LETTER XLVI. April 14. 1730. This is a letter extraordinary, to do and fay nothing but recommend to you (as a clergyman, and a charitable one) a pious and a good work, for a good and an honeft man: moreover he is above feventy, and poor, which you might think included in the word honeft. I fhall think it a kindness done myfelf, if you can propagate Mr. Weftley's fubfcription for his commentary on Job, among your divines, (bifhops excepted, of whom there is no hope), and among such as are believers, or readers of fcripture; even the curious may find®fomething to please them, if they fcorn to be edified. It has been the labour of eight years of this learned man's life; I call him what he is, a learn, ed man, and I engage you will approve his profe more than you formerly could his poetry. Lord Bolingbroke is a favourer of it, and allows you to do your best to ferve an old Tory, and a fufferer for the church of England, though you are a Whig, as I am.. We have here fome verfes in your name, which I am angry at. Sure you would not use me fo ill as to flatter me. I therefore think it is fome other weak Irishman. P. S. I did not take the pen out of Pope's hands, I proteft to you. But fince he will not fill the remainder of the page, I think I may without offence. I feek no epiftolary fame, but am a good deal pleased to think that it will be known, hereafter that you and I lived in the most friendly intimacy together. Pliny writ his letters for the public; fo did Seneca, fo did Balfac, Voiture, &c. Tully did not; and therefore thefe give us more pleasure than any which have come down to us from antiquity. When we read them, we pry into a fecret which was intended to be kept from us. That is a pleasure. We fee Cato, and Brutus, and Pompey, and others, fuch as they really were, and not fuch as the gaping multitude of their own age took them to be, or as hiftorians and poets have reprefented them to ours. That is another pleasure. I remember to have feen a proceffion at Aix-la-Chapelle, wherein an image of Charlemagne is carried on the fhoulders of a man, who is hid by the long robe of the imperial faint. Follow him into the veftry; you fee the bearer flip from under the robe, and the gigantic figure dwindles into an image of the ordinary fize, and is fet by among other lumber. I agree much with Pope, that our climate is rather better than that you are in, and perhaps your public fpirit would be lefs grieved, or oftener comforted, here than there. Come to us therefore on a vifit at least. It will not be the fault of feveral perfons here, if you do not come to live with us. But great good-will and little power produce fuch flow and feeble effects as can be acceptable to hea ven alone, and heavenly men. I know you will be angry with me, if I fay nothing to you of a poor woman who is ftill on the other fide of the water in a moft languishing ftate of health. If the regains ftrength enough to come over, (and fhe is better within a few weeks), I fhall nurfe her in this farm with all the care and tenderness poffible. If fhe does not, I must pay her the laft duty of friendship wherever the is, though I break through the whole plan of life which I have formed in my mind. Adieu. I am most faithfully and affectionately yours. * , *Lady Bolingbroke. + Lord Bolingbroke's feat at Dawley in Middlesex. Wab. LETTER LETTER XLVII. Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr. SWIFT. Jan. 1730-31. Begin my letter, by telling you, that my wife has been returned from abroad about a month, and that her health, though feeble and precarious, is better than it has been thefe two years. She is much your fervant; and as fhe has been her own phyfician with fome fuccefs, imagines fhe could be yours with the fame. Would to God you were within her reach. She would, I believe, prefcribe a great deal of the medicina animi, without having recourfe to the books of Trifmegiftus. Pope and I fhould be her principal apothecaries in the courfe of the cure; and though our beft botanists com. plain, that few of the herbs and fimples which go to the compofition of thefe remedies, are to be found at prefent in our foil, yet there are more of them here than in Ireland; befides, by the help of a little chymistry, the most noxious juices may become falubrious, and rank poison a specific. Pope is now in my library with me, and writes to the world, to the prefent and to future ages, whilst I begin this letter which he is to finish to you. What good he will do mankind, I know not: this comfort he may be fure of; he cannot do less than you have done before him. I have fometimes thought, that if preachers, hangmen, and moral writers, keep vice at a ftand, or fo much as retard the progrefs of it, they do as much as human nature admits. A real reformation is not to be brought about by Ordinary means; it requires thofe extra C 3 ordinary ordinary means which become punishments as well as leffons. National corruption must be purged by national calamities.- -Let us hear from you. We deserve this attention, because we defire it, and because we believe that you defire to hear from us. I LETTER XLVIII. Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr. SWIFT. March 29. Have delayed several pofts anfwering your letter of January laft, in hopes of being able to speak to you about a project which concerns us both, but me the most, fince the fuccefs of it would bring us together. It has been a good white in my head, and at my heart; if it can be fet a-going, you fhall hear more of it. I was ill in the beginning of the winter for near a week, but in no danger, either from the nature of my diftemper, or from the attendance of three phyficians. Since that bilious intermitting fever, I have had, as I had before, better health than the regard I have paid to health deferves. We are both in the decline of life, my dear Dean, and have been fome years going down the hill; let us make the paffage as fmooth as we can. Let us fence against physical evil by care, and the ufe of thofe means which experience must have pointed out to us: let us fence against moral evil by philofophy. I renounce the alternative you propofe. But we may, nay, (if we will follow nature, and do not work up imagination against her plaineft dictates), we fhall of courfe grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interefts of a fyftem out of which we are foon to go. This is is much better than ftupidity. The decay of paf fion strengthens philofophy; for paffion may decay, and ftupidity not fucceed. Paffions (fays Pope, our divine, as you will fee one time or other) are the gales of life. Let us not complain that they do not blow a ftorm. What hurt does age do us, in fubduing what we toil to fubdue all our lives? It It is now fix in the morning. I recal the time, (and am glad it is over), when about this hour I ufed to be going to bed, furfeited with pleasure, or jaded with bufinefs: my head often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rife at this hour refreshed, ferene, and calm ? that the past, and even the prefent affairs of life, ftand like objects at a diftance from me, where I can keep off the difagreeable fo as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to me! Paffions in their force would bring all thefe, nay, even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and reason would but ill defend me in the fcuffle. I leave Pope to fpeak for himself: but I must tell you how much my wife is obliged to you. She fays fhe would find ftrength enough to nurfe you. if you was here; and yet, God knows, the is extremely weak. The flow fever works under, and mines the conftitution: we keep it off fometimes; but still it returns, and makes new breaches before nature can repair the old ones. I am not afhamed to fay to you, that I admire her more every hour of my life. Death is not to her the king of terrors; fhe beholds him without the least. When fhe fuffers much, fhe wishes for him as a deliverer from pain; when life is tolerable, fhe looks on him with diflike, becaufe he is to feparate her from those friends to whom he is more attached than to life itself. You fhall not stay for my next, as long as you have for this letter; and in every one Pope fhall write fomething much better |