do not approve, and in those few where you may not diflike some parts, blot out the rest, and fometimes (tho' it be against the laziness of your nature) be so kind to make a few corrections, if the matter will bear them. I have some few of those things I call Thoughts moral and diverting; if you please, I will send the best I can pick from them, to add to the new volume. I have reason to chuse the method you mention of mixing the several verses, and I hope thereby among the bad Critics to be entitled to more merit than is my due.

This moment I am fo happy to have a letter from my Lord Peterborow, for which I intreat you will present him with my humble respects and thanks, tho' he all-to-be-Gullivers me by very strong infinuations. Though you despise Riddles, I am strongly tempted to fend a parcel to be printed by themselves, and make a nine-penny jobb for the bookseller, There are fome of my own, wherein I exceed mankind, Mira Poemata! the most folemn that were ever feen; and some writ by others, admirable indeed, but far inferior to mine; but I will not praise myself. You approve that writer who laughs and makes others laugh; but why should I who hate the world, or you who do not love it, make it so happy? therefore

,

fore I refolve from henceforth to handle only ferious subjects, nisi quid tu, docte Trebati, Diffentis.

Your's, &c.

M

LETTER XXII.

March 8, 1726-7.

R. Stopford will be the bearer of this letter, for whose acquaintance I am, among many other favours, obliged to you: and I think the acquaintance of so valuable, ingenious, and unaffected a man, to be none of the leaft obligations.

Our Mifcellany is now quite printed. I am prodigiously pleased with this joint-volume, in which methinks we look like friends, fide by fide, serious and merry by turns, converfing interchangeably, and walking down hand in hand to pofterity; not in the stiff forms of learned Authors, flattering each other, and fetting the rest of mankind at nought: but in a free, unimportant, natural, easy manner; diverting others just as we diverted ourselves. The third volume confists of Verses, but I would chuse to print none but such as have some peculiarity, and may be diftinguish'd for ours, from other writers. There's no end of making Books, SoG4 lomon lomon faid, and above all of making Mifcellanies, which all men can make. For unless there be a character in every piece, like the mark of the elect, I should not care to be one of the Twelve-thousand signed.

You receiv'd, I hope, some commendatory verses from a Horse and a Lilliputian, to Gulliver; and an heroic Epistle of Mrs. Gulliver. The Bookseller would fain have printed 'em before the second Edition of the Book, but I would not permit it without your approbation: nor do I much like them. You fee how much like a Poet I write, and yet if you were with us, you'd be deep in Politics. People are very warm, and very angry, very little to the purpose, but therefore the more warm and the more angry: Non noftrum eft, Tantas componere lites. I stay at Twitnam, without fo much as reading news-papers, votes, or any other paltry Pamphlets: Mr. Stopford will carry you a whole parcel of them, which are fent for your diversion, but not imitation. For my own part, methinks I am at Glubdubdrib with none but ancients and spirits about me.

I am rather better than I use to be at this season, but my hand (tho', as you fee, it has not loft its cunning) is frequently in very aukward sensations, rather than pain. But to convince you it is pretty well, it has done some mischief already, and just been strong enough to cut the other hand, while it was aiming to prune a fruit-tree.

Lady Bolingbroke has writ you a long, lively letter, which will attend this; She has very bad health, he very good. Lord Peterborow has writ twice to you; we fancy some letters have been intercepted, or loft by accident. About ten thousand things I want to tell you : I wish you were as impatient to hear them, for if so, you would, you must come early this spring. Adieu. Let me have a line from you. I am vex'd at lofing Mr. Stopford as foon as I knew him: but I thank God I have known him no longer. If every man one begins to value must settle in Ireland, pray make me know no more of 'em, and I forgive you this one.

IT is

a

LETTER XXIII.

Oct. 2, 1727.

you,

perfect trouble to me to write to and your kind letter left for me at Mr.

Gay's affected me so much, that it made me

like a girl. I can't tell what to say to you; I only only feel that I wish you well in every circumstance of life; that 'tis almost as good to be hated as to be loved, confidering the pain it is to minds of any tender turn, to find themselves so utterly impotent to do any good or give any ease to those who deserve most from us. I would very fain know, as foon as you recover your complaints, or any part of them. Would to God I could ease any of them, or had been able even to have alleviated any! I found I was not, and truly it grieved me. I was forry to find you could think yourself eafier in any house than in mine, tho' at the fame time I can allow for a tenderness in your way of thinking, even when it feem'd to want that tenderness. I can't explain my meaning, perhaps you know it: But the best way of convincing you of my indulgence, will be, if I live, to vifit you in Ireland, and act there as much in my own way as you did here in yours. I will not leave your roof, if I am ill. To your bad health I fear there was added fome difagreeable news from Ireland, which might occafion your fo fudden departure: For the last time I faw you, you assured me you would not leave us this whole winter, unless your health grew better, and I don't find it did so. I never comply'd so unwillingly in my life with any friend as with you, in staying so intirely from you:

por