one foul and of one mind. The day is come*, which I have often wished, but never thought to fee; when every mortal, that I efteem, is of the fame fentiment in Politics and Religion.

Adieu. All you love, are yours; but all are busy, except (dear Sir) your fincere friend.

LETTER LXXI.

Jan. 6th, 1734.

I

NEVER think of you and can never write to you now, without drawing many of those short fighs of which we have formerly talked: the reflection both of the friends we have been deprived of by Death, and of those from whom we are separated almost as eternally by Absence, checks me to that degree that it takes away in a manner the pleasure (which yet I feel very fenfibly too) of thinking I am now converfing with you. You have been filent to me as to your Works; whether those printed here are, or are not genuine? but one, I am fure, is yours; and your method of concealing yourself puts me in mind of the Indian bird I have read of, who hides his head in a hole, while all his feathers and tail

ftick

*This is a remarkable paragraph. At this time therefore, 1733, he and Bolingbroke were of the same sentiment in Religion as well as Politics.

flick out. You'll have immediately by feveral franks (even before 'tis here published) my Epistle to Lord Cobham, part of my Opus Magnum, and the laft Effay on Man, both which, I conclude, will be grateful to your bookfeller, on whom you please to bestow them so early. There is a woman's war declared against me by a certain Lord: his weapons are the fame which women and children use, a pin-to fcratch, and a fquirt to befpatter; I writ a fort of anfwer, but was afhamed to enter the lifts with him, and after fhewing it to fome people, fuppreffed it: otherwise it was fuch as was worthy of him and worthy of me. I was three weeks this autumn with Lord Peterborow, who rejoices in your doings, and always fpeaks with the greatest affection of you. I need not tell you who elfe do the fame; you may be fure almost all those whom I ever fee, or desire to see. I wonder not that B- - paid you no fort of civility while he was in Ireland: he is too much a half-wit to love a true wit, and too much half-honest, to esteem any entire merit. I hope and I think he hates me too, and I will do my best to make him: he is fo infupportably infolent in his civility to me when he meets me at one third place, that I must affront him to be rid of it. That ftrict neutrality as to public parties, which I have conftantly observed in all my writings, I think gives me the more title to attack

*

*Which however he afterwards broke through in 1738.

fuch

fuch men as slender and belie my character in private, to those who know me not. Yet even this is a liberty I will never take, unless at the fame time they are Pefts to private fociety, or mifchievous members of the public, that is to fay, unless they are enemies to all men as well as to me.-Pray write to me when you can: if ever I can come to you, I will: if not, may Providence be our friend and our guard through this fimple world, where nothing is valuable, but fense and friendship. Adieu, dear Sir, may health attend your years, and then may many years be added to you.

P. S. I am just now told, a very curious Lady intends to write to you to pump you about fome poems faid to be yours. Pray tell her that you have not answered me on the fame questions, and that I fhall take it as a thing never to be forgiven from

you, if you tell another what you have concealed

from me.

LETTER LXXII.

Sept. 15, 1734.

HAVE ever thought you as fenfible as any man I knew, of all the delicacies of friendship, and yet I fear (from what Lord B. tells me you faid in your laft letter) that you did not quite understand the reafon of my late filence. I affure you it proceeded wholly from the tender kindness I bear you. When the heart is full, it is angry at all words that cannot come up to it; and you are now the man in all the world I am moft troubled to write to, for you are the friend I have left whom I am most grieved about. Death has not done worfe to me in feparating poor Gay, or any other, than disease and absence in dividing us. I am afraid to know how you do, fince most accounts I have, give me pain for you, and I am unwilling to tell you the condition of my own health. If it were good, I would fee you; and yet if I found you in that very condition of deafnefs, which made you fly from us while we were together, what comfort could we derive from it? In writing often I should find great relief, could we write freely; and yet, when I have done fo, you seem by not anfwering in a very long time, to feel either the fame uneafinefs as I do, or to abftain, from fome prudential reafon. Yet I am fure, nothing that you and I

would

would fay to each other (though our own fouls were to be laid open to the clerks of the post-office) could hurt either of us fo much, in the opinion of any honest man or good fubject, as the intervening, offici. ous, impertinence of those Goers between us, who in England pretend to intimacies with you, and in Ire land to intimacies with me. I cannot but receive any that call upon me in your name, and in truth they take it in vain too often. I take all opportunities of justifying you against these Friends, especially those who know all you think and write, and repeat your flighter verses. It is generally on fuch little scraps that Witlings feed, and it is hard the world fhould judge of our houfe-keeping from what we fling to our dogs, yet this is often the confequence. they treat you still worse, mix their own with yours, print them to get money, and lay them at your door. This I am fatisfied was the cafe in the Epistle to a Lady; it was just the fame hand (if I have any judgment in ftyle) which printed your Life and Character before, which you fo ftrongly difavowed in your letters to Lord Carteret, myself, and others. I was very well informed of another fact, which convinced me yet more; the fame person who gave this to be printed, offered to a bookfeller a piece in profe as yours, and as commiffioned by you, which has fince appeared, and been owned to be his own. I think (I fay once more) that I know your hand, though you did not mine in the Effay on Man. I beg your

But

pardon