the world only as a place to pass thro', just pay your hosts their due, difperfe a little charity, and hurry on. Yet am I just now writing (or rather planning) a book, to make mankind look upon this life with comfort and pleasure, and put morality in good humour.—And just now too I am going to fee one I love very tenderly; and to-morrow to entertain feveral civil people, whom if we call friends, it is by the courtesy of England.-Sic, fic juvat ire fub umbras. While we do live, we must make the best of life,

Cantantes licet ufque (minus via lædet) eamus, as the fhepherd faid in Virgil, when the road was long and heavy. I am yours.

LETTER XLVIII.

Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr. SWIFT.

You

may affure yourself, that if you come Over over this fpring, you will find me not only got back into the habits of study, but devoted to that historical task, which you have fet me these many years. I am in hopes of fome materials which will enable me to work in the whole extent of the plan I propofe to myself. If they are not to be had, I must accommodate my

plan to this deficiency. In the mean time Pope has given me more trouble than he or I thought of; and you will be furprized to find that I have been partly drawn by him and partly by myself, to write a pretty large volume upon a very grave and very important fubject; that I have ventur'd to pay no regard whatever to any authority except facred authority, and that I have ventured to start a thought, which muft, if it is pufh'd as fuccefsfully, as I think it is, render all your Metaphyfical Theology both ridiculous and abominable. There is an expreffion in one of your letters to me, which makes me believe you will come into my way of thinking on this fubject; and yet I am persuaded that Divines and Freethinkers would both be clamorous against it, if it was to be fubmitted to their cenfure, as I do not intend that it fhall. The paffage I mean, is that where you say that you told Dr. the Grand points of Christianity ought to be taken as infallible Revelations, &c.

In this maxim all bigotted Divines and free-thinking Politicians agree: the one, for fear of disturbing the eftablished Religion; the other, left that disturbance fhould prove injurious to their adminiftration of the ftate. And would they be content to take these points for granted themselves, without injuring thofe, in their for

tunes and reputation, who are for inquiring into, and fettling them on, their right grounds, I think nobody would envy their piety or their wifdom but when they begin to persecute those who venture to affume this natural liberty, then they unmask their hypocrify and Machivelianifm.

It has happened, that, whilst I was writing this to you, the Dr. came to make me a vifit from London, where I heard he was arrived fome time ago: He was in hafte to return, and is, I perceive, in great hafte to print. He left with me eight Differtations b, a small part, as I understand, of his work, and defired me to perufe, confider, and obferve upon them against Monday next, when he will come down again. By what I have read of the two firft, I find myself unable to serve him. The principles he reasons upon are begged in a disputation of this fort, and the manner of reafoning is by no means close and conclufive. The fole advice I could give him in confcience would be that which he would take ill and not follow. I will get rid of this task as well as I can, for I esteem the man, and should be forry to disoblige him where I cannot ferve him.

As to retirement, and exercise, your notions are true: The first should not be indulged fo much as to render us favage, nor the last neglected fo as to impair health. But I know men, who for fear of being favage, live with all who will live with them; and who, to preserve their health, faunter away half their time. Adieu : Pope calls for the

paper.

Revelation examined with candor.

P.S.

P. S. I hope what goes before will be a strong motive to your coming. God knows if ever I fhall fee Ireland; I fhall never defire it, if you can be got hither, or kept here. Yet I think I fhall be, too foon, a Free-man.-Your recommendations I constantly give to those you mention; tho' fome of 'em I fee but seldom, and am every day more retired. I am lefs fond of the world, and lefs curious about it: yet no way out of humour, difappointed, or angry: tho' in my way I receive as many injuries as my betters, but I don't feel them, therefore I ought not to vex other people, nor even to return injuries. I pafs almost all my time at Dawley and at home; my Lord (of which I partly take the merit to myfelf) is as much estranged from politics as I am. Let Philosophy be ever fo vain, it is lefs vain now than Politics, and not quite fo vain at prefent as Divinity: I know nothing that moves ftrongly but Satire, and those who are ashamed of nothing else, are so of being ridiculous. I fancy, if we three were together but for three years, fome good might be done even upon this age.

I know you'll defire fome account of my health: It is as ufual, but my fpirits rather worse. I write little or nothing. You know I never had either a taste or talent for politics, and the world minds nothing else. I have per

fonal

of

fonal obligations, which I will ever preserve, to men of different fides, and I wish nothing fo much as public quiet, except it be my own quiet. I think it a merit, if I can take off any man from grating or fatirical fubjects, merely on the score of Party: and it is the greatest vanity my life that I've contributed to turn my Lord Bolingbroke to fubjects moral, useful, and more worthy his pen. Dr.'s Book is what I can't commend fo much as Dean Berkley's, tho' it has many things ingenious in it, and is not deficient in the writing part: but the whole book, tho' he meant it ad Populum, is, I think, purely ad Clerum. Adieu.

A very lively and ingenious book, called, The Minute Philofopher.

LET