I wonder you are not ashamed to let me pine away in this kingdom while you are out of power.

I come from looking over the Melange abovewritten, and declare it to be a true copy of my present disposition, which must needs please you, since nothing was ever more displeasing to myself. I desire you to present my most humble respects to my lady.

LETTER LXXXV.

DR. ARBUTHNOT TO DR. SWIFT.

London, March 19, 1728-9.

THIS is the second or third time, dear sir, that I have writ to you without hearing a word of you, or from you; only, in general, that you are very much out of order; sometimes of your two old complaints, the vertigo and deafness, which I am very sorry for. The gentleman who carries this has come better off than I did imagine: I used my little interest as far as it would go, in his affair. He will be able to give you some account of your friends, many of whom have been in great distress this winter. John Gay, I may say with vanity, owes his life, under God, to the unwearied endeavours and care of your humble servant; for a physician who had not been passionately his friend could not have saved him. I had, besides my personal concern for him, other motives of my care. He is now become a public person, a little Sache

verell; and I took the same pleasure in saving him as Radcliffe did in preserving my Lord Chief Justice Holt's wife, whom he attended out of spite to the husband, who wished her dead.

The inoffensive John Gay is now become one of the obstructions to the peace of Europe, the terror of ministers, the chief author of the Craftsman, and all the seditious pamphlets which have been published against the government. He has got several turned out of their places; the greatest ornament of the court banished from it for his sake;* another great lady in danger of being chassée likewise; † about seven or eight duchesses pushing forward, like the ancient Circumcelliones in the church, who shall suffer martyrdom upon his account first. He is the darling of the city. If he should travel about the country, he would have hecatombs of roasted oxen sacrificed to him. Since he became so conspicuous Will Pulteney hangs his head, to see himself so much outdone in the career of glory. I hope he will get a good deal of money by printing his play: but, I really believe, he would get more by showing his person and I can assure you, this is the very identical John Gay, whom you formerly knew, and lodged with in Whitehall two years ago. I have been diverting myself with making an extract out of a history, The Duchess of Queensberry.

Sir W. Scott.

+ Mrs. Howard perhaps, who declared herself in Gay's favour on this momentous occasion. Sir W. Scott.

A sect of African heretics, who were smitten with the rage of being martyrs. Sir W. Scott,

which will be printed in the year 1948. I wish I had your assistance to go through with it; for I can assure you, it rises to a very solemn piece of burlesque.

As to the condition of your little club, it is not quite so desperate as you might imagine; for Mr. Pope is as high in favour, as I am afraid the rest are out of it. The king, upon the perusal of the last edition of his Dunciad, declared he was a very honest man. I did not know till this moment that I had so good an opportunity to send you a letter; and now I know it, I am called away, and obliged to end with my best wishes and respects, being most sincerely yours, &c.

LETTER LXXXVI.

DR. SWIFT TO LORD BOLINGBROKE AND MR. POPE.

Dublin, April 5, 1729.

Do not think it would be possible for me to hear better news than that of your getting over your scurvy suit, which always hung as a dead weight on my heart: I hated it in all its circumstances, as it affected your fortune and quiet, and in a situation of life that must make it every way vexatious. And as I am infinitely obliged to you for the justice you do me in supposing your affairs do at least concern me as much as my own, so I would never have pardoned your omitting it. But

before I go on, I cannot forbear mentioning what I read last summer in a newspaper, that you were writing the history of your own times. I suppose such a report might arise from what was not secret among your friends, of your intention to write another kind of history; which you often promised Mr. Pope and me to do. I know he desires it very much, and I am sure I desire nothing more, for the honour and love I bear you, and the perfect knowledge I have of your public virtue. My lord, I have no other notion of œconomy than that it is the parent of liberty and ease, and I am not the only friend you have who hath chid you in his heart for the neglect of it, though not with his mouth, as I have done. For there is a silly error in the world, even among friends otherwise very good, not to intermeddle with men's affairs in such nice matters. And, my lord, I have made a maxim, that should be writ in letters of diamonds, That a wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart. Pray, my lord, inquire whether your prototype, my Lord Digby, after the Restoration, when he was at Bristol, did not take some care of his fortune, notwithstanding that quotation I once sent you out of his speech to the H. of Commons? In my conscience, I believe Fortune, like other drabs, values a man gradually less for every year he lives. I have demonstration for it; because, if I play at piquet for sixpence with a man or woman two years younger than myself, I always lose; and there is a young girl of twenty,

who never fails of winning my money at backgammon, though she is a bungler, and the game be ecclesiastic. As to the public, I confess nothing could cure my itch of meddling with it, but these frequent returns of deafness, which have hindered me from passing last winter in London; yet I cannot but consider the perfidiousness of some people, who I thought when I was last there, upon a change that happened, were the most impudent in forgetting their professions that I have ever known. Pray, will you please to take your pen, and blot me out that political maxim from whatever book it is in, that res nolunt diu male administrari; the commonness makes me not know who is the author, but sure he must be some modern.

I am sorry for Lady Bolingbroke's ill health; but I protest I never knew a very deserving person of that sex, who had not too much reason to complain of ill health. I never wake without finding life a more insignificant thing than it was the day before; which is one great advantage I get by living in this country, where there is nothing I shall be sorry to lose. But my greatest misery is recollecting the scene of twenty years past, and then all on a sudden dropping into the present. I remember, when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in, and the disappointment vexes me to this very day; and I believe, it was the type of all my future disappointments. I should be ashamed to say this to you, if you had