times, which, if we may judge from the press, is now in full vigour. But I forget I am writing to one who has the power of the keys of Parnassus, and that the only merit my letter can have is brevity. Please therefore to place the profit I had in your long one to your fund of charity, which carries no interest, and to add to your prayers and good wishes now and then a line to, Sir, your obedient humble servant,

C. CONDUITT.

Mrs. Barber, whom I had sent to dine with us, is in bed with the gout, and has not yet sent me her proposals.

SIR,

FROM MR. COOTE.*

London, Dec. 13, 1733.

BEING indebted solely to you for a most valuable acquaintance with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, and some other of your friends, I ought to have acknowledged it before. It is a common stratagem of mine, and has always succeeded, to give hints in proper places of your allowing me to some degree of personal acquaintance with you, and

* This gentleman is mentioned in the Duchess of Queensberry's letter of 10th November preceding. He was father to Sir Charles Coote, who succeeded to the Earldom of Bellamont, in 1764. Swift had introduced Mr. Coote to several of his English friends, amongst others to Pope, with this remarkable recommendation, "Dear Pope, though the little fellow that brings this be a justice of peace and a member of our Irish House of Commons, yet he may not be altogether unworthy of your acquaintance."-Spence's Anecdotes, p. 350.

I owe to it most of the agreeable hours I passed at Spa this summer, where they were. I had strong temptations, especially at that distance, to give myself high airs this way; but finding the bare mention of my having been received by you in a most obliging manner, was enough to do my business, and it being a fact I could make oath of, I kept within due bounds. Her grace, who would be the most agreeable woman in England, though she were not the handsomest, has honoured me with her compliments to you with a walking-stick, the manufacture of Spa, where she had it made for you, and I ought to have delivered it two months ago; accidents prevented my leaving this place, and it is not certain when I can; so that I must send it to you by the first proper opportunity, but could no longer delay your pleasure in knowing it, and hers, when you shall acknowledge it. If I can be of any sort of service to you on this side, your commands will find me at St. James's coffee-house. I am, Sir, your most obliged humble servant,

CHARLES COote.

FROM DR. SHERIDAN.*.

DEAR SIR,

Dec. 20, 1733.

YOURS I received, and if it was not that I have a good deel of company to sup at my house upon beef griskins, I would go and play a game of backgammon with Mr. Worrall's tables, and be after win

* Indorsed, "Dr. Sheridan's insolence, in presuming to answer my eloquent Hibernicisms."-D. S.

ning some of Mrs. Worrall's coin; I would not fear to win a crown piece of her money by playing sixpence halfpenny a time. a time. She is a very good body, and one that I have a great value for; I wish my spouse were but half as good, but of this I shall say nothing more till meeting. I hope my gossip Delany's spouse is upon the mending hand, for they tell me she has been lately much out of order. She is as good a woman as ever breathed, and it is a thousand pities that anything should ail her. God Almighty wish her well; for I am sure if she went off, the doctor would not meet with her fellow. I hope nothing ails her but a brush.

To-morrow I eat a bit with Mr. and Mrs. M'Gwyre; if you will make one, you will get as hearty a welcome, as if you were their own father; for nobody speaks better of you than they. My humble service to all friends and to yourself, is the request of yours to command,

THADY O SULIVAN.

I lodge hard by the Shovel in Francis Street.

TO MRS. PILKINGTON.

MADAM,

1733.

You must shake off the leavings of your sex. If you cannot keep a secret, and take a chiding, you will quickly be out of my sphere. Corrigible people are to be chid; those who are otherwise, may very safe from any lectures of mine; I should rather choose to indulge them in their follies, than attempt

be

to set them right. I desire you may not inform your husband * of what has past, for a reason I shall give you when I see you, which may be this evening, if you will. I am very sincerely your friend,

JON. SWIFT.

FROM MR. POPE.

January 6, 1733-4.

I NEVER think of you, and can never write to you now, without drawing many of those short sighs of which we have formerly talked; the reflection both of the friends we have been deprived of by death, and of those from whom we are separated almost as eternally by absence, checks me to that degree, that it takes away in a manner the pleasure, (which yet I feel very sensibly too,) of thinking I am now conversing with you. You have been silent to me as to your works; whether those printed here are, or are not genuine. But one I am sure is yours; and your method of concealing yourself puts me in mind of the Indian bird I have read of, who hides his head in a hole, while all his feathers and tail stick out. You will have immediately by several franks, (even before it is here published), my Epistle to Lord Cobham, part of my Opus Magnum, and the last Essay on Man; both which I conclude will be grateful to your bookseller, on whom you please to bestow them so early. There is a woman's war

* Mr. Barber's letter, expressing himself less than satisfied with Mr. Pilkington, probably led to this sharp letter from the Dean to his wife.

declared against me by a certain lord;* his weapons are the same which women and children use, a pin to scratch, and a squirt to bespatter: I writ a sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists with him, and after shewing it to some people, suppressed it; otherwise it was such as was worthy of him, and worthy of me. I was three weeks this autumn with Lord Peterborow, who rejoices in your doings, and always speaks with the greatest affection of you. I need not tell you who else do the same; you may be sure almost all those whom I ever see, or desire to see. I wonder not that B-† paid you no sort of civility while he was in Ireland; he is too much a half wit to love a true wit, and too much half honest, to esteem any entire merit. I hope and I think he hates me too, and I will do my best to make him; he is so insupportably insolent in his civility to me when he meets me at one third place, that I must affront him to get rid of it. That strict neutrality as to public parties, which I have constantly observed in all my writings, I think gives me the more title to attack such men, as slander and belie my character in private, to those who know me not. Yet even this is a liberty I will never take, unless at the same time they are pests to private society, or mischievous members of the public, that is to say, unless they are enemies to all men as well as to me.-Pray write to me when you can; if ever I can come to you, I will; if not, may Providence be our friend and our guard through this simple world, where nothing is valuable, but sense and friendship. Adieu, dear sir, may health attend your years, and then may many years be added to you.

* Harvey:

† B- is perhaps Bishop Boulter, the friend of Phillips, of whom he says,

"Still to one Bishop, PHILLIPS seems a wit."-BOWLES.