LETTER LXVIII.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

October 30, 1727.

THE first letter I writ after my landing was to Mr. Gay; but it would have been wiser to direct to Tonson or Lintot, to whom I believe his lodgings are better known than to the runners of the post-office. In that letter you will find what a quick change I made in seven days from London to the Deanery, through many nations and languages unknown to the civilized world. And I have often reflected in how few hours, with a swift horse or a strong gale, a man may come among a people as unknown to him as the antipodes. If I did not know you more by your conversation and kindness than by your letter, I might be base enough to suspect, that in point of friendship you. acted like some philosophers who writ much better upon virtue than they practised it. In answer, I can only swear that you have taught me to dream, which I had not done in twelve years further than by inexpressible nonsense; but now I can every night distinctly see Twickenham and the Grotto, and Dawley, and many other et ceteras, and it is but three nights since I beat Mrs. Pope. I must needs confess, that the pleasure I take in thinking of you is very much lessened by the pain I am in about your health: you pay dearly for the great talents God hath given you, and for the

consequences of them in the esteem and distinction you receive from mankind, unless you can provide a tolerable stock of health; in which pursuits I cannot much commend your conduct, but rather entreat you would mend it by following the advice of my Lord Bolingbroke and your other physicians. When you talked of cups and impressions, it came into my head to imitate you in quoting Scripture, not to your advantage; I mean what was said to David by one of his brothers: "I knew thy pride and the naughtiness of thy heart." I remember when it grieved your soul to see me pay a penny more than my club at an inn, when you had maintained me three months at bed and board; for which, if I had dealt with you in the Smithfield way, it would have cost me a hundred pounds, for I live worse here upon more. Did you ever consider that I am for life almost twice as rich as you, and pay no rent, and drink French wine twice as cheap as you do Port, and have neither coach, chair, nor mother? As to the world, I think you ought to say to it with St. Paul, If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? This is more proper still, if you consider the French word spirituel, in which sense the world ought to pay you better than they do. If you made me a present of a thousand pounds, I would not allow myself to be in your debt; but if I made you a present of two, I would not allow myself to be out of it. But I have not half your pride; witness what Mr. Gay

says in his letter, that I was censured for begging presents, though I limited them to ten shillings. I see no reason (at least my friendship and vanity see none) why you should not give me a visit, when you shall happen to be disengaged: I will send a person to Chester to take care of you, and you shall be used by the best folks we have here, as well as civility and good-nature can contrive; I believe local motion will be no ill physic, and I will have your coming inscribed on my tomb, and recorded in never-dying verse.

I thank Mrs. Pope for her prayers, but I know the mystery. A person of my acquaintance, who used to correspond with the last Great Duke of Tuscany, shewing one of the Duke's letters to a friend, and professing great sense of his Highness's friendship, read this passage out of the letter: I would give one of my fingers to procure your real good. The person to whom this was read, and who knew the Duke well, said, the meaning of real good was only that the other might turn a good Catholic. Pray ask Mrs. Pope whether this story is applicable to her and me? I pray God bless her, for I am sure she is a good Christian, and (which is almost as rare) a good woman.

Adieu.

LETTER LXIX.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

DEAR SIR,

Oct. 6, 1727.

HAVE many years ago magnified in my own mind, and repeated to you, a ninth beatitude, added to the eighth in the Scripture: "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." I could find in my heart to congratulate you on this happy dismission from all court dependance; I dare say I shall find you the better and the honester man for it many years hence; very probably the healthfuller and the cheerfuller into the bargain. You are happily rid of many cursed ceremonies, as well as of many ill and vicious habits, of which few or no men escape the infection, who are hackneyed and trammelled in the ways of a court. Princes indeed, and peers (the lackeys of princes), and ladies (the fools of peers), will smile on you the less; but men of worth, and real friends, will look on you the better. There is a thing, the only thing which kings and queens cannot give you, (for they have it not to give), liberty, and which is worth all they have; which, as yet, thank God, Englishmen need not ask from their hands. You will enjoy that, and your own integrity, and the satisfactory consciousness of having not merited such graces from courts as are bestowed only on the mean, servile, flattering, inte

rested, and undeserving. The only steps to the favour of the great* are such complacencies, such compliances, such distant decorums, as delude them in their vanities, or engage them in their passions. He is their greatest favourite who is the falsest ; and when a man by such vile gradations arrives at the height of grandeur and power, he is then at best but in a circumstance to be hated, and in a condition to be hanged, for serving their ends: so many a minister has found it!

I believe you did not want advice in the letter you sent by my Lord Grantham; I presume you writ it not, without and you could not have better, if I guess right at the person who agreed to your doing it, in respect to any decency you ought to observe: for I take that person to be a perfect judge of decencies and forms. I am not without fears even on that person's account; I think it a bad omen. But what have I to do with court omens? Dear Gay, adieu. I can only add a plain uncourtly speech; while you are nobody's servant, you may be any one's friend; and as such,

* Dr. Warton observes, "This satire against the Great is carried to excess." The representation is surely very unlike the English character, and betrays equally the spleen and ignorance of the author. If there is any thing offensive and disgusting in wealth, it is where its superiority is unmitigated by education; but this is very far from being the case with respect to English nobility, or English gentlemen. Bowles.

+ This relates to the death of George I. and the succession of Gay's patrons, the prince and princess, to the throne, from whom he expected preferment.

Bowles.