impressions, it will scarce receive or retain affections of yesterday; and those friends who have been dead these twenty years, are more present to me now, than these I see daily. You, dear Sir, are one of the former fort to me in all respects, but that we can, yet, correspond together. I don't know whether 'tis not more vexatious, to know we are both in one world, without any further intercourse. Adieu. I can fay no more, I feel so much: Let me drop into common things---Lord Masham has just mar ried his fon. Mr. Lewis has just buried his wife. Lord Oxford wept over your letter in pure kindness. Mrs. B. fighs more for you than for the lofs of youth. She says, she will be agreeable many years hence, for she has learn'd that fecret from some receipts of your writing.---Adieu.

T

LETTER LXXXV,

March 23, 1736-7.

HO' you were never to write to me, yet what you defired in your last, that I would write often to you, would be a very easy task; for every day I talk with you, and of you, in my heart; and I need only set down what that is thinking of. The nearer I find myself verging

to

to that period of life which is to be labour and forrow, the more I prop myself upon those few supports that are left me. People in this state are like props indeed, they cannot stand alone, but two or more of them can stand, leaning and bearing upon one another. I wish you and I might pass this part of life together. My only necessary care is at an end. I am now my own mafter too much; my house is too large; my gardens furnish too much wood and provifion for my use. My servants are sensible and tender of me; they have intermarried, and are become rather low friends than servants: and to all those that I fee here with pleasure, they take a pleasure in being useful. I conclude this is your cafe too in your domeftic life, and I fometimes think of your old house-keeper as my nurse; tho' I tremble at the fea, which only divides us. As your fears are not fo great as mine, and, I firmly hope, your strength still much greater, is it utterly impoffible, it might once more be fome pleasure to you to fee England? My fole motive in propofing France to meet in, was the narrowness of the passage by sea from hence, the Physicians having told me the weakness of my breaft, &c. is fuch, as a fea-fickness might indanger my life. Thơ one or two of our friends are gone, fince you faw your native country, there remain a few more who will last

fo

so till death, and who, I cannot but hope, have an attractive power to draw you back to a Country, which cannot quite be funk or enflaved, while such spirits remain. And let me tell you, there are a few more of the same spirit, who would awaken all your old Ideas, and revive your hopes of her future recovery and Virtue. These look up to you with reverence, and would be animated by the fight of him at whose foul they have taken fire, in his writings, and deriv'd from thence as much love of their species as is confiftent with a contempt for the knaves of it.

I could never be weary, except at the eyes, of writing to you; but my real reason (and a strong one it is) for doing it so seldom, is Fear; Fear of a very great and experienc'd evil, that of my letters being kept by the partiality of friends, and passing into the hands, and malice of enemies; who publish them with all their Imperfections on their head; so that I write not on the common terms of honest men.

Would to God you would come over with Lord Orrery, whose care of you in the voyage I could fo certainly depend on; and bring with you your old house-keeper and two or three servants. I have room for all, a heart for all, and (think what you will) a fortune for all. We could, were we together, contrive to make

our

1

our last days easy, and leave some fort of Monument, what Friends two Wits could be in spite of all the fools in the world. Adieu.

IT

LETTER LXXXVI.

From Dr. SWIFT.

Dublin, May 31, 1737.

T is true, I owe you some letters, but it has pleased God, that I have not been in a condition to pay you. When you shall be at my age, perhaps you may lie under the fame disability to your prefent or future friends. But my age is not my disability, for I can walk fix or seven miles, and ride a dozen. But I am deaf for two months together; this deafness unqualifies me for all company, except a few friends with counter-tenor voices, whom I can call names, if they do not speak loud enough for my ears. It is this evil that hath hindered me from venturing to the Bath, and to Twickenham; for deafness being not a frequent diforder, hath no allowance given it; and the scurvy figure a man affected that way makes in company, is utterly insupportable.

It was I began with the petition to you of Orna me, and now you come like an unfair merchant, to charge me with being in your debt; debt; which by your way of reckoning I must always be, for yours are always guineas, and mine farthings; and yet I have a pretence to quarrel with you, because I am not at the head of any one of your Epistles. I am often wondring how you come to excel all mortals on the subject of Morality, even in the poetical way; and should have wondred more, if Nature and Education had not made you a profeffor of it from your infancy. "All the letters " I can find of yours, I have fastened in a folio

cover, and the rest in bundles endors'd: But, " by reading their dates, I find a chasm of fix

years, of which I can find no copies; and " yet I keep them with all possible care : But, " I have been forced, on three or four occa" fions, to fend all my papers to some friends,

yet those papers were all sent sealed in bun"dles, to fome faithful friends; however, what " I have are not much above fixty." I found nothing in any one of them to be left out : None of them have any thing to do with Party, of which you are the clearest of all men by your Religion, and the whole tenour of your life, while I am raging every moment against the Corruption of both kingdoms, especially of this; fuch is my weakness.

I have read your Epistle of Horace to Augustus: it was sent me in the English Edition,

as