cafion. Prudence will make us defire Fame, because it gives us many real and great advantages in all the affairs of life. Fame is the wife man's means; his ends are his own good, and the good of fociety. You Poets and Orators have inverted this order; you propose Fame as the end; and good, or at least great actions, as the means. You go further: You teach our felf-love to anticipate the applause which we fuppofe will be paid by pofterity to our names; and with idle notions of immortality you turn other heads befides your own: I am afraid this may have done fome harm in the world.

Fame is an object which men purfue fuccefsfully by various and even contrary courses. Your doctrine leads them to look on this end as effential, and on the means as indifferent; fo that Fabricius and Craffus, Cato and Cæfar preffed forward to the fame goal. After all perhaps it may appear, from a confideration of the depravity of mankind, that you could do no better, nor keep up virtue in the world without calling this paffion or this direction of felflove, in to your aid : Tacitus has crowded this excufe for you, according to his manner, into a maxim, Contemptu fama, contemni virtutes. But now whether we confider Fame as an useful inftrument in all the occurrences of private and public life, or whether we confider it as the cause of that pleasure which our felf-love is fo fond of; methinks our entrance into life, or (to fpeak more properly) our youth, not our old age, is the feafon when we ought

شاهد

land Hoadley Dodge

125

you; fhe's >ur admirer.

: not to find pe both the Fore I went

ROKE.

&. 31, 1729. ; letter of ferom different either could

kind remem

s to your ten
ed in a Let-
he was half

Terence, ifta
then ought I

years more to

this Country id good com

It is you were

yet if he were, Je to love him, ¿inning of your it I granted he

to defire it moft, and therefore when it is moft becoming to defire it with ardor. If it is useful, it is to be defired most when we have, or may hope to have a long scene of action open before us : Towards our exit, this fcene of action is or fhould be closed; and then, methinks, it is unbecoming to grow fonder of a thing which we have no longer occafion for. If it is pleafant, the fooner we are in poffeffion of fame the longer we shall enjoy this pleasure. When it is acquired early in life it may tickle us on till old age; but when it is acquired late, the fenfation of pleasure will be more faint, and mingled with the regret of our not having tasted it sooner.

From my Farm, Oct. 5.

I am here; I have feen Pope, and one of my firft enquiries was after you. He tells me a thing I am forry to hear: You are building, it feems on a piece of land you have acquired for that purpose, in fome county of Ireland. Tho' I have built in a part of the world, which I prefer very little to that where you have been thrown and confined by our ill-fortune and yours, yet I am forry you do the fame thing. I have repented a thousand times of my refolution, and I hope you will repent of yours before it is executed. Adieu, my old and worthy friend; may the phyfical evils of life fall as eafily upon you, as ever they did on any man who lived to be old; and may the moral evils which surround us, make as little impreffion on you, as they ought to make on one who has fuch fuperior fenfe to estimate things by, and fo much virtue to wrap himself up in.

My wife defires not to be forgotten by you; she's faithfully your fervant, and zealously your admirer. She will be concerned and difappointed not to find you in this ifland at her return, which hope both fhe and I had been made to entertain before I went abroad.

LETTER XLI.

Dr. SWIFT to Lord BOLINGBROKE.

Dublin, Oct. 31, 1729.

Receiv'd your Lordship's travelling letter of fe

nations, languages, and religions. Neither could any thing be more obliging than your kind remembrance of me in fo many places. As to your ten Luftres, I remember, when I complained in a Letter to Prior, that I was fifty years old, he was half angry in jeft, and answered me out of Terence, ifta commemoratio eft quafi exprobratio. How then ought I to rattle you, when I have a dozen years more to anfwer for, all monaftically paffed in this Country of liberty and delight, and money, and good company! I go on answering your letter; It is you were my Hero, but the other * never was; yet if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often vindicated him, in the beginning of your miniftry, from my accufations. But I granted he

* L. Ox,