on a like sad occasion, when you was here comforting me in her last great illness. May your health augment as fast as, I fear, hers must decline! I believe that would be very fast. May the life that is added to you be passed in good fortune and tranquillity, rather of your own giving to yourself, than from any expectations or trust in others! May you and I live together, without wishing more felicity or acquisitions than friendship can give and receive without obligations to Greatness! God keep you, and three or four more of those I have known as long, that I may have something worth the surviving my mother! Adieu, dear Gay, and believe me (while you live and while I live) Your, &c.

As I told you in my last letter, I repeat it in this; do not think of writing to me., The doctor, Mrs. Howard, and Mrs. Blount, give me daily accounts of you.

LETTER XXXVI.

MR POPE TO MR. GAY..

Sunday Night.

I TRULY rejoice to see your hand-writing, though I feared the trouble it might give you. I wish I had not known that you are still so excessively weak. Every day for a week past I had hopes of being able in a day or two more to see

you. But my mother advances not at all, gains no strength, and seems but upon the whole to wait for the next cold day to throw her into a diarrhoea, that must, if it return, carry her off. This being daily to be feared, makes me not dare to go a day from her, lest that should prove to be her last. God send you a speedy recovery, and such a total one as, at your time of life, may be expected. You need not call the few words I write to you, either kind or good; that was, and is nothing. But whatever I have in my nature of kindness, I really have for you, and whatever good I could do, I would, among the very first, be glad to do to you. In your circumstance the old Roman farewell is proper, Vive memor nostri. Your, &c.

I send you a very kind letter of Mr. Digby,* between whom and me two letters have passed concerning you.

LETTER XXXVII.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

No words can tell you the great concern I feel for you; I assure you it was not, and is not lessened by the immediate apprehension I have now every day lain under of losing my mother. Be assured, no duty less than that should have kept me

*Mr. Digby died in 1726.

one day from attending your condition: I would come and take a room by you at Hampstead, to be with you daily, were she not still in danger of death. I have constantly had particular accounts of you from the doctor, which have not ceased to alarm me yet. God preserve your life, and restore your health! I really beg it for my own sake, for I feel I love you more than I thought in health, though I always loved you a great deal. If I am so unfortunate as to bury my poor mother, and yet have the good fortune to have my prayers heard for you, I hope we may live most of our remaining days together. If, as I believe, the air of a better clime, as the southern part of France, may be thought useful for your recovery, thither I would go with you infallibly; and it is very probable we might get the Dean with us, who is in that abandoned state already in which I shall shortly be, as to other cares and duties. Dear Gay, be as cheerful as your sufferings will permit: God is a better friend than a court: even any honest man is a better. I promise you my entire friendship in all events, heartily praying for your recovery. Your, &c.

Do not write, if you are ever so able: the doctor tells me all.

LETTER XXXVII.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

July 13, 1722.

I was very much pleased, not to say obliged, by your kind letter, which sufficiently warmed my heart to have answered it sooner, had I not been deceived (a way one often is deceived) by hearkening to women; who told me that both Lady Burlington and yourself were immediately to return from Tunbridge, and that my lord was gone to bring you back. The world furnishes us with too many examples of what you complain of in yours, and, I assure you, none of them touch and grieve me so much as what relates to you. I think your sentiments upon it are the very same I should entertain: I wish those we call great men had the same notions, but they are really the most little creatures in the world; and the most interested in all but one point, which is, that they want judgment* to know their greatest interest, to encourage and choose honest men for their friends.

I have not once seen the person you complain of, whom I have of late thought to be, as the Apostle admonisheth, one flesh with his wife.

Pray make my sincere compliments to Lord Burlington, whom I have long known to have a

* Instead of-that they want judgment, propriety of expression requires he should have said-there where they want judgment. Warburton.

stronger bent of mind to be all that is good and honourable, than almost any one of his rank.

I have not forgot yours to Lord Bolingbroke, though I hope to have speedily a fuller opportunity, he returning for Flanders and France next month.

Mrs. Howard has writ you something or other in a letter, which, she says, she repents. She has as much good-nature as if she had never seen any ill-nature, and had been bred among lambs and turtle-doves, instead of princes and court-ladies. By the end of this week, Mr. Fortescue will pass a few days with me: we shall remember you in our potations, and wish you a fisher with us on my grass-plat. In the mean time we wish you success as a fisher of women at the Wells, a rejoicer of the comfortless and widow, and a play-fellow of the maiden. I am your, &c.

LETTER XXXIX.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

September 11, 1722.

I THINK it obliging in you to desire an account of my health. The truth is, I have never been in a worse state in my life, and find whatever I have tried as a remedy so ineffectual, that I give myself entirely over. I wish your health may be set perfectly right by the waters: and be assured, I not only wish that, and every thing else for you, as common friends wish, but with a zeal not usual among those we call so. I am always glad to hear