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inscribed to me while I am alive, and you just in the time when wit and wisdom are in the height. I must once more repeat Cicero's desire to a friend; orna me. A month ago were sent me over by a friend of mine, the works of John Hughes, esq., they are in verse and prose. I never heard of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a subscriber too. He is too grave a poet for me, and I think among the mediocribus in prose as well as verse. have the honour to know Dr. Rundle; he is indeed worth all the rest you ever sent us, but that is saying nothing, for he answers your character; I have dined thrice in his company. He brought over a worthy clergyman of this kingdom as his chaplain, which was a very wise and popular action. His only fault is, that he drinks no wine, and I drink nothing else.

This kingdom is now absolutely starving, by the means of every oppression that can be inflicted on mankind---shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord. You advise me right, not to trouble myself about the world: but, oppression tortures me, and I cannot live without meat and drink, nor get either without money; and money is not to be had, except they will make me a bishop, or a judge, or a colonel, or a commissioner of the revenues. Adieu.

JON, SWIFT.

FROM MR. POPE.

To answer your question as to Mr. Hughes, what

he wanted as to genius he made up as an honest man: but he was of the class you think him

I am glad you think of Dr. Rundle as I do. He will be an honour to the bishops, and a disgrace to one bishop; two things you will like: but what you will like more particularly, he will be a friend and benefactor even to your unfriended, unbenefited nation; he will be a friend to the human race, whereever he goes. Pray tell him my best wishes for his health and long life: I wish you and he came over together, or that I were with you. I never saw a man so seldom, whom I liked so much, as Dr. Rundle.

Lord Peterborow I went to take a last leave of, at his setting sail for Lisbon: no body can be more wasted, no soul can be more alive. Immediately after the severest operation of being cut into the bladder for a suppression of urine, he took coach, and got from Bristol to Southampton. This is a man that will neither live nor die like any other mortal.

* But was the author of "The Siege of Damascus" one of the mediocribus ? Swift and Pope seem not to recollect the value and rank of an author who could write such a tragedy. May I venture, on this occasion, to give a little table of the different sorts of poets, ranged in order according to their merits? Writers of occasional and miscellaneous family things, and tea-table miscellanies; writers of Pastorals; of Epistles; of Satires; of Didactic poems; of Odes; of Tragedies; of Epic Poems. Dr. WARTON.

† On this account he is celebrated by Pope :

"Rundle has a heart."

His Letters have been published by Dallaway. BoWLES,

Poor

Poor lord Peterborow*! There is another string lost, that would have helped to draw you hither! he ordered on his death-bed his watch to be given me (that which had accompanied him in all his travels) with this reason, “That I might have something to put me every day in mind of him." It was a present to him from the king of Sicily, whose arms and insignia are graved on the inner case; on the outer, I have put this inscription. "Victor Amadeus, rex Siciliæ, dux Sabaudiæ, &c. &c. Carolo Mordaunt, comiti de Peterborow, D. D. Car. Mor.com. de Pet. Alexandro Pope moriens legavit. 1735.

Pray write to me a little oftener: and if there be a thing left in the world that pleases you, tell it one who will partake of it. I hear with approbation and pleasure, that your present care is to relieve the most helpless of this world, those objects which most want our compassion, though generally made the scorn of their fellow-creatures, such as are less innocent than they. You always think generously; and of all charities, this is the most disinterested, and least vainglorious, done to such as never will thank you, or can praise you for it.

God bless you with ease, if not with pleasure; with a tolerable state of health, if not with its full enjoyment; with a resigned temper of mind, if not a very cheerful one. It is upon these terms I live myself, though younger than you; and I repine not at my lot, could but the presence of a few that I love be added to these. Adieu.

* See an interesting letter of Pope's to Martha Blount, relating the sufferings and heroic conduct of Lord Peterborow, in the tenth volume of Mr. Bowles's edition of Pope. N.

+ Idiots. N.

VOL. XIII.

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FROM LADY BETTY GERMAIN.

SEPT. 4, 1735.

IF you are not angry with me for my long silence,

I take it ill, and need make no excuse; and if you are angry, then I would not willingly make you sorry too, which I know you will be, when I tell you, that I was laid up at Knowle with a severe fit of the gout. And since that infallible cure for all diseases, which all great fools and talkers wish joy of, I have never been quite well, but have had continually some disorder or other upon me, which made my head and spirits unfit for writing or indeed doing any thing I should: and am still so much out of order, that I am under great apprehensions I shall not be able to go, next year, part of the journey to Ireland with their graces ; which is also part of the road to Drayton, where I intend to stay till November, in hopes that summer deferred its coming till I was there; for I am sure, hitherto, we have had little but winter weather.

I am glad matters are settled between his grace of Dorset and you; and I dare answer, as you are both right thinkers, and of course upright actors, there wants but little explanation between you ; since I, that am the gobetween, can easily find out, that he has as sincere a value for you, as you have for him. I do assure you I am extremely delighted, that since lady Suffolk would take a master (commonly called a husband) she chose my brother George: for if I am not partial to him, which

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which indeed I do not know that I am, his sincere value, love, and esteem for her, must make him a good one.

We are now full of expectation of his royal highness's wedding *. She has jewels bought for her, and clothes bespoke: and a gallery of communication is making between his apartment and St. James's; but as I do not love to pry into mysteries of state, I do not at all know when the lady will come over.

Your friend Mrs. Floyd is grown fat and well, under the duchess of Dorset's care and direction at Knowle; and my saucy niece is gone for a few days (and I verily believe as far as she can decently help) to her father's. Our friend Curll has again reprinted what he called our letters, as a proper third part of Mr. Pope's. He should have made those bitter silly verses on me to have been his too, instead of sir William Trumbull's, whom they just as much belonged to. But you patriots are so afraid of suppressing the press, that every body must suffer under that, and the lies of the newspapers, without hopes of redress. Adieu, my dear Dean.

* Frederick, then prince of Wales. D. S.

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