your fortune to what will support you with ease and plenty, a good house and a garden. The want of this I much dread for you: For I have often known a She-cousin of a good family and small fortune, passing months among all her relations, living in plenty, and taking her circles, till she grew an old Maid, and every body weary of her. Mr. Pope complains of feldom seeing you; but the evil is unavoidable, for different circumstances of life have always separated those whom friendship would join: God hath taken care of this, to prevent any progress towards real happiness here, which would make life more defirable, and death too dreadful. I hope you have now one advantage that you always wanted before, and the want of which made your friends as uneasy as it did yourself; I mean the removal of that folicitude about your own affairs, which perpetually fill'd your thoughts and disturb'd your conversation. For if it be true what Mr. Pope serioufly tells me, you will have opportunity of saving every groat of the interest you receive; and fo by the time he and you grow weary of each other, you will be able to pass the rest of your wineless life, in ease and plenty, with the additional triumphal comfort of never having receiv'd a penny from those tasteless ungrateful people from whom you deserved so much, and who

deserve no better Genius's than those by whom they are celebrated.---If you fee Mr. Cefar, prefent my humble service to him, and let him know that the scrub Libel printed against me here, and re-printed in London, for which he shewed a kind concern to a friend of us both, was written by myself, and sent to a Whig-printer : It was in the style and genius of fuch scoundrels, when the humour of libelling ran in this strain against a friend of mine whom you know. ---But my paper is ended.

Writ to

LETTER LI.

Dublin, Nov 19, 1730. a long letter about a fortnight

I past concluding you were in London

whence I understood one of your former was dated: Nor did I imagine you were gone back to Aimsbury so late in the year, at which season I take the Country to be only a scene for those who have been ill used by a Court on account of their Virtues; which is a state of happiness the more valuable, because it is not accompanied by Envy, although nothing deserves it more. I would gladly fell a Dukedom to lofe favour in the manner their Graces have done. I believe my Lord Carteret, since he is no VOL. IX. longer

N

longer Lieutenant, may not wish me ill, and I have told him often that I only hated him as Lieutenant: I confess he had a genteeler manner of binding the chains of this kingdom than most of his predecessors, and I confefs at the same time that he had, fix times, a regard to my recommendation by preferring so many of my friends in the church; the two laft acts of his favour were to add to the dignities of Dr. Delany and Mr. Stopford, the last of whom was by you and Mr. Pope put into Mr. Pultney's hands. I told you in my last, that a continuance of giddiness (tho' not in a violent degree) prevented my thoughts of England at present. For in my case a domeftic life is neceffary, where I can with the Centurion fay to my fervant, Go, and he goeth, and Do this, and he doth it. I now hate all people whom I cannot command, and confequently a Duchefs is at this time the hatefullest Lady in the world to me, one only excepted, and I beg her Grace's pardon for that exception, for, in the way I mean, her Grace is ten thousand times more hateful. I confefs I begin to apprehend you will squander my money, because I hope you never less wanted it; and if you go on with success for two years longer, I fear I shall not have a farthing of it left. The Doctor hath ill-informed me, who says that Mr. Pope is at present the chief Poetical Favourite, yet Mr. Pope himself talks like a Philosopher and one wholly retir'd. But the vogue of our few honeft folks here is, that Duck is absolutely to fucceed Eufden in the laurel, the contention being between Concannen or Theobald, or fome other Hero of the Dunciad. I never charged you for not talking, but the dubious state of your affairs in those days was too much the subject, and I wish the Duchefs had been the voucher of your amendment. Nothing so much contributed to my ease as the turn of affairs after the Queen's death; by which all my hopes being cut off, I could have no ambition left, unless I would have been a greater rafcal than happened to fuit with my temper. I therefore fat down quietly at my morsel, adding only thereto a principle of hatred to all fucceeding Measures and Ministries by way of fauce to relish my meat: And I confess one point of conduct in my Lady Duchefs's life hath added much poignancy to it. There is a good Irish practical bull towards the end of your letter, where you spend a dozen l'nes in telling me you must leave off, that you may give my Lady Duchess room to write, and so you proceed to within two or three lines of the bottom; though I would have remitted you my 2001. to have left place for as many

Madam,

To the Duchess.

My beginning thus low is meant as a mark of respect, like receiving your Grace at the bottom of the stairs. I am glad you know your duty; for it hath been a known and establish'd rule above twenty years in England, that the first advances have been conftantly made me by all Ladies who afpir'd to my acquaintance, and the greater their quality, the greater were their advances. Yet, I know not by what weakness, I have condescended gracioufly to dispense with you upon this important article. Though Mr. Gay will tell you that a nameless person sent me eleven messages before I would yield to a vifit: I mean a person to whom he is infinitely obliged, for being the occasion of the happiness he now enjoys under the protection and favour of my Lord Duke and your Grace. At the same time, I cannot forbear telling you, Madam, that you are a little imperious in your manner of making your advances. You say, perhaps you shall not like me; I affirm you are mistaken, which I can plainly demonstrate : for I have certain intelligence, that another perfon dislikes me of late, with whose likings yours have not for some time past gone toge