Irish witnesses) to prove it. I renounce your whole philosophy, because it is not your practice. By the figure of living, (if I used that expression to Mr. Pope,) I do not mean the parade, but a suitableness to your mind and as for the pleasure of giving, I know your soul suffers when you are debarred of it. Could you, when your own generosity and contempt of outward things, (be not offended, it is no Ecclesiastical, but an Epictetian phrase,) could you, when these have brought you to it, come over and live with Mr. Pope and me at the Deanery? I could almost wish the experiment was tried-No, God forbid, that ever such a scoundrel as Want should dare to approach you. But, in the mean time, do not brag; retrenchments are not your talent. But as old Weymouth said to me in his lordly Latin, Philosopha verba, ignava opera: I wish you could learn arithmetic, that three and two make five, and will never make more. My philosophical spectacles which you advise me to, will tell me that I can live on 50%. a-year, (wine excluded, which my bad health forces me to,) but I cannot endure that Otium should be sine dignitate.—My lord, what I would have said 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 subsidium, I would endeavour that my betters should seek me by the merit of something distinguishable, instead of my seeking them. The desire of enjoying it in after-times is owing to the spirit and folly of youth: but with age we learn to know the house is so full, that there is no room for above one or two at most in an age, through the whole world'. My lord, I hate and love to write to you, it

1 When Bolingbroke was very old, in his retirement at Battersea, it was customary for many people to pay their respects to him, chiefly with the view of seeing and conversing with a character so distinguished. Among others, Lord Chatham, then a young man, called on him; but found him

gives me pleasure, and kills me with melancholy. The D—— take stupidity, that it will not come to supply the want of philosophy.

LETTER XCI.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

Oct. 31, 1729.

You were so careful of sending me the Dunciad, that I have received five of them, and have pleased four friends. I am one of every body who approve every part of it, text and comment; but am one abstracted from every body, in the happiness of being recorded your friend, while wit, and humour, and politeness shall 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 sold wonderfully, considering our poverty, aud dulness the consequence of it.

I writ this post to Lord B. and tell him in my letter, that, with a great deal of loss for a frolic, I will fly as soon as build; I have neither years, nor spirits, nor money, nor patience, for such amusements. The frolic is gone off, and I am only 100%. the poorer. But this kingdom is grown so excessively poor, that we wise men must think of nothing but getting a little ready money. It is thought there are not two hundred thousand pounds in specie in the whole island; for we return thrice as much to our absentees as we get by trade, and so are all inevitably undone; which I have been telling them in print these 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 so nearly touches myself. I must repeat what, I believe, I have

pedantic, fretful, angry with his wife, &c. Such is the melancholy picture of the last stage of existence. [Communicated by Lord Chatham to the late Marquis of Lansdowne.]-Bowles,

said before, that I pity you much more than Mrs. Pope. Such a parent and friend hourly declining before your eyes is an object very unfit for your health, and duty, and tender disposition; and I pray God it may not affect you too much. I am as much satisfied that your additional 100l. 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 shall 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 necessity of some little paltry figure in the station I am: but I make it as little as possible. As to the other part, you are base, 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 secret even from me, when I wondered how you were able to live with your whole little revenue.

Adieu.

LETTER XCII.

LORD BOLINGBROKE TO DR. SWIFT.

November 19, 1729.

I FIND that you have laid aside your project of building in Ireland, and that we shall see you in this island cum zephyris, et hirundine prima. I know not whether the love of fame increases as we advance in age; sure I am that the force of friendship does. I loved you almost 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 less, or for loving you as well after loving you so many years, I What I would say is this: whilst

shall not determine.

2

my mind grows daily more independent of the world, and feels less need of leaning on external objects, the ideas of friendship return oftener, they busy me, they warm me more. Is it that we grow more tender as the moment of our great separation approaches? or is it that they who are to live together in another state, (for vera amicitia non nisi inter bonos,) begin to feel more strongly that divine sympathy which is to be the great band of their future society? There is no one thought which soothes my mind like this: I encourage my imagination to pursue it, and am heartily afflicted when another faculty of the intellect comes boisterously in, and wakes me from so pleasing a dream, if it be a dream. I will dwell no more on œconomics than I have done in my former letter. Thus much only I say, that otium cum dignitate is to be had with 500l. a-year as well as with 5000/.; the difference will be found in the value of the man, and not in that of the estate. I do assure you, that I have never quitted the design of collecting, revising, improving, and extending several materials which are still in my power; and I hope that the time of setting myself about this last work of my life is not far off. Many papers of much curiosity and importance are lost, and some of them in a manner which would surprise and anger you. However, I shall be able to convey several great truths to posterity, so clearly and so authentically, that the Burnets and the

2 Viz. Reason. Tully (to whom the letter-writer seems to allude) observes something like this on the like occasion, where, speaking of Plato's famous book of the Soul, he says, Nescio quomodo, dum lego, adsentior: cum posui librum, et mecum ipse de immortalitate animarum cæpi cogitare, adsentio illa omnis elabitur. Cicero seems to have had but a confused notion of the cause of the slippery nature of this assent, which the letter-writer has here explained, namely, that the imagination is always ready to indulge so flattering an idea, but severer reason corrects and disclaims it. As to RELIGION, that is out of the question for Tully wrote to his few philosophic friends; though, as has been the fate of his lordship's first philosophy, (where this whole matter is explained at large,) it came at last into the hands of the public.-Warburton.

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, since Pope is to write to you; no matter, for, upon recollection, the rules of proportion are not broken; he will say as much to you in one page, as I have said in three. Bid him talk to you of the work he is about, I hope in good earnest; it is a fine one; and will be, in his hands, an original 3. His sole complaint is, that he finds it too easy in the execution. This flatters his laziness, it flatters my judgment, who always thought that (universal as his talents are) this is eminently and peculiarly his, above all the writers I know living or dead; I do not except Horace.

LETTER XCIII.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

November 28, 1729.

THIS letter (like all mine) will be a rhapsody; it is many years ago since I wrote as a wit. How many occurrences or informations must one omit, if one determined to say nothing that one could not say prettily! I lately received from the widow of one dead correspondent, and the father of another, several of my own letters, of about fifteen and twenty years old: and it was not unentertaining to myself to observe, how and by what degrees I ceased to be a witty writer; as either my experience grew on the one hand, or my affection to my correspondents on the other. Now as I love you better than most I have ever met with in the world, and esteem you too the more, the longer I have com

3 Essay on Man.-Warburton.

On which, therefore, it appears, he was employed in 1729.-Warton. 4 He used to value himself on this particular.-Warburton.