one Lord B. who admir'd the Duchefs before fhe grew a Goddess; and a few others.

To defcend now to tell you what are our wants, our complaints, and our miseries here; I muft feriously fay, the lofs of any one good woman is too great to be born eafily: and poor Mrs. Rollinson, tho' a private woman, was fuch. Her husband is gone into Oxfordshire very melancholy, and thence to the Bath, to live on, for fuch is our fate, and duty. Adieu. Write to me as often as you will, and (to encourage you) I will write as feldom as if you did not. did not. Be

I Am fomething like the fun at this feason,

withdrawing from the world, but meaning it mighty well, and refolving to shine whenever I can again. But I fear the clouds of a long winter will overcome me to fuch a degree, that any body will take a farthing candle for a better guide, and more ferviceable companion. My friends may remember my brighter days, but will think (like the Irishman) that the moon is a better thing when once I am gone. I don't

fay

fay this with any allufion to my poetical capacity as a fon of Apollo, but in my companionable one (if you'll fuffer me to use a phrase of the Earl of Clarendon's) for I fhall fee or be seen of few of you this winter. I am grown too faint to do any good, or to give any pleafure. I not only, as Dryden finely says, feel my notes decay as a poet, but feel my fpirits flag as a companion, and shall return again to where I first began, my books. I have been putting my library in order, and enlarging the chimney in it, with equal intention to warm my mind and body (if I can) to some life. A friend (a woman friend, God help me!) with whom I have spent three or four hours a day these fifteen years, advised me to pass more time in my ftudies: I reflected, the must have found fome reason for this admonition, and concluded she would complete all her kindneffes to me by returning me to the employment I am fittest for; conversation with the dead, the old, and the worm-eaten.

Judge therefore if I might not treat you as a beatify'd fpirit, comparing your life with my ftupid state. For as to my living at Windfor with the ladies, &c. it is all a dream; I was there but two nights, and all the day out of that company. I shall certainly make as little court to others as they do to me; and that will be

none at all. My Fair-weather friends of the fummer are going away for London, and I shall see them and the butter-flies together, if I live till next year; which I would not defire to do, if it were only for their fakes. But we that are writers, ought to love pofterity, that posterity' may love us; and I would willingly live to fee the children of the present race, merely in hope they may be a little wifer than their Parents. I am, &c.

I

LETTER XXI.

T is true that I write to you very seldom, and have no pretence of writing which fatisfies me, because I have nothing to say that can give you much pleasure: only merely that I am in being, which in truth is of little confequence to one from whofe conversation I am cut off by fuch accidents or engagements as feparate us. I continue, and ever thall, to wish you all good and happiness: I wish that fome lucky event might fet you in a state of ease and independency all at once! and that I might live to fee you as happy, as this filly world and fortune can make any one. Are we never to live together more, as once we did? I find my life ebbing apace, and my affections ftrengthening as my age encreases; not that I am worse, but better,

better, in my health than last winter; but my mind finds no amendment nor improvement, nor fupport to lean upon, from those about me: and fo I find myself leaving the world, as fast as it leaves me. Companions I have enough, friends few, and those too warm in the concerns of the world, for me to bear pace with; or elfe fo divided from me, that they are but like the dead whose remembrance I hold in honour. Nature, temper, and habit from my youth made me have but one strong defire; all other ambitions, my perfon, education, conftitution, religion, &c. confpired to remove far from me. That defire was, to fix and preserve a few lasting, dependable friendships: and the accidents which have disappointed me in it, have put a period to all my aims. So I am funk into an idlenefs, which makes me neither care nor labour to be noticed by the reft of mankind; I propofe no rewards to myfelf, and why should I take any fort of pains? here I fit and fleep, and probably here I fhall fleep till I fleep for ever, like the old man of Verona. I hear of what paffes in the bufy world with fo little attention, that I forget it the next day

and as to the learned world, there is nothing paffes in it. I have no more to add, but that I am with the

fame truth as ever,

N 3

Your, &c.
LET

You

LETTER XXII.

O&. 23, 1730.

OUR letter is a very kind one, but I can't say so pleasing to me as many of yours have been, thro' the account you give of the dejection of your fpirits. I with the too conftant use of water does not contribute to it; I find Dr. Arbuthnot and another very knowing physician of that opinion. I also wish you were not fo totally immers'd in the country; I hope your return to town will be a prevalent remedy against the evil of too much recollection. I wifh it partly for my own fake. We have lived little together of late, and we want to be phyficians for one another. It is a remedy that agreed very well with us both, for many years, and I fancy our conftitutions would mend upon the old medicine of Studiorum Similitudo, &c. I believe we both of us want whetting; there are feveral here who will do you that good office, merely for the love of wit, which seems to be bidding the town a long and last adieu. I can tell you of no one thing worth reading, or feeing; the whole age feems refolv'd to justify the Dunciad, and it may stand for a public Epitaph or monumental Infcription like that at Thermopyla, on a whole people perish'd! There

may