LETTER LXX. Sept. 1. 1733. 1. Have every day wished to write to you, to fay a a thoufand things; and yet, I think, I fhould not have writ to you now, if I was not fick of writing any thing, fick of myself, and (what is worfe) fick of my friends too. The world is become too bufy for me; every body is fo concerned for the public, that all private enjoyments are loft or difrelished. I write more to show you I am tired of this life, than to tell you any thing relating to it. I live as I did, I think as I did, I love you as I did but all these are to no purpofe; the world will not live, think, or love, as I do. I am troubled for, and vexed at all my friends by turns. Here are fome whom you love, and who love you; yet they receive no proofs of that affection from you, and they give none of it to you. There is a great gulf between. In earneft, I would go a thoufand miles by land to fee you, but the fea I dread. My ailments are fuch, that I really believe a feaficknefs (confidering the oppreffion of colical pains, and the great weaknefs of my breast) would kill me: and if I did not die of that, I muft of the exceffive eating and drinking of your hofpitable town, and the exceffive flattery of your most poetical country. I hate to be crammed either way. your hungry poets, and your rhyming poets digest it, I cannot. I like much better to be abused, and half starved, than to be fo over-praised and overfed. Drown Ireland! for having caught you, and for having kept you. I only referve a little charity for her, for knowing your value, and efteem Let ing you. You are the only patriot I know, who is not hated for serving his country. The man who drew your character, and printed it here, was not much in the wrong in many things he faid of you : yet he was a very impertinent fellow for faying them in words quite different from those you had yourself employed before on the same subject : for furely to alter your words is to prejudice them; and I have been told, that a man himself can hardly fay the fame thing twice over with equal happiness; nature is fo much a better thing than artifice. I have written nothing this year. It is no affectation to tell you, my mother's lofs has turned my frame of thinking. The habit of a whole life is a ftronger thing than all the reafon in the world. I know I ought to be eafy, and to be free; but I am dejected, I am confined: my whole amusement is in reviewing my paft life, not in laying plans for my future. I wish you cared as little for popular applaufe as I; as little for any nation, in contradiftinction to others, as I: and then I fancy, you that are not afraid of the fea, you that are a ftronger man at fixty than ever I was at twenty, would come and fee feveral people, who are (at laft) like the primitive Chriftians, of one foul and of one mind. The day is come, which I have often wished, but .never thought to fee, when every mortal that I efteem, is of the fume fentiment in politics and in religion. Adieu. All you love are yours; but all are bufy, except (dear Sir) your fincere friend. LET *************** LETTER LXXI. Jan. 6. 1734. I Never think of you, and can never write to you now, without drawing many of thofe fhort fighs of which we have formerly talked. The reflection both of the friends we have been deprived of by death, and of those from whom we are separated almost as eternally by abfence, checks me to that degree, that it takes away in a manner, the pleafure (which yet I feel very fenfibly too) of thinking I am now converfing with you. You have been filent to me as to your works; whether thofe printed here are, or are not genuine. But one, I am fure, is yours; and your method of concealing yourself, puts me in mind of the Indian bird I have read of, who hides his head in a hole, while all his feathers and tail ftick out. You'll have immediately by feveral franks (even before it is here publifhed) my epiftle to Lord Cobham, part of my Opus Magnum, and the laft Effay on Man; both which. I conclude, will be grateful to your bookfeller, on whom you pleafe to bestow them fo early. There is a woman's war declared against me by a certain Lord; his weapons are the fame which women and children ufe, a pin to fcratch, and afquirt to befpatter. I writ a fort of anfwer; but was afhamed to enter the lifts with him, and after fhewing it to fome people, fuppreffed it otherwise it was such as was worthy of him, and worthy of me. I was three weeks this autumn with Lord Peterborow; who rejoices in your doings, and always fpeaks with the greatest affection of you. I need not tell you who else do the fame; you may be fure almost all those whom lever fee, or defire to fee. I wonder not that B paid you no fort of civility, while he was in Ireland: he is too much a half-wit to love a true wit; and too much half-honeft, to esteem any entire merit. I hope and think he hates me too, and I will do my best to make him he is fo infupportably infolent in his civility to me when he meets me at one third place, that I muft affront him to be rid of it. The ftrict neutrality as to public parties, which I have conftantly obferved in all my writings, I think gives me the more title to attack fuch men, as flander and belye my character in private, to those who know me not. Yet even this is a liberty I will never take, unless at the fame time they are enemies to all men, as well as to me.-Pray write to me when you can. If ever I can come to you, I will if not, may Providence be our friend and our guard through this fimple world, where nothing is valuable but fense and friendship. Adieu, dear Sir; may health attend your years, and then may many years be added to you. : P. S. I am just now told, a very curious lady intends to write to you, to pump you about fome poems faid to be yours. Pray tell her, that you have not answered me on the fame queftions, and that I fhall-take it as a thing never to be forgiven from you, if you tell another what you have concealed from me. LET Sept. 15 1734. I Have ever thought you as fenfible as any man I knew, of all the delicacies of friendship and yet I fear (from what Lord B. tells me you faid in your last letter) that you did not quite understand the reafon of my late filence. I affure you it proceeded wholly from the tender kindness I bear you. When the heart is full, it is angry at all words that cannot come up to it; and you are now the man in all the world I am most troubled to write to, for you are the friend I have left, whom I am moft grieved about. Death has not done worse to me in feparating poor Gay, or any other, than difeafe and abfence in dividing us. I am afraid to know how you do; fince moft accounts I have, give me pain for you, and I am unwilling to tell the condition of my own health. If it were good, I would fee you; and yet if I found you in that very condition of deafnefs, which made you fly from us while we were together, what comfort could we derive from it? In writing often I should find great relief, could we write freely; and yet, when I have done fo, you feem, by not answering in a very long time, to feel either the fame uneafinefs as I do, or to abstain, from some prudential reafon Yet I am fure, nothing that you and I would fay to cach other, though our whole fouls were to be laid open to the clerks of the poft-office) would hurt either of us fo much, in the opinion of any honeft man or good fubject, as the intervening, officious impertinence of those goers between us, who in England pretend to intimacies with you, and in Ireland to |