as much love of their species, as is consistent with a contempt for the knaves of it. I could never be weary, except at the eyes, of writing to you; but my real reason (and a strong one it is) for doing it so seldom, is fear; fear of a very great and experienced evil, that of my letters being kept by the partiality of friends, and passing into the hands, and malice of enemies; who publish them with all their imperfections on their head, so that I write not on the common terms of honest men. Would to God you would come over with lord Orrery, whose care of you in the voyage I could so certainly depend on; and bring with you your old housekeeper and two or three servants. I have room for all, a heart for all, and (think what you will) a fortune for all. We could, were we together, contrive to make our last days easy, and leave some sort of monument, what friends two wits could be in spite of all the fools in the world. Adieu. DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE. DUBLIN, MAY 31, 1737. IT is true, I owe you some letters, but it has pleased God, that I have not been in a condition to pay you. When you shall be at my age, perhaps you may lie under the same disability to your present or future friends. But my age is not my disability, for for I can walk six or seven miles, and ride a dozen. But I am deaf for two months together, this deafness unqualifies me for all company, except a few friends with countertenor voices, whom I can call names, if they do not speak loud enough for my ears. It is this evil that has hindered me from venturing to the Bath, and to Twitenham; for deafness being not a frequent disorder, has no allowance given it; and the scurvy figure a man affected that way makes in company, is utterly insupportable. It was I began with the petition to you of Orna me, and now you come like an unfair merchant, to charge me with being in your debt; which by your way of reckoning I must always be, for yours are always guineas, and mine farthings; and yet I have a pretence to quarrel with you, because I am not at the head of any one of your epistles. I am often wondering how you come to excel all mortals on the subject of morality, even in the poetical way; and should have wondered more, if nature and education had not made you a professor of it from your infancy. All the letters I can find of yours, I "have fastened in a folio cover, and the rest in "bundles endorsed; but, by reading their dates, I "find a chasm of six years, of which I can find no "copies; and yet I keep them with all possible care: "but, I have been forced, on three or four occasions "to send all my papers to some friends, yet those papers were all sent sealed in bundles, to some "faithful friends; however, what I have, are not "much above sixty." I found nothing in any one of them to be left out: none of them have any thing to do with party, of which you are the clearest of all men, by your religion, and the whole tenour of your your life; while I am raging every moment against the corruption of both kingdoms, especially of this; such is my weakness. I have read your Epistle of Horace to Augustus : it was sent me in the English edition, as soon as it could come. They are printing it in a small octavo. The curious are looking out, some for flattery, some for ironies in it; the sour folks think they have found out some but your admirers here, I mean every man of taste, affect to be certain, that the profession of friendship to me in the same poem, will not suffer you to be thought a flatterer. My happiness is that the ages you are too far engaged, and in spite of to come will celebrate me, and know you are a friend who loved and esteemed me, although I died the object of court and party hatred. you Pray who is that Mr. Glover, who writ the epick poem called Leonidas, which is reprinting here, and has great vogue. We have frequently good poems of late from London. I have just read one upon conversation, and two or three others. But the crowd do not encumber you, who like the orator or preacher, stand aloft, and are seen above the rest, more than the whole assembly below. my I am able to write no more; and this is third endeavour, which is too weak to finish the paper: I am, my dearest friend, yours entirely, as long as I can write, or speak, or think. J. SWIFT. DR. DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE. DUBLIN, JULY 23, 1737. I SENT a letter to you some weeks ago, which my lord Orrery enclosed in one of his, to which I received as yet no answer; but it will be time enough when his lordship goes over, which will be as he hopes in about ten days, and then he will take with him all the letters I preserved of yours, which " are not above twenty-five. I find there is a 66 great chasm of some years, but the dates are more early than my two last journeys to England, which "makes me imagine, that in one of those journeys "I carried over another cargo." But I cannot trust my memory half an hour; and my disorders of deafness and giddiness increase daily. So that I am declining as fast as it is easily possible for me, if I were a dozen years older. We have had your volume of letters, which I am told are to be printed here. Some of those who highly esteem you, and a few who know you personally, are grieved to find you make no distinction between the English gentry of this kingdom, and the savage old Irish, (who are only the vulgar, and some gentlemen who live in the Irish parts of the kingdom) but the English colonies, who are three parts in four, are much more civilized than many counties in England, and speak better English, and are much better bred. And they think it very hard, that an American who is of the fifth generation from England, England, should be allowed to preserve that title, only because we have been told by some of them that their names are entered in some parish in London. I have three or four cousins here who were born in Portugal, whose parents took the same care, and they are all of them Londoners. Dr. Delany, who as I take it, is of an Irish family, came to visit me three days ago, on purpose to complain of those passages in your letters; he will not allow such a difference between the two climates, but will assert that North Wales, Northumberland, Yorkshire, and the other northern shires have a more cloudy ungenial air than any part of Ireland. In short, I am afraid your friends and admirers here will force you to make a palinody. As for the other parts of your volume of letters, my opinion is, that there might be collected from them the best system that ever was writ for the conduct of human life, at least to shame all reasonable men out of their follies and vices. It is some recommendation of this kingdom, and of the taste of the people, that you are at least as highly celebrated here as you are at home. If you will blame us for slavery, corruption, atheism, and such trifles, do it freely, but include England, only with an addition of every other vice.-I wish you would give orders against the corruption of English by those scribblers who send us over their trash in prose and verse, with abominable curtailings and quaint modernisms.I now am daily expecting an end of life: I have lost all spirit, and every scrap of health; I sometimes recover a little of my hearing, but my head is ever out of order. While I have any ability to hold a commerce with you, I will never be silent, and |