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to hear; you are building it feems, on a piece of land you have acquired for that purpose, in fome county of Ireland*. Though I have built in a part of the world which I prefer very little to that where you have been thrown and confined by our ill fortune and yours, yet I am forry you do the fame thing. I have repented a thousand times of my refolution, and I hope you will repent of yours before it is executed. Adieu, my old and worthy friend. May the phyfical evils of life fall as eafily upon you, as ever they did on any man who lived to be old; and may the moral evils which furround us, make as little impreffion on you, as they ought to make on one who has fuch fuperior fenfe to estimate things by, and fo much virtue to wrap himself up in.

My wife defires not to be forgotten by you. She's faithfully your fervant, and zealously your admirer. She will be concerned and disappointed not to find you in this ifland at her return, which hope both she and I had been made to entertain before I went abroad,

LETTER

XLII.

Dr SWIFT to Lord BOLINGBROKE.

Dublin, O&. 31. 1729. Received your Lordship's travelling letter of feveral

languages, and religions. Neither could any thing be more obliging than your kind remembrance of me in fo many places. As to your ten luftres, I remember, when I complained in a letter to Prior, that I was fifty years old, he was half angry in jeft, and answered me out of Terence, Ifta commemoratio eft quafi exprobratio. How then ought I to rattle you, when I have a dozen years more to anfwer for, all monaftically paffed in this country of liberty, and delight, and money, and good company! I go on anfwering your letter. It is you were my hero, but the other never was: yet if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and In the county of Armagh, called Drapier's Hill. † Lord Oxford.

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often vindicated him, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accufations. But I granted he had the greateft inequalities of any man alive, and his whole fcenewas fifty times more a What-d'ye call-it, than yours: for I declare yours was unie; and I with you would fo order it, that the world may be as wife as I upon that article. Mr Pope wishes it too; and I believe there is not a more honeft man in England, even without wit. But you regard us not.I was forty-feven years old * when I began to think of death; and the reflections upon it now begin when I wake in the morning, and end when I am going to fleep.-I writ to Mr Pope, and not to you. My birth, although from a family not undistinguished in its tine, is many degrees inferior to yours; all my pretenfions from perfon and parts infinitely fo; a younger fon of younger fons; you born to a great fortune: yet I fee you, with all your advantages, funk to a degree that you could never have been without them but yet I feo you as much efteemed, as much be loved, as much dreaded, and perhaps more, (though it be almost impoffible), than ever you were in your highest exaltation;-only I grieve like an alderman, that you are not fo rich. And yet, my Lord, I pretend to value money as little as you; and I will call five hundred witneffes (if you will take Irish witneffes) to prove it. I renounce your whole philofophy, because it is not your practice. By the figure of living, (if I ufed that expref fion to Mr Pope), I do not mean the parade, but a suitableness to your mind; and as for the pleasure of giving, I know your foul fuffers when you are debarred of it. Could you, when your own generofity and contempt of outward things, (be not offended, it is no ecclefiaftical, but an Epictetian phrafe), could you, when thefe have brought you to it, come over, and live with Mr Pope and me at the deanery? I could almoft with the experiment were tried-no, God forbid, that ever fuch a fcoundrel as Want should dare to approach you. But in the mean time do not brag; retrenchments are not your talent. But as old Weymouth faid to me in his lordly Latin, Philofopha verba ignava opera; I wish you could learn arithmetic, that three and two make five, and

*The year of Queen Anne's death,

will never make more. My philofophical fpectacles which you advifed me to, will tell me, that I can live on 50 l. a-year, (wine excluded, which my bad health forces me to); but I cannot endure that otium fhould be Gine dignitate.My Lord, what I would have faid of fame, is meant of fame which a man enjoys in his life; because I cannot be a great Lord, I would acquire what is a kind of fubfidium; I would endeavour that my betters fhould feek me by the merit of fomething diftinguifhable, instead of my feeking them. The defire of enjoying it in after times is owing to the fpirit and folly of youth but with age we learn to know the house is fo full, that there is no room for above one or two at most in an age through the whole world. My Lord, I hate and love to write to you; it gives me pleafure, and kills me with melancholy. The d- take ftupidity, that it will not come to fupply the want of philofophy.

You

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08. 31. 1729;

OU were fo careful in fending me the Dunciad, that I have received five of them, and have pleafed four friends. I am one of every body who approve every part of it, text and comment; but am one abftracted from every body, in the happiness of being recorded your friend, while wit, and humour, and politeness fhall have any memorial among us. As for your octavo edi tion, we know nothing of it; for we have an octavo of our own, which hath fold wonderfully, confidering our poverty, and dulnefs, the confequence of it.

I writ this poft to Loid B. and told him in my letter, that, with a great deal of lofs for a frolic, I will fly as foon as build; I have neither years, nor fpirits, nor money, nor patience for such amufements. The frolic is gone off, and I am only 100 1. the poorer. But this kingdom is grown fo exceffively poor, that we wife men must think of nothing but getting a little ready money. It is thought there are not two hundred thou

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fand pounds of fpecie in the whole island; for we return thrice as much to our abfentees as we get by trade, and fo are all inevitably undone; which I have been telling them in print thefe ten years, to as little purpose as if it came from the pulpit. And this is enough for Irish politics, which I only mention, because it so nearly touches myself. I must repeat what, I believe, I have faid before, that I pity you inuch more than Mrs Pope.. Such a parent and friend hourly declining before your eyes, is an object very unfit for your health, and duty, and tender difpofition; and I pray God it may not af. fect you too much. I am as much fatisfied that your additional 100l. per annum is for your life as if it were You have enough to leave your friends, I' would not have them glad to be rid of you; and I shalk take care that none but my enemies will be glad to get. rid of me. You have imbroiled. me with Lord Babout the figure of living, and the pleasure of giving. I am under the neceffity of fome little paltry figure in the ftation I am but I make it as little as poffible. As to the other part, you are base, because I thought myself as great a giver as ever was of my ability; and yet in proportion you exceed, and have kept it till now a fecret even from me, when I wondered how you were able to live with your whole little revenue. Adieu. LC- who doth his duty of a good governor in inflaving this kingdom as much as he can, talks to me of you in the manner he ought.

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Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr SWIFT.

Νου. 19. 1729: Find that you have laid aside your project of builds ing in Ireland, and that we fhall fee you in this ifland cum zephyris, et hirundine prima. I know not whe ther the love of fame increases as we advance in age; fure I am that the force of friendfhip does. I loved you almost twenty years ago; I thought of you as well as I do now; better was beyond the power of concep tion, or, to avoid an equivoque, beyond the extent of my ideas. Whether you are more obliged to me for

loving you as well when I knew you lefs, or for loving you as well after loving you so many years, I fhall not determine. What I would say is this: Whilft my mind grows daily more independent of the world, and feels lefs need of leaning on external objects, the ideas of friendship return oftener, they busy me, they warm me more is it that we grow more tender as the moment of our great feparation approaches? or is it that they who are to live together in another state, (for vera amicitia non nifi inter bonos), begin to feel more ftrongly that divine fympathy which is to be the great band of their future fociety? There is no one thought. which fooths my mind like this. I encourage my imagination to purfue it, and am heartily afflicted when another faculty of the intellect * comes boisterously in, and wakes me from fo pleafing a dream, if it be a dream. I will dwell no more on œconomics than I have: done in my former letter. Thus much only I will fay, that otium cum dignitate is to be had with 500 1. a-year as well as with 5000: the difference will be found in the value of the man, and not in that of the eftate. I do affure you, that I have never quitted the defign of collecting, revifing, improving, and extending feveral. materials which are ftill in my power; and I hope that. the time of fetting myfelf about this laft work of my life is not far off. Many papers of much curiofity and importance are loft, and fome of them in a manner which would furprise and anger you. However, I fhall be able to convey feveral great truths to pofterity, fo clearly and fo authentically, that the Burnets and the Oldmixons of another age may rail, but not be able to deceive. Adieu, my friend. I have taken up more of this paper than belongs to me, fince Pope is to write

Viz Reafon. Tully (or, what is much the fame, his difciple) ob ferves fomething like this on the like occafion; where, fpeaking of Plato's famous book of the foul, he fays, Nefcio quomodo, dum lego, adfentior; cum pofui librum, et mecum ipfe de immortalitate animorum copi cogitare, adfenfio illa omnis elabitur. Cicero feems to have had but a confufed notion of the caufe which the letter writer has here explained, namely, that the imagination is always ready to indulge fo flattering an idea, but feverer reafon corrects and difclaims it. Asto RELIGION, that is out of the question; for Tully wrote to his few philofophic friends. Warb.

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