youth, and who surely, besides his other talents, was a very agreeable companion. He had the misfortune to squander away a very good constitution in his younger days; and I think a man of sense and merit like him, is bound in conscience to preserve his health for the sake of his friends, as well as of himself. Upon his own. account, I could not much desire the continuance of his life under so much pain, and so many infirmities. Years have not yet hardened me; and I have an addition of weight upon my spirits since we lost him; though I saw him so seldom, and possibly if he had lived on, should never have seen him more. I do not only wish, as you ask me, that I was unacquainted with any deserving person, but almost that I never had a friend. Here is an ingenious good-humoured physician, a fine gentleman, an excellent scholar, easy in his fortunes, kind to every body, hath abundance of friends, entertains them often and liberally; they pass the evening with him at cards, with plenty of good meat and wine, eight or a dozen together; he loves them all, and they him. He has twenty of these at command; if one of them dies, it is no more than Poor Tom! he gets another, or takes up with the rest, and is no more moved than at the loss of his cat: he offends nobody, is easy with every body.-Is not this the true happy man? I was describing him to my Lady A- who knows him too, but she hates him mortally by my cha

And crazy Congreve scarce could spare

A shilling to discharge his chair;

Till prudence taught him to appeal,
From Pæan's fire to party zeal;

Not owing to his happy vein
The fortunes of his latter scene;
Took proper principles to thrive ;

And so might every dunce alive."

This picture is unfair and over-charged; for the honour of Government, Congreve had several good places conferred on him, and enjoyed an affluent income.-Warton.

Congreve died in January, 1728-9.

racter, and will not drink his health; I would give half my fortune for the same temper, and yet I cannot say I love it, for I do not love my Lord who is much of the Doctor's nature. I hear Mr. Gay's second opera, which you mention, is forbid; and then he will be once more fit to be advised, and reject your advice. Adieu.

LETTER LXXX.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

(Jan. 1728-9.)

I AM glad to hear of the progress of your recovery,. and the oftener I hear it, the better, when it becomes easy to you to give it me. I so well remember the consolation you were to me in my mother's former illness, that it doubles my concern at this time not to be able to be with you, or you able to be with me. Had I lost her, I would have been no where else but with you during your confinement. I have now passed five weeks without once going from home, and without any company but for three or four of the days. Friends rarely stretch their kindness so far as ten miles. My Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Bethel have not forgotten to visit me the rest (except Mrs. Blount once) were contented to send messages. I never passed so melancholy a time, and now Mr. Congreve's death 2 touches

2 Our author's great regard for Congreve appears from his having dedicated to him, in preference to any great patron, his translation of the Iliad. One of the most singular circumstances in the life of Congreve is, his having been able to write such a comedy as the Old Bachelor, at the age of nineteen. Dr. Johnson accounts for this extraordinary phenomenon in the history of literature, by saying it might be done by a mind vigorous and acute, and furnished with comic characters by the perusal of other poets, without much actual commerce with mankind. And then he afterwards adds, in direct and palpable contradiction of this assertion, “that he is an original writer, who borrowed neither the models of his plots, nor the manner of his dialogue." The inexhausted and improper superabundance of his wit, on all subjects and occasions, and in all characters, (for Jeremy is as witty as his master, Valentine,) has been too often observed to be here

me nearly. It was twenty years and more that I have
known him.
Every year carries away something dear
with it, till we outlive all tendernesses, and become
wretched individuals again as we begun. Adieu; This
is my birth-day, and this is my reflection upon it:
With added days if life give nothing new,

But, like a sieve, let every pleasure through;
Some joy still lost, as each vain year runs o'er,
And all we gain, some sad reflection more!
Is this a birth-day ?—Tis, alas! too clear,
"Tis but the funeral of another year 3.

LETTER LXXXI.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

March 6, 1728-9.

IF I am not a good correspondent, I have bad health; and that is as good. I passed eight months in the country, with Sir Arthur and my Lady Acheson, and had at least half a dozen returns of my giddiness and deafness, which lasted me about three weeks a-piece; and among other inconveniences, hindered me from visiting my chapter, and punishing enormities; but did not save me the charges of a visitation dinner. This disorder neither hinders my sleeping, nor much my walking: yet is the most mortifying malady I can

mentioned. The Mourning Bride has been magnified, beyond its merits, by Lord Kaimes; and Dr. Johnson has strained an encomium on a speech of Almeria, in this tragedy, so high, as to say, that a more poetical paragraph cannot be selected from the whole mass of English poetry. One passage in this speech must be noticed for its affectation: she says, "The temple in which the scene lies, is so solemn and awful, that it looks tranquillity." How different in style and manner are the brilliant sallies in Congreve's comedies, from the purity, justness, and truth of Terence, and the Drummer!-Warton.

These lines were originally added to the Lines on the Birth-day of M. Blount :

"Oh, be thou blest!"

These appear in the MS. in his own hand-writing, sent to her; but are properly left out in his Works.-Bowles.

suffer. I have been just a month in town, and have just got rid of it in a fortnight: and, when it is on me, I have neither spirits to write, or read, or think, or eat. But I drink as much as I like; which is a resource you cannot fly to when you are ill. And I like it as little as you but I can bear a pint better than you can a spoonful. You were very kind in your care for Mr. Whaley; but I hope you remembered that Daniel is a damnable poet, and consequently a public enemy to mankind. But I despise the Lords' decree, which is a jest upon common sense, for what did it signify to the merits of the cause, whether George the old, or the young, were on the throne?

5

No: I intended to pass last winter in England, but my health said no: and I did design to live a gentleman, and, as Sancho's wife said, to go in my coach to court. I know not whether you are in earnest to come hither in spring; if not, pray God you may never be in jest! Dr. Delany shall attend you at Chester, and your apartment is ready; and I have a most excellent chaise, and about sixteen dozen of the best cider in the world; and you shall command the town and kingdom, and digito monstrari, &c. And, when I cannot hear, you shall have choice of the best people we can afford, to hear you, and nurses enough; and your apartment is on the sunny side.

The next paragraph strikes me dumb. You say, "I am to blame, if I refuse the opportunity of going with my Lady Bolingbroke to Aix la Chapelle." I must tell you that a foreign language is mortal to a deaf man. I

4 This respects a lawsuit between Mr. Nathaniel Whaley and the Archbishop of Armagh on the one side, and the Crown on the other, which depended in the House of Lords, on a writ of error, and in which the Dean greatly interested himself. Mr. Whaley was at length successful. The shape of the question resolved into a doubt whether the death of George I. did not abate the writ.-Sir W. Scott.

5 Richard Daniel, Dean of Armagh, attending as a witness on the issue of the cause.-Sir W. Scott.

must have good ears to catch up the words of so nimble a tongued race as the French, having been a dozen years without conversing among them. Mr. Gay is a scandal to all lusty young fellows with healthy countenances; and, I think, he is not intemperate in a physical sense. I am told he has an asthma, which is a disease I commiserate more than deafness, because it will not leave a man quiet either sleeping or waking. I hope he does not intend to print his opera before it is acted; for I defy all your subscriptions to amount to eight hundred pounds. And yet, I believe, he lost as much more, for want of human prudence.

6

I told you some time ago that I was dwindled to a writer of libels on the lady of the family where I lived, and upon myself; but they never went farther: and my Lady Acheson made me give her up all the foul copies, and never gave the fair ones out of her hands, or suffered them to be copied. They were sometimes shown to intimate friends, to occasion mirth, and that was all. So that I am vexed at your thinking I had any hand in what could come to your eyes. I have some confused notion of seeing a paper called Sir Ralph the Patriot, but am sure it was bad or indifferent: and as to the Lady at Quadrille, I never heard of it. Perhaps it may be the same with a paper of verses, called the Journal of a Dublin Lady, which I writ at Sir Arthur Acheson's; and leaving out what concerned the family, I sent it to be printed in a paper which Dr. Sheridan had engaged in, called, The Intelligencer, of which he made but sorry work, and then dropped it. But the verses were printed by themselves, and most

The Second Part of the Beggars' Opera, which was excluded from the theatre by order of the Chamberlain.-Sir W. Scott.

7 Pope appears to have thought the poem so entitled was the Dean's production, and, notwithstanding his disapprobation, it has some glimpse of his manner and peculiar humour.-Sir W. Scott.

It is given in Swift's Works by Sir W. Scott, vol. xvii. p. 256.