are wholly taken up in considering the best manner I ought to die, and how to dispose of my poor fortune for the best public charity. But in conversation I trifle more and more every day, and I would not give threepence for all I read, or write, or think, in the compass of a year.

Well, God bless you, and preserve your life as long as you can reasonably desire. I take my age with less mortification, because, if I were younger, I should probably outlive the liberty of England, which, without some unexpected assistance from Heaven, many thousands now alive will see governed by an absolute monarch.

Farewell, dear Sir; and believe me to be, with true esteem,

Your most obedient humble servant,

TO MR. POPE.

JON. SWIFT.

September 3, 1735.

THIS letter will be delivered to you by Faulkner the printer, who goes over on his private affairs. This is an answer to yours of two months ago, which complains of that profligate fellow Curll. I heartily wish you were what they call disaffected, as I am. I may say as David, I have sinned greatly, but what have these sheep done! You have given no offence to the ministry, nor to the lords, nor commons, nor queen, nor the next in power. For you are a man of virtue, and therefore must abhor vice and all corruption, although your discretion holds the reins. "You need not fear any consequence in the com

merce that has so long passed between us; although I never destroyed one of your letters. But my executors are men of honour and virtue, who have strict orders in my will to burn every letter left behind me." Neither did our letters contain any turns of wit, or fancy, or politics, or satire, but mere innocent friendship; yet I am loth that any letters, from you and a very few other friends, should die before me; I believe we neither of us ever leaned our head upon our left hand to study what we should write next; yet we have held a constant intercourse from your youth and my middle age, and from your middle age it must be continued till my death, which my bad state of health makes me expect every month. I have the ambition, and it is very earnest, as well as in haste, to have one epistle inscribed to me while I am alive, and you just in the time when wit and wisdom are in the height; I must once more repeat Cicero's desire to a friend: orna me. A month ago were sent me over by a friend of mine, the works of John Hughes, Esq.; they are in verse and prose. I never heard of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a subscriber too. He is too grave a poet for me, and I think among the mediocribus in prose as well as verse. I have the honour to know Dr. Rundle; he is indeed worth all the rest you ever sent us, but that is saying nothing, for he answers your character; I have dined thrice in this company. He brought over a worthy clergyman of this kingdom as his chaplain, which was a very wise and popular action. His only fault is, that he drinks no wine, and I drink nothing else.

This kingdom is now absolutely starving, by the means of every oppression that can be inflicted on mankind—shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord. You advise me right, not to trouble my

self about the world: but oppression tortures me, and I cannot live without meat and drink, nor get either without money; and money is not to be had, except they will make me a bishop, or a judge, or a colonel, or a commissioner of the revenues. Adieu. JON. SWIFT.

FROM MR. POPE.

To answer your question as to Mr. Hughes, what he wanted as to genius he made up as an honest man: but he was of the class you think him.

I am glad you think of Dr. Rundle as I do. He will be an honour to the bishops, and a disgrace to one bishop; two things you will like: but what you will like more particularly, he will be a friend and benefactor even to your unfriended, unbenefited nation; he will be a friend to the human race, wherever he goes. Pray tell him my best wishes for his health and long life: I wish you and he came over together, or that I were with you. I never saw a man so seldom, whom I liked so much, as Dr. Rundle.

Lord Peterborow I went to take a last leave of, at his setting sail for Lisbon: no body can be more wasted, no soul can be more alive. Immediately after the severest operation, of being cut into the bladder for a suppression of urine, he took coach, and got from Bristol to Southampton. This is a man that will neither live nor die like any other mortal.

Poor Lord Peterborow! There is another string lost, that would have helped to draw you hither! he ordered on his death-bed his watch to be given me,

(that which accompanied him in all his travels,) with this reason, “That I might have something to put me every day in mind of him." It was a present to him from the King of Sicily, whose arms and insignia are graved on the inner case; on the outer, I have put this inscription: "Victor Amadeus, rex Sicilia, dux Sabaudia, &c. &c., Carolo Mordaunt, Comiti de Peterborow, D. D. Car. Mor. Com. de Pet. Alexandro Pope moriens legavit. 1735."

Pray write to me a little oftener: and if there be a thing left in the world that pleases you, tell it one who will partake of it. I hear with approbation and pleasure, that your present care is to relieve the most helpless of this world, those objects* which most want our compassion, though generally made the scorn of their fellow-creatures, such as are less innocent than they. You always think generously; and of all charities, this is the most disinterested, and least vain-glorious, done to such as never will thank you, or can praise you for it.

God bless you with ease, if not with pleasure; with a tolerable state of health, if not with its full enjoyment; with a resigned temper of mind, if not a very cheerful one. It is upon these terms I live myself, though younger than you and I repine not at my lot, could but the presence of a few that I love be added to these. Adieu.

*Idiots.-N.

FROM LADY BETTY GERMAIN.

September 4, 1735

IF you are not angry with me for my long silence, I take it ill, and need make no excuse; and if you are angry, then I would willingly make you sorry too, which I know you will be, when I tell you, that I was laid up at Knowle with a severe fit of the gout. And since that infallible cure for all diseases, which all great fools and talkers wish joy of, I have never been quite well, but have had continually some disorder or other upon me, which made my head and spirits unfit for writing, or indeed doing anything I should; and am still so much out of order, that I am under great apprehensions I shall not be able to go, next year, part of the journey to Ireland with their graces; which is also part of the road to Drayton, where I intend to stay till November, in hopes that summer deferred its coming till I was there: for I am sure, hitherto, we have had little but winter weather.

I am glad matters are settled between his Grace of Dorset and you; and I dare answer, as you are both right thinkers, and of course upright actors, there wants but little explanation between you; since I, that am the go-between, can easily find out, that he has as sincere a value for you, as you have for him. I do assure you I am extremely delighted, that since Lady Suffolk would take a master (commonly called a husband) she chose my brother George for if I am not partial to him, which indeed I do not know that I am, his sincere value, love, and esteem for her, must make him a good one.

We are now full of expectation of his royal high