LETTER

CCCVII.

COM

DR SWIFT TO MR GAY.

Dublin, Jan. 8, 1722-3.

MOMING home after a fhort Christmas ramble, I found a letter upon my table; and little expected, when I opened it, to read your name at the bottom. The beft and greatest part of my life, until thefe laft eight years, I spent in England; there I made my friendships, and there I left my defires. I am condemned for ever to another country. What is in prudence to be done? I think, to be oblitufque meorum, oblivifcendus et illis. What can be the design of your letter but malice, to wake me out of a fcurvy fleep, which however is better than none? I am towards nine years older fince I left you; yet that is the leaft of my alterations: My bufinefs, my diverfions, my converfations, are all entirely changed for the worfe, and fo are my studies, 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 horfes, nor my garden, for three months, until the fpirit you have raifed fhall be difpoffeffed. I have fometimes wondered, that I have not vifited you; but I have been stopped by too many reafons, befides years and lazinefs; and yet thefe are

very

very good ones. Upon my return after half a year amongst you, there would be to me defiderii nec pudor nec modus. I was three years reconciling myself to the scene, and the bufinefs to which fortune had condemned me; and stupidity was what I had récourfe to. Befides, what a figure fhould I make in London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, diftress, or imprisonment, and my enemies with rods of iron? Yet I often threaten myself with the journey, and am every Summer 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 cholic. 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 diftemper, and I believe our friend Arbuthnott will recommend you to temperance and exercife. I wish they could have as good an effect upon the giddinefs I am fubject to, and which this moment I am not free from. I fhould have been glad if you had lengthened your letter, by telling me the prefent condition of many of my old acquaintance, Congreve, Arbuthnott, Lewis, &c.; but you mention only Mr Pope, who, I believe, is lazy, or elfe he might have added three lines of his own. I am extremely glad he is not in your cafe of needing great men's favour, and could heartily with 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 best 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 confcience of fpeaking. Befides, they are too libertine to haunt antechambers, 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 dif tance; and, befides, am, for my cafe, utterly ignorant of the commoneft things that pafs in the world: But if all courts have a famenefs in them, (as the parfons phrafe it), things may be as they were in my time, when all employments went to parliament-men's friends, who had been useful in elections; and there was always a huge lift of, names in arrears at the Treafury, which would at leaft take up your feven years expedient to dif charge 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 employmeut, or to be one of his fecretaries; which your parliament-men are fond enough of, when there is no room at home. The wine is good and reafonable; you may dine twice a-weck at the deanryVOL. XV. houfe;

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houfe; there is a fet 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.

I wish I could do more than fay I love you. I left you in a good way, both for the late court, and the fucceffors; and by the force of too much honesty, or too little fublunary wisdom, you fell between two ftools. Take care of your health and money; be lefs modeft, and more active; or elfe turn parfon, and get a bishoprick here : Would to God they would fend us as good ones from your fide!

I am ever, &c.

I

LETTER

CCCVIII.

MR POPE TO DR SWIFT.

Jan. 12, 1723.

FIND a rebuke in a late letter of your's, that both ftings and pleaseth me extremely. Your faying that I ought to have writ a postscript to my friend Gay's, makes me not content to write lefs 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

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 furfeit of writing; fo I really thought you would know yourself to be fo certainly entitled to my friendship, that it was a poffeffion you could not imagine ftood in need of any futher deeds or writings to affure you of

it.

Whatever you feem to think of your withdrawn and separate state, at this distance, and in this abfence, Dean Swift ftill lives in England, in every 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 your's 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 seems 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 those I most loved, and with whom I most lived, must be banished. After both of you left England, my constant host was the bi

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* Alluding to his large work on Homer.

fhop.