good purpose, and you build on this admission the necessity of a future state of rewards and punishments. But what if you should find, that this future state will not account, in opposition to the atheist, for God's justice in the present state, which you give up? Would it not have been better to defend God's justice in this world, against these daring men, by irrefragable reasons, and to have rested the proof of the other point on revelation? I do not like concessions made against demonstration, repair or supply them how you will. The Epistles I have mentioned will compose a first book; the plan of the second is settled. You will not understand by what I have said, that Pope will go so deep into the argument, or carry it so far as I have hinted.* You inquire so kindly after "Happier as kinder in whate'er degree,

And height of bliss, but height of charity."

Now there seems to be an inconsistency between these two principles, of which they are not aware.

It may reasonably be asked, what virtue, as a principle of active benevolence, has to bestow? Can it bestow upon others any thing more than externals? If not, it either has not the power of communicating happiness, or happiness is to be communicated in externals. If it has not the power of communicating happiness, it is indeed a mere name; the subject receives nothing; the agent gives nothing. The bliss of charity is founded on a delusion; on the false supposition of a benefit communicated by externals, which externals cannot communicate. If happiness can be communicated by externals, and consequently is dependent upon them, and these externals are unequally distributed, how is the dispensation of Providence, with respect to happiness in the present state, equal?-H.

* That is, will not reconcile the present unequal distribution to the divine justice.-H.

Consequently Pope would not weaken the argument for a futur

my wife, that I must tell you something of her She has fallen upon a remedy, invented by a surgeon abroad, and which has had great success in cases similar to hers. This remedy has visibly attacked the original cause of all her complaints, and has abated, in some degree, by one gentle and uniform effect, all the grievous and various symptoms. I hope, and surely with reason, that she will receive still greater benefit from this method of cure, which she will resume as soon as the great heat is over. If she recovers, I shall not, for her sake, abstract myself from the world more than I do at present in this place. But if she should be taken from me, I should most certainly yield to that strong desire, which I have long had, of secluding myself totally from the company and affairs of mankind; of leaving the management, even of my private affairs, to others; and of securing, by these means, for the rest of my life, an uninterrupted tenor of philosophical quiet.

I suppose you have seen some of those volumes of scurrility, which have been thrown into the world against Mr. Pulteney and myself, and the Craftsman, which gave occasion to them. I think, and it is the sense of all my friends, that the person who published the Final Answer,* took a right state, which is founded on the unequal distribution of happiness in the present.

This pamphlet was written by Lord Bolingbroke, in his own vindication, 1731. It is entitled, "A Final Answer to the Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindication of his two honourable Patrons; and to all the Libels which have come, or may come, from the same Quarter, against the Person last mentioned in the Craftsman of 22d of May." Sir W. Scott.

turn, in a very nice and very provoking circumstance. To answer all the falsities, misrepresentations, and blunders, which a club of such scoundrels, as Arnall, Concanen, and other pensioners of the minister, crowd together, would have been equally tedious and ridiculous; and must have forced several things to be said, neither prudent, nor decent, nor perhaps strictly honourable to be said. To have explained some points, and to have stopped at others, would have given strength to that impertinent suggestion. Guilt alone is silent in the day of inquiry. It was therefore right to open no part of the scene of the late queen's reign, nor submit the passages of her administration, and the conduct of any of her ministers, to the examination of so vile a tribunal. This was still the more right, because, upon such points as relate to subsequent transactions, and as affect me singly, what the Craftsman had said, was justified unanswerably; and what the remarker had advanced, was proved to be infamously false. The effect of this paper has answered the design of it; and, which is not common, all sides agree, that the things said ought to have been said. The public writers seem to be getting back, from these personal altercations, to national affairs, much against the grain of the minister's faction. What the effect of all this writing will be, I know not; but this I know, that when all the information which can be given is given; when all the spirit which can be raised, is raised; it is to no purpose to write any

more. Even you men of this world have nothing else to do, but to let the ship drive till she is cast away, or till the storm is over. For my own part, I am neither an owner, an officer, nor a foremastman. I am but a passenger, said my Lord Carbury.

It is well for you I am got to the end of my paper; for you might else have a letter as long again from me. If you answer me by the post, remember, while you are writing, that you write by the post. Adieu, my reverend friend.

LETTER CXIII.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. GAY AND THE DUCHESS OF

QUEENSBERRY.

August 28, 1731.

You and the Duchess use me very ill, for, I profess, I cannot distinguish the style or the handwriting of either. I think her Grace writes more like you than herself, and that you write more like her Grace than yourself. I would swear the beginning of your letter writ by the Duchess, though it is to pass for yours; because there is a cursed lie in it, that she is neither young nor healthy, and besides it perfectly resembles the part she owns. I will likewise swear, that what I must suppose is written by the Duchess, is your hand; and thus I am puzzled and perplexed between you, but I will go on in the innocency of my own heart. I am got eight miles from our famous me

tropolis, to a country parson's, to whom I lately gave a city-living, such as an English chaplain would leap at. I retired hither for the public good, having two great works in hand: one to reduce the whole politeness, wit, humour, and style of England into a short system, for the use of all persons of quality, and particularly the maids of honour.* The other is of almost equal importance; I may call it the Whole Duty of Servants, in about twenty several stations, from the steward and waiting-woman down to the scullion and pantry-boy. I believe no mortal had ever such fair invitations, to be happy in the best company of England; I wish I had liberty to print your letter with my own comments upon it. There was a fellow in Ireland, who from a shoe-boy grew to be several times one of the chief governors, wholly illiterate, and with hardly common sense: a Lord Lieutenant told the first King George, that he was the greatest subject he had in both kingdoms; and truly his character was gotten and preserved by his never appearing in England, which was the only wise thing he ever did, except purchasing sixteen thousand pounds a year. Why, you need not stare: it is easily applied: I must be absent, in order to preserve my credit with her Grace. Lo, here comes in the Duchess again (I know her

* Wagstaff's Dialogues of Polite Conversation, published in his lifetime. Warburton. † An imperfect thing of this kind, called Directions to Servants in general, has been published since his death. Warburton.