fixty miles off, and has been fo all this fummer, with the Duke and Duchefs of Queenfberry. He is the fame man; fo is every one here that you know. Mankind is unamendable. Optimus ille qui minimis urgetur.Poor Mrs. ** is like the reft; fhe cries at the thorn in her foot, but will fuffer no body to pull it out. The court-lady I have a good opinion of: yet I have treated her more negligently than you would do, becaufe you like to fee the infide of a court, which I do not. I have seen her but twice. You have a defperate hand at dafhing out a character by great ftrokes, and at the fame time a delicate one at fine touches. God forbid you fhould draw mine, if I were conscious of any guilt: but if I were confcious only of folly, God fend it! for as no body can detect a great fault fo well as you, no body would fo well hide a small one. But, after all, that lady means to do good, and does no harm, which is a vaft deal for a courtier. I can affure you, that Lord Peterborow always speaks kindly of you, and certainly has as great a mind to be your friend as any one. I must throw away my pen'; it cannot. it will never tell you, what I inwardly am to you. Quod nequeo monftrare, et fentio tantum.

I

LETTER XLI.

Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr, SWIFT,

Bruffels Sept. 27. 1729. Have brought your French acquaintance* thus far on her way into her own country, and con

Lady Bolingbroke.

Liderably

fiderably better in health than fhe was when the went to Aix. I begin to entertain hopes, that the will recover fuch a degree of health as may render old age fupportable. Both of us have clofed the tenth luftre, and it is high time to determine how we shall play the last act of the farce. Might not my. life be intitled much more properly a Whit-dyecall-it, than a farce? Some comedy, a great deal of tragedy, and the whole interfperfed with fcenes of Harlequin, Scaramouch, and Dr. Baloardo, the prototype of your hero.-I used to think fometimes formerly of old age and of death; enough to prepare my mind, not enough to anticipate forrow, to dafh the joys of youth, and to be all my life adying I find the benefit of this practice now, and find it more as I proceed on my journey; little regret when I look backwards, little apprehenfion when I look forward. You complain grievoufly of your fituation in Ireland: I would complain of mine too in England; but I will not; nay, I ought not; for I find by long experience, that I can be unfortunate without being unhappy. I do not aps prove your joining together the figure of living, and the pleasure of giving, though your old prating friend Montague does fomething like it in one of his rhapfodies. To tell you my reafons would be to write an effay, and I fhall hardly have time to write a letter: but if you will come over, and live with Pope and me, I'll fhew you in an inftant why these two things fhould not aller de pair and that forced retrenchments on both may be made, without making us even uneafy. You know that I am too expenfive, and all mankind knows that I have been cruelly plundered; and yet I feel in my mind the power of defcending without anxiety two or three ftages more. In fhort, Mr. Dean, if you will come to a certain farm in Middlefex, you fhall find that I can live frugally without VOL. X. growlin

B

growling at the world, or being peevish with thofe whom Fortune has appointed to eat my bread, instead of appointing me to eat theirs and yet I have naturally as little difpofition to frugality as any man alive. You fay you are no philofopher, and I think you are in the right to dislike a word which is fo often abused. But I am fure you like to follow reafon, not cuftom, (which is fometimes the reason, and oftner the caprice of others, of the mob of the world). Now, to be fure of doing this you must wear your philofophical fpectacles as conftantly as the Spaniards used to wear theirs. You must make them part of your drefs; and fooner part with your broad-brimmed beaver, your gown, your scarf, or even that emblematical veftment your furplice. Through this medium you will fee few things to be vexed at, few perfons to be angry at: and yet there will frequently be things which we ought to wish altered, and perfons whom we ought to with hanged.

In your letter to Pope, you agree, that a regard for fame becomes a man more towards his exit than at his entrance into life; and yet you confefs, that the longer you live, the more you grow indifferent about it. Your fentiment is true and natural: your reasoning, I am afraid, is not fo upon this occafion. Prudence will make us defire fame, because it gives us many real and great advantages in all the affairs of life. Fame is the wife man's means; his ends are his own good, and the good of society. You poets and orators have inverted this order; you propose fame as the end; and good, or at least great actions, as the means. You go further; you teach your felf-love to anticipate the applaufe which we fuppofe will be paid by pofterity to our names; and with idle notions of immortality you turn other heads befides your own. I am afraid this may have done fome harm in the world.

Fame

Fame is an object which men purfue fuccefsfully by various and even contrary courfes Your doctrine leads them to look on this end as effential, and on the means as indifferent; fo that Fabricius and Craffus, Cato and Cæfar, preffed forward to the fame goal. After all, perhaps it may appear, from a confideration of the depravity of mankind, that you could do no better, nor keep up virtue in the world, without calling this paffion, or this direction of felf-love into your aid. Tacitus has crouded this excufe for you, according to his manner, into a maxim, Contemptu famæ contemni virtutes. But now, whether we confider fame as an useful inftrument in all the occurrences of private and public life, or whether we confider it as the caufe of that pleasure which our felf-love is fo fond of; methinks our entrance into life, or (to fpeak more properly) our youth, not our old age, is the feafon when we ought to defire it most, and therefore when it is moft becoming to defive it with ardour. If it is ufeful, it is to be defired most when we have, or may hope to have, a long scene of action open before us. Towards our exit, this fcene of action is, or fhould be clofed; and then, methinks, it is unbecoming to grow fonder of a thing which we have no longer occafion for. If it is pleafant, the fooner we are in poffeffion of fame, the longer we fhall enjoy this pleafure. When it is acquired early in life, it may tickle us on till old age; but when it is acquired late, the fenfation of pleafure will be more faint, and mingled with the regret of our not having tasted it fooner.

From my Farm, Oct. 5.

I am here. I have feen Pope, and one of my firft inquiries was after you. He tells me a thing I am forry to hear; you are building it feems, on a piece of land you have acquired for that purpofe, in fome county of Ireland *. Though I have built in a part of the world which I prefer very little to that where you have been thrown and confined by our ill fortune and yours; yet I am forry you do the fame thing. I have repented a thousand times of my refolution, and I hope you will repent of yours before it is executed. A. dieu, my old and worthy friend. May the phyfi. cal evils of life fall as eafily upon you, as ever they did on any man who lived to be old; and may the moral evils which furround us, make as little impreffion on you, as they ought to make on one who has fuch fuperior fenfe to eftimate things by, and fo much virtue to wrap himself up in.

My wife defires not to be forgotten by you. She's faithfully your fervant, and zealoufly your admirer. She will be concerned and difappointed not to find you in this island at her return, which hope both the and I had been made to entertain before I went abroad.

In the county of Armagh, called Drapier's Hill.

LET