confidering your temper; and this is the period of all my letter which I fear you will think the most impertinent. I am, with the trueft affection,

Yours, etc.

LETTER II.

FROM DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

с

Dublin, June 28, 1715.

MY Lord Bishop of Clogher gave me your kind letter full of reproaches for my not writing. I am naturally no very exact correfpondent, and when I leave a country without a probability of returning, I think as feldom as I can of what I loved or esteemed in it, to avoid the Defiderium which of all things makes life most uneasy. But you must give me leave to add one thing, that you talk at your eafe, being wholly unconcerned in public events: For, if your friends the Whigs continue, you may hope for fome favour; if the Tories return *, you are at least fure of quiet. You

Dr. St. George Afb, formerly a fellow of Trinity-College, Dublin, (to whom the Dean was a Pupil,) afterwards Bishop of Clogher, and translated to the See of Derry in 1716-17. It was he who married Swift to Mrs. Johnson, 1716, and performed the ceremony in a garden.

S.

* In a Manuscript Letter of Lord Bolingbroke it is faid, "That George the First set out from Hanover with a refolution of oppreffing no fet of men that would be quiet fubjects. But as foon

as

You know how well I loved both Lord Oxford and Bolingbroke, and how dear the Duke of Ormond is to me: Do you imagine I can be eafy while their enemies are endeavouring to take off their heads? I nunc et verfus tecum meditare canoros-Do you imagine I can be eafy, when I think of the probable consequences of these proceedings, perhaps upon the very peace of the nation, but certainly of the minds of so many hundred thousand good fubjects? Upon the whole, you may truly attribute my filence to the Eclipfe, but it was that Eclipse which happened on the first of Auguft.

I borrowed your Homer from the Bishop (mine is not yet landed) and read it out in two evenings. If it pleaseth others as well as me, you have got your end in profit and reputation; yet I am angry at fome bad Rhymes and Triplets, and pray in your next do not let me have fo many unjustifiable Rhymes* to war and gods. I tell you all the faults I know, only in one or two places you are a little obfcure; but I expected you to be fo in one or two and twenty.

I have

as he came into Holland a contrary resolution was taken, at the carneft importunity of the Allies, and particularly of Heinfius, and of fome of the Whigs. Lord Townshend came triumphantly to acquaint Lord Somers with all the measures of profcription and of perfecution which they intended, and to which the King had at last confented. The old Peer asked him what he meant, and shed tears on the forefight of measures like those of the Roman Triumvirate.”

* He was frequently carping at Pope for bad Rhymes in many parts of his works. His own were remarkably exact.

other

I have heard no foul talk of it here, for indeed it is not come over; nor do we very much abound in judges, at least I have not the honour to be ac quainted with them. Your notes are perfectly good, and fo are your Preface and Effay *. Your are pretty bold in mentioning Lord Bolingbroke in that Preface. I saw the Key to the Lock but yesterday: I think you have changed it a good deal, to adapt it to the prefent times.

God be thanked I have yet no Parliamentary bufi nefs, and if they have done with me, I fhall never feek their acquaintance. I have not been very fond of them for fome years paft, not when I thought them tolerably good; and therefore if I can get leave to be absent, I fhall be much inclined to be on that fide, when there is a Parliament on this; but truly I must be a little eafy in my mind before I can think of Scriblerus.

You

* Given to him by Parnell; and with which Pope told Mr. Spence, he was never well fatisfied, though he corrected it again and again.

d Put these two last observations together, and it will appear, that Mr. Pope was never wanting to his friends for fear of Party, nor would he infult a Ministry to humour them. He said of himself, and I believe he said truly, that he never wrote a line to gratify the animofity of any one party at the expence of another. See the Letter to a Noble Lord.

W.

Never was exhibited fo ftrong and lamentable a picture of difappointed ambition, as in thefe Letters of the Dean. When we confider the fidelity and ability with which he served the Queen's laft Miniftry, we are furprised that they gave him no higher preferment, but banished him, as it were, to Ireland. The

fact

You are to understand that I live in the corner of a vast unfurnished house; my family confifts of a fteward, a groom, a helper in the ftable, a footman, and an old maid, who are all at board wages, and when I do not dine abroad, or make an entertainment (which last is very rare), I eat a mutton pye, and drink half a pint of wine: My amusements are, defending my fmall dominions against the Archbishop, and endeavouring to reduce my rebellious Choir. Perditur haec inter mifero lux. I defire you will prefent my humble fervice to Mr. Addison, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Rowe, and Gay. I am, and will be always, extremely yours, etc.

fact is, that he had fo infuperably difgufted many grave Divines, and the Queen herself, by his Tale of a Tub, that she never would hear of his advancement in the Church. And this difguft was kept alive by the inftigations of Archbishop Sharp. and by the Duchefs of Somerset, whom he had wantonly lampooned. It was in vain he wrote, to take off these impreffions, his incomparable Treatifes, A Project for the Advancement of Religion; and the Sentiments of a Church of England Man. The truth is, his friends the Minifters had it not in their power to do more for him than they did; but, as is the constant practice of all Minifters, artfully concealed from him their inability to ferve him, to keep him fteady in his dependance on them.

LETTER III.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

June 20, 1716.

I CANNOT fuffer a friend to cross the Irish seas with

out bearing a teftimony from me of the conftant esteem and affection I am both obliged and inclined to have for you. It is better he should tell you than I, how often you are in our thoughts and in our cups, and how I learn to fleep lefs and drink more whenever you are named among us. I look upon a friend in Ireland as upon a friend in the other world, whom (popishly speaking) I believe conftantly well difpofed towards me, and ready to do me all the good he can, in that state of feparation, though I hear nothing from him, and make addreffes to him but very rarely. A proteftant divine cannot take it amifs that I treat him in the fame manner with my patron Saint.

I can tell you no news, but what you will not fufficiently wonder at, that I fuffer many things as an author militant: whereof in your days of probation you have been a fharer, or you had not arrived in that triumphant ftate you now deservedly enjoy in the Church. As for me, I have not the least hopes of the Cardinalat, tho' I fuffer for my religion in almost every weekly paper. I have begun to take a

pique

• Alluding to his conftant custom of fleeping after dinner.