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 defire when you fee them to deliver my compliments; but chiefly to Mrs. P. B. and let me know whether the be as young and agreeable as when I faw her last? Have you got a fupply 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 a perfect retirement, and confequently fittest for those who are grown good for nothing: for this 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 fome 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 fuch 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 poffibly not much mend our manners, yet pofterity will enjoy the benefit, when

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ever a Court happens to have the least relish for Virtue and Religion.

LETTER LXXXIV.

To Dr. SWIFT.

Decemb. 30, 1736.

OUR very kind letter has made me more in this

Y melancholy, than almost an

world now can do. For I can bear every thing in it, bad as it is, better than the complaints of my friends. Tho' others tell me you are in pretty good health, and in good fpirits, I find the contrary when you open your mind to me : And indeed it is but a prudent part, to feem not so concern'd about others, nor so crazy ourselves as we really are: for we shall neither be beloved nor esteem'd 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. If you have but as much more health than others at 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 rejoyce at every year that shall be added to you, of which you have had a late instance in the public rejoycings on your birth-day. I can affure you, fomething 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 lov'd and have loft, perpetually encreasing. How much that Reflection struck me, you'll fee from the Motto I have prefix'd to my Book of Letters, which so much against my inclination has been drawn from me. It is from Catullus:

Quo defiderio veteres revocamus Amores,
Atque olim amissas flemus Amicitias!

I detain this letter till I can find some safe conveyance; innocent as it is, and as all letters of mine must be, of any thing to offend my superiors, except the reverence I bear to true merit and virtue. "But I have much reason to fear, " those which you have too partially kept in your

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your hands will get out in some very disagree"able shape, in case of our mortality: and the " more reason to fear it, since this last month "Curl has obtain'd from Ireland two letters,

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(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 fince in"serted, fince 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 cufto"dy; for whatever is lent is loft (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 fettled and principled Philosopher, thanking Fortune for the Tranquillity he has been led into by her averfion, like a man driven by a violent wind, from the fea into a calm harbour. You ask me, if I have got any fupply of new Friends to make up for those that are gone? I think that impoffible, for not our friends only, but so much of ourselves is gone by the mere flux and course of years, that, were the fame 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 throws weeds and fedges in their room2; 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 fome little use, by accident. Thus I have acquired, without my feeking, a few chance-acquaintance, of young men, who look rather to the past age than the present, and therefore the future may have fome hopes of them. If I love them, it is because they honour fome of those whom I, and the world, have loft, or are lofing. Two or three of them have diftinguish'd themselves in Parliament, and you will own in a very uncommon manner, when I tell you it is by their afserting of Independency, and contempt of Corruption. One or two are link'd to me by their love of the same studies and the fame 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 cafting weight on the former. But I find my heart harden'd and blunt to new

* There are some strokes in this letter, which can be accounted for no otherwise than by the Author's extreme compaffion and tenderress of heart, too much affected by !

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the complaints of a peevish old man, (labouring and impatient under his infirmities) and too intent in the friendly office of mollifying them.