HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH LADY M. W. MONTAGU.

427

parties of Walpole and Stanhope as violent as Whig and Tory. The K. and P.1 continue two [opposed] names. There is nothing like a coalition, but at the masquerade. However, the Princess is a dissenter from it, and has a very small party in so unmodish a separation.

The last I received from your hands was from Peterwaradin. It gave me the joy of thinking you in good health and humour. One or two expressions in it are too generous ever to be forgotten by me. I writ a very melancholy one just before, which was sent to Mr. Stanyan, to be forwarded through Hungary. It would have informed you, how meanly I thought of the pleasures of Italy, without the qualification of your company, and that mere statues and pictures are not more cold to me than I to them. I have had but four of your letters: I have sent several, and wish I knew how many you have received. For God's sake, Madam, send to me as often as you can, in the dependence that there is no man breathing more constantly, or more anxiously, mindful of you. Tell me that you are well, tell me that your little son is well, tell me that your dog (if you have one) is well. Defraud me of no one thing that pleases you: for, whatever that is, it will please me better than anything else can do.

I am always yours.

TO DR. PARNELL,

July 6, 1717.

I write to you as a friend, without apology or study, without intending to appear anything but what I am, and without so much as thinking I stand in need of any excuses or ceremonies for doing so. If it were otherwise, how many pretty things

1 George the First and his son, the Prince of Wales, who were at this timo at open rupture.-C. W. D.

2 From the original, in the possession of Mr. Murray.-E.

6

might be said for my silence, and what ingenious turns might be given to yours,-that, as soon as you have obliged a man, you quite forget it, and that I know nothing is so ungrateful to you as thanks. To tell you that your translation of the Batrachomuomachia is an excellent piece is no more than everybody now knows, and to say that I like it still the better, and am more in your debt than the rest of the world, because it was done at my desire, is no more than you know already; and to acquaint you that there is not one man of any taste who does not approve the whole, verse and prose, is (after all that modesty may fancy it thinks) no more than what you must needs give a good guess at.

The other pieces you entrusted to my care lie preserved with the same veneration as relics, but I look upon them with greater pleasure when I reflect that the owner of them is yet living, though, indeed, you live to me but as a saint or separated spirit, whose sight I must never enjoy, though I am always sure of his good offices. It is through your mediation that Homer is to be saved, I mean my Homer, and, if you could yet throw some hours away rather upon me than him, in suggesting some remarks upon his 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th books, it would be charitable beyond expression; for I am very backward in this year's task, through the interruption of many different cares and distractions, to which none but as intimate and tender a friend as you ought to be privy. I could unload upon you with much comfort and confidence; but the very things I complain of prevent my seeing you in Ireland, which else I had done this

summer.

I have, before I was aware, run into my own affairs too far, when I only meant to have told you the reason that your poems are not published. The present violent bent to politics and earnest animosities of parties, which grow within one another so fast, that one would think even every single heart was breeding a worm to destroy itself these have left no room for any

HIS LOVE AND ESTEEM FOR SWIFT.

429

thought but those of mischief to one another. The Muses are all run mad and turned bacchanals, and a poet now may be like Amphion, and sing with the stones about his ears. This is my case, whose Works my bookseller would publish at such a juncture that I take it to be tempting Providence. I send them you all, and I think them but a poor return for those fine lines you allowed me to print in the front of them.

I must never forget my obligations to the Dean of St. Patrick's, and I hope you never omit to acquaint him with all that esteem, affection, and remembrance, which there is no putting upon paper, and which can only be felt in the heart. You will also put Dr. Ellwood and Mr. Ward in mind of me, each of whom I have desired, by Mr. Jervas, to accept of all I am worth-that is to say, my poems.

Gay is going for France next week in company with the late Secretary, Pulteney. I remain within four miles of London, a man of business and poetry,' from both of which I pray to be delivered. I am always the same in one respect― that is, always yours most sincerely.

TO THE MISSES TERESA AND MARTHA BLOUNT.

Sep. 13, 1717.

You cannot be surprised to find him a dull correspondent, whom you have known so long for a dull companion. though I am pretty sensible that, if I have any wit, I may as

1 At Chiswick.

And

2 Published in ed. of 1735, not reproduced in Quarto. Reappeared in Cooper (1737). Mr. Carruthers gives extracts from the original, which is, he says, dated 13th Sept., 1717. But the reader must remember that there were not only omissions and alterations, but interpolations, in the letter when published for example, the account of the death of Radcliffe, which took place in 1714, and which was here inserted from a suppressed letter written in 114, is proof how Pope altered the letters on publication.-C.W.D.

:

well write to show it as not; yet I will content myself with giving you as plain a history of my pilgrimage as Purchas1 himself, or as John Bunyan could do of his walking through the wilderness of this world, &c.

First, then, I went by water to Hampton Court, unattended by all but my own virtues, which were not of so modest a nature as to keep themselves or me concealed: for I met the Prince, with all his ladies, on horseback, coming from hunting. Mrs. B and Mrs. L2 took me into protection (contrary to the laws against harbouring papists), and gave me a dinner, with something I like better-an opportunity of conversing with Mrs. H. We all agreed that the life of a Maid of Honour was, of all things, the most miserable; and wished that every woman, who envied it, had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham in a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark in the forehead from an uneasy hat, all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for foxhunters, and bear abundance of ruddy-complexioned children. As soon as they can wipe off the sweat of the day, they must simper an hour, and catch cold, in the Princess's apartment: from thence (as Shakspeare has it) to dinner with what appetite they may-and, after that, till midnight, walk, work, or think, which they please. I can easily believe no lone house in Wales, with a mountain and a rookery, is more contemplative than this Court; and, as a proof of it, I need only tell you, Mrs. L[epell] walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality but the King,

1 Author of Purchas his Pilgrimage; or Relations of the World, &c.; and of Haklytus Posthumus: or Purchas his Pilgrimes, Containing a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Land Travels. Died 1626.

2 Mary Bellenden and Mary Lepell, Maids of Honour to the Princess (of Wales). Mrs. H. is Mrs. Howard. The Prince was the future George II. "Beaver hat in orig.-C. W. D.

SEEKS REFUGE IN WINDSOR FOREST.

431 who gave audience to the Vice-Chamberlain, all alone, under the garden wall,1

In short, I heard of no ball, assembly, basset-table, or any place where two or three were gathered together, except Madam Kilmansegg's: to which I had the honour of being invited, and the grace to stay away. I was heartily tired, and posted to park. There we had an excellent discourse of quackery. Dr. S― [Shadwell?] was mentioned with honour. Lady walked a whole hour abroad without dying after it, at least in the time I stayed, though she seemed to be fainting, and had convulsive motions several times in her head. I arrived in the Forest by Tuesday noon, having fled from the face (I wish I could say the horned face) of Moses, who dined in the midway thither. I passed the rest of the day in those woods, where I have so often enjoyed a book and a friend. I made a hymn as I passed through, which ended with a sigh, that I will not tell you the meaning of.

Your doctor is gone the way of all his patients, and was hard put to it, how to dispose of an estate miserably unwieldly and splendidly unuseful to him. Sir Samuel Garth says, that for Radcliffe to leave a library was as if an eunuch should found a seraglio.2 Dr. Slately told a lady, he wondered she could be alive after him. She made answer, she wondered

at it for two reasons-because Dr. Radcliffe was dead, and because Dr. S. was living. I am, &c.

1 This [the last sentence], I am assured, exists in the MS.: otherwise it is very like a passage in a letter to Lady M. W. Montagu (summer of 1718).— C. W. D.

2 Because it was notorious that he had little learning: but he possessed what was better-wonderful sagacity and penetration in judging of diseases. Dr. Young has the same simile in his second Satire :

"Unlearned men of books assume the care,

As Eunuchs are the Guardians of the Fair."-Warton,