constitution, it is in no more danger than a strong man that has got a little surfeit by drunkenness. All will be well, and people recover their sober senses every day. Several of your friends dine with me. to-day; Lady Masham, Jo. Drummond, the judge, &c.; when you will be remembered. I wish I could return your compliments as to my wife and bairns. Sure you are a very ill husband, for you had the complete thousand when you was in England, and sixpence of another thousand given by the dragon. I remember that full well. Lewis is gone his progress. I shall be at Bath in a fortnight. Come that way. Adieu.

I really think the person I recommended will do well; he will be quite another thing before Michaelmas, with Rosingrave's teaching, etc. He has a good

voice.

DEAR SIR,

Νου.

1723.

I HAVE as good a right to invade your solitude as Lord Bathurst, Gay, or Pope, and you see I make use of it. I know you wish us all at the devil for robbing a moment from your vapours and vertigo. It is no matter for that; you shall have a sheet of paper every post till you come to yourself. By a paragraph in yours to Mr. Pope, I find you are in the case of the man, who held the whole night by a broom bush, and found when daylight appeared, he was within two inches of the ground. You do not seem to know how well you stand with our great folks. I myself have been at a great man's table, and have heard, out of the mouths of violent Irish Whigs, the whole table turn

all upon your commendation. If it had not been upon the general topic of your good qualities, and the good you did, I should have grown jealous of you. My intention in this is not to expostulate, but to do you good. I know how unhappy a vertigo makes anybody that has the misfortune to be troubled with it. I might have been deep in it myself, if I had had a mind, and I will propose a cure for you, that I will pawn my reputation upon. I have of late sent several patients in that case to the Spa, to drink there of the Geronstere water, which will not carry from the spot. It has succeeded marvellously with them all. There was indeed one, who relapsed a little this last summer, because he would not take my advice, and return to his course, that had been too short the year before. But, because the instances of eminent men are most conspicuous, Lord Whitworth, our plenipotentiary, had this disease, (which, by the way is a little disqualifying for that employment;) he was so bad that he was often forced to catch hold of anything to keep him from falling. I know he was recovered by the use of that water to so great a degree, that he can ride, walk, or do anything as formerly. I leave this to your consideration. Your friends here wish to see you, and none more than myself; but I really do not advise you to such a journey to gratify them or myself; but I am almost confident, it would do you a great deal of good. The dragon is just the old man, when he is roused. He is a little deaf, but has all his other good and bad qualities just as of old. Lord B is much improved in knowledge, manner, and everything else. The shaver1 is an honest friendly man as before; he has a good deal to do to smother 1 Erasmus Lewis.

his Welsh fire, which, you know, he has in a greater degree than some would imagine. He posts himself a good part of the year in some warm house, wins the ladies' money at ombre, and convinces them, that they are highly obliged to him. Lord and Lady Masham, Mr. Hill and Mrs. Hill, often remember you with affection.

As for your humble servant, with a great stone in his right kidney, and a family of men and women to provide for, he is as cheerful as ever. In public affairs, he has kept, as Tacitus says, Medium iter inter vile servitium, et abruptam contumaciam.—He never rails at a great man but to his face; which I assure you, he has had both the opportunity and licence to do. He has some few weak friends, and fewer enemies: if any, he is low enough to be rather despised than pushed at by them. I am faithfully, dear Sir,

Your affectionate, humble servant,

J. ARBUTHNOT.

LONDON, Sept. 20, 1726.

I HAVE been balancing, dear sir, these three days, whether I should write to you first. Laying aside the superiority of your dignity, I thought a notification was due to me, as well as to two others of my friends: then I considered that this was done in the public news, with all the formalities of reception of a lord-lieutenant. I reflected on the dependency of Ireland; but, said I, what if my friend should dispute this? Then I considered that letters were always introduced at first from the civilized to the barbarous kingdom. In short, my affection, and the pleasure of corresponding with my dear friend, prevailed; and,

since you most disdainfully and barbarously confined me to two lines a-month, I was resolved to plague you with twenty times that number, though I think it was a sort of a compliment, to be supposed capable of saying anything in two lines. The Gascon asked only to speak one word to the French king, which the king confining him to, he brought a paper, and said, signez, and not a word more. Your negotiation with the singing man is in the hands of my daughter Nancy, who, I can assure you, will neglect nothing that concerns you; she has written about it. Mr. Pope has been in hazard of his life by drowning; coming late two weeks ago, from Lord Bolingbroke's in his coach and six, a bridge on a little river being broke down, they were obliged to go through the water, which was not too high, but the coach was overturned in it; and the glass being up, which he could not break nor get down, he was very near drowned: for the footman was stuck in the mud, and could hardly come in time to help him. He had that in common with Horace, that it was occasioned by the trunk of a tree; but it was trunco rheda illapsa, neque Faunus ictum dextra levabat; for he was wounded in the left hand, but, thank God, without any danger; but by the cutting of a large vessel, lost a great deal of blood. I have been with Mrs. Howard, who has a most intolerable pain in one side of her head. I had a great deal of discourse with your friend, her royal highness. She insisted upon your wit, and good conversation. I told her royal highness, that was not what I valued you for, but for being a sincere, honest man, and speaking truth when others were afraid to speak it. I have been for near three weeks together every day at the Duchess of Marlborough's, with Mr. Congreve, who

has been like to die with a fever, and the gout in his stomach; but he is now better, and like to do well. My brother was near being cast away going to France: there was a ship lost just by him. I write this in a dull humour, but with most sincere affection to an ungrateful man as you are, that minds everybody more than me, except what concerns my interest.

My dear friend, farewell.

LONDON, March 19, 1728-9.

THIS is the second or third time, dear sir, that I have writ to you without hearing a word of you, or from you; only, in general, that you are very much out of order; sometimes of your two old complaints, the vertigo and deafness, which I am very sorry for. The gentleman who carries this has come better off than I did imagine: I used my little interest as far as it would go, in his affair. He will be able to give you some account of your friends, many of whom have been in great distress this winter. John Gay, I may say with vanity, owes his life, under God, to the unwearied endeavours and care of your humble servant ; for a physician who had not been passionately his friend could not have saved him. I had, beside my personal concern for him, other motives of my care. He is now become a public person, a little Sacheverell; and I took the same pleasure in saving him as Radcliffe did in preserving my Lord Chief Justice Holt's wife, whom he attended out of spite to the husband, who wished her dead.

The inoffensive John Gay is now become one of the obstructions to the peace of Europe, the terror of ministers, the chief author of the Craftsman, and all the seditious pamphlets which have been published