better than that you are in, and perhaps your public spirit would be lefs grieved, or oftener comforted, here than there. Come to us therefore on a vifit at leaft. It will not be the fault of several persons here, if you do not come to live with us. But great good will, and little power produce fuch flow and feeble effects as can be acceptable to heaven alone, and heavenly men.I know you will be angry with me, if I fay nothing to you of a poor woman, who is still on the other fide of the water in a moft languishing ftate of health. If fhe regains ftrength enough to come over, (and she is better within thefe few weeks,) I fhall nurfe her in this farm with all the care and tenderness poffible. If fhe does not, I must pay her the laft duty of friendship wherever she is, though I break through the whole plan of life which I have formed in my mind. Adieu. I am most faithfully and affectionately yours. LETTER XLVI. LORD B. TO DR. SWIFT. Jan. 17, 1730-31. I BEGIN my letter by telling you that my wife has been returned from abroad about a month, and that her health, though feeble and precarious, is better than it has been these two years*. She is much your Bolingbroke's conftant attachment to this amiable and interefting Lady is a very captivating trait in his character. In proportion as he flood, from increafing years and disappointment, forlorn in the world, he felt the more strongly her kindness, her attachment, and tender fidelity. She certainly looked up to him as the first of human beings. The following paffage occurs in a Letter, from the Townsend papers, written from France to Walpole, by one whom he appears to have employed on purpose to give him intelligence: "Paris, Dec. 2, 1730., "I was with Monfieur D'Albin, who is an intimate acquaintance of Lady Bolingbroke's; and he affured me, that he was in a private conference with her fome days before the departed, which gave him an occafion to found her principles in regard to the Pretender, which fhe parried by ambiguous replies for fome time; but afterwards became more open, and confeffed herself to be his friend; but concluded, that he was an ill judge of men :— in particular, his contempt for her Lord, whofe great capacity would have been of more ufe than all the rest of his friends put together which gave D'Albin an occafion to ask her about the Bishop; to which the anfwered, that he was a great man for some things, but a wretched politician; that there were others that had the fame point in view, but acted with more prudence, by taking a more effectual road to come at it.This D'Albin affured me to : your fervant, and as fhe has been her own phyfician with some success, imagines fhe could be yours with the fame. Would to God you was within her reach! She would, I believe, prescribe a great deal of the medicina animi, without having recourse to the Books of Trismegiftus. Pope and I should be her principal apothecaries in the courfe of the cure; and though our best Botanifts complain, that few of the herbs and fimples which go to the compofition of these remedies, are to be found at prefent in our foil, yet there are more of them here than in Ireland; befides, by the help of a little chemistry, the most noxious juices may become falubrious, and rank poison a spe cific. mean her husband, and the faction he influences; who muft either be in his fecret, or deceived by his craft; and I think proper to mention it as reported, word for word, as I think it the most open confeffion I have heard of the kind; but as it was to a Frenchman, I prefume fhe thought she ran no risk. She was conftantly with the Duchefs of Buckingham, who is certainly gone to Rome on the Bishop's errand (as I told you in my former), and I hope to come at the bottom of it: he is always asking me what the world fays of her, and her journey to Italy. He fays, it is remarkable what pains Sir Robert takes to become popular; and that one of his views to appease the Parliament was to disband the Heffian troops; and that, in fhort, he wants to patch up matters at any rate; to fecure his retreat, and retire from bufinefs; with a thoufand fuch idle remarks, to demonftrate how much he flicks in their ftomachs, and is never to be digefted; and, when they hear of his generofity and honourable actions, turn pale, as if they were mortified and galled. It would be needlefs to fay more, than I fee it is a matter impoffible for his Majefty's enemies ever to love Sir Robert Walpole." cific.-Pope is now in my library with me, and writes to the world, to the present and to future ages, whilst I begin this letter which he is to finish to you. What good he will do to mankind I know not; this comfort he may be fure of, he cannot do less than you have done before him. I have fometimes thought, that if preachers, hangmen, and moral-writers keep vice at a stand, or fo much as retard the progrefs of it, they do as much as human nature admits: a real reformation* is not to be brought about by ordinary means; it requires those extraordinary means which become punishments as well as leffons: National corruption must be purged by national calamities.Let us hear from you. We deserve this attention, because we defire it, and because we believe that you defire to hear from us. *Bolingbroke has enlarged on this topic in his Philofophical works, intending to depreciate Christianity by fhewing that it has not had a general effect on the morals of mankind, nor produced a real Reformation :-an argument nothing to the purpose, nor any impeachment of the Doctrines of the Gofpel; even if it were well founded, as it certainly is not. WARTON, LETTER XLVII. LORD B. TO DR. SWIFT. March 29. I HAVE delayed feveral posts anfwering your letter of January last, in hopes of being able to speak to you about a project which concerns us both, but me the most, since the fuccefs of it would bring us together. It has been a good while in my head, and at my heart; if it can be fet a going, you shall hear more of it. I was ill in the beginning of the winter for near a week, but in no danger either from the nature of my diftemper, or from the attendance of three phyficians. Since that bilious intermitting fever, I have had, as I had before, better health than the regard I have paid to health deferves. We are both in the decline of life, my dear Dean, and have been fome years going down the hill; let us make the paffage as fmooth as we can. Let us fence against phyfical evil by care, and the use of those means which experience muft have pointed out to us: let us fence against moral evil by philofophy. I renounce the alternative you propofe. But we may, nay, (if we will follow nature, and do not work up imagination against her plaineft dictates,) we fhall of course grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interefts of a fyftem out of which we are foon |