judge more favourably, to be a couple of simpletons. In my answer to the last letter which my lady Suffolk honoured me with, I did, with great civility, discharge her from ever giving herself another trouble of that kind. I have a great esteem for her good sense and taste. She would be an ornament to any court: and I do not in the least pity her for not being a female minister, which I never looked on as an advantageous character to a great and wise lady; of which I could easily produce instances. Mr. Pope, beside his natural and acquired talents, isa gentleman of very extraordinary candour; and is, consequently, apt to be too great a believer of assurances, promises, professions, encouragements, and the like words of course. He asks nothing; and thinks, like a philosopher, that he wants nothing. Mr. Gay is, in all regards, as honest and sincere a man as ever I knew; whereof neither princes nor ministers are either able to judge, or inclined to encourage : which, however, I do not take for so high a reach of politicks as they usually suppose: for, however insignificant wit, learning, and virtue, may be thought in the world, it perhaps would do government no hurt to have a little of them on its side. If you have gone thus far in reading, you are not so wise as I thought you to be; but I will never offend again with so much length. I write only to justify myself. I know you have been always a zealous whig, and so am I to this day but nature has not given you leave to be virulent. As to myself, I am of the old whig principles, without the modern articles and refinements.

Your ladyship says not one syllable, to inform me whether you approve of what I sent you to be writ

it in Latin or English. I am ever, with true respect

and high esteem,

Madam, your ladyship's, &c.

The friend I named, who I was afraid would die, is recovered; and his preferment is by turns in the crown and the primate; but the next vacancy will not be in the crown's disposal.

DR. ARBUTHNOT TO DR. SWIFT.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

LONDON, JAN. 13, 1732.

I HAD the pleasure of receiving one from you by Mr. Pilkington. I thank you for the opportunity it gave me of being acquainted with a very agreeable ingenious man. I value him very much for his musick, which you give yourself an air of contemning; and I think I treated him in that way to a degree of surprise.

I have had but a melancholy sorrowful life for some time past, having lost my dear child, whose life, if it had so pleased God, I would have willingly redeemed with my own. I thank God for a new lesson of submission to his will, and likewise for what he has left me.

We have all had another loss of our worthy and dear friend Mr. Gay. It was some alleviation of

*In St. Andrew's church, Dublin, to the memory of her sister, lady Penelope Berkeley.

+ He died December 4, 1732.

my

time to come.

my grief to see him so universally lamented by almost every body, even by those who knew him only by reputation. He was interred at Westminster-Abbey, as if he had been a peer of the realm; and the good duke of Queensberry, who lamented him as a brother, will set up a handsome monument upon him. These are little affronts put upon vice and injustice, and is all that remains in our power. I believe the Beggar's Opera, and what he had to come upon the stage, will make the sum of the diversions of the town for some Curll (who is one of the new terrours of death) has been writing letters to every body for memoirs of his life. I was for sending him some, particularly, an account of his disgrace at court, which, I am sure, might have been made entertaining by which I should have attained two ends at once, published truth, and got a rascal whipped for it. I was overruled in this. I wish you had been here, though I think you are in a better country. Į fancy to myself, that you have some virtue and honour left, some small regard for religion. Perhaps christianity may last with you at least twenty or thirty years longer. You have no companies or stockjobbing, are yet free of excises; you are not insulted in your poverty, and told with a sneer, that you are a rich and a thriving nation. Every man that takes neither place nor pension, is not deemed with you a rogue, and an enemy to his country,

Your friends of my acquaintance are in tolerable good health. Mr. Pope has his usual complaints of head-ach and indigestion, I think, more than formerly. He really leads sometimes a very irregular life, that is, lives with people of superiour health and strength. You will see some new things of his, equal to any

of his former productions. He has affixed to the new edition of his Dunciad, a royal declaration against the haberdashers of points and particles, assuming the title of criticks and restorers, wherein he declares, that he has revised carefully this his Dunciad, beginning and ending so and so, consisting of so many lines, and declares this edition to be the true reading; and it is signed by John Barber, major civitatis Londini.

I remember you, with your friends, who are my neighbours they all long to see you. As for news, there is nothing here talked of but the new scheme of excise. You may remember, that a ministry in the queen's time, possessed of her majesty, the parliament, army, fleet, treasury, confederate, &c. put all to the test, by an experiment of a silly project of the trial of a poor parson*. The same game, in my mind, is playing over again, from a wantonness of power. Miraberis quam pauca sapientia mundus regitur.

I have considered the grievance of your wine: the friend that designed you good wine, was abused by an agent that he intrusted this affair to. It was not this gentleman's brother, whose name is de la Mar, to whom show what friendship you can. My brother is getting money now, in China, less, and more honestly, than his predecessors supercargoes; but enough to make you satisfaction, which, if he comes home alive, he shall do.

My neighbour the proseman is wiser, and more cowardly and despairing than ever. He talks me into a fit of vapours twice or thrice a week. I dream

* Dr, Sacheverell.

at

at night of a chain, and rowing in the gallies. But, thank God, he has not taken from me the freedom I have been accustomed to in my discourse, (even with the greatest persons to whom I have access) in defending the cause of liberty, virtue and religion: for the last, I have the satisfaction of suffering some share of the ignominy that belonged to the first confessors. This has been my lot, from a steady resolution I have taken of giving these ignorant impudent fellows battle upon all occasions. My family send you their best wishes, and a happy new year; and none can do it more heartily than myself, who am, with the most sincere respect, your most faithful humble servant.

TO THE EARL OF ORRERY.

MY LORD,

JANUARY, 1732-3.

It is some time since Mrs. Ball gave me, enclosed and directed to me, your lordship's verses, in your own hand, with the alterations you were pleased to make, for which I have long deferred my acknowledgments; and if I were to follow the course of my own nature, the delay should be longer: because, although I believe no man has a more grateful sense of a real honour done him than myself, yet no man is in more confusion how to express it. Although I had not the least hand in publishing those verses (which would have ill become me) yet I will not be so affected as to conceal the pride I have in seeing them abroad, whatever enmity they may procure against