LETTERS TO AND FROM Dr. JONATHAN SWIFT, etc. From the Year 1714 to 1737. LETTER I. Mr. POPE to Dr. SWIFT. W June 18, 1714, HATEVER Apologies it might become me to make at any other time for writing to you, I shall use none now, to a man who has own'd himself as fplenetic as a Cat in the Country. In that circumstance, I know by experience a letter is a very useful, as well as amufing thing: If you are too bufied in State affairs to read it,. yet you may find entertaiment in folding it into divers figures, either doubling it into a pyramidical, or twisting it into a ferpentine form: B 2 or, if your difpofition fhould not be fo mathematical, in taking it with you to that place where men of ftudious minds are apt to fit longer than ordinary; where, after an abrupt divifion of the paper, it may not be unpleasant to try to fit and rejoin the broken lines together. All these amusements I am no ftranger to in the Country, and doubt not but (by this time) you begin to relish them, in your prefent contemplative fituation, I remember a man, who was thought to have fome knowledge in the world, used to affirm, that no people in town ever complained they were forgotten by their Friends in the country but my encreafing experience convinces me he was miftaken, for I find a great many here grievously complaining of you, upon this fcore. I am told further, that you treat the few you correfpond with in a very arrogant ftyle, and tell them you admire at their infolence in disturbing your meditations, or even enquiring of your a retreat but this I will not positively affert, because I never received any fuch infulting Epiftle from you. My Lord Oxford says you have not written Some time before the Death of Queen Anne, when her ministers were quarrelling, and the Dean could not reconcile them, he retired to a Friend's Houfe in Berk.. fhire, and never faw them after. S. tg to him once fince you went: but this perhaps may be only policy, in him or you: and I, who am half a Whig, muft not entirely credit any thing he affirms. At Button's it is reported you are gone to Hanover, and that Gay goes only on an Embaffy to you. Others apprehend fome dangerous State treatise from your retirement; and a Wit, who affects to imitate Balfac, fays, that the Ministry now are like those Heathens of old, who received their Oracles from the Woods. The Gentlemen of the Roman Catholic perfuafion are not unwilling to credit me, when I whisper, that you are gone to meet fome Jefuits commiffioned from the Court of Rome, in order to fettle the most convenient methods to be taken for the coming of the Pretender. Dr. Arbuthnot is fingular in his opinion, and imagines your only defign is to attend at full leifure to the life and adventures of Scriblerus '. This indeed must be granted of greater importance than all the reft; This project (in which | life and writings of Scriblethe principal perfons engaged rus; of which only fome dewere Dr. Arbuthnot, Dr. tached parts and fragments Swift, and Mr. Pope) was were done, fuch as the Mea very noble one. It was to moirs of Scriblerus, the Tra write a complete fatire in vels of Gulliver, the Treatife profe upon the abufes in eve- of the Profund, the literal ry branch of fcience, com- Criticifms on Virgil, &c. prifed in the hiftory of the |