the other never was; yet if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often vindicated him3, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accusations. But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive, and his whole scene was fifty times more a What-d'ye-call-it than yours: for, I declare yours was unie, and I wish you would so order it, that the world may be as wise as I upon that article: Mr. Pope wishes it too, and I believe there is not a more honest man in England, even without wit. But you regard us not. I was forty-seven years old when I began to think of death, and the reflections upon it now begin when I wake in the morning, and end when I am going to sleep. I writ to Mr. Pope, and not to you. My birth, although from a family not undistinguished in its name, is many degrees inferior to yours; all my pretensions from person and parts infinitely so; I a younger son of younger sons; you born to a great fortune: yet I see you, with all your advantages, sunk to a degree that you could never have been without them: but yet I see you as much esteemed, as much beloved, as much dreaded, and perhaps more (though it be almost impossible) than ever you were in your highest exaltation-only I grieve like an Alderman that you are not so rich. And yet,

This is a remarkable sentence; as it conveys a depreciating idea of Lord Oxford, whom we had imagined Swift preferred to Bolingbroke.

'The year of Queen Anne's death. W.

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my Lord, I pretend to value money as little as you, and I will call five hundred Witnesses (if you will take Irish witnesses) to prove it. I renounce your whole philosophy, because it is not your practice. By the figure of living (if I used that expression to Mr. Pope), I do not mean the parade, but a suitableness to your mind: and as for the pleasure of giving, I know your soul suffers when you are debarred of it. Could you, when your own generosity and contempt of outward things (be not offended, it is no Ecclesiastical, but an Epictetian phrase), could you, when these have brought you to it, come over and live with Mr. Pope and me at the Deanery? I could almost wish the experiment was tried-No, God forbid that ever such a scoundrel as Want should

dare to approach you. But in the mean time, do not brag; Retrenchments are not your talent. But as old Weymouth said to me in his Lordly Latin, Philosopha verba, ignava opera: I wish you could learn Arithmetic, that three and two make five and will never make more. My philosophical spectacles which you advise me to, will tell me that I can live on 50%. a year (wine excluded, which my bad health forces me to), but I cannot endure that Otium should be sine dignitate.-My Lord, what I would have said of Fame is meant of fame which a man enjoys in his life; because I cannot be a great Lord, I would acquire what is a kind of subsidium, I would endeavour that my betters should seek me by the merit of something distinguishable, instead of my seeking them." The desire of enjoying it in after-times is owing to the spirit and folly of youth: but with age we learn

to know the house is so full, that there is no room for above one or two at the most in an age, through the whole world. My Lord, I hate and love to write to you, it gives me pleasure, and kills me with melancholy. The D take stupidity, that it will

not come to supply the want of philosophy.

LETTER XLII.

FROM DR. SWIFT.

October 31,

1729.

You were so careful of sending me the Dunciad, that I have received five of them, and have pleased four friends. I am one of every body who approve every part of it, Text and Comment; but am one abstracted from every body, in the happiness of being recorded your friend, while wit, and humour, and politeness shall have any memorial among us. As for your octavo edition, we know nothing of it, for we have an octavo of our own, which hath sold wonderfully, considering our poverty, and dulness the consequence of it.

I writ this post to Lord B. and tell him in my letter, that, with a great deal of loss for a frolick, I will fly as soon as build; I have neither years, nor spirits, nor money, nor patience, for such amusements. The frolick is gone off, and I am only 1007. the

the

poorer.

But this kingdom is grown so excessively poor, that

we wise men must think of nothing but getting a little

'

ready money. It is thought there are not two hundred thousand pounds in specie in the whole island; for we return thrice as much to our Absentees, as we get by trade, and so are all inevitably undone; which I have been telling them in print these ten years, to as little purpose as if it came from the pulpit. And this is enough for Irish politics, which I only mention, because it so nearly touches myself. I must repeat what, I believe, I have said before, that I pity you much more than Mrs. Pope. Such a parent and friend hourly declining before your eyes is an object very unfit for your health, and duty, and tender disposition; and I pray God it may not affect you too much. I am as much satisfied that your additional 100l. per annum is for your life as if it were for ever. You have enough to leave your friends, I would not have them glad to be rid of you; and I shall take care that none but my enemies will be glad to get rid of me. You have embroiled me with Lord Babout the figure of living, and the pleasure of giving. I am under the necessity of some little paltry figure in the station I am: but I make it as little as possible. As to the other part, you are base, because I thought myself as great a giver as ever was, of my ability; and yet in proportion you exceed, and have kept it till now a secret even from me, when I wondered how you were able to live with your whole little revenue. Adieu.

This is a very melancholy picture of the state of Ireland, and it must be hoped does not resemble that kingdom in its pre

sent state.

I FIND that you have laid aside your project of building in Ireland, and that we shall see you in this island cum zephyris, et hirundine prima. I know not whether the love of fame increases as we advance in age; sure I am that the force of friendship does. I loved you almost twenty years ago, I thought of you as well as I do now, better was beyond the power of conception, or, to avoid an equivoque, beyond the extent of my ideas. Whether you are more obliged to me for loving you as well when I knew you less, or for loving you as well after loving you so many years, I shall not determine. What I would say is this: whilst my mind grows daily more independent of the world, and feels less need of leaning on external objects, the ideas of friendship return oftener, they busy me, they warm me more: is it that we grow more tender as the moment of our great separation approaches? or is it that they who are to live together in another state (for vera amicitia non nisi inter bonos), begin to feel more strongly that divine sympathy which is to be the great band of their future society? There is no one thought which soothes my mind like this: I encourage my imagination to pursue it, and am heartily afflicted