; 301 mufements 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 spirit you have raised fhall be difpoffeffed. I have fometimes wondered that I have not vifited you; but I have been stopt by too many reafons, befides years and laziness: and yet thefe are very good ones. Upon my return a ter half a year amongst you, there would be to me defiderio nec pudor nec modus. I was three years reconciling myfelf to the fcene, and the bufinefs to which fortune hath condemned me ; and ftupidity was what I had recourfe to. Befides, what a figure fhould I make in London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, diftrefs, or imprifonment, and my enemies with rods of iron? Yet I often threaten myself with the journey, and am every fummer 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 colic. 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 dempferet aptonet annos. I am heartily forry you have any dealings with that ugly diftemper, and I believe our friend Arbuthnot 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, Arbuthnot, 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 mens favour, and could heartily with that you were in his. I have been VOL. IX. confidering C c confidering why poets have fuch ill fuccefs in making their court, fince they are allowed to be the greatest and beft 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 antichambers, 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 Bolinbroke? I am an ill judge at this diftance; 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 mens friends, who had been useful in elections, and there was always a huge lift of names in arrears at the treasury, which would at least take up your feven years expedient to difcharge 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 houfe to recommend you to the next chief governor who comes over here, for a good civil employment, 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 reasonable; you may dine twice a-week at the deanery-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 honefty or or too little fublunary wifdom, 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 bishopric here; would to God they would send us as good ones from your fide! I am ever, &c. I Jan. 12. 1723. Find a rebuke in a late letter of yours, that both ftings and pleaseth me extremely. Your faying that I ought to have writ a poftfcript to my friend Gay's, makes me 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 I cannot but own the lazinefs 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 intitled to my friendship, that it was a poffeffion you could not imagine ftood in need of any further deeds or writings to affur you of it. Whatever you feem to think of your withdrawn < and separate state at this distance, and in this abfence, Dean Swift lives still 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. Alluding to his large work on Homer. We have never met these many years without mention of you. Beñides my old acquaintance, I have found that all my friends of a later date are fuch as were yours 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 moft loved, and with whom I moft lived, must be banifhed. After both of you left England, my constant hoft was the bishop of Rochefter†. Sure, this is a nation that is curfedly afraid of being overrun with too much politenefs, and cannot regain one great genius, but at the expence of another ‡. I tremble for my Lord Peterborow, (whom I now lodge with), he has too much wit as well as courage, to make a folid general and if he escapes being banished by others, I fear he will banish himfelf. This leads me to give you fome account of the manner of my life and converfation; which has been infinitely more various and diffipated, than when knew me and cared for me; and among all fexes, parties, and profeffions. A glut of study and retirement in the first part of my life caft you + Dr. Atterbury. * : 1 The Bishop of Rochefer thought this to be indeed the cafe ; and that the price agreed on for Lord B.'s return was his banishment: an imagination which fo ftrongly poffeffed him when he went abroad, that all the expoftulations of his friends could not convince him of the folly of it. Wab. -- * This Mr. Walsh seriously thought to be the cafe, where, in a letter to Mr. Pope, he fays, "When we were in the north, my "Lord Wharton fhewed me a letter he had received from a certain great general in Spain, [Lord Peterborow]. I told him, I would by all means have that general recalled, and fet to writing here at "home; for it was impoffible that a man with fo much wit as he "fhewed, could be fit to command an army, or do any o her bufi" nefs." me me into this; and this, I begin to fee, will throw me again into ftudy and retirement. at any. The civilities I have met with from oppofite-fets of people, have hindered me from being violent or four to any party; but at the fame time the obfervations and experiences I cannot but have collected, have made me lefs fond of, and lefs furprised I am therefore the more afflicted and the more angry at the violences and hardships I fee practifed by either. The merry vein you knew me in, is funk into a turn of reflection, that has made the world pretty indifferent to me; and yet I have acquired a quietnefs of mind which by fits improves into a certain degree of chearfulness, enough to make me juft fo good-humoured as to wish that world well. My friendships are increafed by new ones, yet no part of the warmth I felt for the old is diminished Averfions I have none, but to knaves (for fools I have learned to bear with); and fuch I cannot be commonly civil to; for I think thofe men are next to knaves who converfe with them. The greatest man in power of this fort shall : hardly make me bow to him, unless I had a perfonal obligation, and that I will take care not to have. The top pleasure of my life is one I learned from you, both how to gain and how to use the freedom of friendship with men much my fuperiors. To have pleafed great men, according to Horace, is a praise; but not to have flattered them, and yet not have difpleased them, is a greater. I have carefully avoided all intercourfe with poets and fcribblers, unlefs where by great chance I have found a modeft one. By thefe means I have had no quarrels with any perfonally; none have been enemies, but who were alfo ftrangers to me; and as there is no great need of an eclairciffiment with fuch, whatever they writ or faid, I never retaliated; not only never feeming to know, but often really never knowing, any thing of the matter. There Cc3 are |
