experience that I can be unfortunate without being unhappy. I do not approve your joining together the figure of living, and the pleasure of giving, though your old prating friend Montagne does fomething like it in one of his Rapfodies. To tell you my reasons would be to write an Essay, and I hall hardly have time to write a Letter; but if you will come over, and live with Pope and me, I'll ́ fhew you in an inftant why those two things fhould not aller de pair, and that forced retrenchments on both may be made, without making us even uneasy. You know that I am too expensive, and all mankind knows that I have been cruelly plundered; and yet I feel in my mind the power of defcending without anxiety two or three stages more. In fhort (Mr. Dean) if you will come to a certain farm in Middlefex, you fhall find that I can live frugally without growling at the world, or being peevish with those whom fortune has appointed to eat my bread, instead of appointing me to eat theirs: and yet I have naturally as little difpofition to frugality as any man alive. You fay you are no philosopher, and I think you are in the right to diflike a word which is fo often abused; but I am fure you like to follow reafon, not custom, (which is fometimes the reafon and oftner the caprice of others, of the mob of the world.) Now to be fure of doing this, you must wear your philofophical spectacles as conftantly as the Spaniards used to wear theirs. You must make them part of your drefs, and fooner part with your broadbrimm❜d beaver, your gown, your scarf, or even that emblematical vestment your furplice. Thro' this medium you will fee few things to be vexed at, few perfons to be angry at: and yet there will frequently be things which we ought to wish altered, and perfons whom we ought to wish hanged.

In your letter to Pope, you agree that a regard for Fame becomes a man more towards his Exit, than at his entrance into life; and yet you confefs, that the longer you live, the more you grow indifferent about it. Your fentiment is true and natural; your reafoning, I am afraid, is not fo upon this occafion. Prudence will make us defire Fame, because it gives us many real and great advantages in all the affairs of life. Fame is the wife man's means; his ends are his own good, and the good of fociety. You Poets and Orators have inverted this order; you propose Fame as the end; and good, or at least great actions, as the means. You go further; You teach our felf-love to anticipate the applause which we suppose will be paid by posterity to our names; and with idle notions of immortality you turn other heads befides your own: I am afraid this may have done fome harm in the world.

Fame is an object which men pursue fuccessfully by various and even contrary courfes. Your doctrine leads them to look on this end as effential, and on the means as indifferent; fo that Fabricius and Craffus, Cato and Cæfar preffed forward to the fame goal. After all perhaps it may appear, from a confideration of the depravity of mankind, that you could do no better, nor keep up virtue in the world without calling this paffion or this direction of felf-love, in to your aid: Tacitus has crowded this excufe for you, according to his manner, into a maxim, Contemptu famæ, contemni virtutes. But now whether we confider Fame as an useful inftrument in all the occur rences of private and public life, or whether we confider it as the cause of that pleasure which our felflove is fo fond of; methinks our entrance into life, or (to speak more properly) our youth, not our

old age, is the feafon when we ought to defire it moft, and therefore when it is most becoming to defire it with ardor. If it is useful, it is to be defired most when we have, or may hope to have, a long fcene of action open before us: Towards our exit, this scene of action is or should be closed; and then, methinks, it is unbecoming to grow fonder of a thing which we have no longer occafion for.. If it is pleafant, the fooner we are in poffeffion of fame the longer we shall enjoy this pleasure. When it is acquired early in life it may tickle us on till old age; but when it is acquired late, the sensation of pleasure will be more faint, and mingled with the regret of our not having tastest it sooner.

From my Farm Octob. 5.

I am here; I have seen Pope, and one of my first enquiries was after you. He tells me a thing I am forry to hear: You are building, it seems, on a piece of land you have acquired for that purpose, in fome county of Ireland. Tho' I have built in a part of the world, which I prefer very little to that where you have been thrown and confined by our ill fortune and yours, yet I am forry you do the fame thing. I have repented a thousand times of my refolution, and I hope you will repent of yous before it is executed. Adieu, my old and worthy friend; may the physicalevils of life fall as eafily upon you, as ever they did on any man who lived to be old; and may the moral evils which furround us, make as little impreffion on you, as they ought to make on one who has fuch fuperior sense to estimate things by, and so much virtue to wrap himself up in.

My wife defires not to be forgotten by you; fhe's faithfully your fervant, and zealously your admirer.

She will be concerned and disappointed not to find you in this island at her return, which hope both the and I had been made to entertain before I went abroad.

1

I

LETTER XLI.

Dr. SWIFT to Lord BOLINGBROKE.

Dublin, Octob. 31, 1729.

Receiv'd your Lordship's travelling letter of seve ral dates, at several ftages, and from different nations, languages, and religions. Neither could any thing be more obliging than your kind remémbrance of me in fo many places. As to your ten Luftres, I remember, when I complained in a Letter to Prior, that I was fifty years old, he was half angry in jeft, and anfwered me out of Terence, ifta commemoratio eft quafi exprobratio. How then ought I to rattle you, when I have a dozen years more to anfwer for, all monaftically passed in this Country of liberty and delight, and money, and good company! I go on answering your letter; It is you were my Hero, but the other 1) never was; yet if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often vindicated him, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accufations. But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive, and his whole scene was fifty times more a What-d’yecall it, than yours: for, I declare, yours was uniè, and I wish you would so order it, that the world

1) L. Ox.

may be as wife as I upon that article: Mr. Pope wishes it too, and I believe there is not a more honest man in England, even without wit. But you regard us not. — I was 2) forty seven years old when I began to think of death, and the reflections upon it now begin when I wake in the morning, and end when I am going to fleep. — I writ to Mr. Pope and not to you. My birth, although from a family not undistinguished in its name, is many degrees inferior to yours; all my pretenfions from perfon and parts infinitely fo; I a younger fon of younger fons; you born to a great fortune: yet I fee you with all your advantages, funk to a degree that you could never have been without them: But yet I fee you as much efteemed, as much beloved, as much dreaded, and perhaps more (thought it be almost impossible) than ever you were in your highest exaltation only I grieve like an Alderman that you are not so rich. And yet, my Lord, I pretend to value money as little as you, and I will call five hundred witnesses (if you will take Irish witneffes) to prove it. I renounce your whole philosophy, because it is not your practice. By the figure of living, (if I used that expreffion to Mr. Pope) I do not mean the parade, but a fuitablene to your mind; and as for the pleasure of giving, I know your foul fuffers when you are debarr'd of it, Could you, when your own generofity and contempt of outward things (be not offended, it is no Ecclefiaftical but an Epictetian phrase) could you, when these have brought you to it, come over and live with Mr. Pope and me at the Deanery? I could almost wish the experiment were tried No, God forbid, that ever fuch a scoundrel as Want should dare to approach you. But in the

2) The Year of Queen Anne's Death.