there you lost your giddiness, we have great reason to praise smoky rooms for the future, and prescribe them in like cases to our friends. The maid of the house writes us word, that, while you were there, you were busy for ten days together writing continually; and that, as Wat drew nearer and nearer to Ireland, he blundered more and more. By a scrap of paper left in this smoky room, it seemed as if the book you were writing was a most lamentable account of your travels; and really, had there been any wine in the house, the place would not have been so irksome. We were further told, that you set out, were driven back again by a storm, and lay in the ship all night. After the next setting sail, we were in great concern about you, because the weather grew very tempestuous; when to my great joy and surprize, I received a letter from Carlingford in Ireland, which informed us, that, after many perils, you were safely landed there. Had the oysters been good, it would have been a comfortable refreshment after your fatigue. We compassionated you in your travels through that country of desolation and poverty in your way to Dublin; for it is a most dreadful circumstance, to have lazy, dull horses on a road where there are very bad or no inns. When you carry a sample of English apples next to Ireland, I beg you would get them which, being dated 1726, was probably written in the course of his journey to London; and while delayed at Holyhead, on his return, he wrote the verses which are to be found on p. 361 of the same volume. Sir W. Scott. either from Goodrich or Devonshire. Pray who was the clergyman that met you at some distance from Dublin? because we could not learn his name. These are all the hints we could get of your long and dangerous journey, every step of which we shared your anxieties--and all that we have now left to comfort us, is to hear that you are in good health. * But why should we tell you what you know already? The queen's family is at last settled, and in the list I was appointed gentleman-usher to the Princess Louisa, the youngest princess; which, upon account that I am so far advanced in life, I have declined accepting; and I have endeavoured, in the best manner I could, to make my excuses by a letter to her majesty. So now all my expectations are vanished; and I have no prospect, but in depending wholly upon myself, and my own conduct. As I am used to disappointments, I can bear them; but as I can have no more hopes, I can no more be disappointed, so that I am in a blessed condition. You remember you were ad * Queen Caroline, consort of King George II. Sir W. Scott. This appointment was treated by all the friends of Gay, as a great indignity; and he is said to have felt the disappointment very severely, and was too much dejected on the occasion. Warton. The miscarriage of Gay's hopes of patronage at court, or rather their mean and contemptuous termination in appointing him gentleman-usher to a child, opened the voices of all his friends, not only against Walpole, but against the Queen and Mrs. Howard, from whose influence far different promotion had been expected. Sir W. Scott. vising me to go into Newgate to finish my scenes the more correctly. I now think I shall, for I have no attendance to hinder me; but my opera is already finished. I leave the rest of this paper to Mr. Pope. Gay is a free man, and I wrote him a long congratulatory letter upon it. Do you the same: it will mend him, and make him a better man than a court could do. Horace might keep his coach in Augustus's time, if he pleased; but I will not in the time of our Augustus. My poem (which it grieves me that I dare not send you a copy of, for fear of the Curlls and Dennises of Ireland, and still more for fear of the worst of traitors, our friends and admirers), my poem, I say, will show you what a distinguished age we live in? Your name is in it, with some others, under a mark of such ignominy as you will not much grieve to wear in that company. Adieu, and God bless you, and give you health and spirits. Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, These two verses are over and above what I have said of you in the poem.§ Adieu. * The Beggars' Opera. † See these Letters, Nos. LXIX and LXX. The Dunciad. We see by this, with what judgment Pope corrected and erased. Warburton. LETTER LXVIII. DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE. October 30, 1727. If I 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. 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 |