at her return, which hope both fhe and I had been made to entertain before I went abroad.

I

LETTER XLI.

Dr. SWIFT to Lord BOLINGBROKE.

Dublin, O&. 31, 1729. Receiv'd your Lordship's travelling letter of several dates, at feveral ftages, 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 complained in a Letter to Prior, that I was fifty years old, he was half angry in jeft, and anfwered me out of Terence, ifta commemoratio eft quafi exprobatio. 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 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 had the greatest inequalities of any man alive, and his whole fcene was fifty times more a What-d'ye-callit, than yours: for, I declare, yours was unie, and I wish you would fo order it, that the world may be as wife as I upon that article: Mr. Pope wishes it too, and I believe there is not a more honeft man in England, even without wit. But you regard us not.-I was + forty-feven years old, when I began to think of death, and the reflections upon it now begin when I wake in the morning, and end when I am going to fleep-I writ to Mr. Pope, and not to you. My birth, although from a family not undiftinguished in its name, is many degrees inferior to yours; all my pretenfions from perfons and parts infinitely fo; I a younger fon of younger fons; you born to a great fortune: yet I fee you with all your advantages funk to a degree that you could never have been without them: But yet I fee you, as much efteemed, as much beloved, as much dreaded, and perhaps more (though it be almost impoffible) than ever you were in your higheft exaltation-only I grieve like an Alderman that you are not fo rich. And

*L. Ox.

+ The Year of Queen Anne's Death.

་

yet

yet, my Lord, I pretend to value money as little as you, and I will call five hundred witneffes (if you will take Irish witneffes) to prove it. I renounce your whole philofophy, becaufe it is not your practice. By the figure of living, (if I used that expreffion to Mr. Pope) I do not mean the parade, but a fuitableness to your mind; and as for the pleasure of giving, I know your foul fuffers when you are debarr'd of it. Could you, when your own generofity and contempt of outward things (be not offended, it is no Ecclefiaftical but an Epictetian phrafe) could you, when thefe have brought you to it, come over and live with Mr. Pope and me at the Deanry? I could almoft with the ext periment were tried-No, God forbid, that ever fuch a fcoundrel as Want fhould dare to approach you." But, in the mean time, do not brag, Retrenchments are not your talent. But, as old Weymouth faid to me in his lordly Latin, Philofopha verba ignava opera; I wish you could learn Arithmetic, that three and two make five, and will never make more. My philofophical spectacles which you advise me to, will tell me that I can live on 50l. a year (wine excluded, which my bad health forces me to) but I cannot endure that Otium fhould be fine dignitate - My Lord, what I would have faid of Fame is meant of fame which a man enjoys in his life: because I cannot be a great Lord, I would acquire what is a kind of fubfidium, I woult! endeavour that my betters fhould feek me by the merit of fomething diftinguishable, inftead of my feeking of them. The defire of enjoying it in after-times is owing to the fpirit and folly of youth: but with age we learn to know the houfe is fo full, that there is no room for above one or two at moft in an age, through the whole world. My Lord, I hate and love to write to you, it gives me pleafure, and kills me with melancholy. The D- take ftupidity, that it will not come to fupply the want of philo· 'Tophy.

γου

O&. 31, 1729.

OU were fo careful of fending me the Dunciad, that I have received five of them, and have pleafed four friends. I am one of every body who approve every part of it, Text and Comment; but am one abftracted from every body, in the happiness of being recorded your friend, VOL. IV.

T t

while

while wit, and humour, and politenefs fhall have any memorial among us. As for your octavo edition, we know nothing of it, for we have an octavo of our own, which hath fold wonderfully, confidering our poverty, and dulnefs the confequence of it.

1

I writ this poft to Lord B. and tell him in my letter, that, with a great deal of lofs for a frolick, I will fly as foon as build; I have neither years, nor fpirits, nor money, nor patience for fuch amufements. The frolick is gone off, and I am only ico/. the poorer. But this kingdom is grown. fo exceffively poor, that we wife men muft think of nothing but getting a little ready money. It is thought there are not two hundred thousand pounds of fpecie in the whole ifland; for we return thrice as much to our abfentees, as we get by trade, and fo are all inevitably undone ; which I have been telling them in print thefe ten years, to as little purpose as if it came from the pulpit. And this is enough for Irish politics, which I only mention, because it fo nearly touches myfelf. I must repeat what, I believe, I have faid before, that I pity you much more than Mrs. Pope. Such a parent and friend hourly decli ning before your eyes is an object very unfit for your health, and duty, and tender difpofition; and I pray God it may not affect you too much. I am as much satisfied that your additional col per Annum is for your life, as if it were for ever. You have enough to leave your friends:. .I would not have them glad to be rid of you; and I fhall take care that none but my enemies will be glad to get rid of me. You have embroiled me with Lord B-about the figure of living, and the pleasure of giving. I am under the neceffity of fome little paultry figure in the ftation I am; but I make it as little as poffible. As to the other -part you are bafe, because I thought myself as great a giver as ever was of my ability; and yet in proportion you exceed, and have kept it till now a fecret even from me, when I wondered how you were able to live with your whole little revenue.

I

Nov. 19, 1729

Find that you have laid afide your project of building in Ireland, and that we fhall fee you in this ifland cum zephyris, et hirundine prima. I know not whether the love of fame increases as we advance in age; fure I am that the

force

*

'force of friendship does. I lov'd you almoft twenty years ago, I thought of you as well as I do now, better was beyond the power of conception, or, to avoid an equivoque, beyond the extent of my ideas. Whether you are more obliged to me for loving you as well when I knew you lefs, or for loving you as well after loving you fo many years, I fhall not determine. What I would fay is this whilft my mind grows daily more independent of the world, and feels lefs need of learning on external objects, the ideas of friendship return oftener, they bufy me, they warm me more: Is it that we grow more tender as the moment of our great feparation approaches? or is it that they who are to live together in another ftate, (for vera amicitia non nifi inter bonos) begin to feel more ftrongly that divine fympathy which is to be the great band of their future fociety? There is no one thought which fooths my mind like this: I encourage my imagination to purfue it, and am heartily afflicted when another faculty of the intellect comes boifteroufly in, and wakes me from so pleafing a dream, if it be a dream. I will dwell no more on Oeconomicks than I have done in my former letter. Thus much only I will fay, that otium cum dignitate is to be had with 500. a year as well as with 5000: the difference will be found in the value of the man, and not in that of the eftate. I do affure you, that I have never quitted the defign of collecting, revifing, improving, and extending feveral materials which are ftill in my power; and I hope that the time of fetting myfelf about this laft work of my Aife is not far off. Many papers of much curiofity and importance are loft, and fome of them in a manner which would furprize and anger you. However I fhall be able to convey feveral great truths to pofterity, fo clearly and fo anthentically, that the Burnets and the Oldmixons of another age may rail, but not be able to deceive. Adieu, my friend. I have taken up more of this paper than belongs to me, fince Pope is to write to you; no matter, for, upon recollection, the rules of proportion are not broken; he will fay as much to you in one page, as I have faid in three. Bid him talk to you of the work he is about, I

*Viz. Reafon. Tully (or what is much the fame, his Difciple) obferves fomething like this on the like occafion, where fpeaking of Plato's famous Book of the Soul, he fa,s, Nejcio quomodo, dum lego, adjentior: cum pofui librum, et mecum ipfe de immortalitate animorum coepi cogitare, adfenfio illa emnis elabitur. Cicero feems to have had but a confufed notion of the couje, which the Letterwriter has here explained, namely, that the imagination is always ready to indulge to flattering an idea, but feverer reafon corrects and difclaims it. As to RELIGION, that is out of the queftion; for Tully wrote to his few philofophic friends.

Tt 2

hope

hope in good earneft; it is a fine one, and will be, in his hands, an original *. His fole complaint is, that he finds it too eafy in the execution. This flatters his laziness, it flatters my judgment, who always thought that (univerfal as his talents are) this is eminently and peculiarly his, above all the writers I know living or dead; 1 do not except Horace Adieu.

LETTER XLIV.

Nov. 28, 1729.

T His Letter (like all mine) will be a Rhapfody; it is many years ago fince I wrote as a Wit How many occurrences or informations muft one omit, if one determin'd to fay nothing that one could not fay prettily? I Jately received from the widow of one dead correfpondent, and the father of another, feveral of my own letters of about fifteen and twenty years old; and it was not unentertaining to myself to obferve, how and by what degrees I ceas'd to be a witty writer; as either my experience grew on the one hand, or my affection to my correfpondents on the other. Now as I love you better than most I have ever met with in the world, and efteem you too the more, the longer I have compar'd you with the reft of the world; fo inevitably I write to you more negligent ly, that is, more openly, and what all but fuch as love one another will call writing worfe. I fmile to think how Curl would be bit, were our Epiftles to fall into his hands, and how gloriously they would fall fhort of every ingenious reader's expectations?

You can't imagine what a vanity it is to me, to have fomething to rebuke you for in the way of Oeconomy. I love the man that builds a houle fubito ingenio, and makes a wall for a horfe : then cries, "We wife men muft think ❝of nothing but getting ready money." I am glad you approve my annuity; all we have in this world is no more than an annuity, as to our own enjoyment; but I will increafe your regard for my wildom, and tell you, that this annuity includes alfo the life of another †, whofe concern ought to be as near me as my own, and with whom my whole profpects ought to finifh. I throw my javelin of Hope no farther, Cur brevi fortes jaculamur ævo-etc. The fecond (as it is call'd, but indeed the eighth) edi.