stance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge Such-a-one: it is so with physicians, (I will not speak of my own trade,) soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man,* although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, (but do not tell,) and so I shall go on till I have done with them. I have got materials towards a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale,† and to shew it should be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy (though not in Timon's manner) the whole building of my travels is erected; and I never will have peace of mind, till all honest men are of my opinion: by consequence you are to embrace it immediately, and procure that all who deserve my esteem may do so too. The matter is so clear, that it will admit of no dispute; nay, I

* A sentiment that dishonours him, as a man, a Christian, and a philosopher! as indeed did his conduct towards Miss Vanhomrigh, and his cruelty to Mrs. Johnson: which cannot be palliated nor pardoned. Warton.

†There is no person so capable of doing the greatest injury to public morals, as a man of great talents, but of mistaken and perverted sensibility.

Bowles.

These and similar passages contain a great deal of wild and violent invective against mankind, which has been perhaps too hastily adopted as expressive of Swift's actual sentiments. It ought, however, to be remembered, that if the dean's principles were misanthropical, his practice was benevolent. Few have written so much with so little view either to fame, or to profit, or to aught but benefit to the public. Sir W. Scott.

will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point.

I did not know your Odyssey was finished, being yet in the country, which I shall leave in three days. I thank you kindly for the present, but shall like it three-fourths the less for the mixture you mention of other hands; however, I am glad you saved yourself so much drudgery. I have been long told by Mr. Ford of your great achievements in building and planting, and especially of your subterranean passage to your garden, whereby you turned a blunder into a beauty, which is a piece of Ars Poetica.

I have almost done with harridans, and shall soon become old enough to fall in love with girls of fourteen. The lady whom you describe to live at court, to be deaf, and no party-woman, I take to be mythology, but know not how to moralize it. She cannot be Mercy, for Mercy is neither deaf, nor lives at court: Justice is blind, and perhaps deaf, but neither is she a court-lady: Fortune is both blind and deaf, and a court-lady, but then she is a most damnable party-woman, and will never make me easy, as you promise. It must be Riches, which answers all your description: I am glad she visits you, but my voice is so weak, that I doubt she will never hear me.

Mr. Lewis sent me an account of Dr. Arbuthnot's illness, which is a very sensible affliction to me, who by living so long out of the world, have lost that hardness of heart contracted by years and

general conversation. I am daily losing friends, and neither seeking nor getting others. Oh, if the world had but a dozen of Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels! But, however, he is not without fault. There is a passage in Bede, highly commending the piety and learning of the Irish in that age, where after abundance of praises he overthrows them all, by lamenting that, alas! they kept Easter at a wrong time of the year. So our doctor has every quality and virtue that can make a man amiable or useful; but alas! he hath a sort of slouch in his walk! I pray God protect him, for he is an excellent Christian, though not a Catholic.

I hear nothing of our friend Gay, but I find the court keeps him at hard meat. I advised him to come over here with a lord lieutenant. Philips writes little flams (as Lord Leicester called those sort of verses) on Miss Carteret. A Dublin blacksmith, a great poet, hath imitated his manner in a poem to the same Miss. Philips is a complainer, and on this occasion I told Lord Carteret, that complainers never succeeded at court, though railers do.

Are you altogether a country gentleman? that I must address to you out of London, to the hazard of your losing this precious letter, which I will now conclude, although so much paper is left. I have an ill name, and therefore shall not subscribe it, but you will guess it comes from one

who esteems and loves you about half as much as you deserve, I mean as much as he can.

I am in great concern, at what I am just told is in some of the newspapers, that Lord Bolingbroke is much hurt by a fall in hunting. I am glad he has so much youth and vigour left, (of which he hath not been thrifty,) but I wonder he has no more discretion.

LETTER XLVIII.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

October 15, 1725.

I

AM wonderfully pleased with the suddenness of your kind answer. It makes me hope you are coming towards us, and that you incline more and more to your old friends, in proportion as you draw nearer to them; and are getting into our vortex. Here is one, who was once a powerful planet, but has now (after long experience of all that comes of shining) learned to be content, with returning to his first point, without the thought or ambition of shining at all. Here is another, who thinks one of the greatest glories of his father was to have distinguished and loved you, and who loves you hereditarily. Here is Arbuthnot, recovered from the jaws of death, and more pleased with the hope of seeing you again, than of review+ Edward, Earl of Oxford.

Lord Bolingbroke.

ing a world, every part of which he has long despised, but what is made up of a few men like yourself. He goes abroad again, and is more cheerful than even health can make a man; for he has a good conscience into the bargain, which is the most catholic of all remedies, though not the most universal. I knew it would be a pleasure to you to hear this, and in truth that made me write so soon to you.

I am sorry poor P. is not promoted in this age; for certainly if his reward be of the next, he is of all poets the most miserable. I am also sorry for another reason; if they do not promote him, they will spoil the conclusion of one of my Satires, where having endeavoured to correct the taste of the town in wit and criticism, I end thus:

"But what avails to lay down rules for sense?
In -'s reign these fruitless lines were writ,
When Ambrose Philips was preferr'd for wit!"

Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs, and generally by Tories too. Because he had humour he was supposed to have dealt with Dr. Swift; in like manner as when any one had learning formerly, he was thought to have dealt with the devil. He puts his whole trust at court in that lady whom I described to you; and

Mrs. Howard, Gay trusted to her influence as the Prince's mistress, not aware that the real governess of the family was the princess herself, who, though indulgent to her husband's gallantries, was sufficiently jealous of her political influence over him;