inform me in any one point. I very much much approve of your keeping up your family-house at Moor Park. I have heard it is very much changed for the better, as well as the gardens. The tree on which I carved those words, factura nepotibus umbram, is one of those elms that stand in the hollow ground just before the house: but I suppose the letters are widened and grown shapeless by time.

I know nothing more of your brother, than that he has an Irish title (I should be sorry to see you with such a feather), and that some reason or other drew us into a correspondence, which was very rough. But I have forgot what was the quarrel.

This letter goes by my Lord Castle-durrow, who is a gentleman of very good sense and wit. I suspect, by taking his son with him, that he designs to see us no more. I desire to present my most humble service to your lady, with hearty thanks of her remembrance of me. I am, Sir,

Your most humble faithful servant,

TO MR PULTENEY.

JON. SWIFT.

March 7,

1736-7.

SIR, I MUST begin by assuring you, that I did never intend to engage you in a settled correspondence with so useless a man as I here am; and still more so, by the daily increase of ill health and old age; and yet I confess that the high esteem I preserve for your public and private virtues, urges me on to

*See the correspondence with Lord Palmerstone,

retain some little place in your memory, for the short time I may expect to live.

That I no sooner acknowledged the honour of your letter is owing to your civility, which might have compelled you to write while you were engaged in defending the liberties of your country with more than an old Roman spirit: which has reached this obscure enslaved kingdom, so far, as to have been the constant subject of discourse and of praise among the whole few of what unprostituted people here remain among us.

I did not receive the letter you mentioned from Bath; and yet I have imagined, for some months past, that the meddlers of the post-offices here and in London have grown weary of their curiosity, by finding the little satisfaction it gave them. I agree heartily in your opinion of physicians; I have esteemed many of them as learned ingenious men; but I never received the least benefit from their advice or prescriptions. And poor Dr Arbuthnot was the only man of the faculty who seemed to understand my case, but could not remedy it. But to conquer five physicians, all eminent in their way, was a victory that Alexander and Cæsar could never pretend to. I desire that my prescription of living may be published (which you design to follow) for the benefit of mankind: which, however, I do not value a rush, nor the animal itself, as it now acts; neither will I ever value myself as a Philanthropus, because it is now a creature (taking a vast majority) that I hate more than a toad, a viper, a wasp, a stork, a fox, or any other that you will please to add.

Since the date of your letter, we understand there is another duke to govern here. Mr Stopford was with me last night; he is as well provided for, and

to his own satisfaction, as any private clergyman. He engaged me to present his best respects and acknowledgments by you. Your modesty, in refusing to take a motto, goes too far. The sentence is not a boast, because it is every man's duty in morals and religion. *

Indeed we differ here from what you have been told of the Duke of Dorset's having given great satisfaction the last time he was with us; particularly in his disposal of two bishopricks, and other church as well as civil preferments. I wrote to a lady in London, his grace's near relation and intimate, that she would no more continue the office of a go-between (as she called herself) betwixt the duke and me, because I never design to attend him again; † and yet I allow him to be as agreeable a person in conversation as I have almost any where met. I sent my letter to that lady under a cover addressed to the duke; and in it I made many complaints against some proceedings, which 1 suppose he has seen. I never made him one request for myself; and if I spoke for another, he was always upon his guard; which was but twice, and for trifles: but failed in both.

The father of our friend in France + may outlive the son; for I would venture a wager, that if you pick out twenty of the oldest men in England, nineteen of them have been the most worthless fellows in

* Amicis prodesse, nemini nocere. dated Dec. 21, 1736, p. 107.—A.

See Mr Pulteney's letter,

+ See his Letter to Lady Betty Germain, June 29, 1736-7.-II. The friend in France appears to be Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, whose father, Sir Henry St John, Bart. had been created Baron St John of Battersea, and Viscount St John, July 2, 1716.-B.

the kingdom. You tell me with great kindness as well as gravity, that I ought, this spring, to make a trip to England, and your motive is admirable, that shifting the scene was of great service to you, and therefore it may be so to me. I answer as an academic, Nego consequentiam. And besides comparisons are odious. You are what the French call plein de vie. As you are much younger, so I am a dozen years older than my age makes me, by infirmities of mind and body; to which I add the perpetual detestation of all public persons and affairs in both kingdoms. I spread the story of Mrs Mapp while it was new to us: there was something humorous in it throughout, that pleased every body here. Will you engage for your friend Carteret that he will oppose any step toward arbitrary power? He has promised me, under a penalty, that he will continue firm, and yet some reports go here of him, that have a little disconcerted me. Learning and good sense he has, to a great degree, if the love of riches and power do not overbalance.

Pray God long continue the gifts he has bestowed you, to be the chief support of liberty to your country, and let all the people say, Amen.

I am, with the truest respect, and highest esteem, Sir, your, &c. JON. SWIFT.

FROM THE EARL OF ORRERY.

DEAR SIR,

Cork, March 15, 1736-7.

I RECEIVED your commands, by Faulkner, to write to you. But what can I say? The scene of Cork is ever the same; dull, insipid, and void of all amusement. His sacred majesty was not under greater difficulty to find out diversions at Helvoetsluys, than I am here. The butchers are as greasy, the quakers as formal, and the presbyterians as holy, and full of the Lord, as usual: all things are in statu quo; even the hogs and pigs gruntle in the same cadence as of yore, Unfurnished with variety, and drooping under the natural dulness of the place, materials for a letter are as hard to be found, as money, sense, honesty, or truth. But I will write on; Ogilby, Blackmore, and my Lord Grimston, have done the same before me.

I have not yet been upon the Change; but am told, that you are the idol of the court of aldermen. They have sent you your freedom. The most learned of them having read a most dreadful account, in Littleton's dictionary, of Pandora's gold box, it was unanimously agreed, not to venture so valuable a present in so dangerous a metal. Had these sage counsellors considered, that Pandora was a woman, (which, perhaps, Mr Littleton forgets to mention) they would have seen, that the ensuing evils arose from the sex, and not from the ore. But

* Author of "Love in a Hollow Tree."...H.