talk of improving. How are you this moment?` Do you love or hate Quilca the most of all places? Are you in or out of humour with the world, your friends, your wife, and your school? Are the ladies in town, or in the country? If I knew, I would write to them; and how are they in health? Quilca (let me fee) you fee I can (if I please) make parentheses (as well as others) is about a hundred miles from Clonfert; and I am half weary with the four hundred I have rode. With love and fervice, and fo adieu.

Your's, &c.

R

LETTER

CCCXV.

FROM DR SWIFT.

Dublin, Sept. 20, 1723.

ETURNING from a Summer expedition of four months on account of my health, I found a letter from you, with an appendix longer than your's, from Lord Bolingbroke. I believe there is not a more miferable malady than an unwillingness to write letters to our best friends; and a man might be philofopher enough, in finding out reafons for it. One thing is clear, that it fhews a mighty difference betwixt friendfhip and love, for a lover (as I have heard) is always fcribbling to his miftrefs. If I could not permit myself to believe what your civility makes

you

you fay, that I am still remembered by my friends in England, I am in the right to keep myfelf here-Non fum qualis eram. I left you in a pe

riod of life, when one year does more execution than three at your's; to which if you add the dulness of the air, and of the people, it will make a terrible fum. I have no very strong faith in you pretenders to retirement; you are not of an age for it, nor have gone through either good or bad fortune enough to go into a corner, and form conclufions de contemptu mundi et fuga fæculi; unless a poet grows weary of too much applaufe, as minifters do of too much weight of bufinefs.

Your happiness is greater than your merit, in chufing your favourites fo indifferently among either party. This you owe, partly to your education, and partly to your genius employing you in an art in which faction has nothing to do; for I fuppofe Virgil and Horace are equally read by Whigs and Tories. You have no more to do with the conftitution of church and state, than a Christian at Conftantinople; and you are fo much the wifer and the happier, because both parties will approve your poetry, as long as you are known to be of neither.

Your notions of friendfhip are new to me *. I believe every man is born with his quantum ; and he cannot give to one, without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give

Yet they are the Christian notions, Warb,

the

the first places in my friendship, but they are not in the way I am condemned to another fcene; and therefore I diftribute it in penny-worths to thofe about me, and who difpleafe me leaft; and should do the fame to my fellow-prifoners, if I were condemned to jail. I can likewife tolerate knaves much better than fools, because their knavery does me no hurt in the commerce I have with them; which, however, I own is more dangerous, though not fo troublefome as that of fools. I have often endeavoured to establish a friendship among all men of genius, and would fain have it done: They are feldom above three or four contemporaries; and if they could be united, would drive the world before them. I think it was fo among the poets in the time of Augustus; but envy, and party, and pride, have hindered it amongst us. I do not include the fubalterns, of which you are feldom without a large tribe. Under the name of poets and scribblers, I suppose you mean the fools you are content to fee fometimes, when they happen to be modest; which was not frequent among them, while I was in the world.

I would defcribe to you my way of living, if any method could be called fo in this country. I chufe my companions among thofe of leaft confequence, and moft compliance. I read the most trifling books I can find; and whenever I write, it is upon the moft trifling fubjects: But riding, walking, and fleeping, take up eighteen of the

twenty

twenty-four hours. I procraftinate more than I did twenty years ago; and have several things to finish, which I put off to twenty years hence: Hac eft vita folutorum, &c. I fend you the compli ments of a friend of your's, who hath paffed four months this Summer with two grave acquaintances at his country-houfe, without ever once going to Dublin, which is but eight miles diftant; yet when he returns to London, I will engage you shall find him as deep in the Court of Requests, the park, the opera's, and the coffeehouse, as any man there. I am now with him for a few days.

You must remember me with great affection to Dr Arbuthnott, Mr Congreve, and Gay.-I think there are no more eodem tertio's between you and me, except Mr Jervais, to whofe houfe I addrefs this, for want of knowing where you live For it was not clear from your last, whether you lodge with Lord Peterborow, or he with you. I am ever, &c.

I

HAVE as good a right to invade your folitude, as Lord B, Gay or Pope, and you fee I make use of it. I know you wish us all

at

at the Devil, for robbing a moment from your vapours and vertigo. It is no matter for that; you shall have a fheet of paper every poft, till you come to yourself. By a paragraph in your's to Mr Pope, I find you are in the cafe of the man, who held the whole night by a broom-bufh, and found, when day-light appeared, he was within two inches of the ground. You don't seem to know how well you ftand with our great folks. I myself have been at a great man's table, and have heard, out of the mouths of violent Irish Whigs, the whole table-talk turn upon your commendation. If it had not been upon the general topic of your good qualities, and the good you did, I fhould have grown jealous of you. My intention in this, is not to expoftulate, but to do you good. I know how unhappy a vertigo makes any body, that has the misfortune to be troubled with it. I might have been deep in it myfelf, if I had a-mind; and I will propofe a cure for you, that I will pawn my reputation upon. I have of late fent feveral patients in that cafe to the Spa, to drink there of the Geronster water, which will not carry from the spot. It has fucceeded marvelloufly with them all. There was indeed one who relapsed a little this last Summer, because he would not take my advice, and return to his courfe, that had been too short the year before. But because the inftances of eminent men are moft confpicuous, Lord Whitworth, our plenipotentiary, had this difeafe,

(which,