nurse her in this farm with all the care and tenderness poffible. If he does not, I muft pay her the last duty of friendship wherever he is, tho' I break thro' the whole plan of life which I have formed in my mind. Adieu. I am most faithfully and affectionately yours.

B,

LETTER XLV.

Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr. SWIFT.

Jan. 1730-1.

you

Begin my letter by telling you that my wife hath been returned from abroad about a month, and that her health, tho' feeble and precarious, is better than it hath been thefe two years. She is much your fervant, and as fhe hath been her own phyfician with fome. fuccefs, imagines the could be yours with the fame. Would to God you were within her reach. She would I believe prescribe a great deal of the medicina animi, without having recourse to the Books of Trifmegiftus. Pope and I fhould be her principal apothecaries in the course of the cure; and tho' our beft Botanifts complain, that few of the herbs and fimples

*Lord Bolingbroke's Seat at Dawley in Middlefex.

The Medicine of the Mind,

fimples which go to the compofition of these remedies, are to be found at prefent in our foil, yet there are more of them here than in Ireland; befides, by the help of a little chymistry the most noxious juices may become falubrious, and rank poison a fpecifick-Pope is now in my library with me, and writes to the world, to the present and to future ages, whilft I begin this letter which he is to finish to you. What good he will do to mankind I know not, this comfort he may be fure of, he cannot do lefs than you have done before him. I have fometimes thought that if preachers, hangmen, and moral writers keep vice at a stand, or so much as retard the progrefs of it, they do as much as human nature admits: A real reformation is not to be brought about by ordinary means, it requires thefe extraordinary means which become punishments as well as leffons : national corruption must be purged by national calamities. Let us hear from you. We deserve this attention, because we defire it, and because we believe that you defire to hear from

us.

LETTER

I

Lord BOLINGBROKE to Dr. SWIFT.

March 29.

Have delayed several pofts answering your letter of January laft, in hopes of being able to speak to you about a project which concerns us both, but me the most, fince the fuccefs of it would bring us together. It has been a good while in my head, and at my heart, if it can be fet a going, you fhall hear more of it; I was ill in the beginning of the winter for near a week, but in no danger either from the nature of my diftemper, or from the attendance of three Phyficians. Since that bilious intermitting fever, I have had, as I had before, better health than the regard I have payed to health deferves. We are both in the decline of life, my dear Dean, and have been fome years going down the hill. Let us make the paffage as smooth as we can. Let us fence against physical evil by care and the use of thofe means which experience must have pointed out to us. Let us fence against moral evil by philofophy. I renounce the alternative you propofe. But we may, nay (if we will follow nature, and do not work up imagination against her plaineft dictates) we shall of course grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interests of a system out of which we are foon to go. This is much better than

ftupidity.

ftupidity. The decay of paffion strengthens philofophy, for paffion may decay, and stupidity not fucceed. Paffions, (fays our divine Pope, as you will fee one time or other) are the Gales of life: Let us not complain that they do not blow a storm. What hurt does age do us, in fubduing what we toil to fubdue all our lives? It is now fix in the morning: I recal the time (and am glad it is over) when about this hour I used to be going to bed, furfeited with pleasure, or jaded with bufinefs: My head often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rife at this hour, refreshed, ferene, and calm? That the paft, and even the prefent, affairs of life ftand like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the difagreeable fo as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to me? Paffions in their force, would bring all these, nay even future contingencies about my ears at once, and Reason would but ill defend me in the fcuffle. I leave Pope to speak for himself, but I must tell you how much my Wife is obliged to you. She fays fhe would find strength enough to nurse you, if you was here, and yet God knows the is extremely weak: The flow fever works under, and mines the conftitution ; we keep it off fometimes, but ftill it returns, and makes new breaches before nature can repair the old ones. I am not ashamed to fay to you that I admire her more every hour of

my

my life. Death is not to her the King of Terrors, fhe beholds him without the leaft: When fhe fuffers much, the wishes for him as a deliverer from pain; when life is tolerable, fhe looks on him with diflike, because he is to separate her from those friends to whom she is more attatched than to life itself. You shall not stay for my next, as long as you have for this letter; and in every one Pope shall write fomething much better than the scraps of old Philofophers, which were the prefents, Munufcula, that Stoical Fop Seneca used to fend in every Epistle to his friend Lucilius.

P. S. My Lord has fpoken juftly of his Lady: Why not I of my Mother? Yesterday was her birth-day, now entering on the ninety-first year of her age; her memory much diminished, but her fenfes very little hurt; her fight and hearing, good; the fleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks water, fays her prayers; this is all the does. I have reafon to thank God for continuing fo long to me a very good and tender parent, and for allowing me to exercise for fome years, thofe cares which are now as neceffary to her, as hers have been to me. An object of this fort daily before one's eyes very much softens the mind, but perhaps may hinder it from the willingness of contracting other tyes of the like domeftick nature, when one finds how painful it is even to enjoy the tender pleaI have formerly made fome ftrong efforts

fures.