FROM CHARLES FORD, ESQ. SIR, Paris, Oct. 28, 1716. * If I was to see you again, you would give twice as much as you offered six weeks ago, not to have seen me. By the same rule, you might afford something not to hear from me; but the inclosed came this morning to me, and I could not send it away, without adding a few lines to the cover. They are not to put you again into the spleen, but only to ask how you do, and how you employ yourself? Do the great designs go on at Laracor? Or have the rains put a stop to your improvements, as well as to my journey? It will cost you but a penny, and a few minutes to answer these questions; and in return you shall know any thing you desire to know of me in my travels. I shall go on as soon as we have five or six days sunshine to dry the roads, and make the finest country in the world supportable, I am laughed at here, when I talk of travelling, and yet of waiting for fair weather; but to me the jour ney is the greatest part of the pleasure. And whereas my companion is continually wishing himself at Rome, I wish Rome was a thousand leagues farther that I might have more way to pass in France and Italy. If you will do me the favour to write to me, direct to be left with Mr Cantillon, banker in Paris. I am, &c. *The preceding letter of Lord Bolingbroke ~TO ARCHBISHOP KING. MY LORD, Dublin, Nov. 13, 1716. THE reason I never gave your grace the trouble of a letter, was, because it could only be a trouble, without either entertainment or use; for I am so much out, even of this little world, that I know not the commonest occurrences in it; neither do I now write to your grace upon any sort of business, for I have nothing to ask but your blessing and favourable thoughts: only I conceived it ought not to be said, that your grace was several months absent in England, without one letter from the dean to pay his respects. My schemes are all circumscribed by the cathedral, and the liberties about it; where nothing of moment happened since your grace left it, except the election of Mr Chamberlain to St Nicholas, which passed quietly while I was absent in the country. I am purchasing a glebe, by the help of the trustees, for the vicarage of Laracor and I have vanity enough to desire it might be expressed by a clause in the deeds, as one consideration, that I had been instrumental in procuring the first-fruits; which was accordingly inserted; but hints were given it would not pass. Then the bishops of Ossory and Killaloe had, as I am told, a sum of money for their labour in that affair; who, upon my arrival at London to negotiate it, were one of them gone to Bath, and the other to Ireland: but it seems more reasonable to give bishops money for doing nothing, than a private gentleman thanks for succeeding where bishops have failed. I am only sorry I was not a bishop, that I might at least have got money. The tory clergy here seem ready for conversion, provoked by a parcel of obscure zealots in London, who, as we hear, are setting up a new church of England by themselves. By our intelligence, it seems to be a complication of as much folly, madness, hypocrisy, and mistake, as ever was offered to the world. If it be understood so on your side, I cannot but think there would be a great opportunity of regaining the body of the clergy to the interest of the court: who, if they were persuaded by a few good words to throw off their fears, could never think of the pretender without horror; under whom it is obvious that those refiners would have the greatest credit, and consequently every thing be null since the time of the revolution, and more havock made in a few months, than the most desponding among the tories can justly apprehend from the present management in as many years. These at least are, as I am told, the thoughts and reasonings of the high church people among us; but whether a court, in the midst of strength and security, will conceive it worth their while to cultivate the dispositions of people in the dust, is out of my reach.* The Bishop of Dromore has never been in town since he went to his diocese, nor does he say any thing of coming up. He is in good health. *It will be presently seen, that the archbishop made an ungene. rous use of this letter and showed the passage immediately preceding the reference, as a proof that Dr Swift was abandoning the high church interest. It is difficult to screw such a meaning out of the fair import of the words, which seem only an allusion to the violence of the nonjuring and jacobite party, with whose politics Swift agreed still less than with the church government approved by the whigs. See Lewis's letters to Swift, 12th January 1716-17, and Swift's to Atterbury, 18th July 1717. I was told a week or two ago a confused story of the anatomy lecturer at the college turned out by the provost, and another put in his place. I know not the particulars; but am assured he is blamed for it both by the prince and your grace. I take the provost to be a very honest gen leman, perfectly good-natured, and the least inclined to speak ill of others of almost any person I have known. He has very good intentions; but the defect seems to be, that his views are short, various, and sudden; and I have reason to think, he hardly ever makes use of any other counsellor than himself. I talked to him of this matter since it was done, and I think his answers satisfied me; but I am an ill retainer of facts wherein I have no concern: my humble opinion is, that it would be much to his own ease, and of theirs who dislike him, if he were put. into another station; and if you will not afford him a bishoprick, that you will let him succeed some rich country dean. I dare be confident that the provost had no other end in changing that lecturer, than a design of improving anatomy as far as he could; for he would never have made such a step as choosing the prince † chancellor, but from a resolution of keeping as fair as he possibly could with the present powers, in regard both to his ease and his interest; and in hopes of changing a post, wherein, to say the truth, he has been used by judges and governors like any dog, and has suffered more by it in his health and honour, than I, with his patrimonial estate, would think it were worth. Here has been one Whittingham, in an ordination * Dr Pratt, afterwards Dean of Down.-F. + George, Prince of Wales, afterwards King George II.-F. sermon, calling the clergy a thousand dumb dogs, and treating episcopacy as bad as Boyse; * yet no notice at all shall be taken of this, unless to his ad vantage upon the next vacant bishoprick; and wagers are laid already, whether he or one Monk will be the man. But I forget myself; and therefore shall only add, that I am, with the greatest respect and truth, my Lord, Your grace's most dutiful and most humble servant, &c. SIR, FROM ARCHBISHOP KING. London, Suffolk Street, Nov. 22, 1716. I READ your's of the thirteenth instant with great satisfaction. It is not only an advantage to you and me, that there should be a good correspondence between us, but also the public; and I assure you I had much ado to persuade people here, that we kept any tolerable measures with one another; much less, that there was any thing of a good intelligence and therefore you judged right, that it ought not to be said, that in so many months I had not received any letter from you. I do a little admire, that those that should be your fastest friends, should be so opposite to acknowledge the service you did in procuring the twentieth parts and first-fruits: I know no reason * An eminent dissenting teacher, minister of Wood Street meeting-house in Dublin, who wrote several tracts in favour of the dissenters. |