ment no hurt to have a little of them on its side. If you have gone thus far in reading, you are not so wise as I thought you to be; but I will never offend again with so much length. I write only to justify myself. I know you have been always a zealous Whig, and so am I to this day: but nature has not given you leave to be virulent. As to myself, I am of the old Whig principles, without the modern articles and refinements.

Your ladyship says not one syllable to inform me whether you approve of what I sent you to be written on the monument,* nor whether you would have it in Latin or English. I am ever, with true respect and high esteem, madam, your ladyship's, &c.

JON. SWIFT.

The friend I named, who I was afraid would die, is recovered and his preferment is by turns in the crown and the primate; but the next vacancy will not be in the crown's disposal.

FROM DR. ARBUTHNOT.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

London, Jan. 13, 1732-3.

I HAD the pleasure of receiving one from you by Mr. Pilkington. I thank you for the opportunity it gave me of being acquainted with a very agreeable,

* In St. Andrew's church, Dublin, to the memory of her sister, Lady Penelope Berkeley.-P.

ingenious man. I value him very much for his music, which you give yourself an air of contemning; and I think I treated him in that way to a degree of surprise.

I have had but a melancholy, sorrowful life for some time past, having lost my dear child, whose life, if it had so pleased God, I would have willingly redeemed with my own. I thank God for a new lesson of submission to his will, and likewise for what he has left me.

We have all had another loss of our worthy and dear friend Mr. Gay.* It was some alleviation of my grief to see him so universally lamented by almost everybody, even by those who knew him only by reputation. He was interred at Westminster-Abbey, as if he had been a peer of the realm; and the good Duke of Queensberry, who lamented him as a brother, will set up a handsome monument upon him. These are little affronts put upon vice and injustice, and is all that remains in our power. I believe the Beggars' Opera, and what he had to come upon the stage, will make the sum of the diversions of the town for some time to come. Curll (who is one of the new terrors of death) has been writing letters to everybody for memoirs of his life. I was for sending him some, particularly an account of his disgrace at court, which, I am sure, might have been made entertaining: by which I should have attained two ends at once, published truth, and got a rascal whipped for it. I was overruled in this. I wish you had been here, though I think you are in a better country. I fancy to myself, that you have some virtue and honour left, some small regard for religion. Perhaps Christianity may last with you at least twenty or thirty years longer. You have

VOL. XVIII.

* He died December 4, 1732.-H.

E

no companies or stock-jobbing, are yet free of excises; you are not insulted in your poverty, and told with a sneer, that you are a rich and a thriving nation. Every man that takes neither place nor pension, is not deemed with you a rogue and an enemy to his country.

Your friends of my acquaintance are in tolerable good health. Mr. Pope has his usual complaints of headache and indigestion, I think, more than formerly. He really leads sometimes a very irregular life, that is, lives with people of superior health and strength. You will see some new things of his, equal to any of his former productions. He has affixed to the new edition of his Dunciad, a royal declaration against the haberdashers of points and particles, assuming the title of critics and restorers, wherein he declares, that he has revised carefully this his Dunciad, beginning and ending so and so, consisting of so many lines, and declares this edition to be the true reading : and it is signed by John Barber, major civitatis Londini.

I remember you, with your friends, who are my neighbours; they all long to see you. As for news, there is nothing here talked of but the new scheme of excise. You may remember, that a ministry in the queen's time, possessed of her majesty, the parliament, army, fleet, treasury, confederate, &c., put all to the test, by an experiment of a silly project in the trial of a poor parson.* The same game, in my mind, is playing over again, from a wantonness of power. Miraberis quàm paucâ sapientiâ mundus

regitur.

I have considered the grievance of your wine; the friend that designed you good wine, was abused by an agent that he entrusted this affair to. It was

* Dr. Sacheverell.-H.

not this gentleman's brother, whose name is De la Mar, to whom shew what friendship you can. My brother is getting money now, in China, less, and more honestly, than his predecessors' supercargoes; but enough to make you satisfaction, which, if he comes home alive, he shall do.

I

My neighbour the proseman is wiser, and more cowardly and despairing than ever. He talks mé into a fit of vapours twice or thrice a-week. dream at night of a chain, and rowing in the galleys. But, thank God, he has not taken from me the freedom I have been accustomed to in my discourse, (even with the greatest persons to whom I have access,) in defending the cause of liberty, virtue, and religion for the last, I have the satisfaction of suffering some share of the ignominy that belonged to the first confessors. This has been my lot, from a steady resolution I have taken of giving these ignorant impudent fellows battle upon all occasions. My family send you their best wishes, and a happy new year; and none can do it more heartily than myself, who am, with the most sincere respect,

Your most faithful humble servant.

TO MR. POPE.

Dublin, Jan. 1732-3.

I RECEIVED yours with a few lines from the Doctor, and the account of our losing Mr. Gay, upon which event I shall say nothing. I am only concerned that long living has not hardened me; for even in this kingdom, and in a few days past, two

persons of great merit, whom I loved very well, have died in the prime of their years, but a little above thirty. I would endeavour to comfort myself upon the loss of friends as I do upon the loss of money; by turning to my account-book, and seeing whether I have enough left for my support; but in the former case I find I have not any more than in the other; and know not any man who is in a greater likelihood than myself to die poor and friendless. You are a much greater loser than I by his death, as being a more intimate friend, and often his companion; which latter I could never hope to be, except perhaps once more in my life for a piece of a summer. I hope he has left you the care of any writings he may have left, and I wish that, with those already extant, they could be all published in a fair edition, under your inspection. Your poem on the Use of Riches has been just printed here, and we have no objection but the obscurity of several passages by our ignorance in facts and persons, which makes us lose abundance of the satire. Had the printer given me notice, I would have honestly printed the names at length, where I happened to know them; and writ explanatory notes, which, however, would have been but few, for my long absence has made me ignorant of what passes out of the scene where I am. I never had the least hint from you about this work, any more than of your former, upon Taste. We are told here, that you are preparing other pieces of the same bulk to be inscribed to other friends, one (for instance) to my Lord Bolingbroke, another to Lord Oxford, and so on. Dr. Delany presents you his most humble service; he behaves himself very commendably, converses only with his former friends, makes no parade, but entertains them constantly at an elegant, plentiful table, walks the streets, as usual, by day