LETTER LXXV.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

Dawley, June 28, 1728.

I NOW hold the pen for my Lord Bolingbroke, who is reading your letter between two haycocks; but his attention is somewhat diverted by casting his eyes on the clouds, not in admiration of what you say, but for fear of a shower. He is pleased with your placing him in the triumvirate between yourself and me; though he says that he doubts he shall fare like Lepidus, while one of us runs away with all the power like Augustus, and another with all the pleasures like Antony. It is upon a foresight of this, that he has fitted up his farm, and you will agree, that his scheme of retreat at least is not founded upon weak appearances. Upon his return from the Bath, all peccant humours, he finds, are purged out of him; and his great temperance and œconomy are so signal, that the first is fit for my constitution, and the latter would enable you to lay up so much money as to buy a bishopric in England. As to the return of his health and vigour, were you here, you might inquire of his haymakers; but as to his temperance, I can answer that (for one whole day) we have had nothing for dinner but mutton-broth, beans and bacon, and a barn-door fowl.

Now his lordship is run after his cart, I have a moment left to myself to tell you, that I overheard

him yesterday agree with a painter for 2007. to paint his country-hall with trophies of rakes, spades, prongs, &c. and other ornaments, merely to countenance his calling this place a farm-now turn over a new leaf

He bids me assure you, he should be sorry not to have more schemes of kindness for his friends, than of ambition for himself: there, though his schemes may be weak, the motives at least are strong; and he says further, if you could bear as great a fall and decrease of your revenues, as he knows by experience he can, you would not live in Ireland an hour.

The Dunciad is going to be printed in all pomp, with the inscription, which makes me proudest.* It will be attended with Proeme, Prolegomena, Testimonia Scriptorum, Index Authorum, and Notes Variorum. As to the latter, I desire you to read over the text, and make a few in any way you like best; whether dry raillery, upon the style and way of commenting of trivial critics; or humorous, upon the authors in the poem; or historical, of persons, places, times; or explanatory; or collecting the parallel passages of the ancients. Adieu. I am pretty well, my mother not ill; Dr. Arbuthnot vexed with his fever by intervals; I am afraid he declines, and we shall lose a worthy man: I am troubled about him very much.

I am, &c.

*The lines added in the second edition in which the poem is

inscribed to Swift.

LETTER LXXVI.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

July 16, 1728.

I HAVE often run over the Dunciad in an Irish edition (I suppose full of faults) which a gentleman sent me.* The notes I could wish to be very large, in what relates to the persons concerned ; for I have long observed that twenty miles from London nobody understands hints, initial letters, or town facts and passages; and in a few years not even those who live in London. I would have the names of those scribblers printed indexically at the beginning or end of the poem, with an account of their works, for the reader to refer to. I would have all the parodies (as they are called) referred to the author they imitate. When I began this long paper, I thought I should have filled it with setting down the several passages I had marked in the edition I had; but I find it unnecessary, so many of them falling under the same rule. After twenty times reading the whole, I never in my opinion saw so much good satire, or more good sense, in so many lines. How it passes in Dublin, I know not yet; but I am sure it will be a great disadvantage to the that the perpoem, sons and facts will not be understood, till an explanation comes out, and a very full one. I ima

No doubt Swift could fully have accounted for the publication of this edition.

gine it is not to be published till towards winter, when folks begin to gather in town. Again I insist, you must have your asterisks filled up with some real names of real dunces.

I am now reading your preceding letter, of June 28, and find that all I have advised above is mentioned there. I would be glad to know whether the quarto edition is to come out anonymously, as published by the commentator, with all his pomp of prefaces, &c. and among many complaints of spurious editions? I am thinking whether the editor should not follow the old style of, This excellent author, &c. and refine in many places where you meant no refinement; and into the bargain take all the load of naming the dunces, their qualities, histories, and performances?

As to yourself, I doubt you want a spurrer-on to exercise and to amusements; but to talk of decay at your season of life is a jest. But you are not so regular as I. You are the most temperate man God-ward, and the most intemperate your self-ward, of most I have known. I suppose Mr. Gay will return from the Bath with twenty pounds more flesh, and two hundred less in money: Providence never designed him to be above two-andtwenty, by his thoughtlessness and cullibility. He hath as little foresight of age, sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers, as a girl at fifteen. By the way, I must observe, that my Lord Bolingbroke (from the effects of his kindness to me) argues most sophistically: the fall from a million to a

hundred thousand pounds is not so great, as from eight hundred pounds a year to one: besides, he is a controller of fortune, and poverty dares not look a great minister in the face under his lowest declension. I never knew him live so great and expensively as he hath done since his return from exile; such mortals have resources that others are not able to comprehend. But God bless you, whose great genius has not so transported you as to leave you to the courtesy of mankind; for wealth is liberty, and liberty is a blessing fittest for a philosopher-and Gay is a slave just by two thousand pounds too little-And Horace was of my mind, and let my lord contradict him, if he dares.

LETTER LXXVII.

MR. GAY TO MR. POPE.

August 2, 1728.

It was two or three weeks ago that I writ you a letter; I might indeed have done it sooner; I thought of you every post-day upon that account, and every other day upon some account or other. I must beg you to give Mrs. B. my sincere thanks for her kind way of thinking of me, which I have heard of more than once from our friend at court,* who seemed, in the letter she writ, to be in high health and spirits. Considering the multiplicity

* Mrs. Howard.