me; they have intermarried, and are become rather low friends than servants; and to all those that I see here with pleasure, they take a pleasure in being useful. I conclude this is your case too in your domestic life, and I sometimes think of your old housekeeper as my nurse; though I tremble at the sea, which only divides us. As your fears are not so great as mine, and, I firmly hope, your strength still much greater, is it utterly impossible, it might once more be some pleasure to you to see England? My sole motive in proposing France to meet in, was the narrowness of the passage by sea from hence, the physicians having told me the weakness of my breast, &c. is such, as a sea-sickness might endanger my life. Though one or two of our friends are gone, since you saw your native country, there remain a few more who will last so till death, and who, I cannot but hope, have an attractive power to draw you back to a country', which cannot quite be sunk or enslaved, while such spirits remain. And let me tell you, there are a few more of the same spirit, who would awaken all your old ideas, and revive your hopes of a future recovery and virtue. These look up to you with reverence, and would be animated by the sight of him at whose soul they have taken fire in his writings, and derived from thence as much love of their species as is consistent with a contempt for the knaves of it.

I could never be weary, except at the eyes, of writing

3 It has been observed, that the last place of Swift's residence in England, was Letcombe. He retired there to the house of his friend, just before Queen Anne's death, when he found it impossible to reconcile Oxford and Bolingbroke. In this village he wrote his " Free Thoughts on the present State of Affairs." His friend was the Rev. Mr. Geary, rector of the place and there is a kind of cloister in the garden, where he used to walk in wet weather, which is still called "Dean Swift's Cloister."— Bowles.

Swift paid two visits to England afterwards. The last place of his residence in England was with Pope at Twickenham, in the summer of

to you; but my real reason (and a strong one it is) for doing it so seldom, is fear; fear of a very great and experienced evil, that of my letters being kept by the partiality of friends, and passing into the hands and malice of enemies; who publish them with all their imperfections on their head; so that I write not on the common terms of honest men.

Would to God you would come over with Lord Orrery, whose care of you in the voyage I could so certainly depend on, and bring with you your old housekeeper, and two or three servants! I have room for all, a heart for all, and (think what you will) a fortune for all. We could, were we together, contrive to make our last days easy, and leave some sort of monument, what friends two wits could be in spite of all the fools in the world.

Adieu.

LETTER CLXI.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

Dublin, May 31, 1737.

It is true I owe you some letters, but it has pleased God that I have not been in a condition to pay you. When you shall be at my age, perhaps you may lie under the same disability to your present or future friends. But my age is not my disability, for I can walk six or seven miles, and ride a dozen; but I am deaf for two months together. This deafness unqualifies me for all company, except a few friends with counter-tenor voices, whom I can call names, if they

do not speak loud enough for my ears. It is this evil that hath hindered me from venturing to the Bath, and to Twickenham; for deafness being not a frequent disorder, hath no allowance given it; and the scurvy

VOL. VIII.

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figure a man affected that way makes in company, is utterly insupportable.

It was I began with the petition to you of Orna me, and now you come like an unfair merchant to charge me with being in your debt; which by your way of reckoning I must always be, for yours are always guineas, and mine farthings; and yet I have a pretence to quarrel with you, because I am not at the head of any one of your Epistles. I am often wondering how you come to excel all mortals on the subject of morality, even in the poetical way, and should have wondered more, if nature and education had not made you a professor of it from your infancy. All the letters I can find of yours, I have fastened in a folio cover, and the rest in bundles endorsed; but, by reading their dates, I find a chasm of six years, of which I can find no copies; and yet I keep them with all possible care. But I have been forced, on three or four occasions, to send all my papers to some friends; yet those papers were all sent sealed in bundles, to some faithful friends: however, what I have are not much above sixty. I found nothing in any one of them to be left out: none of them have any thing to do with party, of which you are the clearest of all men by your religion, and the whole tenour of your life; while I am raging every moment against the corruption of both kingdoms, especially of this; such is my weakness.

I have read your Epistle of Horace to Augustus: it was sent me in the English edition as soon as it could come. They are printing it in a small octavo. The curious are looking out, some for flattery, some for ironies in it; the sour folks think they have found out some; but your admirers here, I mean every man of taste, affect to be certain, that the profession of friendship to me in the same poem, will not suffer you to be

thought a flatterer. My happiness is that you are too far engaged, and in spite of you the ages to come will celebrate me, and know you were a friend who loved and esteemed me, although I died the object of court and party hatred.

Pray, who is that Mr. Glover, who writ the epic poem called Leonidas, which is reprinting here, and hath great vogue? We have frequently good poems of late from London 5. I have just read one upon Conversation, and two or three others. But the crowd do not encumber you, who, like the orator or preacher, stand aloft, and are seen above the rest, more than the whole assembly below.

I am able to write no more: and this is my third endeavour, which is too weak to finish the paper. I am, my dearest friend, yours entirely, as long as I can write, or speak, or think.

4. Few poems on their first appearance have been received with greater applause than Leonidas. Lord Lyttelton, in the paper called Common Sense, gave it a very high encomium. Dr. Pemberton wrote a long and critical examination of its merits, equalling it to Homer and Milton. Nothing else was read or talked of at Leicester-house, and by all the members that were in opposition to Sir R. Walpole; and particularly by Lord Cobham and his friends, to whom the poem was dedicated. If at first it was too much admired, it certainly of late has been too much neglected. Many parts of it are commendable; such as the parting of Leonidas with his wife and family; the story of Ariana and Teribazus; the hymn of the Magi; the dream of Leonidas: the description of his shield; the exact description of the vast army of Xerxes, taken from Herodotus ; the burning the camp of Xerxes; and the last conflict and death of the hero. Many of the characters are drawn with discrimination and truth. The style, which sometimes wants elevation, is remarkably pure and perspicuous: but the numbers want variety, and he has not enough availed himself of the great privilege of blank verse, to run his verses into one another, with different pauses. And I have often (as I had the pleasure of knowing him well) disputed with him on his favourite opinion, that only Iambic feet should be used in our heroic verses, without admitting any Trochaic. His Medea is still acted with applause. He was one of the best and most accurate Greek scholars of his time; and a man of great probity, integrity, and sweetness of manners. He has left behind him some curious Memoirs, which, it is hoped, will be one day published.-Warton. 5 Glover, Thomson, &c. indeed, wrote in such a superior style of poetry, that he might say with great truth, "We have frequently good poems

from London."-Bowles.

By Mr. Stillingfleet, published afterwards in Dodsley's Miscellanies. He was a learned, modest, and ingenious man; a great and skilful botanist.

-Warton.

LETTER CLXII.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

Dublin, July 23, 1737.

I SENT a letter to you some weeks ago, which my Lord Orrery inclosed in one of his, to which I received as yet no answer, but it will be time enough when his lordship goes over, which will be, as he hopes, in about ten days, and then he will take with him all the letters I preserved of yours, which are not above twenty-five. I find there is a great chasm of some years, but the dates are more early than my two last journeys to England, which makes me imagine that in one of those journeys I carried over another cargo. But I cannot trust my memory half an hour; and my disorder of deafness and giddiness increases daily. So that I am declining as fast as it is easily possible for me, if I were a dozen years older.

We have had your volume of letters', which, I am told, are to be printed here. Some of those who highly esteem you, and a few who know you personally, are grieved to find you make no distinction between the English gentry of this kingdom, and the savage old Irish (who are only the vulgar, and some gentlemen who live in the Irish parts of the kingdom); but the English colonies, who are three parts in four, are much more civilized than many counties in England, and speak better English, and are much better bred. And they think it very hard, that an American, who is of the fifth generation from England, should be allowed to preserve that title, only because we have been told by some of them that their names are entered in some parish in London. I have three or four cousins here

7 The authentic edition of Pope's Letters, published by himself in 4to.

and 8vo. 1737.