yet he was a very impertinent fellow, for faying them in words quite different from those you had yourself employed before on the fame subject: for surely to alter your words is to prejudice them; and I have been told, that a man himself can hardly fay the fame thing twice over with equal happiness; Nature is fo much a better thing than artifice.

I have written nothing this year: It is no af fectation to tell you, my Mother's lofs has turned my frame of thinking. The habit of a whole life is a stronger thing than all the reason in the world. I know I ought to be eafy, and to be free; but I am dejected, I am confined: my whole amusement is in reviewing my past life, not in laying plans for my future. I wish you cared as little för popular applaufe as I; as little for any nation, in contradiftinction to o thers, as I and then I fancy, you that are not afraid of the fea, you that are a stronger man at fixty than ever I was at twenty, would come and fee feveral people who are (at last) like the primitive chriftians, of one foul and of one mind. The day is come, which I have often wished, but never thought to fee; when every mortal, that I esteem, is of the fame fentiment in Politics and in Religion.

Adieu. All you love, are yours; but all are bufy, except (dear Sir) your fincere friend.

LETTER

I

LETTER LXX.

Jan. 6, 1734.

Never think of you and can never write to

you, now, without drawing many of those fhort fighs of which we have formerly talk'd: The reflection both of the friends we have been depriv'd of by Death, and of those from whom we are separated almost as eternally by Absence, checks me to that degree that it takes away in a manner the pleasure (which yet I feel very fenfibly too) of thinking I am now converfing with you. You have been filent to me as to your Works; whether those printed here are, or are not genuine? but one, I am fure, is yours; and your method of concealing yourfelf puts me in mind of the Indian bird I have read of, who hides his head in a hole, while all his feathers and tail ftick out. You'll have immediately by feveral franks (even before 'tis here publish'd) my Epiftle to Lord Cobham, part of my Opus Magnum, and the last Effay on Man, both which, I conclude, will be grateful to your bookseller, on whom you please to bestow them so early. There is a woman's war declar'd against me by a certain Lord; his weapons are the fame which women and chil

dren

dren use, a pin to fcratch, and a squirt to befpatter: I writ a fort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lifts with him, and after fhewingit to some people, fupprefs'd it: otherwise it was fuch as was worthy of him and worthy of me. I was three weeks this autumn with Lord Peterborow, who rejoices in your doings, and always speaks with the greatest affection of you. I need not tell you who elfe do the fame; you may be fure almost all those whom I ever fee, or defire to fee. I wonder not that B---paid you no fort of civility while he was in Ireland he is too much a half-wit to love a true wit, and too much half-honeft, to esteem: any entire merit. I hope and think he hates me too, and I will do my best to make him he is fo infupportably infolent in his civility to me when he meets me at one third place, that I must affront him to be rid of it. That strict neutrality as to public parties, which I have constantly obferv'd in all my writings, I think gives me the more title to attack fuch men, as flander and belye my character in private, to those who know me not. Yet even this is a liberty I will never take, unless at the fame time they are Pefts of private fociety, or mischievous members of the public, that is to fay, unless they are enemies to all men as

well

well as to me.---Pray write to me when you can: If ever I can come to you, I will: if not, may Providence be our friend and our guard thro' this fimple world, where nothing is valuable, but fenfe and friendship. Adieu, dear Sir, may health attend your years, and then may many years be added to you.

P. S. Iam juft now told, a very curious Lady intends to write to you to pump you about fome poems faid to be yours. Pray tell her, that you have not answered me on the fame questions, and that I fhall take it as a thing never to be forgiven from you, if you tell another what you have conceal'd from me.

I

LETTER LXXI.

Sept. 15, 1734

Have ever thought you as fenfible as any man I knew, of all the delicacies of friendship, and yet I fear (from what Lord B. tells me you faid in your laft letter) that you did not quite understand the reafon of my late filence. I affure you it proceeded wholly from the tender kindness I bear you. When the heart is full, it is angry at all words that cannot come up to it; and you are now the man in all

the world I am most troubled to write to, for you are the friend I have left whom I am most grieved about. Death has not done worfe to me in separating poor Gay, or any other, than disease and absence in dividing us. I am afraid to know how you do, fince moft accounts I have, give me pain for you, and I am unwilling to tell you the condition of my own health. If it were good, I would fee you; and yet if I found you in that very condition of deafness, which made you fly from us while we were together, what comfort could we derive from it? In writing often I fhould find great relief, could we write freely; and yet, when I have done fo, you feem by not answering in a very long time, to feel either the fame uneafinefs as I do, or to abftain, from fome prudential reafon. Yet I am fure, nothing that you and I wou'd fay to each other, (tho' our own fouls were to be laid open to the clerks of the postoffice) could hurt either of us fo much, in the opinion of any honeft man or good fubject, as the intervening, officious, impertinence of those Goers between us, who in England pretend to intimacies with you, and in Ireland to intimacies with me. I cannot but receive any that call upon me in your name, and in truth they take it in vain too often. I take all opportu nities of justifying you against thefe Friends, especially