well as long life to my writings. Could you make as much a better man of me as you can make a better author, I were secure of Immortality both here and hereafter by your means. The Dunciad I have ordered to be advertised in quarto. Pray order as many of them as you will; and know that whatever is mine is yours.

LETTER XXIII.

January 12, 1743.

AN unwillingness to write nothing to you, whom I respect; and worse than nothing (which would afflict you) to one who wishes me so well, has hitherto kept me silent. Of the Public I can tell you nothing worthy the reflection of a reasonable man; and of myself only an account that would give you pain; for my asthma has increased every week since you last heard from me, to the degree of confining me totally to the fire-side; so that I have hardly seen any of my friends but two, who happen to be divided from the world as much as myself, and are constantly retired at Battersea. There I have past most of my time, and often wished you of the company, as the best I know to make me not regret the loss of all others, and to prepare me for a nobler scene than any mortal greatness can open to us. I fear by the account you gave me of the time you design to come this way, one of them (whom I much wish you had a glimpse of) will be gone again, unless you pass

some weeks in London before Mr. Allen arrives there

in March. My present indisposition takes up almost all my hours, to render a very few of them supportable yet I go on softly to prepare the great edition of my Things with your Notes, and as fast I from you, I add others in order.

receive any

I am told the Laureat is going to publish a very abusive pamphlet. That is all I can desire; it is enough, if it be abusive and if it be his. He threatens you; but, I think, you will not fear or love him so much as to answer him, though you have answered one or two as dull. He will be more to me than a dose of hartshorn: and as a stink revives one who has been oppressed with perfumes, his railing will cure me of a course of flatteries.

U

I am much more concerned to hear that some of your Clergy are offended* at a verse or two of mine, because I have respect for your Clergy (though the Verses are harder upon ours). But if they do not blame you for defending those verses, I will wrap myself up in the layman's cloak, and sleep under your shield.

I am sorry to find by a letter two posts since from Mr. Allen, that he is not quite recovered yet of all remains of his indispositions, nor Mrs. Allen quite well. Don't be discouraged from telling me how you are for no man is more yours than, etc.

It was surely impossible for them not to take offence, at one of the severest, and, we hope, undeserved sarcasms ever cast on their order. And it is not a little surprising that the friend under whose guidance our poet had now placed himself, did not prevail on him to suppress these injurious lines.

Ver. 355 to 358, second book of the Dunciad. W.

LETTER XXIV.

If I was not ashamed to be so behind-hand with you, that I can never pretend to fetch it up, (any more than I could in my present state, to overtake you in a race,) I would particularize which of your letters I should have answered first. It must suffice to say I have received them all; and whatever very little respites I have had, from the daily care of my malady, have been employed in revising the papers on the Use of Riches, which I would have ready for your last revise against you come to town, that they may be begun with while you here.-I are here. I own, the late encroachments upon my constitution make me willing to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest for the one, in a full resig nation of my being to be disposed of by the Father of all mercy; and for the other (though indeed a trifle, yet trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted and malevolent critic, or inadvertent and censorious reader. And no hand can set them in so good a light, or so well turn their best side to the day, as your own. This obliges me to confess I have for some months thought myself going, and that not slowly, down the hill. The rather as every attempt

• Without incurring, I hope, the censure of being a shortsighted and malevolent critic, I venture to say, that our author's fond expectation of his commentator's setting his works in the best light, was extremely ill-founded.

of the physicians, and still the last medicines more forcible in their nature, have utterly failed to serve me. I was at last, about seven days ago, taken with so violent a fit at Battersea, that my friends Lord M. and Lord B. sent for present help to the surgeon ; whose bleeding me, I am persuaded, saved my life, by the instantaneous effect it had; and which has continued so much to amend me, that I have passed five days without oppression, and recovered, what I have three months wanted, some degree of expectoration, and some hours together of sleep. I am now got to Twitenham, to try if the air will not take some part in reviving me, if I can avoid colds: and between that place and Battersea with my Lord B. I will pass what I have of life, while he stays (which I can tell you, to my great satisfaction, will be this fortnight or three weeks yet). What if you came before Mr. Allen, and staid till then, instead of postponing your journey longer? Pray, if you write, just tell him how ill I have been, or I had wrote again to him but that I will do, the first day I find myself alone with pen, ink, and paper, which I can hardly be, even here, or in any spirits yet to hold a pen. You see I say nothing, and yet this writing is labour

to me.

I am, etc.

I AM sorry to meet you with so bad an account of myself, who should otherwise with joy have flown to the interview. I am too ill to be in town; and within this week so much worse, as to make my journey thither, at present, impracticable, even if there was no Proclamation in my way. I left the town in a decent compliance to that; but this additional prohibition from the highest of all powers I must bow to without murmuring. I wish to see you here. Mr. Allen comes not till the 16th, and you will probably chuse to be in town chiefly while he is there. I received yours just now, and I writ to hinder — from printing the Comment on the Use of Riches too hastily, since what you write me, intending to have forwarded it otherwise, that you might revise it dursing your stay. Indeed my present weakness will make me less and less capable of any thing. I hope at least, now at first, to see you for a day or two here at Twitenham, and concert measures how to enjoy for the future what I can of your friendship",

I am, etc.