owned me a contemporary. Not to mention lords Oxford, Bolingbroke, Harcourt, Peterborow: in short, I was the other day recollecting twenty-seven great ministers, or men of wit and learning, who are all dead, and all of my acquaintance, within twenty years past; neither have I the grace to be sorry, that the present times are drawn to the dregs, as well as my own life.---May my friends be happy in this and a better life, but I value not what becomes of posterity, when I consider from what monsters they are to spring.---My lord Orrery writes to you tomorrow, and you see I send this under his cover, or at least franked by him. He has 3000l. a year about Cork, and the neighbourhood, and has more than three years rent unpaid; this is our condition in these blessed times. I writ to your neighbour about a month ago, and subscribed my name: I fear he has not received my letter, and wish you would ask him; but perhaps he is still a rambling; for we hear of him at Newmarket, and that Boerhaave has restored his health.---How my services are lessened of late with the number of my friends on your side! yet my lord Bathurst and lord Marsham and Mr. Lewis remain; and being your acquaintance I desire when you see them to deliver my compliments; but chiefly to Mrs. Patty Blount, and let me know whether she be as young and agreeable as when I saw her last? Have you got a supply of new friends to make up for those who are gone? and are they equal to the first? I am afraid it is with friends as with times; and that the laudator temporis acti se puero *, is equally applicable to both. I am less * Ill-natur'd censor of the present age, grieved grieved for living here, because it is a perfect retirement, and consequently fittest for those who are grown good for nothing; for this town and kingdom are as much out of the world as North Wales. ---My head is so ill that I cannot write a paper ful! as I used to do; and yet I will not forgive a blank of half a inch from you.---I had reason to expect from some of your letters, that we were to hope for more epistles of morality; and I assure you, my acquaintance resent that they have not seen my name at the head of one. The subject of such epistles are more useful to the publick, by your manner of handling them, than any of all your writings; and although in so profligate a world as ours they may possibly not much mend our manners, yeṭ posterity will enjoy the benefit, whenever a court happens to have the least relish for virtue and religion. SIR, CASTLE-DURROW, DEC. 4, 1736. IT is now a month since you favoured me with your letter; I fear the trouble of another from me may persuade you to excuse my acknowledgments * Only son of Thomas Flower, esq. of Durrow, co. Kilkenny. He was born in 1685; and represented the borough of Portarlington in parliament in the reign of queen Anne; was sheriff of Kilkenny 1731; and in 1733 was created baron of Castle-Durrow, took his seat among the Irish peers, and was called to the privycouncil. He died in May 1746; and his successor was created viscount Ashbrook in 1751. N. of of it; but I am too sensible of the honour you do me, to suffer a correspondence to drop, which I know some of the greatest men in this age have gloried in. How then must my heart be elated! The fly on the chariot wheel is too trite a quotation: I shall rather compare myself to a worm enlivened by the sun, and crawling before it. I imagine there is a tinge of vanity in the meanest insect; and who knows but even this reptile may pride itself in its curls and twists before its benefactor? This is more than the greatest philosopher can determine. Guesses are the privilege of the ignorant, our undoubted right, and what you can never lay claim to. I am quite angry with your servant, for not acquainting you I was at your door. I greatly commend both your economy and the company you admit at your table. I am told your wine is excellent. The additional groat is, I hope, for suet to your pudding. I fancy I am as old an acquaintance as most you have in this kingdom; though it is not my happiness to be so qualified as to merit that intimacy you profess for a few. It is now to little purpose to repine; though it grieves me to think I was a favourite of dean. Alrich, the greatest man that ever presided in that high post; that over Virgil and Horace, Rag* and Philips smoked many a pipe, and drank many a quart with me, beside the expence of a bushel of nuts, and that now I am scarce able to relish their beauties. I know it is death to you to see either of them mangled; but a scrap of paper I design to enclose, will convince you of the truth. It was in joke to an old woman of seventy, who takes * Edmund Smith, usually called Rag Smith. N. 1 the last line so heinously, that, thanks to my stars, she hates me in earnest. So I devote myself to ladies of fewer years, and more discretion. This, and such other innocent amusements, I devote myself to in my retirement. Once in two years I appear in the anus of the world, our metropolis. His grace, my old acquaintance, told me, I began to contract strange old fashioned rust, and advised me to burst out of my solitude, and refit myself for the publick; but my own notion of the world, for some time past, is so confirmed by the sanction of your opinion of it, that I resolve this same rust shall be as dear to me, as that which enhanced the value · of poor Dr. Woodward's shield *; though it gave such offence to his cleanly maid, that she polished it to none at all. I shall appear very inconsistent with myself in now telling you, that I still design the latter end of next month for England. You allow I have some pretence to go there. My progress with my son will be farther; for which, perhaps, you too will condemn me, as well as other friends do. I shall be proud of the honour of your commands, and, with your leave, will wait upon you for them. I design to send you a pot of woodcocks for a christmas-box: small as the present is, pray believe I am, * The character of Dr. Cornelius Scriblerus, in the Memoirs of his son Martinus Scriblerus, is intended for Dr. Woodward, who wrote a dissertation on an antient shield; and Dr. Cornelius is represented as having intended to place his son in what he conceived to be an antique shield, to be christened; but which being given to the maid, with its venerable rust upon it, she scoured it bright, and then it appeared to be nothing more than an old sconce without a nozzle. H. with with sincere respect, sir, your most obedient humble servant, CASTLEDURROW. I hope you are as well as the news says. A propos, can you agree with me, that the little operator of mine, whom you saw lately at his grace of Dublin's, has a resemblance of your friend Mr. Pope? Verses by lord CASTLEDURROW, enclosed in the above letter. Lætitia's Character of her Lover rendered in metre. Old women sometimes can raise his desire; The Lover's Answer. Parciùs junctas quatiunt fenestras HOR. 1. Od. xxv. No more shall frolick youth advance And never be unbarr'd thy door. |