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tily allow. But I doubt you are a perverter; for sure I was never capable of comparing the loss of friends with the loss of money. I think we never lament the death of a friend upon his own account, but merely on account of his friends or the public, or both; and his, for a person in private life, was as great as possible. How finely you preach to us who are going out of the world, to keep our spirits, without informing us where we shall find materials! Yet I have my flatterers too, who tell me, I am allowed to have retained more spirits than hundreds of others who are richer, younger, and healthier than myself; which, considering a thousand mortifications, added to the perfect ill will of every creature in power, I take to be a high point of merit, as well as an implicit obedience to your Grace's commands. Neither are those spirits (such as they be) in the least broken by the honour of lying under the same circumstances, with a certain great person, whom I shall not name, of being in disgrace at court. I will excuse your blots upon paper, because they are the only blots that you ever did, or ever will make in the whole course of your life. I am content, upon your petition, to receive the Duke and your Grace for my stewards for that immense sum; and in proper time I may come to thank you, as a king does the Commons, for your loyal benevolence. In the mean while, I humbly entreat your Grace, that the money may lie where you please, till I presume to trouble you with a bill, as my Lord Duke allows me.

One thing I find, that you are grown very tetchy since I lost the dear friend who was my supporter; so that perhaps you may expect I shall be very careful how I offend you in words, wherein you will be much mistaken; for I shall become ten times worse after correction. It seems Mr. Pope, like a treacherous gentleman, showed you my letter wherein I mentioned good qualities that you seem to have. You have understroked that offensive word, to show that it should be printed in italic. What could I say more? I never saw your person since you were a girl, except once in the dark (to give you a bull of this country) in a walk next the Mall. Your letters may possibly be false copies of your mind; and the universal, almost idolatrous esteem you have forced from every person in two kingdoms, who have the least regard for virtue, may have been only procured by a peculiar art of your own, I mean, that of bribing all wise and good men to be your flatterers. My literal mistakes are worse than your blots. I am subject to them by a sort of infirmity wherein I have few fellow-sufferers; I mean that my heart runs before my pen, which it will ever do in a greater degree, as long as I am a servant to your Grace, I mean to the last hour of my life and senses. I am, with the greatest respect and utmost gratitude, Madam, your Grace's most obedient, most obliged, and most humble servant.

I desire to present my most humble respects and thanks to my Lord Duke of Queensberry. For a man of my level, I have as bad a name almost as I desire; and I pray God, that those who give it me, may never have reason to give me a

better.

LETTER CXXXIV.

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

April 2, 1733.

You say truly, that death is only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love, but I really think those have the worst of it who are left by us, if we are true friends. I have felt more (I fancy) in the loss of Mr. Gay, than I shall suffer in the thoughts of going away myself into a state that can feel none of this sort of losses. I wished vehemently to have seen him in a condition of living independent, and to have lived in perfect indolence the rest of our days together, the two most idle, most innocent, undesigning poets of our age. I now as vehemently wish you and I might walk into the grave together, by as slow steps as you please, but contentedly and cheerfully: whether that ever can be, or in what country, I know no more, than into what country we shall walk out of the grave. But it suffices me to know it will be exactly what region or state our Maker appoints,

and that Whatever is, is right.* Our poor friend's papers are partly in my hands, and for as much as is so, I will take care to suppress things unworthy of him. As to the epitaph, I am sorry you gave a copy, for it will certainly by that means come into print, and I would correct it more, unless you will do it for me, and that I shall like as well. Upon the whole, I earnestly wish your coming over hither, for this reason among many others, that your influence may be joined with mine to suppress whatever we may judge proper of his papers. To be plunged in my neighbour's and my papers, will be your inevitable fate as soon as you come. That I am an author whose characters are thought of some weight, appears from the great noise and bustle that the court and town make about any I give and I will not render them less important, or less interesting, by sparing vice and folly, or by betraying the cause of truth and virtue. I will take care they shall be such, as no man can be angry at but the persons I would have angry. You are sensible with what decency and justice I paid homage to the royal family, at the same time that I satirized false courtiers, and spies, &c. about them. I have not the courage however to be such

* The manner in which this maxim is here introduced, decidedly shows, that in the adoption of it Pope never meant to confine it to the present state of being, as an argument against the necessity of a future state; but that he considered every thing to be right upon the whole; that is, combining the present with a future state of existence.

a satirist as you, but I would be as much, or more, a philosopher. You call your satires, libels; I would rather call my satires, epistles: they will consist more of morality than of wit, and grow graver, which you will call duller. I shall leave it to my antagonists to be witty (if they can) and content myself to be useful, and in the right. Tell me your opinion as to Lady 's or Lord ***’s performance:* they are certainly the top-wits of the court, and you may judge by that single piece what can be done against me; for it was laboured, corrected, pre-commended, and post-disapproved, so far as to be disowned by themselves, after each had highly cried it up for the other's. I have met with some complaints,† and heard at a distance of some threats, occasioned by my verses: I sent fair messages to acquaint them where I was to be found in town, and to offer to call at their houses to satisfy them, and so it dropped. It is very poor in any one to rail and threaten at a distance, and have nothing to say to you when they see you. I am glad you persist and abide by so good a thing as that poem, in which I am immortal for my morality: I never took any praise so kindly, and yet, I think, I deserve that praise better than I do any other. When does your Collection come out, and

Lady Montagu and Lord Harvey's Epistle to the Imitator of Horace. Bowles.

† At this time there was a great outcry among all the courtiers, against the keenness of his satires.

The ironical libel on Dr. Delany.

Warton.

Warburton.

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