yet knew any perfon one tenth part fo heartily difposed as you are to do good offices to others, without the leaft private view.

Was it a gafconade to please me, that you faid your fortune was increased 100 /. a-year fince I left you? you fhould have told me how. Those fubfidia fenectuti are extremely defirable, if they could be got with justice, and without avarice; of which vice tho' I cannot charge myself yet, nor feel any approaches towards it, yet no ufurer more wishes to be richer, (or rather to be surer of his rents). But I am not half fo moderate as you; for I declare I cannot live eafily under double to what you are fatisfied with.

1 hope Mr Gay will keep his 3000 /. and live on the intereft, without decreafing the principal one penny; but I do not like your feldom feeing him. I hope he is grown more difengaged from his intentnefs on his own affairs, which I ever difliked, and is quite the reverse to you, unless you are a very dextrous disguiser. I defire my humble fervice to Lord Oxford, Lord Bathurst, and particularly to Mrs B-, but to no Lady at court. God bless you for being a greater dupe than I. I love that character too myself, but I want your charity. Adieu.

I

LETTER XL.

O&. 9. 1729.

T pleases me that you received my books at last: but you have never once told me if you approve the whole, or disapprove not of fome parts of the commentary, &e. It was my principal aim in the entire work, to perpetuate the friendship between us, and to fhew, that the friends or the enemies of one were the friends or enemies of the other. If, in any particular, any thing be stated or mentioned in a different manner from what you like, pray tell me freely, that the new editions now coming out here, may have it rectified. You'll find the octavo rather more correct than the quarto, with fome additions to the notes and epigrams caft in, which I wish had been increased by your acquaintance in Ireland. I rejoice in hearing that Dra

piers-hill is to emulate Parnaffus. I fear the country about it is as much impoverished. I truly fhare in all that troubles you, and wish you removed from a scene of diftrefs, which I know works your compaffionate temper too ftrongly. But if we are not to fee you here, I believe I fhall once in my life fee you there. You think more for me, and about me, than any friend I have, and you think better for me. Perhaps you'll not be contented, tho' I am, that the additional 100%. a year is only for my life. My mother is yet living, and I thank God for it: fhe will never be troublesome to me, if fhe be not fo to herself. But a melancholy object it is, to obferve the gradual decays both of body and mind, in a person to whom one is tied by the links of both. 1 can't tell whether her death itself would be so afflict

ing.

very

You are too careful of my worldly affairs. I am rich enough, and I can afford to give away 100 a year. Don't be angry: I will not live to be old; I have revelations to the contrary. I would not crawl upon the earth without doing a little good when I have a mind to do it. I will enjoy the pleasure of what I give, by giving it alive, and feeing another enjoy it. When I die, I fhould be ashamed to leave enough to build me a monument, if there were a wanting friend above ground. MR Gay affures me his 3000 /. is kept entire and facred. He feems to languish after a line from you, and complains tenderly. Lord Bolingbroke has told me ten times over he was going to write to you. Has he, or not? The Doctor is unalterable, both in friendship and quadrille. His wife has been very near death laft week his two brothers buried their wives within these fix weeks. Gay is fixty miles off, and has been fo all this fummer, with the Duke and Duchefs of Queensberry. He is the fame man; fo is every one here that you know. Mankind is unamendable. Optimus ille qui minimis urgetur. -Poor Mrs** is like the reft; fhe cries at the thorn in her foot, but will fuffer no body to pull it out. The court-lady I have a good opinion of: yet I have treated her more negligently than you would do, becaufe you like to fee the infide of a court, which I do not. I have feen her but twice. You have a defperate

hand

hand at dafhing out a character by great ftrokes, and at the fame time a delicate one at fine touches. God forbid you should draw mine, if I were confcious of any guilt: but if I were conscious only of folly, God fend it! for as no body can detect a great fault fo well as you, no body would fo well hide a fmall one. But, after all, that Lady means to do good, and does no harm, which is a vast deal for a courtier. I can affure you, that Lord Peterborow always fpeaks kindly of you, and certainly has as great a mind to be your friend as any one. I must throw away my pen; it cannot, it will never tell you, what I inwardly am to you. nequeo monftrare, et fentio tantum.

I

LETTER XLI.

Lord BOLING BROKE to Dr SWIFT.

Quod

Bruffels, Sept. 27. 1729.

Have brought your French acquaintance

thus far on her way into her own country, and confiderably better in health than fhe was when she went to Aix. I begin to entertain hopes, that she will recover fuch a degree of health as may render old age fupportable. Both of us have closed the tenth luftre, and it is high time to determine how we shall play the last act of the farce. Might not my life be intitled much more properly a What-d'ye call it, than a farce? Some comedy, a great deal of tragedy, and the whole interfperfed with fcenes of Harlequin, Scaramouch, and Dr Baloardo, the prototype of your hero--I ufed to think fometimes formerly of old age and of death; enough to prepare my mind, not enough to anticipate forrow, to dafh the joys of youth, and to be all my life a dying. I find the benefit of this practice now, and find it more as I proceed on my journey: little regret when I look backwards, little apprehenfion when I look forward. You complain grievoufly of your fituation in Ireland: I would complain of mine too in England; but I will not;

Lady Bolingbroke.

nay,

nay, I ought not; for I 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 rhapsodies. To tell you my reafons, 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 instant 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 expenfive, 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 ftages more. In fhort Mr Dean, if you will come to a certain farm in Middlesex, you shall 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 cuftom, (which is fometimes the reason, and oftener the caprice of others, of the mob of the world). Now, to be fure of doing this, you must wear your philofophical fpectacles as conftantly as the Spaniards ufed to wear theirs. You must make them part of your drefs; and fooner part with your broad-brimmed beaver, your gown, your fcarf, or even that emblematical veftment, your furplice. Thro' this medium you will fee few things to be vexed at, few perfons to be angry at: and yet there will frequently be things which we ought to with altered, and perfons whom we ought to with hanged.

In your letter to Pope, you agree, that a regard for fane becomes a man more towards his exit, than at his entrance into life; and yet you confefs, that the longer you live, the more you grow indifferent about it. Your fentiment is true and natural; your reafoning, 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 VOL. VI. man's

I.

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 leaft 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 courfes. 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 felf-love, into your aid. Tacitus. has crouded 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 to defire it moft, and therefore when it is moft becoming to desire it with ardor. If it is ufeful, 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 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 pleafant, the fooner we are in poffeffion of fame, the longer we shall enjoy this pleafure. 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 fooner.

From my farm, October 5.

I am here. I have feen Pope, and one of my first inquiries was after you. He tells me a thing I am forry

to