never thought myself so warm in any party's caufe as to deferve their money; and therefore would never have accepted it but give me leave to tell you, that of all mankind the two perfons I would leaft have accepted any favour from, are thofe very two to whom you have unluckily spoken of it. I defire you to take off any impreffions which that dialogue may have left on his Lordhip's mind, as if I ever had any thought of being beholden to him, or any other in that way. And yét you know I am no enemy to the prefent conftitution; I believe, as fincere a wellwifher to it, nay even to the church established, as any minister in or out of employment whatever; or any Bifhop of England or Ireland. Yet am I of the religion of Erasmus, a Catholic: fo I live, so I fhall die; and hope one day to meet you, Bifhop Atterbury, the younger Craggs, Dr Garth, Dean Berkely, and Mr Hutchifon, in that place to which God of his infinite mercy bring us, and every body!

LORD B.'s answer to your letter I have juft received, and join it to this packet. The work he speaks of with fuch abundant partiality, is a fyftem of ethics in the Horatian way.

LETTER XLVI.

April 14. 1730.

TH

His is a letter extraordinary, to do and fay nothing but recommend to you (as a clergyman, and a charitable one) a pious and a good work, and for a good and an honeft man: moreover he is above feventy, and poor, which you might think included in the word honeft. I fhall think it a kindness done myself, if you can propagate Mr Weftley's fubfcription for his commentary on Job, among your divines, (bifhops exopted, of whom there is no hope), and among fuch as are believers, or readers of fcripture; even the curious may find fomething to pleafe them, if they fcorn to be edified. It has been the labour of eight years of this learned man's life; I call him what he is, a learned man, and I engage you will approve his profe more than you formerly could his poetry. Lord Bolingbroke is a favourer

favourer of it, and allows you to do your best to serve an old Tory, and a fufferer for the church of England, though you are a Whig, as I am.

WE have here fome verfes in your name, which I am angry at. Sure you would not use me fo ill as to flatter me. I therefore think it is fome other weak Irishman.

P. S. I did not take the pen out of Pope's hands, I protest to you. But fince he will not fill the remainder of the page, I think I may without offence. I seek no epiftolary fame, but am a good deal pleased to think that it will be known hereafter that you and I lived in the most friendly intimacy together.-Pliny writ his letters for the public; fo did Seneca, fo did Balfac, Voiture, &c. Tully did not; and therefore these give us more pleasure than any which have come down to us. from antiquity. When we read them, we pry into a fecret which was intended to be kept from us.

That is

a pleasure. We fee Cato, and Brutus, and Pompey, and others, fuch as they really were, and not fuch as the gaping multitude of their own age took them to be, or as historians and poets have reprefented them to ours. That is another pleafure. I remember to have seen a proceffion at Aix-la-Chapelle, wherein an image of Charlemagne is carried on the fhoulders of a man, who is hid by the long robe of the imperial faint. Follow him into the veftry; you fee the bearer flip from under the robe, and the gigantic figure dwindles into an image of the ordinary fize, and is fet by among other lumber. agree much with Pope, that our climate is rather better than that you are in, and perhaps your public fpirit would be lefs grieved, or oftner comforted, here than there. Come to us therefore on a visit at least. It will not be the fault of several persons here, if you do not come to live with us. But great good-will and little power produce fuch flow and feeble effects as can be acceptable to heaven alone, and heavenly men. I know you will be angry with me, if I fay nothing to you of a poor woman*, who is ftill on the other fide of the water in a moft languishing ftate of health.

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* Lady Bolingbroke.

health. If the regains ftrength enough to come over, (and he is better within a few weeks), I fhall nurse her in this farm * with all the care and tenderness poffible. If fhe does not, I must pay her the laft duty of friendfhip where-ever fhe is, tho' I break thro' the whole plan of life which I have formed in my mind. Adieu. I am moft faithfully and affectionately yours.

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Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr SWIFT.

Jan. 1730-31. ' Begin my letter, by telling you, that my wife has been returned from abroad about a month, and that her health, tho' feeble and precarious, is better than it has been these two years. She is much your fervant ; and as she has been her own physician with fome fuccefs, imagines fhe could be yours with the fame. Would to God you was within her reach. She would, I believe, prescribe a great deal of the medicina animi, without ha ving recourfe to the books of Trifmegiftus. Pope and I should be her principal apothecaries in the course of the cure; and tho' our beft botanists complain, that few of the herbs and fimples which go to the compofition of these remedies, are to be found at prefent in our foil, yet there are more of them here than in Ireland; befides, by the help of a little chymistry, the moft noxious juices may become falubrious, and rank poifon a fpecific.-Pope is now in my library with me, and writes to the world, to the prefent and to future ages, whilft I begin this letter which he is to finish to you. What good he will do to mankind, I know not; this comfort he may be fure of, he cannot do lefs than you have done before him. I have fometimes thought, that if preachers, hangmen, and moral writers keep vice at a ftand, or fo much as retard the progrefs of it, they do as much as human nature admits. A real reformation is not to be brought about by ordi. VOL. IV.

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nary

Lord Bolingbroke's feat at Dawley in Middlesex. Warb.

nary means; it requires, thofe extraordinary means which become punishments as well as leffons. National corruption must be purged by national calamities.- Let us hear from you We deferve this attention, because we defire it, and because we believe that you defire to hear from us.

LETTER XLVIII.

Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr SWIFT.

March 29.

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Have delayed feveral posts answering your letter of January laft, in hopes of being able to fpeak to you about a project which concerns us both, but me the moft, fince the fuccefs of it would bring us together. It has been a good while in my head, and at my heart ; if it can be fet a-going, you fhall hear more of it. was ill in the beginning of the winter for near a week, but in no danger, either from the nature of my diftemper, or from the attendance of three phyficians. Since that bilious intermitting fever, I have had, as I had before, better health than the regard I have paid to health deferves. We are both in the decline of life, my dear Dean, and have been fome years going down the hill ; Jet us make the paffage as fmooth as we can. Let us

fence against physical evil by care, and the ufe of those means which experience must have pointed out to us: let us fence against moral evil by philofophy. I renounce the alternative you propofe. But we may, nay, (if we will follow nature, and do not work up imagination against her plainest dictates) we shall of course grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interefts of a fyftem out of which we are soon to go. This is much better than ftupidity. The decay of paffion ftrengthens philofophy: for paffion may decay, and ftupidity not fucceed. Paffions (fays Pope, our divine, as you will fee one time or other) are the gales of life. Let us not complain that they do not blow a ftorm. What hurt does What hurt does age do us, in fubduing what we toil to fubdue all our lives? It is now fix in

the

the morning. I recal the time, (and am glad it is over), when about this hour I ufed to be going to bed, furfeited with pleasure, or jaded with bufinefs: my head often full of fchemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rise at this hour refreshed, ferene, and calm that the past, and even the present affairs of life, stand like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the disagreeable so as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to me? Paffions in their force would bring all these, nay even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and reason would but ill defend me in the fcuffle.

I leave Pope to speak for himself; but I must tell you how much my wife is obliged to you. She fays fhe would find ftrength enough to nurfe you, if you was here; and yet, God knows, fhe is extremely weak. The flow fever works under, and mines the conftitution: we keep it off fometimes; but fill it returns, and makes new breaches before nature can repair the old ones. I am not ashamed to fay to you, that I admire her more every hour of my life, Death is not to her the king of terrors; fhe beholds him without the leaft. When fhe fuffers much, the wishes for him as a deliverer from pain; when life is tolerable, the looks on him with diflike, because he is to feparate her from thofe friends to whom fhe is more attached than to life itself.-You fhall not stay for my next, as long as you have for this letter; and in every one Pope fhall write fomething much better than the fcraps of old philofophers, which were the prefents, munufcula, that Stoical fop Seneca used to send in every epistle to his friend Lucilius.

P. S. My Lord has fpoken juftly of his lady: why not I of my mother? Yefterday was her birthday, now enaring on the ninety first year of her age; her memory much diminished, but her fenfes very little hurt, her fight and hearing good; fhe fleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks water, fays her prayers; this is all the does. I have reafon to thank God for continuing fo long to me a very good and tender parent, and for allowing me to exercife for fome years thofe cares which

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are