laft duty of friendship wherever fhe is, tho' I break thro' the whole plan of life which I have formed in my mind. Adieu. I am most faithfully and affectionately yours.

I

LETTER XLVI.

Lord B. to Dr. SWIFT.

Jan. 1730-31.

Begin my letter by telling you that

has been returned from abroad about a month, and that her health, tho' feeble and precarious, is better than it has been these two years. She is much your fervant, and as fhe has been her own physician with fome fuccefs, imagines fhe could be yours with the fame.

Would to God you was within her reach. She would, I believe, prescribe a great deal of the medicina animi, without having recourse to the Books of Trismegiftus. Pope and I should be her principal apothecaries in the course of the cure; and tho' our best Botanifts complain, that few of the herbs and fimples which go to the compofition of these remedies, are to be found at present in our foil, yet there are more of them here than in Ireland; befides, by the help of a little chemistry the most noxious juices

may

may
become falubrious, and rank poifon a fpe-
cific.-Pope is now in my library with me, and
writes to the world, to the present and to fu-
ture ages, whilst I begin this letter which he is
to finish to you. What good he will do to man-
kind I know not; this comfort he may be sure
of, he cannot do less than you have done before
him. I have sometimes thought, that if preach-
ers, hangmen, and moral-writers keep vice at a
ftand, or fo much as retard the progrefs of it,
they do as much as human nature admits: a
real reformation is not to be brought about by
ordinary means; it requires thofe extraordinary
means which become punishments as well as
leffons: National corruption must be purged by
national calamities. Let us hear from you.
We deserve this attention, because we desire it,
and because we believe that you defire to hear
from us.

I

LETTER XLVII.

Lord B. to Dr. SWIFT.

March 29.

Have delayed several posts answering your letter of January laft, in hopes of being able to speak to you about a project which concerns us both, but me the moft, fince the fuccefs of it would bring us together. It has been a good while

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1

while in my head, and at my heart; if it can be fet a going, you shall hear more of it. I was ill in the beginning of the winter for near a week, but in no danger either from the nature of my diftemper, or from the attendance of three phyficians. Since that bilious intermitting fever, I have had, as I had before, better health than the regard I have paid to health deferves. We are both in the decline of life, my dear Dean, and have been fome years going down the hill; let us make the paffage as fmooth as we can. Let us fence against physical evil by care, and the use of thofe means which experience must have pointed out to us: Let us fence against moral evil by philofophy. I renounce the alternative you propose. But we may, nay, (if we will follow nature, and do not work up imagination against her plaineft dictates) we shall of courfe grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interefts of a system out of which we are foon to go. This is much better than stupidity. The decay of paffion ftrengthens philosophy, for paffion may decay, and ftupidity not fucceed. Paffions (fays Pope, our Divine, as you will fee one time or other) are the Gales of life: Let us not complain that they do not blow a ftorm. What hurt does age do us, in fubduing what we toil to fubdue all our lives? It is now fix in the morning I recall the time (and am glad it

is over) when about this hour I used to be going to bed, furfeited with pleasure, or jaded with business: my head often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rife at this hour refreshed, serene and calm? that the past, and even the present affairs of life stand like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the disagreeable fo as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to me? Paffions in their force, would bring all these, nay even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and reason would but ill defend me in the fcuffle.

my

I leave Pope to speak for myself, but I must tell how much you Wife is obliged to you. She fays fhe would find ftrength enough to nurse you, if you was here, and yet, God knows, she is extremely weak: The flow fever works under, and mines the conftitution; we keep it' off fometimes, but ftill it returns, and makes new breaches before nature can repair the old ones. I am not ashamed to fay to you, that I admire her more every hour of my life: Death is not to her the King of Terrors; fhe beholds him without the least. When fhe fuffers much, fhe wishes for him as a deliverer from pain; when life is tolerable, fhe looks on him with dislike, because he is to feparate her from those friends

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friends to whom she is more attached than to

life itself. You shall not ftay for my next, as

long as you have for this letter; and in every one, Pope fhall write fomething much better than the scraps of old Philofophers, which were the prefents, Munufcula, that Stoical Fop Seneca used to fend in every Epiftle to his friend Lucilius.

P.S. My Lord has spoken juftly of his Lady: why not I of my Mother? Yesterday was her birth-day, now entering on the ninety-first year of her age; her memory much diminished, but her fenfes very little hurt, her fight and hearing good; fhe fleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks water, fays her prayers; this is all she does. I have reason to thank God for continuing fo long to me a very good and tender parent, and for allowing me to exercise for fome years, thofe cares which are now as neceffary to her, as hers have been to me. An object of this fort daily before one's eyes very much foftens the mind, but perhaps may hinder it from the willingness of contracting other tyes of the like domestic nature, when one finds how painful it is even to enjoy the tender pleasures. I have formerly made fome strong efforts to get and to deserve a friend: perhaps it were wiser never to attempt it, but live extempore, and look upon

the