can hold a pen, I Pray let my lord

this chancing to be a day that I will drag it as long as I am able. Orrery see you often; next to yourself I love no man so well; and tell him what I say, if he visits you. I have now done, for it is evening, and my head grows worse. May God always protect you, and preserve you long, for a pattern of piety and virtue.

Farewell my dearest and almost only constant friend. I am ever, at least in my esteem, honour, and affection to you, what I hope you expect me to be.

Yours, &c.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

I

MY DEAR FRIEND,

DUBLIN,

AUGUST 8, 1738.

HAVE yours of July 25, and first I desire you will look upon me as a man worn with years, and sunk by publick as well as personal vexations. I have entirely lost my memory, uncapable of conversation by a cruel deafness, which has lasted almost a year, and I despair of any cure. I say not this to increase your compassion (of which you have already too great a part) but as an excuse for my not being regular in my letters to you, and some few other friends. I have an ill name in the postoffice of both kingdoms, which makes the letters addressed to me not seldom miscarry, or be opened and read, and then sealed in a bungling manner before they

come

come to my hands. Our friend Mrs. B. is very often in my thoughts, and high in my esteem; I desire you will be the messenger of my humble thanks and service to her. That superiour universal genius you describe, whose handwriting I know toward the end of your letter, has made me both proud and happy; but by what he writes I fear he will be too soon gone to his forest abroad. He began in the queen's time to be my patron, and then descended to be my friend.

It is a great favour of Heaven, that your health grows better by the addition of years. I have absolutely done with poetry for several years past, and even at my best times I could produce nothing but trifles: I therefore reject your compliments on that score, and it is no compliment in me; for I take your second dialogue that you lately sent me, to equal almost any thing you ever writ; although I live so much out of the world, that I am ignorant of the facts and persons, which I presume are very well known from Temple Bar to St. James's; I mean the court exclusive.

"I can faithfully assure you, that every letter you "have favoured me with, these twenty years and "more, are sealed up in bundles, and delivered to "Mrs. W-, a very worthy, rational, and judicious "cousin of mine, and the only relation whose visits "I can suffer: all these letters she is directed to

"send safely to you upon my decease."

My lord Orrery is gone with his lady to a part of her estate in the north: she is a person of very good understanding as any I know of her sex. Give me leave to write here a short answer to my lord B.'s letter in the last page of yours.

MY

MY DEAR LORD,

I am infinitely obliged to your lordship for the honour of your letter, and kind remembrance of me. I do here confess, that I have more obligations to your lordship than to all the world besides. You never deceived me, even when you were a great minister of state and yet I love you still more, for your condescending to write to me, when you had the honour to be an exile. I can hardly hope to live till you publish your history, and am vain enough to wish that my name could be squeezed in among the few subalterns, quorum pars parva fui: if not, I will be revenged, and contrive some way to be known to futurity, that I had the honour to have your lordship for my best patron; and I will live and die, with the highest veneration and gratitude, your most obedient, &c.

P. S. I will here in a postscript correct (if it be possible) the blunders I have made in my letter. I have showed my cousin the above letter, and she assures me, "that a great collection of your letters 66 to me, are put up and sealed, and in some very "safe hand."

you,

*

my

I am, my most dear and honoured friend, entirely yours,

It is now Aug. 24, 1738.

J. SWIFT.

It is written just thus in the original. The series of correspondence in the present volume seems to be part of the collection here spoken of, as it contains not only the letters of Mr. Pope, but of Dr. Swift, both to him and Mr. Gay, which were returned to Mr. Pope after Mr. Gay's death: though any mention made by Mr. P. of the return or exchange of letters has been industriously suppressed in the publication, and only appears by some of the answers.

DR.

DR. SWIFT'S JOURNAL

ΤΟ

STELLA *.

LETTER I.

Chester, Sept. 2, 1710.

JOE+will give you an account of me till I got

into the boat, after which the rogues made a new bargain, and forced me to give them two crowns, and talked

These letters to Stella, or Mrs. Johnson, were all written in a series from the time of Dr. Swift's landing at Chester, in September 1710, until his return to Ireland, upon being made dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. The letters were all very carefully preserved by Stella; and at her death, if not before, taken back by Dr. Swift; for what end we know not, unless it were to compare the current news of the times with that history of the queen which he writ at Windsor in the year 1713: they were sometimes addressed to Mrs. Johnson, and sometimes to Mrs. Dingley, who was a relation of the Temple family, and friend to Mrs. Johnson. Both these ladies went over to Ireland upon Swift's invitation in the year 1701, and lodged constantly together.

+ Mr. Joseph Beaumont, merchant, of Trim, whose name fre quently occurs in these papers. He was a venerable, handsome, grayheaded man, of quick and various natural abilities, but not improved by learning: his forte was mathematicks, which he applied to some useful purposes in the linen trade, but chiefly to the investigation of VOL. XIV.

the

talked as if we should not be able to overtake any ship; but in half an hour we got to the yacht; for the ships lay by to wait for my lord lieutenant's steward. We made our voyage in fifteen hours just. Last night I came to this town, and shall leave it, I believe, on Monday: the first man I met in Chester was Dr. Raymond*. He and Mrs. Raymond were here about levying a fine, in order to have power to sell their estate. I got a fall off my horse, riding here from Parkgate, but no hurt; the horse understanding falls very well, and lying quietly till I got up. My duty to the bishop of Clogher. I saw him returning from Dunlary; but he saw not me. I take it ill he was not at convocation, and that I have not his name to my powers. I beg you will hold your resolution of going to Trim, and riding there as much as you can. Let the bishop of Clogher remind the bishop of Killala to send me a letter, with one enclosed to the bishop of Litchfield §. Let all who write to me, enclose to Richard Steele, esq., at his office at the Cockpit near Whitehall. My lord Mountjoy is now in the humour that we should begin our journey this afternoon, so that I have stolen here

the longitude; which was supposed to have occasioned a lunacy, with which he was seized in Dublin about the year 1718; whence he was brought home to Trim, and recovered his understanding. But some years after, having relapsed into his former malady, he cut his throat in a fit of distraction.

* Vicar of Trim, and formerly one of the fellows of the Univer sity of Dublin.

+ Dr. St. George Ashe, who, in the reign of George I, was made bishop of Derry.

This must have been while Swift was sailing in the bay of Dublin, and the bishop riding upon the North Strand.

{ Dr. John Hough.