find by long experience that I can be unfortunate without being unhappy. I do not approve your joining together the figure of living, and the pleasure of giving, tho' your old prating friend Montagne does fomething like it in one of his Rapfodies. To tell you my reasons would be to write an effay, and I fhall hardly have time to write a Letter; but if you will come over, and live with Pope and me, I'll fhew you in an inftant why thofe two things fhould not aller de pair, and that forced retrenchments on both may be made, without making us even uneafy. You know that I am too expensive, and all mankind knows that. I have been cruelly plundered; and yet I feel in my mind the power of defcending without anxiety two or three stages more. In fhort (Mr. Dean) if you will come to a certain farm in Middlesex, you fhall find that I can live frugally without growling at the world, or being peevish with those whom fortune has appointed to eat my bread, instead of appointing me to eat theirs and yet I have naturally as little difpofition to frugality as any man alive. You fay, you are no philofopher, and I think you are in the right to diflike a word which is so often abused; but I am fure you like to follow reafon, not custom, (which is fometimes the reafon and oftener the caprice of others, of the mob

of

of the world.) Now to be fure of doing this, you must wear your philosophical spectacles as constantly as the Spaniards used to wear theirs. You must make them part of your dress, and fooner part with your broad-brimm'd beaver, your gown, your scarf, or even that emblematical vestment your furplice. Thro' this medium you will see few things to be vexed at, few perfons to be angry at: and yet there will frequently be things which we ought to wish altered, and perfons whom we ought to wish hanged.

In your letter to Pope, you agree that a regard for fame becomes a man more towards his Exit, than at his entrance into life; and yet you confess, that the longer you live, the more you grow indifferent about it. Your fentiment is true and natural; your reasoning, I am afraid, is not fo upon this occafion. 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 suppose will be paid by pofterity to our names;

and

and with idle notions of immortality you turn other heads befides your own: I am afraid this have done fome harm in the world.

may

Fame is an object which men pursue fuccessfully by various and even contrary courses. Your doctrine leads them to look on this end as effential, and on the means as indifferent; so 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 felf-love, into your aid: Tacitus has crowded this excufe for you, according to his manner, into a maxim, Contemptu famæ, 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 speak more properly) our youth, not our old age, is the feafon when we ought to defire it most, 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

scene of action is or should be closed; and then, methinks, it is unbecoming to grow fonder of a thing which we have no longer occafion for. If it is pleasant, the fooner we are in poffeffion. of fame the longer we shall enjoy this pleasure. When it is acquir'd 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 fooner.

From my Farm, Oct. 5.

I am here; I have feen Pope, my firft enquiries was after

and one of

you. He tells me a thing I am forry to hear: You are building, it seems, 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 easily upon you, as ever they did on any man who lived to be old; and may the moral evils which furround us, make as little impreffion on you, as they ought to make on one who has fuch fuperior fenfe to eftimate things by, and fo much virtue to wrap himself up

in.

My

My wife defires not to be forgotten by you; fhe's faithfully your fervant, and zealously your admirer. She will be concerned and disappointed 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.

I

Dublin, Oct. 31, 1729.

Receiv'd your Lordship's travelling letter of feveral dates, at several stages, and from different 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 complain'd 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 answer for, all monaftically paffed in this Country of liberty and delight, and money, and good company! I go on anfwering your letter: It is you were my Hero, but the other a never was; yet if he were it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often

* L. Ox.

vindicated