Miscellanies, 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 received, I hope, some commendatory verses from a Horse and a Lilliputian, to Gulliver; and an heroic Epistle to Mrs. Gulliver.* The bookseller would fain have printed them before the second edition of the book, but I would not permit it without your approbation: nor do I much like them. You see how much like a poet I write, and yet if you were with us, you would 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 nostrum est tantas componere lites. I stay at Twit'nam without so much as reading newspapers, votes, or any other paltry pamphlets: Mr. Stopford will carry you a whole parcel of them, which are sent 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 (though, as you see, it has not lost its cunning) is frequently in very awkward 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

* Poems of Pope addressed to Dr. Swift.

letter, which will attend this: she has very bad health, he very good. Lord Peterborough has writ twice to you; we fancy some letters have been intercepted, or lost 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 vexed at losing Mr. Stopford as soon 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 them, and I forgive you this one.

LETTER LXV.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.*

October 2, 1727.

It is a perfect trouble to me to write to you, and your kind letter left for me at Mr. Gay's affected me so much, that it made me like a girl. I cannot tell what to say to you; I only feel that I wish you well in every circumstance of life; that it is almost as good to be hated as to be loved, considering 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

* This letter alludes to Swift's abrupt departure from Twickenham, which he imputed to indisposition; but which was certainly occasioned by his distressed state of mind concerning Stella.

Sir W. Scott.

from us. I would very fain know, as soon 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 sorry to find you could think yourself easier in any house than in mine, though at the same time I can allow for a tenderness in your way of thinking, even when it seemed to want that tenderness. I cannot explain my meaning; perhaps you know it. But the best way of convincing you of my indulgence, will be, if I live, to visit 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 some disagreeable news from Ireland, which might occasion your so sudden departure: for the last time I saw you, you assured me you would not leave us this whole winter, unless your health grew better, and I do not find it did so. I never complied so unwillingly in my life with any friend as

Dr. Johnson has given this circumstance a malevolent turn. "He left the house of Pope it seems with very little ceremony, finding that two sick friends cannot agree together, and did not write to him till he found himself at Chester." Sinking, as he himself declares, under weakness, age, and wounded affection, Swift might have claimed some exemption from ceremony. But Pope saw Swift at his lodgings in London, as he himself writes to Sheridan, more than once at least; and when the Dean left England, he took leave of Pope in a kind letter, not written from Chester, but left for him at Gay's lodgings; over which he to whom it was addressed wept "like a girl." Sir W. Scott's Life of Swift, p. 354.

with you, in staying so entirely from you; nor could I have had the constancy to do it, if you had not promised that before you went we should meet, and you would send to us all to come. I have given your remembrances to those you mention in yours: we are quite sorry for you, I mean for ourselves. I hope, as you do, that we shall meet in a more durable and more satisfactory state; but the less sure I am of that, the more I would indulge it in this. We are to believe, we shall have something better than even a friend there, but certainly here we have nothing so good. Adieu for this time. May you find every friend you go to as pleased and happy, as every friend you went from is sorry and troubled!

Yours, &c.

LETTER LXVI.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.†

Dublin, Oct. 12, 1727.

I HAVE been long reasoning with myself upon the condition I am in, and in conclusion have thought it best to return to what fortune hath made my home; I have there a large house, and

Swift remained some days in London after having quitted Pope at Twickenham.

+ The following seems to be an enlarged edition of the "kind letter" left for Pope at Gay's, in which the Dean apologized for abruptly quitting the hospitable mansion of Twickenham.

Sir W. Scott.

servants and conveniences about me. I may be worse than I am, and have no where to retire. I therefore thought it best to return to Ireland, rather than go to any distant place in England. Here is my maintenance, and here my convenience. If it pleases God to restore me to my health, I shall readily make a third journey; if not, we must part as all human creatures have parted. You are the best and kindest friend in the world, and I know nobody alive or dead to whom I am so much obliged; and if ever you made me angry, it was for your too much care about me. I have often wished that God Almighty would be so easy to the weakness of mankind as to let old friends be acquainted in another state; and if I were to write an Utopia for heaven, that would be one of my schemes. This wildness you must allow for, because I am giddy and deaf.

I find it more convenient to be sick here, without the vexation of making my friends uneasy; yet my giddiness alone would not have done, if that unsociable, comfortless deafness had not quite tired me. And I believe I should have returned from the inn, if I had not feared it was only a short intermission, and the year was late, and my licence expiring. Surely, besides all other faults, I should be a very ill judge, to doubt your friendship and kindness. But it hath pleased God that you are not in a state of health to be mortified with the care and sickness of a friend. Two sick