le fatiguer jamais: laisser rouiller l'esprit, meuble inutil, voire outil dangereux: laisser sonner vos cloches le matin pour éveiller les chanoines, et pour faire dormir le Doyen d'un sommeil doux et profond, qui luy procure de beaux songes lever vous tard, et aller à l'Eglise, pour vous faire payer d'avoir bien dormi et bien dejeuné. As to myself (a person about whom I concern myself very little) I must say a word or two out of complaisance to you. I am in my farm, and here I shoot strong and tenacious roots: I have caught hold of the earth (to use a gardener's phrase), and neither my enemies nor my friends will find it an easy matter to transplant me again. Adieu. Let me hear from you, at least of you: I love you for a thousand things, for none more than for the just esteem and love you have for all the sons of Adam. P. S. According to Lord Bolingbroke's account I shall be at Dublin in three days. I cannot help adding a word, to desire you to expect my soul there with you by that time; but as for the jade of a body that is tacked to it, I fear there will be no dragging it after. I assure you I have few friends here to detain me, and no powerful one at court absolutely to forbid my journey. I am told the Gynocrasy are of opinion, that they want no better writers than Cibber and the British Journalist; so that we may live at quiet, and apply ourselves to our most abstruse studies. The only courtiers I know, or have the honour to call my friends, are John Gay and Mr. Bowry; the former is at present so employed in the elevated airs of his Opera, and the latter in the exaltation of his high dignity (that of her majesty's waterman), that I can scarce obtain a cate 7 The whole of this pleasant receipt is taken from the Lutrin of Boileau. -Warton. gorical answer from either to any thing I say to them. But the Opera succeeds extremely, to yours and my extreme satisfaction, of which he promises this post to give you a full account. I have been in a worse condition of health than ever, and think my immortality is very near out of my enjoyment: so it must be in you and in posterity to make me what amends you can for dying young. Adieu. While I am, I am yours. Pray love me, and take care of yourself. LETTER LXXII. MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT. March 23, 1727-8. I SEND you a very odd thing, a paper printed in Boston in New England, wherein you will find a real person, a member of their parliament, of the name of Jonathan Gulliver. If the fame of that traveller hath travelled thither, it has travelled very quick to have folks christened already by the name of the supposed author. But if you object that no child so lately christened could be arrived at years of maturity to be elected into parliament, I reply (to solve the riddle) that the person is an anabaptist, and not christened till full age, which sets all right. However it be, the accident is very singular, that these two names should be united. Mr. Gay's opera has been acted near forty days running, and will certainly continue the whole season. So he has more than a fence about his thousand pounds he will soon be thinking of a fence about 3 Before Mr. Gay had fenced his thousand pounds, he had a consultation with his friends about the disposal of it. Mr. Lewis advised him to intrust it to the funds, and live upon the interest: Dr. Arbuthnot, to intrust it to Providence, and live upon the principal; and Mr. Pope was for purchasing his two thousand. Shall no one of us live as we would wish each other to live? Shall he have no annuity, you no settlement on this side, and I no prospect of getting to you on the other? This world is made for Cæsar-as Cato said, for ambitious, false, or flattering people to domineer in: nay, they would not, by their goodwill, leave us our very books, thoughts, or words, in quiet. I despise the world yet, I assure you, more than either Gay or you, and the court more than all the rest of the world. As for those scribblers for whom you apprehend I would suppress my Dulness, (which, by the way, for the future, you are to call by a more pompous name, The Dunciad,) how much that nest of hornets are my regard, will easily appear to you, when you read the Treatise of the Bathos. At all adventures, yours and my name shall stand linked as friends to posterity, both in verse and prose, and (as Tully calls it) in consuetudine studiorum. Would to God our persons could but as well, and as surely, be inseparable! I find my other ties dropping from me some worn off, some torn off, others relaxing daily my greatest, both by duty, gratitude, and humanity, Time is shaking every moment, and it now hangs but by a thread! I am many years the older, for living so much with one so old; much the more helpless, for having been so long helped and tended by her; much the more considerate and tender, for a daily commerce with one who required me justly to be both to her; and consequently the more melancholy and thoughtful; and the less fit for others, who want only, in a companion or a friend, to be amused or entertained. My constitution too has its share of an annuity for life. In this uncertainty he could only say with the old man in Terence, fecistis probe, Incertior sum multo, quam dudum,—Warburton. decay, as well as my spirits, and I am as much in the decline at forty as you at sixty. I believe we should be fit to live together, could I get a little more health, which might make me not quite insupportable: your deafness would agree with my dulness; you would not want me to speak when you could not hear. But God forbid you should be as destitute of the social comforts of life, as I must when I lose my mother; or that ever you should lose your more useful acquaintance so utterly, as to turn your thoughts to such a broken reed as I am, who could so ill supply your wants. I am extremely troubled at the returns of your deafness: you cannot be too particular in the accounts of your health to me; every thing you do or say in this kind obliges me, nay, delights me, to see the justice you do in thinking me concerned in all your concerns; so that though the pleasantest thing you can tell me be that you are better or easier, next to that it pleases me, that you make me the person you would complain to. As the obtaining the love of valuable men is the happiest end I know of this life, so the next felicity is to get rid of fools and scoundrels; which I cannot but own to you was one part of my design in falling upon these authors, whose incapacity is not greater than their insincerity, and of whom I have always found (if I may quote myself) "That each bad author is as bad a friend." This poem will rid me of these insects: 66 Cedite, Romani Scriptores, cedite, Graii ; I mean than my Iliad; and I call it Nescio quid, which is a degree of modesty; but however if it silence these fellows', it must be something greater than any Iliad in Christendom. Adieu. "It did, in a little time, effectually silence them.-Warburton. LETTER LXXIII. DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE. Dublin, May 10, 1728. I HAVE with great pleasure shown the New England newspaper, with the two names Jonathan Gulliver, and I remember Mr. Fortescue sent you an account from the assizes, of one Lemuel Gulliver who had a cause there, and lost it on his ill reputation of being a liar'. These are not the only observations I have made upon odd, strange accidents in trifles, which in things of great importance would have been matter for historians. Mr. Gay's opera hath been acted here twenty times, and my Lord Lieutenant tells me it is very well performed; he hath seen it often, and approves it much. You give a most melancholy account of yourself, and which I do not approve. I reckon that a man subject like us to bodily infirmities, should only occasionally converse with great people, notwithstanding all their good qualities, easinesses, and kindnesses. There is another race which I prefer before them, as beef and mutton for constant diet before partridges: I mean a middle kind both for understanding and fortune, who are perfectly easy, never impertinent, complying in every thing, ready to do a hundred little offices that you and I may often want, who dine and sit with me. five times for once that I go with them, and whom I can tell without offence, that I am otherwise engaged at present. This you cannot expect from any of those that either you or I, or both, are acquainted with on your side; who are only fit for our healthy seasons, and The circumstance seems almost too odd to be credited; for although the surname of Gilliver, or Gulliver, sometimes occurs, yet its being joined to the odd Christian name, Lemuel, and the attribute assigned to the witness, make the coincidence almost incredible.-Sir W. Scott. |