-mine. I mean Wycherley, Rowe, Prior, Congreve, Addison, Parnel, etc. and in spite of your heart, you have owned me a cotemporary. Not to mention Lords Oxford, Bolingbroke, Harcourt, Peterborow: in short, I was t'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 to-morrow, 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 hath 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 hath 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 Masham and Mr. Lewis remain, and being your acquaintance, I desire when you see them to deliver my compliments; but chiefly to Mrs. P. B. 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 grieved for living here, because it is perfect retirement, and consequently fittest for those who are grown good for nothing for this 9 Patty Blount, town and kingdom are as much out of the world as North-Wales. My head is so ill that I cannot write a paper full as I used to do; and yet I will not forgive a blank of half an 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 subjects of such epistles are more useful to the public, 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, yet posterity will enjoy the benefit, whenever a court happens to have the least relish for virtue and religion. : LETTER LXXXV. TO DR. SWIFT. December 30, 1736. YOUR very kind letter has made me more melancholy, than almost any thing in this world now can do. For I can bear every thing in it, bad as it is, better than the complaints of my friends. Though others tell me you are in pretty good health and in good spirits, I find the contrary when you open your mind to me and indeed it is but a prudent part, to seem not so concerned about others, nor so crazy ourselves as we really are: for we shall neither be beloved nor esteemed the more, by our common_acquaintance, for any affliction or any infirmity. But to our true friend we may, we must complain, of what ('tis a thousand to one) he complains with us; for if we have known him long, he is old, and if he has known the world long, he is out of humour at it. you have but as much more health than others at If your age, as you have more wit and good temper, you shall not have much of my pity: but if you ever live to have less, you shall not have less of my affection. A whole people will rejoice at every year that shall be added to you, of which you have had a late instance in the public rejoicings on your birth-day. I can assure you, something better and greater than high birth and quality must go toward acquiring those demonstrations of public esteem and love. I have seen a royal birth-day uncelebrated, but by one vile ode, and one hired bonfire. Whatever years may take away from you, they will not take away the general esteem, for your sense, virtue, and charity. The most melancholy effect of years is that you mention, the catalogue of those we loved and have lost, perpetually increasing. How much that reflection struck me, you'll see from the motto I have prefixed to my Book of Letters which so much against my inclination has been drawn from me. It is from Catullus : Quo desiderio veteres revocamus Amores, I detain this letter till I can find some safe convey- "have much reason to fear, those which you have too "partially kept in your hands will get out in some "very disagreeable shape, in case of our mortality: "and the more reason to fear it, since this last month "Curl has obtained from Ireland two letters (one of "Lord Bolingbroke and one of mine, to you, which "we wrote in the year 1723); and he has printed "them, to the best of my memory, rightly, except "one passage concerning Dawley, which must have "been since inserted, since my Lord had not that place at that time. Your answer to that letter he "has not got; it has never been out of my custody; "for whatever is lent is lost (wit as well as money) "to these needy poetical readers." The world will certainly be the better for his change of life. He seems in the whole turn of his letters to be a settled and principled philosopher, thanking fortune for the tranquillity he has been led into by her aversion, like a man driven by a violent wind, from the sea into a calm harbour. You ask me if I have got any supply of new friends to make up for those that are gone? I think that impossible, for not our friends only, but so much of ourselves is gone by the mere flux and course of years, that were the same friends to be restored to us, we could not be restored to ourselves, to enjoy them. But as when the continual washing of a river takes away our flowers and plants, it throws weeds and sedges in their room; so the course of time brings us something, as it deprives us of a great deal; and instead of leaving us what we cultivated, and expected to flourish and adorn us, gives us only what is of some little use, by accident. Thus I have acquired, without my seeking, a few chance-acquaintance, of young men, who look rather to the past age than the present, and therefore the future may have some hopes of them. If I love them, it is because they honour some of those whom I, and the world, have lost, or are losing. Two or three of them have distinguished themselves in parliament, and you will own in a very uncommon manner, when I tell you it is by their asserting of independency, and contempt of corruption. One or two are linked to me by their love of the same studies and the same authors: but I will own to you, my moral capacity has got so much the better of my poetical, that I have few acquaintance on the latter score, and none without a casting weight on the former. But I find my heart hardened and blunt to new impressions, it will scarce receive or retain affections of yesterday; and those friends who 12 have been dead these twenty years, are more present to me now, than those I see daily. You, dear Sir, are one of the former sort to me in all respects but that we can, yet, correspond together. I don't know whether 'tis not more vexatious, to know we are both in one world, without any further intercourse. Adieu. I can say no more, I feel so much: let me drop into common things. Lord Masham has just married his son. Mr. Lewis has just buried his wife. Lord Oxford wept over your letter in pure kindness. Mrs. B. sighs more for you, than for the loss of youth. She says, she will be agreeable many years hence, for she has learned that secret from some receipts of your writing.-Adieu. LETTER LXXXVI. March 23, 1736-7. THOUGH you were never to write to me, yet what you desired in your last, that I would write often to you, would be a very easy task; for every day I talk with you, and of you, in my heart; and I need only set down what that is thinking of. The nearer I find myself verging to that period of life which is to be labour and sorrow, the more I prop myself upon those few supports that are left me. People in this state are like props indeed; they cannot stand alone, but two or more of them can stand, leaning and bearing upon one another. I wish you and I might pass this part of life together. My only necessary care is at an end. I am now my own master too much; my house is too large; my gardens furnish too much wood and provision for my use. My servants are sensible and tender of me; they have intermarried, and are become rather low friends than servants: and to all those that I see here with pleasure, they take a pleasure in being useful. I conclude this is your |