renews the grief for the death of our friend Mr. Congreve, whom I loved from my youth, and who surely, besides his other talents, was a very agreeable companion. He had the misfortune to squander away a very good constitution in his younger days; and, I think, a man of sense and merit like him is bound, in conscience, to preserve his health for the sake of his friends as well as of himself. Upon his own account, I could not much desire the continuance of his life under so much pain and so many infirmities. Years have not yet hardened me, and I have an addition of weight upon my spirits since we lost him, though I saw him so seldom; and possibly, if he had lived on, should never have seen him more.1

I do not only wish, as you ask me, that I was unacquainted with any deserving person, but almost that I never had a friend. Here is an ingenious, good-humoured physician, a fine gentleman, an excellent scholar, easy in his fortunes, kind to everybody, has abundance of friends, entertains them often and liberally. They pass the evening with him at cards, with plenty of good [flesh] meat and wine, eight or a dozen together. He loves them all, and they him. He has twenty of these at command. If one of them dies, it is no more than poor Tom! He gets another, or takes up with the rest, and is no more moved than at the loss of his cat. He offends nobody, is easy with everybody. Is not this the true happy man? I was describing him to my Lady Acheson, who knows him too; but she hates him mortally by my character [of him], and will not drink his health. I would give half my fortune for the same temper, and yet I cannot say I love it; for I do not love my Lord, who is much of the doctor's

"I looked into the volume," he loitering, read it till twelve, like Never saw the like." This literary

1 Swift was no admirer of his Comedies. remarks in one of his letters, "and, in mere an owl and a fool. If ever I do so again! indifference Congreve reciprocated, for he found nothing to admire in the Tale of a Tub.

2 Dr. Helsham.

A common term for poor and outcast. See King Lear.

nature. I hear Mr. Gay's second opera,1 which you mention, is forbid, and then he will be once more fit to be advised, and reject your advice.-Adieu.

To MR. POPE.

Dublin, March 6, 1728-9.

If I am not a good correspondent, I have bad health; and that is as good. I passed eight months in the country, with Sir Arthur and my Lady Acheson, and had, at least, half-a-dozen returns of my giddiness and deafness, which lasted me about three weeks apiece, and, among other inconveniences, hindered me from visiting my Chapter, and punishing enormities; but did not save me the charges of a Visitation Dinner.2

This disorder neither hinders my sleeping, nor much my walking; yet is the most mortifying malady I can suffer. I have been just a month, and have just got rid of it in a fortnight; and, when it is on me, I have neither spirits to write, or read, or think, or eat. But I drink as much as I like, which is a resource you cannot fly to, when you are ill. And I like it as

1 Polly. The Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of the manager of the theatre that he would not permit it to be acted. Gay complained that he was persecuted for "writing in the cause of virtue," upon which Mr. Croker remarks:-Poor Gay must really have been, "in simplicity, a child," if he could persuade himself that the Beggar's Opera was written in the cause of virtue. He wrote it to make money, and to curry favour with the Prince, by assailing Walpole. The Duke of Grafton's refusal to

let it be produced on the stage enlisted party feeling on its side. The Duke and Duchess of Queensberry gave Gay an asylum in their house for the rest of his life; and from the subscriptions of the Opposition, and the sale of the printed play, he realized, as Pope told Spence, £1,100 or £1,200.—E.

For a lively description of a Visitation Dinner, and of the inspired eloquence of the typical Dr. Marrowfat, see Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, lviii.

INVITATION TO POPE.

213

little as you; but I can bear a pint better than you can a spoonful. You were very kind in your care for Mr. Whaley; but I hope you remembered that Daniel is a damnable poet,1 and consequently a public enemy to mankind. But I despise the Lords' decree, which is a jest upon common sense; for what did it signify to the merits of the Cause, whether George the Old, or the Young, were on the throne.

No. I intended to pass last winter in England, but my health said no; and I did design to live a gentleman, and, as Sancho's wife said, to go in my coach to Court. I know not whether you are in earnest to come hither in spring. If not, pray God, you may never be in jest! Dr. Delany shall attend you at Chester, and your apartment is ready; and I have a most excellent chaise, and about sixteen dozen of the best cider in the world; and you shall command the town and kingdom, and digito monstrari. And, when I cannot hear, you shall have choice of the best people we can afford, to hear you, and nurses enough; and your apartment is on the sunny side.

The next paragraph strikes me dumb. You say, "I am to blame, if I refuse the opportunity of going with my Lady Bolingbroke to Aix la Chapelle." I must tell I must tell you that a foreign language is mortal to a deaf man. I must have good ears to catch up the words of so nimble a tongued race as the French, having been a dozen years without conversing among them. Mr. Gay is a scandal to all lusty young fellows with healthy countenances; and I think he is not intemperate in a physical sense. I am told he has an asthma, which is a disease I com. miserate more than deafness, because it will not leave a man

1 Richard Daniel, Dean of Armagh, attending as a witness in a lawsuit between Mr. Whaley and the Archbishop of Armagh on the one side, and the Crown on the other, which depended in the House of Lords on a writ of error, and in which the Dean greatly interested himself. Mr. Whaley was at length successful. The shape of the question resolved into a doubt, whether the death of George I. did not abate the writ.-S.

2 "Et dicier, Hic est." Hor. Sat.

quiet either sleeping or waking. I hope he does not intend to print his Opera1 before it is acted; for I defy all your subscriptions to amount to eight hundred pounds. And yet, I believe, he lost as much more for want of human prudence.

I told you some time ago, that I was dwindled to a writer of libels on the lady of the family where I lived, and upon myself. But they never went further; and my Lady Acheson made me give her up all the foul copies, and never gave the fair ones out of her hands, or suffered them to be copied. They were sometimes shewn to intimate friends, to occasion mirth, and that was all. So that I am vexed at your thinking I had any hand in what could come to your eyes. I have some confused notion of seeing a paper called Sir Ralph the Patriot, but am sure it was bad or indifferent; and as to the Lady at Quadrille, I never heard of it. Perhaps it may be the same with a paper of verses called The Journal of a Dublin Lady, which I writ at Sir Arthur Acheson's, and, leaving out what concerned the family, I sent it to be printed in a Paper which Dr. Sheridan had engaged in, called the Intelligencer, of which he made but sorry work, and then dropped it. But the verses were printed by themselves, and most horridly mangled in the press, and were very mediocre in themselves; but did well enough in the manner I mentioned, of a family jest.

I do sincerely assure you, that my frequent old disorders,

1 The Second Part of the Beggar's Opera, which was excluded from the theatre by order of the Chamberlain.-S. It was entitled Polly.

2 Lady Acheson, at whose request the "libels," in the shape of verse, were composed: although it was commonly said, or believed, that they were malicious verses, and a proof of his ingratitude. The most considerable of them is the piece on Hamilton's Bawn. See Life, &c. A far less creditable jeu d'esprit, as far as propriety was concerned, was his Panegyric on the Dean, which, to make matters worse, he attributed to his hostess.

3 It appeared first in the Country Journal, Aug. 1728, and was transferred from thence to the 12th No. of the Intelligencer.-S. The full title of this set of verses is The Progress of Patriotism: a Tale; a satire on Walpole. Scott evidently believes them to be Swift's.

and the scene where I am, and the humour I am in, and some other reasons which time has shewn, and will shew more if. I live, have lowered my small talents with a vengeance, and cooled my disposition to put them in use. I want only to be rich, for I am hard to be pleased; and, for want of riches, people grow every day less solicitous to please me. Therefore I keep humble company, who are happy to come where they can get a bottle of wine, without paying for it. I give my vicar a supper, and his wife a shilling, to play with me at home at backgammon once a fortnight. To all people of quality, and especially of titles, I am not within; or, at least, am deaf a week or two after I am well. But, on Sunday evenings, it costs me six bottles of wine to people whom I cannot keep out. Pray, come over in April, if it be only to convince you that I tell no lies; and the journey will certainly be for your health. Mrs. Brent, my housekeeper, famous in print for digging out the great bottle, says, "she will be your nurse," and the best physicians we have shall attend you without fees: although, I believe, you will have no occasion but to converse with one or two of them, to make them proud. Your letter came but last post, and you see my punctuality. I am unlucky at everything I send to England. Two bottles of Usquebaugh were

broken.

Well, my humble services to my Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Bathurst, Lord Masham and his lady, my dear friend, and Mr. Pulteney, and the Doctor, and Mr. Lewis, and our sickly friend Gay, and my Lady Bolingbroke; and very much to Patty [Blount], who, I hope, will learn to love the world less, before the world leaves off to love her. I am much concerned to hear of my Lord Peterborough being ill. I am exceedingly his servant, and pray God recover his health. As for your

courtier, Mrs. Howard, and her mistress, I have nothing to say, but that they have neither memory nor manners; else I should have some mark of the former from the latter, which I was