LETTER CXXXVIII.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

Sept. 1, 1733.

I HAVE every day wished to write to you, to say a thousand things; and yet, I think, I should not have writ to you now, if I was not sick of writing any thing, sick of myself, and (what is worse) sick of my friends too. The world is become too busy for me; every body is so concerned for the public that all private enjoyments are lost, or disrelished I write more to show you I am tired of this life, than to tell you any thing relating to it. I live as I did, I think as I did, I love you as I did; but all these are to no purpose; the world will not live, think, or love, as I do. I am troubled for, and vexed at, all my friends by turns. Here are some whom you love, and who love you; yet they receive no proofs of that affection from you, and they give none of it to you. There is a great gulf between. In earnest, I would go a thousand miles by land to see you, but the sea I dread. My ailments are such, that I really believe a sea-sickness (considering the oppression of colical pains, and the great weakness of my breast) would kill me : and if I did not die of that, I must of the excessive eating and drinking of your hospitable town, and the excessive flattery of your most poetical country. Lhate to be crammed either way. Let your

hungry poets, and your rhyming poets, digest it; I cannot. I like much better to be abused and half starved, than to be so over praised and over fed. Drown Ireland! for having caught you, and for having kept you: I only reserve a little charity for her, for knowing your value, and esteeming you: you are the only patriot I know, who is not hated for serving his country. The man who drew your character and printed it here, was not much in the wrong in many things he said of you: yet he was a very impertinent fellow, for saying them in words quite different from those you had yourself employed before on the same subject: for surely to alter your words is to prejudice them; and I have been told, that a man himself can hardly say the same thing twice over with equal happiness; nature is so much a better thing than artifice.

I have written nothing this year: it is not affectation to tell you, my mother's loss has turned my frame of thinking. The habit of a whole life is a stronger thing than all the reason in the world. I know I ought to be easy, and to be free; but I am dejected, I am confined: my whole amusement is in reviewing my past life, not in laying plans for my future. I wish you cared as little for popular applause as I; as little for any nation in contradistinction to others, as I; and then I fancy you that are not afraid of the sea, you that are a stronger man at sixty than ever I was at twenty, would come and see several people who are (at last) like

the primitive Christians, of one soul and of one mind. The day is come, which I have often wished, but never thought to see; when every mortal, that I esteem, is of the same sentiment in politics and religion.

Adieu.

All you love, are yours; but all are busy, except (dear Sir) your sincere friend.

LETTER CXXXIX.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

Jan. 6, 1734.

I NEVER think of you, and can never write to you now, without drawing many of those short sighs of which we have formerly talked; the reflection both of the friends we have been deprived of by death, and of those from whom we are separated almost as eternally by absence, checks me to that degree that it takes away in a manner the

This is a remarkable paragraph. At this time, therefore, 1733, he and Bolingbroke were of the same sentiment in religion as well as politics. Warton.

This attempt of Dr. Warton to shew that Pope's religious opinions were the same as Lord Bolingbroke's is futile; unless it could be shewn that Swift was also of the same opinion, which no one has ever supposed. The sentiment to which Pope here alludes is, as clearly appears by the context, that of Christian charity from the professors of one sect towards those of another-a sentiment which he always considered as of the first importance; and which is perhaps the only one in which all those he esteemed could be supposed perfectly to agree.

pleasure (which yet I feel very sensibly too) of thinking I am now conversing with you. You have been silent to me as to your works; whether those printed here are, or are not genuine. But one, I am sure, is yours; and your method of concealing yourself puts me in mind of the Indian bird I have read of, who hides his head in a hole, while all his feathers and tail stick out. You will have immediately by several franks (even before it is here published) my Epistle to Lord Cobham, part of my Opus Magnum, and the last Essay on Man, both which, I conclude, will be grateful to your bookseller, on whom you please to bestow them so early. There is a woman's war declared against me by a certain Lord:* his weapons are the same which women and children use, a pin to scratch, and a squirt to bespatter; I writ a sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists with him, and, after shewing it to some people, suppressed it: otherwise it was such as was worthy of him and worthy of me. I was three weeks this autumn with Lord Peterborough, who rejoices in your doings, and always speaks with the greatest affection of you. I need not tell you who else do the same; you may be sure almost all those whom I ever see, or desire to see. I wonder not that

An Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court, (Lord Hervey) Aug. 28, 1733, and printed in November following, for J. Roberts, fol.

It was afterwards published, and will be found at the close of the preceding volume.

B

:

—* paid you no sort of civility while he was in Ireland he is too much a half-wit to love a true wit, and too much half-honest, to esteem any entire merit. I hope, and I think he hates me too, and I will do my best to make him he is so insupportably insolent in his civility to me when he meets me at one third place, that I must affront him to be rid of it. That strict neutrality as to public parties, which I have constantly observed in all my writings, I think gives me the more title to attack such men as slander and belie my character in private, to those who know me not. Yet even this is a liberty I will never take, unless at the same time they are pests to private society, or mischievous members of the public; that is to say, unless they are enemies to all men as well as to me. Pray write to me when you can: if ever I can come to you, I will: if not, may Providence be our friend and our guard through this simple world, where nothing is valuable, but sense and friendship. Adieu, dear Sir; may health attend your years; and then may many years be added to you.

P.S. I am just now told, a very curious lady+ intends to write to you, to pump you about some

B is perhaps Bishop Boulter, the friend of Philips, of whom he says,

"Still to one Bishop, Philips seems a wit."

Bowles. † Probably M. Blount, concerning the offensive verses, "The Lady's Dressing-room," "Strephon and Chloe," &c. Bowles. That the lady referred to was Martha Blount is not unlikely;