LETTER XLVI.

Lord B. to Dr. SWIFT.

Jan. 1730.31.

Begin my letter by telling you that my wife has

been returned from abroad about a month, and that her health, tho' feeble and precarious, is better than it has been these two years. She is much your fervant, and as she has been her own phyfician with fome fuccefs, imagines fhe could be yours with the fame. Would to God you was within her reach. She would, I believe, prescribe a great deal of the medicina animi, without having recourse to the Books of Trifmegiftus. Pope and I fhould be her principal apothecaries in the courfe of the cure; and tho' our best Botanifts complain, that few of the herbs and fimples which go to the compofition of these remedies, are to be found at present in our foil, yet there are more of them here than in Ireland; befides, by the help of a little chemistry the most noxious juices may become falubrious, and rank poison a fpecific.-Pope is now in my library with me, and writes to the world, to the present and to future ages, whilft I begin this letter which he is to finish to you. What good he will do to mankind I know not; this comfort he may be sure of, he cannot do lefs than you have done before him. I have fometimes thought, that if preachers, hangmen, and moral-writers keep vice at a ftand, or so much as retard the progrefs of it, they do as much as human nature admits: a real reformation is not to be brought about by ordinary means; it requires those extraordinary means which become punishments as well as leffons: National corruption must be purged by national calamities.- Let us hear from you. We

I 3

deferve

deferve this attention, because we defire it, and because we believe that you defire to hear from us,

I

LETTER XLVII.

Lord B, to Dr. SWIFT.

March 29.

have delayed feveral pofts answering your letter of January laft, in hopes of being able to speak to you about a project which concerns us both, but me the moft, fince the fuccefs of it would bring uş together. It has been a good while in my head, and at my heart; if it can be fet a going, you fhall hear more of it. I was ill in the beginning of the winter for near a week, but in no danger either from the nature of my diftemper, or from the attendance of three phyficians. Since that bilious intermitting fever, I have had, as I had before, better health than the regard I have paid to health deferves. We are both in the decline of life, my dear Dean, and have been fome years going down the hill; let us make the paffage as fmooth as we can. Let us fence

against phyfical evil by care, and the use of those means which experience muft have pointed out to us: Let us fence against moral evil by philofophy, I renounce the alternative you propofe. But we may, nay, (if we will follow nature, and do not work up imagination against her plaineft dictates) we fhall of courfe grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interefts of a system out of which we are foon to go. This is much better than ftupidity. The decay of paffion ftrengthens philofophy, for paffion may decay, and ftupidity not fucceed. Paffions (fays Pope, our Divine, as you will fee one time or other) are the Gales of life;

Let

Let us not complain that they do not blow a ftorm. What hurt does age do us, in fubduing what we toil to fubdue all our lives? It is now fix in the morning: I recall the time (and am glad it is over) when about this hour I ufed to be going to bed, furfeited with pleasure, or jaded with business: my head often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rife at this hour refreshed, ferene and calm? that the past, and even the prefent affairs of life ftand like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the disagreeable so as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to me? Paffions in their force, would bring all thefe, nay even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and Reason would but ill defend me in the fcuffle.

I leave Pope to fpeak for himself, but I must tell you how much my Wife is obliged to you. She fays fhe would find ftrength enough to nurse you, if you was here, and yet, God knows, she is extremely weak: The flow fever works under, and mines the constitution; we keep it off sometimes, but still it returns, and makes new breaches before nature can repair the old ones. I am not afhamed to say to you, that I admire her more every hour of my life: Death is not to her the King of Terrors; the beholds him without the leaft. When fhe fuffers much, the wishes for him as a deliverer from pain; when life is tolerable, she looks on him with dislike, because he is to feparate her from those friends to whom she is more attached than to life itself.-You fhall not stay for my next, as long as you have for this letter; and in every one, Pope shall write something much better than the scraps of old Philofophers, which were the prefents, Munufcula, that Stoical Fop Seneca ufed to fend in every Epiftle to his friend Lucilius.

P.S. My Lord has spoken juftly of his Lady: why not I of my Mother? Yesterday was her birthday, now entering on the ninety-first year of her age; her memory much diminished, but her fenfes very little hurt, her fight and hearing good; she fleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks water, fays her prayers; this is all fhe does. I have reafon to thank God for continuing fo long to me a very good and tender parent, and for allowing me to exercise for fome years, thofe cares which are now as neceffary to her, as hers have been to me. An object of this fort daily before one's eyes very much foftens the mind, but perhaps may hinder it from the willingnefs of contracting other tyes of the like domeftic nature, when one finds how painful it is even to enjoy the tender pleafures. I have formerly made fome ftrong efforts to get and to deserve a friend: perhaps it were wiser never to attempt it, but live extempore, and look upon the world only as a place to pass thro', juft pay your hofts 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 several 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 beft of life,

Cantantes licet ufque (minus via lædet) eamus,

as the fhepherd said in Virgil, when the road was long and heavy. I am yours.

LET

LETTER XLVIII.

Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr. SWIFT.

You

OU may affure yourfelf, that, if you come over this fpring, you will find me not only got back into the habits of ftudy, but devoted to that hiftorical tafk, 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 push'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 subject; and yet I am perfwaded 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 fay that you told Dr. * the Grand points of Chriftianity ought to be taken as infallible Revelations *, &c.

* In this maxim all bigotted Divines and free-thinking Politicians agree: the one, for fear of difturbing the eltablished Religion; the other, left that disturbance fhould prove injurious to their administration of government.