one great Genius, but at the expence of another +. I tremble for my Lord Peterborow (whom I now lodge with) he has too much Wit, as well as Courage, to make a folid General : and if

*Dr. Atterbury.

The Bishop of Rochefter thought this to be indeed the cafe; and that the price agreed on for Lord B.'s return was his banishment: an imagination, which fo ftrongly poffeffed him when he went abroad, that all, which his friends could fay or do, could not convince him of the folly of it.

This Mr. Walth feriously thought to be the cafe, where, in a letter to Mr. Pope, he fays When we were "in the North, my Lord Wharton fhew'd me a letter he. "had received from a certain great General in Spain;

[Lord Peterb.] I told him, I would by all means have "that General recalled, and fet to writing here at home, "for it was impoffible that a man with fo much wit as he "fhewed, could be fit to command an army or do any "other bufinefs." Let. V. Sep. 9. 1705.179

he

he efcapes being banifhed by others, I fear he will banish himfelf. This leads me to give you fome account of the manner of my life and Converfation, which has been infinitely more various and diffipated, than when you knew me and cared for me; and among all Sexes, Parties, and Profeffions. A Glut of Study and Retirement in the first part of my life caft me into this; and this, I begin to fee, will throw me again into Study and Retirement.

The Civilities I have met with from oppofite Setts of people, have hinder'd me from being violent or four to any Party; but at the fame time the Obfervations and Experiences I cannot but have collected, have made me lefs fond of, and lefs furprized at, any: I am therefore the more afflicted and the more angry at the Violences and Hardships I fee practifed by either. The merry Vein you knew me in, is funk into a Turn of Reflection, that has made the world pretty indifferent to me; and yet I have acquired a Quietness of mind which by fits improves into a certain degree of Chearfulnefs, enough to make me just so good humoured as to wish that world well. My Friendships are encreased by new ones, yet no part of the warmth I felt for the old is diminished. Averfions I have none, but to Knaves (for Fools I have learned to bear with) and fuch I cannot be commonly civil to; for I think those men are next to Knaves who converse with them. The greatest man in power of this fort fhall hardly make me bow to him, unless I had a perfonal obligation, and that I will take care not to have. The top pleasure of my life is one I learned from you both how to gain and how to use; the Freedom of Friendship with men much my Superiors. To have pleafed great men, according to Horace, is a (praife; but not to have Hattered them and yet not have displeased them, is