a bad custom of late, that of writing two letters for one of yours. I am often told I have great assurance in writing to you at all; and to be sure I must do it with great fear and trembling. I am not believed when I affirm I write to you with as much ease as to any correspondent I have; for I know you are as much above criticising a letter of mine, as I should be below your notice, if I gave myself any affected airs: you have encouraged my correspondence, and I should be a brute if I did not make the best of such an opportunity. Bath is full of people, such as they are; none worth giving you any account of: my solace is Mrs. Barber, whose spirit and good countenance cheers me whenever I hear or see her; she is at present pretty well. Company is this moment coming up stairs, and I can only add that I am, Sir, Your most faithful humble servant, M. PENDARVES. TO MR. FAULKNER. MR. FAULKNER, January 8, 1735-6. I AM answering a letter I had from Mr. Pope, when I was at Cavan. My absence and sickness, since I returned, have hindered me from writing to him. He complains of his unluckiness that you could never find him at home, which, he says, since his mother's death, he is often absent from. I here will transcribe a paragraph which relates to you, and I desire you will return an answer to it, time enough for me to send a letter to-night, and I will insert the sum of it. "As to his (Mr. Faulkner's) design about my works, I beg you will desire him to postpone it, until he sees the duodecimo edition of them here, with the first volume, published by Lintot: for that, joined to the rest by Gillever,* will make the completest hitherto extant, and is revised by me. I guess they will be out at Christmas." Pray, let me know what answer I shall make to Mr. Pope write it down and send it by any messenger, the sooner the better, for I am an ill writer at night. I am yours, &c. JON. SWIFT. I think you may send your answer by the bearer, for it need not take above two lines. FROM DR. SHERIDAN. Cavan, Jan. 17, 1735-6. DEAR SIR, I RECEIVED your letter of reproaches with pleasure; and as I know you hate excuses, I shall make none. Whoever has informed you that I was not in my school at the right time appointed, has not done me justice; for whatever else I may disappoint, that shall be inviolably and punctually observed by me. * * ** * ** * As for my quondam friends, as you style them, * Lawton Gillever, a bookseller.-H. quon-dam them all. It is the most decent way I can curse them; for they lulled me asleep till they stole my school into the hands of a blockhead, and have driven me toward the latter end of my life to a disagreeable solitude, where I have the misery to reflect upon my folly in making such a perfidious choice, at a time when it was not in my nature to suspect any soul upon earth. ** * * * Now to think a little for myself. The Duke of Dorset does certainly owe me a small living, for the expensive entertainment I gave him from Terence.* I only want a proper person to dun him; and I know it will be done if my Lord Orrery will undertake it. Do not think me sanguine in this; for more unlikely and less reasonable favours have been granted. God knows whether, during my life, we shall have another scholar sent us for a lord-lieu* * * * tenant. * * * I wish you as much happiness as I have plague, which is enough for any honest man. I am, dear Sir, Your most obedient very humble servant, THOMAS SHERIDAN. TO MR. POPE. February 7, 1735-6. It is some time since I dined at the Bishop of Derry's, where Mr. Secretary Cary told me, with great concern, that you were taken very ill. I have *This was a play of Terence, acted by the doctor's scholars for the entertainment of the duke.-D. S. heard nothing since, only I have continued in great pain of mind, yet for my own sake and the world's, more than for yours; because I well know how little you value life, both as a philosopher, and a Christian; particularly the latter, wherein hardly one in a million of us heretics can equal you. If you are well recovered, you ought to be reproached for not putting me especially out of pain, who could not bear the loss of you; although we must be for for ever distant as much as if I were in the grave, for which my years and continual indisposition are preparing me every season. I have staid too long from pressing you to give me some ease by an account of your health; pray do not use me so ill any more. I look upon you as an estate from which I receive my best annual-rents, although I am never to see it. Mr. Tickell was at the same meeting under the same real concern; and so were a hundred others of this town who had never seen you. I read to the Bishop of Derry the paragraph in your letter which concerned him, and his lordship expressed his thankfulness in a manner that became him. He is esteemed here as a person of learning, and conversation, and humanity, but he is beloved by all people. : I have nobody now left but you pray be so kind as to outlive me, and then die as soon as you please, but without pain, and let us meet in a better place if my religion will permit, but rather my virtue, although much unequal to yours. Pray let my Lord Bathurst know how much I love him; I still insist on his remembering me, although he is too much in the world to honour an absent friend with his letters. My state of health is not to boast of; my giddiness is, more or less, too constant: I sleep ill, and have a poor appetite. I can as easily write a poem in the Chinese language as my own: I am as fit for matrimony as invention; and yet I have daily schemes for innumerable essays in prose, and proceed sometimes to no less than half a dozen lines, which the next morning become waste paper. What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them, as I formerly was which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Pray put me out of fear as soon as you can, about that ugly report of your illness; and let me know who this Cheselden* is, that has so lately sprung up in your favour. Give me also some account of your neighbour, who writ to me from Bath I hear he resolves to be strenuous for taking off the test; which grieves me extremely, from all the unprejudiced reasons I ever was able to form, and against the maxims of all wise Christian governments, which always had some established religion, leaving at best a toleration to others. Farewell, my dearest friend! ever, and upon every account that can create friendship and esteem. JON. SWIFT. FROM LADY BETTY GERMAIN. February 10, 1735-6. I AM Sorry to hear your complaints still of giddiI was in hopes you would have mended, like my purblind eyes, with old age. According to the ness. * The celebrated surgeon and anatomist.-BOWLES. |