merit they cannot reach; and if you knew the infinite content I have received of late, at the finding yours and my name constantly united in any silly scandal, I think you would go near to sing Io Triumphe! and celebrate my happiness in verse; and, I believe, if you will not, I shall. The inscription to the Dunciad is now printed, and inserted in the poem. Do you care I should say any thing further how much that poem is yours? since certainly without you it had never been.* Would to God we were together for the rest of our lives! The whole weight of scribblers would just serve to find us amusement, and not more. I hope you are too well employed to mind them; every stick you plant, and every stone you lay is to some purpose; but the business of such lives as theirs is but to die daily, to labour, and raise nothing. I only wish we could comfort each other under our bodily infirmities, and let those who have so great a mind to have more wit than we, win it and wear it. Give us but ease, health, peace, and fair weather! I think it is the best wish in the world, and you know whose it was. If I lived in Ireland, I fear the wet climate would endanger more than my life; my humour, and health; I am so atmospherical a creature.

I must not omit acquainting you, that what you heard of the words spoken of you in the Drawing

* This seems to confirm the story that Swift rescued the Dunciad when Pope had thrown it into the fire, on Swift's last visit to Twickenham.

room, was not true. The sayings of princes are generally as ill related as the sayings of wits. To such reports little of our regard should be given, and less of our conduct influenced by them.

LETTER LXXIX.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.

Dublin, Feb. 13, 1728-9.

I LIVED very easily in the country: Sir A. is a man of sense, and a scholar, has a good voice, and my lady a better;* she is perfectly well bred, and desirous to improve her understanding, which is very good, but cultivated too much like a fine lady. She was my pupil there, and severely chid when she read wrong: with that, and walking, and making twenty little amusing improvements, and writing family verses of mirth by way of libels on my lady, my time passed very well, and in very great order; infinitely better than here, where I see no creature but my servants and my old Presbyterian housekeeper, denying myself to every body, till I shall recover my ears.

The account of another Lord Lieutenant was only in a common newspaper, when I was in the country; and if it should have happened to be true, I would have desired to have had access to him, as the situation I am in requires. But this

VOL. X.

* Sir Arthur and Lady Acheson.

P

renews the grief for the death of our friend Mr. Congreve,* whom I loved from my youth, and who surely, besides his other talents, was a very agreeable companion. He had the misfortune to squander away a very good constitution in his younger days; and I think a man of sense and merit like him, is bound in conscience to preserve his health for the sake of his friends, as well as of him

* He was certainly one of the most polite, pleasing, and wellbred men of all his contemporaries. And it might have been said of him, as of Cowley, "You would not, from his conversation, have known him to be a wit and a poet, it was so unassuming and courteous." Swift had always a great regard and affection for him; and introduced him, though a strenuous Whig, to the favour of Lord Oxford. It is remarkable that, on its first publication, Congreve thought the Tale of a Tub gross and insipid. Swift, in a copy of Verses to Dr. Delany, speaks thus of Congreve's fortune and situation :

"Thus, Congreve spent in writing plays,

And one poor office, half his days:
While Montague, who claim'd his station
To be Mecænas of the nation,

For poets open tables kept,

But ne'er consider'd where they slept:
Himself, as rich as fifty Jews,

Was easy

tho' they wanted shoes;

And crazy Congreve scarce could spare
A shilling to discharge his chair;
Till prudence taught him to appeal
From Pæan's fire to party zeal;

Not owing to his happy vein
The fortunes of his latter scene;
Took proper principles to thrive ;

And so might every dunce alive."

This picture is unfair and over-charged; for the honour of Government, Congreve had several good places conferred on him, and enjoyed an affluent income.

Congreve died in January, 1728-9.

Warton.

self. Upon his own account, I could not much desire the continuance of his life under so much pain, and so many infirmities. Years have not yet hardened me; and I have an addition of weight upon my spirits since we lost him; though I saw him so seldom, and possibly if he had lived on, should never have seen him more. I do not only wish, as you ask me, that I was unacquainted with any deserving person, but almost that I never had a friend. Here is an ingenious good-humoured physician, a fine gentleman, an excellent scholar, easy in his fortunes, kind to every body, hath abundance of friends, entertains them often and liberally; they pass the evening with him at cards, with plenty of good meat and wine, eight or a dozen together; he loves them all, and they him. He has twenty of these at command; if one of them dies, it is no more than Poor Tom! he gets another, or takes up with the rest, and is no more moved than at the loss of his cat: he offends nobody, is easy with every body.-Is not this the true happy man? I was describing him to my Lady A —, who knows him too, but she hates him mortally by my character, and will not drink his health; I would give half my fortune for the same temper, and yet I cannot say I love it, for I do not love my Lord- who is much of the Doctor's nature. I hear Mr. Gay's second opera, which you mention, is forbid; and then he will be once more fit to be advised, and reject your advice. Adieu.

LETTER LXXX.

MR. POPE TO MR. GAY.

(Jan. 1728-9.)

I AM glad to hear of the progress of your recovery, and the oftener I hear it, the better, when it becomes easy to you to give it me. I so well remember the consolation you were to me in my mother's former illness, that it doubles my concern at this time not to be able to be with you, or you able to be with me. Had I lost her, I would have been no where else but with you during your confinement. I have now passed five weeks without once going from home, and without any company but for three or four of the days. Friends rarely stretch their kindness so far as ten miles. My Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Bethel have not forgotten to visit me: the rest (except Mrs. Blount once) were contented to send messages. I never passed so melancholy a time, and now Mr. Congreve's death* touches me nearly. It was twenty

* Our author's great regard for Congreve appears from his having dedicated to him, in preference to any great patron, his translation of the Iliad. One of the most singular circumstances in the life of Congreve is, his having been able to write such a comedy as the Old Bachelor, at the age of nineteen. Dr. Johnson accounts for this extraordinary phænomenon in the history of literature, by saying it might be done by a mind vigorous and acute, and furnished with comic characters by the perusal of other poets, without much actual commerce with mankind. And then he afterwards adds, in direct and palpable contradiction of this assertion," that he is an