I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health. Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take to recover your flesh; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you can choose a road so suited to your circumstances, as from Dublin hither. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve miles end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long miles, bad road, and no inn at all: but, I have an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not poor; his wife is allowed to be the best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a little cellar of his own, of which he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side; and he cleans, and pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with a coach: if you be tired, you shall stay all night; if not, after dinner, we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine; and, by going through fields and by-ways, which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and .stony roads that lie between this place and that, which · are certainly very bad. I hope you will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may

have all things prepared for you. It may be, if you

ask him, Cope will come: he will do nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall add no more arguments to persuade you. And am, with the greatest truth, your most faithfuļ and obedient humble servant,

TO LADY BETTY GERMAIN.

I

MADAM,

JUNE 8, 1735.

TROUBLE you sooner than usual, in acknowledging your letter of May 27th, because there are some passages in it that seem to require a quick answer. If I forget the date of mine, you must impute it to my ill head; and if I live two years longer, I shall first forget my own name, and last your ladyship's. I gave my lady Kerry an account of what you said in relation to her son, with which she is fully satisfied. I detest the house of lords, for their indulgence to such a profligate prostitute villain as Curll; but am at a loss how he could procure any letters written to Mr. Pope; although, by the vanity or indiscretion of correspondents, the rogue might have picked up some that went from him. Those letters have not yet been sent hither; therefore I can form no judgment on them. When I was leaving England, upon the queen's death, I burnt all the letters I could find, that I had received from ministers for several years before. But, as to the letters I receive from your ladyship, I neither ever did or ever will burn any of them, take it as you please: for I never burn a letter that is entertaining, and consequently will give me new pleasure when it is forgotten. It is true, I have kept some letters merely out of friendship, although they sometimes wanted true spelling and good sense, and some others whose writers are dead: for I live like a monk,

and

and hate to forget my departed friends. Yet I am sometimes too nice; for I burnt all my lord * * * *'s letters, upon receiving one where he had used these words to me, "All I pretend to is a great deal of sincerity:" which, indeed, was the chief virtue he wanted. Of those from my Lord Halifax, I burnt all but one; which I keep as a most admirable original of court promises and professions. I confess also that I have read some passages in many of your letters, to a friend, but without naming you, only "that the writer was a lady," which had such marks of good sense that often the hearers would not believe me. And yet I never had a letter of mine printed, nor of any others to me.

Your ladyship very much surprises me with one passage in your letter, which however I do not in the least understand; where you say, You "have "been honoured in print by amorous, satirical, and

gallant letters," where there was no word but your bare name mentioned. I can assure you, this is to me altogether a riddle, and what I never heard the least syllable of; and wish you would explain it. No, madam, I will never forgive your insolent niece, without a most humble submission under her own hands; which if she will not comply with, I shall draw up letters between us, and send them to Curll.

I will tell your ladyship a cause.I have of complaint against the duke of Dorset. I have written to him about four times since he was lieutenant: and three of my letters were upon subjects that concerned him much more than it did any friend of mine, and not at all myself; but he was never pleased to return me an answer: which omission (for I disdain to call it contempt) I can account for only by some of the

following

following reasons. He is either extremely busy in affairs of the highest importance; or he is a duke with a garter; or he is a lieutenant of Ireland: or he is of a very ancient noble extraction; or so obscure a man as I am is not worth his remembrance; or, like the duke of Chandos, he is an utter stranger to me and it would grieve me to the soul to put them together upon any one article. The last letter I writ to his grace was upon an affair relating to one of the favourite party, and yet a very honest gentleman; which last circumstance, with submission to your ladyship, is what I seldom grant; and the matter desired was a trifle. The letter before that related to a request made him by a senior fellow of this university, upon which I was earnestly pressed to write by some considerable members of the same body, which it highly concerned, as well as his grace's honour; the demand being directly contrary to their statutes, and of the most pernicious consequence, not only to the university, but the kingdom: and for that reason, it is thought, his grace has chosen to let it fall, I suppose by much better causes of conviction than mine. I do assure you, madam, that I have not been troublesome to my lord duke in any particular: since he has been governor, my letters have been at most but once a year, and my personal requests not so many; nor any of them for the least interest that regarded myself. And although it be true that I do not much approve the conduct of affairs in either kingdom, wherein I agree with vast numbers of both parties; yet I have utterly waved intermeddling even in this enslaved kingdom, where perhaps I might have some influence to be troublesome; yet I have long quitted all such thoughts, out

of

of perfect despair: although I have sometimes wished, that the true loyal whigs here might be a little more considered in the disposition of employments, notwithstanding their misfortune of being born on this side the channel, which would gain abundance of hearts both to the crown and his grace. My paper is so full, that I have not room to excuse its length. I remain

Your ladyship's, &c.

TO SIR CHARLES WOGAN*, IN SPAIN.

HONOURED SIR,

1735.

I THINK you are the only person alive who can justly charge me with ingratitude; because, although I was utterly unknown to you, and become an obscure exile in a most obscure and enslaved country, you were at the pains to find me out, and send me your very agreeable writings, with which I have often entertained some very ingenious friends, as well as myself: I mean not only your poetry, in latin and english, but your poetical history in prose of your own life and actions, inscribed to me: which I often wished it were safe to print here, or in England, under the madness of universal party now reigning: I mean particularly in this kingdom, to which I would prefer living among the Hottentots, if it were in my power.

*See in vol. XII a former letter, in the year 1732, to sir Charles Wogan.