the contrary. I persuade myself that you have sent at least fifteen times within this fortnight to Dawley farm,* and that you are extremely mortified at my long silence. To relieve you, therefore, from this great anxiety of mind, I can do no less than write a few lines to you; and I please myself beforehand with the vast pleasure which this epistle must needs give you. That I may add to this pleasure, and give you further proofs of my beneficent temper, I will likewise inform you, that I shall be in your neighbourhood again, by the end of next week; by which time I hope that Jonathan's imagination of business will be succeeded by some imagination more becoming a professor of that divine science, la bagatelle. Adieu, Jonathan, Alexander, John! Mirth be with you!

Gulliver's Travels had been canvassed by the brotherhood; and that Gay's ignorance with respect to the author, as expressed in his letter of 17th November, 1726, was entirely affected. Yet Mr. Sheridan, in his Life of Swift, seems to have thought that Gay and Pope were really under some doubt concerning the author of Gulliver's Travels upon the first appearance of that singular production. Sir W. Scott.

* The country residence of Lord Bolingbroke, near Cranford, in Middlesex.-H. Sir W. Scott.

LETTER LVII.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

August 22, 1726.

MANY NY a short sigh you cost me the day-I left you, and many more you will cost me till the day you return. I really walked about like a man banished, and when I came home found it no home. It is a sensation like that of a limb lopped off; one is trying every minute unawares to use it, and finds it is not. I may say you have used me more cruelly than you have done any other man; you have made it more impossible for me to live at ease without you: habitude itself would have done that, if I had less friendship in my nature than I have. Besides my natural memory of you, you have made a local one, which presents you to me in every place I frequent; I shall never more think of Lord Cobham's, the woods of Ciceter,* or the pleasing prospect of Byberry,† but your idea must be joined with them; nor see one seat in my own garden, or one room in my own house, without a phantom of you, sitting or walking before me. I travelled with you to Chester. I felt the extreme heat of the weather, the inns, the roads, the confinement and closeness of the uneasy coach, and wished a hundred times I had either a deanery or a horse in my gift. In real truth, I have felt my soul peevish ever since with all about

me, from a warm uneasy desire after you. I am gone out of myself to no purpose, and cannot catch you. Inhiat in pedes was not more properly applied to a poor dog after a hare, than to me with regard to your departure. I wish I could think no more of it, but lie down and sleep till we meet again, and let that day (how far soever off it be) be the morrow. Since I cannot, may it be my amends that every thing you wish may attend you where you are, and that you may find every friend you have there, in the state you wish him, or her: so that your visits to us may have no other effect, than the progress of a rich man to a remote estate, which he finds greater than he expected; which knowledge only serves to make him live happier where he is, with no disagreeable prospect if ever he should choose to remove. May this be your state till it become what I wish. But indeed I cannot express the warmth with which I wish you all things, and myself you. Indeed you are engraved elsewhere than on the cups you sent me (with so kind an inscription), and I might throw them into the Thames without injury to the giver. I am not pleased with them, but take them very kindly too and had I suspected any such usage from you, I should have enjoyed your company less than I really did, for at this rate I may say,

Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.

I will bring you over just such another present, when I go to the deanery of St. Patrick's; which

I promise you to do, if ever I am enabled to return your kindness. Donarem Pateras, &c. Till then I will drink (or Gay shall drink) daily healths to you, and I will add to your inscription the old Roman vow for years to come, VOTIS X. VOTIS XX. My mother's age gives me authority to hope it for yours. Adieu.

LETTER LVIII.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

Sept. 3, 1726. YOURS to Mr. Gay gave me greater satisfaction than that to me (though that gave me a great deal); for to hear you were safe at your journey's end, exceeds the account of your fatigues while in the way to it; otherwise, believe me, every tittle of each is important to me, which sets any one thing before my eyes that happens to you. I writ you a long letter, which I day after your arrival. ference with Sir

guess reached you the Since then I had a con* who expressed his desire of having seen you again before you left us. He said he observed a willingness in you to live among us;

Sir Robert Walpole, who perhaps foresaw an approaching union between the Dean and Pulteney, and was probably not unwilling to give opening to a reconciliation, which might prevent such a coalition. But the hint, if it meant any thing serious, was given too late; for, as appears from the conclusion of this letter, a correspondence was already opened between Swift and Pulteney. Sir W. Scott.

which I did not deny; but at the same time told him you had no such design in your coming this time, which was merely to see a few of those you loved but that indeed all those wished it, and particularly Lord Peterborough and myself, who wished you loved Ireland less, had you any reason to love England more. I said nothing but what I think would induce any man to be as fond of you as I, plain truth, did they know either it or you. I cannot help thinking (when I consider the whole short list of our friends) that none of them except you and I are qualified for the mountains of Wales. The Doctor* goes to cards, Gay to Court; one loses money, one loses his time: another of our friends labours to be unambitious, but he labours in an unwilling soil. One lady you like has too much of France to be fit for Wales:† another is too much a subject to princes and potentates, to relish that wild taste of liberty and poverty. Mr. Congreve is too sick to bear a thin air; and she‡ that leads him too rich to enjoy any thing.§ Lord Peterborough can go to any climate, but never stay in any. Lord Bathurst is too great an husbandman to like barren hills, except they are his own to improve. Mr. Bethel, indeed, is too good and too honest to live in the world, but yet it is fit, Lady Bolingbroke. Warton.

* Arbuthnot.

The Duchess of Marlborough. § The Duchess of Marlborough was long a patroness of Congreve. How much she merited the character here bestowed upon her by Pope, appears from the miserable ennui expressed in her own diary. Sir W. Scott.