am not capable of writing. For, however I may have been soured by personal ill treatment, or by melancholy prospects for the public, I am too much a politician to expose my own safety by offensive words. And, if my genius and spirit be sunk by increasing years, I have at least enough discretion left, not to mistake the measure of my own abilities, by attempting subjects where those Talents are necessary, which perhaps I may have lost with my youth3.

2

Swift, in one sentence only, of his admirable "Sentiments of a Church of England Man," demolished the slavish and absurd doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance. "Many of the Clergy," says he, "and other learned men, mistook the object to which passive obedience was due. By the Supreme Magistrate is properly understood the Legislative Power, which in all Governments must be absolute and unlimited. But the word Magistrate, seeming to denote a single person, and to express the executive Power, it came to pass that obedience due to the Legislature was, for want of knowing or considering this easy distinction, misapplied to the Administration."

* The following is a curious Letter from Erasmus Lewis, Esq. to Dr. Swift, concerning the last Ministers of Queen Anne.

"SIR,

"I never differed from you, in my opinion, in any point so much as in your proposals to accommodate matters between the dragon and his quondam friends. I will venture to go so far with you, as to say he contributed to his own disgrace, by his petitesses, more than they did, or ever had it in their power to do. But since they would admit of no terms of accommodation, when he offered to serve them in their own way, I had rather see his dead carcass, than that he should now tamely submit to those, who have loaded him with all the obloquy malice could suggest and tongues to utter. Have not Charteris, Brinsden, and all the runners, been employed to call him dog, villain, sot, and worthless? And shall he, after this, join them? To what end? I have great tenderness for Lady Masham, and think her best way is to retire, and enjoy the comforts of a domestic life. But sure she has not produced such monsters as Lord Bolingbroke

LETTER VI.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. GAY.

Dublin, Jan. 8, 1722-3.

COMING home after a short Christmas ramble, I found a letter upon my table, and little expected when I opened it to read your name at the bottom. The best and greatest part of my life, until these last eight years, I spent in England: there I made my friendships, and there I left my desires. I am condemned for ever to another country; what is in prudence to be done? I think, to be oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis. What can be the design of your letter but malice, to wake me out of a scurvy sleep,

and his companion, probably the Lord Chancellor Harcourt or the Bishop of Rochester. The last openly avows he never had obligations to the dragon, loads him with ten thousand crimes; though his greatest, in reality, was preferring him. But to come out of this rant; What should they be friends for? Cui bono? Are we in a dream? Is the Queen alive again? Can Lady Masham hereafter make any figure, but be a persona muta in a drama? If the dragon declares against the Man of Mercury, he may strike in with the tertium quid, that will probably arise; but with him he never can be otherwise than spurned and hated. The natural result of this is, that however I may, for my private satisfaction, desire to see you here, I cannot but think you should go to Ireland to qualify yourself, and then return hither, when the chaos will be jumbled into some kind of order. If the King keeps some Tories in employment, the notion of Whig and Tory will be lost; but that of Court and Country will arise. The Regency has declared in favour of the Whigs in Ireland. I believe Mr. Thomas will stand his ground. We shall be dissolved as soon as we have settled the Civil List.

We have no appearance

that any attempt will be formed by the Pretender.”

which however is better than none? I am towards nine years older since I left you, yet that is the least of my alterations; my business, my diversions, my conversations, are all entirely changed for the worse, and so are my studies and my amusements in writing; yet, after all, this humdrum way of life might be passable enough, if you would let me alone. I shall not be able to relish my wine, my parsons, my horses, nor my garden for three months, until the spirit you have raised shall be dispossessed. I have sometimes wondered that I have not visited you, but I have been stopt by too many reasons, besides years and laziness, and yet these are very good ones. Upon my return after half a year amongst you, there would be to me Desiderio nec pudor nec modus. I was three years reconciling myself to the scene, and the business, to which fortune hath condemned me, and stupidity was what I had recourse to. Besides, what a figure should I make in London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, distress, or imprisonment, and my enemies with rods of iron? Yet I often threaten myself with the journey, and am every summer practising to get health to bear it the only inconvenience is, that I grow old in the experiment. Although I care not to talk to you as a Divine, yet I hope you have not been author of your cholic: do you drink bad wine or keep bad company? Are you not as many years older as I? It will not always Et tibi quos mihi dempserit Apponet annos. I am heartily sorry you have any dealing with that ugly distemper, and I believe our friend Arbuthnot will recommend you to temperance and exercise. I wish they could have as good an effect

upon the giddiness I am subject to, and which this moment I am not free from. I should have been glad if you had lengthened your letter by telling me the present condition of many of my old acquaintance, Congreve, Arbuthnot, Lewis, etc. but you mention only Mr. Pope, who I believe is lazy, or else he might have added three lines of his own. I am extremely glad he is not in your case of needing great men's favour, and could heartily wish that you were in his. I have been considering why Poets have such ill success in making their court, since they are allowed to be the greatest and best of all flatterers. The defect is, that they flatter only in print or in writing, but not by word of mouth: they will give things under their hand which they make a conscience of speaking. Besides, they are too libertine to haunt anti-chambers, too poor to bribe Porters and Footmen, and too proud to cringe to second-hand favourites in a great family. Tell me, are you not under Original sin by the dedication of your Eclogues to Lord Bolingbroke? I am an ill judge at this distance; and besides, am, for my ease, utterly ignorant of the commonest things that pass in the world; but if all Courts have a sameness in them (as the Parsons phrase it) things may be as they were in my time1, when all employments went to Parliament- men's Friends, who had been useful in Elections, and there was always a huge List of names in arrears at the Treasury, which would at least take up your seven years expedient to discharge even one half. I

1

At what period of time, in English History, was not this the case, and true state of things?

am of opinion, if you will not be offended, that the surest course would be to get your Friend who lodgeth in your house to recommend you to the next chief Governor who comes over here for a good civil employment, or to be one of his Secretaries, which your Parliament-men are fond enough of, when there is no room at home. The wine is good and reasonable; you may dine twice a week at the Deanery-house; there is a set of company in this town sufficient for one man; folks will admire you, because they have read you, and read of you; and a good employment will make you live tolerably in London, or sumptuously here; or if you divide between both places, it will be for your health.

I wish I could do more than say I love you. I left you in a good way both for the late Court, and the Successors; and by the force of too much honesty or too little sublunary wisdom, you fell between two stools. Take care of your health and money; be less modest and more active; or else turn Parson and get a Bishopric here: Would to God they would send us as good ones from your side!

I am ever, etc.