ground, carried off my trees, and I have not fortitude enough to go and see those devastations. But, in return, I live a country life in town, see nobody, and go every day once to prayers; and hope, in a few months, to grow as stupid as the present situation of affairs will require.

Well, after all, parsons are not such bad company, especially when they are under subjection; and I let none but such come near me. However, pray God forgive them by whose indolence, neglect, or want of friendship, I am reduced to live with twenty leagues of salt water between your Lordship and me.

TO MISS VANHOMRIGH.1

Philips-town, Nov. 5, 1714.

I met your servant when I was a mile from Trim, and could send him no other answer than I did, for I was going abroad by appointment; besides, I would not have gone to Kildrohod to see you, for all the world. I ever told you, you wanted discretion. I am going to a friend upon a promise, and shall stay with him about a fortnight, and then come to town, and I will call on you as soon as I can, supposing you lodge at Turnstile Alley, as your servant told me, and that your neighbours can tell me its whereabouts. Your servant said you would be in town on Monday; so that I suppose this will be ready to welcome you there.

I fear you had a journey full of fatigues. Pray take care of your health in this Irish air, to which you are a stranger. Does

1 Addressed to "Mrs." Vanhomrigh, at her lodgings in Turnstile Alley, near College Green, Dublin.

2 The Irish name for Cellbridge, where Vanessa had her country resi dence.-S.

8 Miss Vanhomrigh had just now arrived in Ireland.

HESTER VANHOMRIGH'S REPROACHES.

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not Dublin look very dirty to you, and the country very miserable? Is Kildrohod as beautiful as Windsor, and as agreeable to you as the Prebend's lodgings there? Is there any walk about you as pleasant as the Avenue and the Marlborough Lodge? I have rode a tedious journey to-day, and can say no more. Nor shall you know where I am till I come, and then I will see you. A fig for your letters and messages. Adieu.2

1 Where Swift lodged when at Windsor. "My lodgings," he writes to Stella, Aug. 1712, "look upon Eton and the Thames. I wish I was owner of them: they belong to a Prebend."-S.

The first and last sentence of this letter, which, taken apart from the rest, have almost an air of brutality, have found their way to the public. When the context is restored, it is merely an example of the Dean's playful rudeness.-S.

Writing from Dublin, sometime in the end of 1714, his fair devotce complains again:-"You cannot but be sensible, at least, in some degree, of the many uneasinesses I am slave to. . . . You fly me and give me no reason, but that we are among fools, and must submit. I am very well satis. fied we are among such, but know no reason for having my happiness sacrificed to their caprice. You once had a maxim, which was-to act what was right, and not mind what the world said: I wish you would keep to it now. Pray, what can be wrong in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman ?" And again, a few months later: "Well, now I plainly see how great a regard you have for me! You bid me be easy, and you'd see me as often as you could. You had better have said, as often as you could get the better of your inclinations so much; or, as often as you remembered there was such a person in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. 'Tis impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last. I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long: for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world, I must give way to it, and beg you'd see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you would not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it you, should I see you. For, when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your look so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but as much regard for me left, that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can. Did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you!"

To MR. POPE.

Dublin, June 28, 1715.

your kind letter, full

My Lord Bishop of Clogher1 gave me of reproaches for my not writing. I am naturally no very exact correspondent, and when I leave a country, without probability of returning, I think as seldom as I can of what I loved or esteemed in it, to avoid the desiderium which of all things makes life most uneasy. But you must give me leave to add one thing that you talk at your ease, being wholly unconcerned in public events; for, if your friends the Whigs 2 continue, you may hope for some favour; if the Tories return, you are, at least, sure of quiet. loved both Lord Oxford and Bolingbroke, and how dear the Duke of Ormond is to me. Do you imagine I can be easy, while their enemies are endeavouring to take off their heads? 3

You know how well I

I nunc et versus tecum meditare canoros.-Do you imagine I can be easy, 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 subjects? Upon the whole, you may truly attribute my silence to the eclipse, but it was that eclipse which happened on the first of August. I borrowed your Homer from the bishop (mine is not

1 Dr. Ashe, formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, to whom the Dean was a pupil-afterwards Bishop of Clogher. It was he who married Swift to Mrs. [Miss] Johnson, 1716-17, and performed the ceremony in a garden. Warton.

2 Pope cannot, from his religion, be supposed to have had a violent partiality for the House of Hanover. But he had some powerful friends among the Whig party, and for some time seemed to preserve a sort of liter. ary neutrality in politics.-S.

8 These celebrated politicians were then under grave suspicion of conspiring to bring back the Stuarts. Lord Bolingbroke escaped to France, Lord Oxford was imprisoned in the Tower for two years.

♦ There was a great eclipse [of the sun] at this time. He alludes to the death of Queen Anne on the first of August.-Bowles,

CRITICISES POPE'S ILIAD.

159

yet landed), and read it out in two evenings. If it pleases others as well as me, you have got your end in profit and reputation. Yet I am angry at some bad rhymes and triplets; and pray, in your next, do not let me have so 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 too obscure; but I expected you to be so in one or two and twenty. 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 of being acquainted with them. Your notes are perfectly good, and so are your preface and essay. You were pretty bold in mentioning Lord Bolingbroke in that preface. I saw the Key to the [Rape of the] Lock but yesterday. I think you have changed it a good deal, to adapt it to the present times.

God be thanked, I have yet no Parliamentary business, and if they have none with me, I shall never seek their acquaintance. I have not been very fond of them for some years past—not when I thought them tolerably good; and, therefore, if I can get leave to be absent, I shall be much inclined to be on that side when there is a Parliament on this. But, truly, I must be a little easy in my mind before I can think of Scriblerus. You are to understand that I live in the corner of a vast unfurnished house. My family consists of a steward, a groom, a helper in the stable, 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-pie, and

1 He was frequently carping at Pope for bad rhymes in many other parts of his works. His own were remarkably exact.-W.

2 Given to him by Parnell, and with which Pope told Mr. Spence he was never well satisfied, though he corrected it again and again.—W.

The notice is brief though respectful. It barely intimates, that "such a genius as my Lord Bolingbroke, not more distinguished in the great scenes of business than in all the useful and entertaining parts of learning, has not refused to be the critic of these sheets, and the patron of their writer."Preface to the Iliad.-S.

drink half a pint of wine. My amusements are defending my Archbishop, and endeavouring to Perditur hæc inter misero lux.

small dominions against the reduce my rebellious choir.

I desire you will present my humble service to Mr. Addison, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Rowe, and Gay. I am, and will be always, extremely yours, &c.

To MR. POPE.

Dublin, Aug. 30, 1716.

I had the favour of yours by Mr. Ford of whom, before any other question relating to your health or fortune, or success as a poet, I inquired your principles in the common form, "Is he a Whig or a Tory?" I am sorry to find they are not so well tallied to the present juncture as I could wish. I always thought the terms of facto and jure had been introduced by the poets, and that possession, in any sort, in kings was held an unexceptionable title in the Court of Parnassus.

If you do not grow a perfect good subject in your politics, in all its present latitudes, I shall conclude you are become rich, and able to live without Dedications to men in power; whereby one great inconvenience will follow-that, you, and the world, and posterity, will be utterly ignorant of their virtues. For, either your brethren have miserably deceived us these hundred years past, or power confers virtue, as naturally as five of your Popish sacraments do grace. You sleep less and drink more. But your master, Horace was vini somnique benignus, and, as I take it, both are proper for your trade. As to wine, there are a thousand poetical texts to confirm the one, and, as to the other,

1 Not all the "tuneful tribe" have bowed the knee to Bacchus. Pindar, whatever may have been his practice, proclaimed the superiority of waterǎLOTOV TO Dowp-water is best. Milton, in his elegiac verses addressed to his friend Diodati, declares that the poet who aspires to the highest flights of the Muse, must abjure the alcoholised juice of the grape, and, in fact, adopt the diet of the Samian Sage. Ovid, also, was a water-drinker.