moft when we have, or may hope to have, a long scene of action open before us: towards our exit, this scene of action is or fhould be closed; and then, methinks, it is unbecoming to grow fonder of a thing which we have no longer occafion for. If it is pleafant, the fooner we are in poffeffion of fame the longer we shall enjoy this pleasure. When it is acquired early in life, it may tickle us on till old age; but when it is acquired late, the sensation of pleasure will be more faint, and mingled with the regret of our not having tafted it sooner.

From my Farm, Oct. 5.

I am here; I have feen Pope, and one of my first inquiries was after you. He tells me a thing I am forry to hear you are building, it seems, on a piece of land you have acquired for that purpose, in fome county of Ireland. Though I have built in a part of the world, which I prefer very little to that where you have been thrown and confined by our ill fortune and yours, yet I am forry you do the fame thing. I have repented a thousand times of my refolution, and I hope you will repent of yours before it is executed. Adieu, my old and worthy friend; may the physical evils of life fall as eafily upon you, as ever they did on any man who lived to be old; and may the moral evils which furround us, make as little impreffion on you, as they ought to make on one who has fuch

fuperior

fuperior sense to estimate things by, and fo much virtue to wrap himself up in.

My wife defires not to be forgotten by you; fhe's faithfully your fervant, and zealously your admirer. She will be concerned and disappointed not to find you in this island at her return, which hope both fhe and I had been made to entertain before I went abroad.

LETTER XLI.

DR. SWIFT TO LORD BOLINGBROKE.

Dublin, October 31, 1729.

RECEIVED your Lordship's travelling letter of

feveral dates, at several stages,

and from different

Neither could any kind remembrance

nations, languages, and religions. thing be more obliging than your of me in so many places. As to your ten Luftres, I remember, when I complained in a letter to Prior, that I was fifty years old, he was half angry in jeft, and answered me out of Terence, ifta commemoratio eft quafi exprobratio. How then ought I to rattle you, when I have a dozen years more to answer for, all monaftically paffed in this Country of liberty and delight, and money, and good company! I go on anfwering your letter: it is you were my Hero, but

r

S

the other never was; yet if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often vindicated him*, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accufations. But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive, and his whole fcene was fifty times more a Whatd'ye-call-it than yours: for, I declare yours was unie, and I wish you would fo order it, that the world may be as wife 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-feven 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 fleep.-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 pretenfions from perfon and parts infinitely fo; I a younger fon of younger fons; you born to a great fortune: yet I fee you, with all your advantages, funk to a degree that you could never have been without them: but yet I fee you as much efteemed, as much beloved, as much dreaded, and perhaps more (though it be almoft impoffible) than

'Lord Oxford.

W.

ever

This is a remarkable fentence; 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.

ever you were in your highest exaltation-only I grieve ́like an Alderman that you are not fo rich. And yet, my Lord, I pretend to value money as little as you, and I will call five hundred witnesses (if you will take Irish witneffes) to prove it. I renounce your whole philosophy, because it is not your practice. By the figure of living, (if I ufed that expreffion to Mr. Pope,) I do not mean the parade, but a suitablenefs to your mind: and as for the pleasure of giving, I know your foul fuffers when foul fuffers when you are debarred of it. Could you, when your own generofity and contempt of outward things, (be not offended, it is no Ecclefiaftical, but an Epictetian phrafe,) could you, when these have brought you to it, come over and live with Mr. Pope and me at the Deanry? I could almost wish the experiment was tried-No, God forbid, that ever fuch a scoundrel as Want fhould dare to approach you. But, in the mean time, do not brag; Retrenchments are not your talent. But as old Weymouth faid to me in his Lordly Latin, Philofopha verba, ignava opera: I wish you could learn Arithmetic, that three and two make five, and will never make more. My philofophical spectacles which you advise me to, will tell me that I can live on 50l. a year, (wine excluded, which my bad health forces me to,) but I cannot endure that Otium should be fine dignitate.-My Lord, what I would have faid 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 fubfidium, I would endeavour that my betters fhould feek me by the merit of fomething diftinguishable, inftead of my feeking them. The defire 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 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 fupply the want of philofophy.

LETTER XLII.

FROM DR. SWIFT.

October 31, 1729.

ou were fo careful of fending me the Dunciad,

γου

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 fold wonderfully, confidering our poverty, and dulnefs the confequence of it.

VOL. IX.

L

I writ