promised to recommend this request to your Excellency. And I hope you will please to believe that it proceeds wholly from juftice and humanity, for he is neither a dependent nor relation of mine.

I humbly take my leave, and remain, with the utmost respect,

MY LORD, &c.

LETTER XL.

To Mrs. HOWARD. *

MADAM,

February ift, 1726-7.

IAM fo very nice, and my workmen fo

fearful, that there is yet but one piece finished of the two, which you commanded me to fend to her Royal Highness. The other was done; but, the undertaker confeffing it was not to the utmost perfection, hath obtained my leave for a fecond attempt; in which he promifes to do wonders, and tells me it will be ready in another fortnight; although, perhaps, the humour may be quite off both with the Princefs and you: For fuch were courts

*Afterwards Countefs of Suffolk.

when I knew them. I defire you will order her Royal Highness to go to Richmond as soon as she can this fummer, because she will have the pleasure of my neighbourhood; for I hope to be in London by the middle of March, and I do not love you much when you are there: And I expect to find you are altered by flattery, or ill company. I am glad to tell you now, that I honour you with my esteem; because, when the Princess grows a crowned head, you fhall have no more fuch compliments; and it is a hundred to one whether you will deferve them. I do not approve of your advice to bring over pumps for myself, but will rather provide another fhoe for his Royal Highness *, against there shall be occafion. I will tell you an odd accident that happened this night: While I was careffing one of my Houyhnhnms, he bit my little finger fo cruelly, that I am hardly able to write; and I impute the cause to fome foreknowledge in him, that I was going to write to a Sieve Yahoo, (for fo you are pleased to call yourself.) Pray tell Sir Robert Walpole, that, if he does not ufe me better

* Vide Gulliver's Travels, chap. IV.

next fummer than he did laft, I will study revenge, and it fhall be vengeance ecclefiaftique. I hope you will get your house and wine ready, to which Mr. Gay and I are to have free accefs when you are at court: For, as to Mr. Pope, he is not worth confidering on fuch occafions. I am forry I have no complaints to make of her Royal Highnefs: Therefore, I think, I may let you tell her, That every grain of virtue and good sense, in one of her rank, con-. fidering the bad education among flatterers and adorers, is worth a dozen in any inferior person. Now, if what the world fays be true, that she excels all other ladies at leaft a dozen times; then, multiply one dozen by the other, you will find the number to be one hundred and forty-four. If any one can say a civiler thing, let him, for I think it too much for me.

I have fome title to be angry with you, for not commanding those who write to me to mention your remembrance. Can there be any thing more base, than to make me the firft advances, and then be inconftant. It is very hard, that I must crofs the fea, and ride two hundred miles, to reproach you in perfon; when, at the VOL. XVI. fame

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fame time, I feel myfelf, with the most

entire respect,

MADAM, &C.

LETTER XLI.

To the ARCHBISHOP of DUBLIN. *

MY LORD,

May 18th, 1727.

UNDERSTAND, by some letters juft come to my hands, that, at your Grace's vifitation of the Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick's, a proxy was insisted on from the Dean, the vifitation adjourned, and a rule entered that a proxy be exhibited within a month. If your Grace can find, in any of your old records or of ours, that a proxy was ever demanded for a Dean of St. Patrick's, you will have some reason to infist upon it: But, as it is a thing wholly new and unheard of, let the confequences be what they will, I fhall never comply with it. I take my chapter to be my proxy, if I want any: It is only through them that you vifit me, and my fub-dean is to answer for me. I am neither civilian nor canonist : Your Grace may probably be both, with

Doctor William King,

the

the addition of a dextrous deputy. My proceeding fhall be only upon one maxim: Never to yield to an oppreffion, to justify which no precedent can be produced. I fee very well how personal all this proceeding is; and how, from the very moment of the Queen's death, your Grace hath thought fit to take every opportunity of giving me all forts of uneafinefs, without ever giving me, in my whole life, one fingle mark of your favour beyond common civilities. And, if it were not below a man of spirit to make complaints, I could date them from fix and twenty years past. This hath fomething in it the more extraordinary, because, during fome years, when I was thought to have credit with those in power, I employed it to the utmoft for your service, with great fuccefs, where it could be moft useful, against many violent enemies you then had, however unjustly; by which I got more ill-will than by any other action of my life, I mean from my friends. My Lord, I have lived, and by the grace of God will die, an enemy to fervitude and flavery of all kinds: And I believe, at the fame time, that perfons of fuch a difpofition will be the most ready to pay obedience wherever it is due. Your Grace

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