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was afraid he should have lost the use of his little finger and the next to it; but the surgeon, whom he sent for last Sunday from London to examine it, told him that his fingers were safe, that there were two nerves cut but no tendon. He was in very good health, and very good spirits, and the wound in a fair way of being soon healed. The instructions you sent me to communicate to the doctor about the singer, I transcribed from your own letter, and sent to him; for at that time, he was going every other day to Windsor park to visit Mr Congreve, who has been extremely ill, but is now recovered, so that I was prevented from seeing of him by going out of town. I dined and supped on Monday last with Lord and Lady Bolingbroke, at Lord Berkeley's, at Cranford, and returned to London, with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, on Tuesday, by two o'clock in the morning. You are remembered always with great respect by all your acquaintance, and every one of them wishes for your return. The lottery begins to be drawn on Monday next, but my week of attendance will be the first in October. I am obliged to follow the engravers to make them dispatch my plates for the fables; for without it, I find they proceed but very slowly. I take your advice in this, as I wish to do in all things, and frequently revise my work, in order to finish it as well as I can. Mr Pulteney takes the letter you sent him in the kindest manner; and I believe he is, except a few excursions, fixed in town for the winter. As for the particular affair that you want to be informed in, we are as yet

* See Lord Bolingbroke's account of this accident, in his letter dated Sept. 22, 1726, p. 101.-H.

VOL. XVII.

wholly in the dark; but Mr Pope will follow your instructions. Mr Lancelot sent for the spectacles you left behind you, which were delivered to him. Mr Jervas's sheets are sent home to him, mended, finely washed, and neatly folded up. I intend to see Mr Pope to-morrow or on Sunday. I have not seen Mrs Howard a great while, which you know must be a great mortification and self-denial; but in my case, it is particularly unhappy, that a man cannot contrive to be in two places at the same time; if I could, while you are there, one of them should be always Dublin. But, after all, it is a silly thing to be with a friend by halves, so that I will give up all thoughts of bringing this project to perfection, if you will contrive that we shall meet again soon. I am, dear Sir,

Your most obliged and affectionate friend
and servant,

J. GAY.

FROM DR ARBUTHNOT.

London, Sept. 20, 1726.

I HAVE been balancing, dear Sir, these three days, whether I should write to you first. Laying aside the superiority of your dignity, I thought a notification was due to me, as well as to two others of my friends: then, I considered, that this was done in the public news, with all the formalities of reception of a lord-lieutenant. I reflected on the dependency of Ireland; but, said I, what if my friend should dispute this? Then I considered that letters were always introduced at first from the civilized to the

barbarous kingdom. In short, my affection and the pleasure of corresponding with my dear friend, prevailed; and, since you most disdainfully, and barbarously confined me to two lines a month, I was resolved to plague you with twenty times that number, though I think it was a sort of a compliment, to be supposed capable of saying any thing in two lines. The Gascon asked only to speak one word to the French king, which the king confining him to, he brought a paper, and said, signez, and not a word more. Your negociation with the singing man is in the hands of my daughter Nancy, who, I can assure you, will neglect nothing that concerns you: she has written about it. Mr Pope has been in hazard of his life by drowning; coming late, two weeks ago, from Lord Bolingbroke's in his coach and six, a bridge on a little river being broke down, they were obliged to go through the water, which was not too high, but the coach was overturned in it; and the glass being up, which he could not break nor get down, he was very near drowned; for the footman was stuck in the mud, and could hardly come in time to help him. He had that in common with Horace, that it was occasioned by the trunk of a tree; but it was trunco rheda illapsa, neque Faunus ictum dextra levabat; for he was wounded in the left hand, but thank God, without any danger; but by the cutting of a large vessel, lost a great deal of blood. I have been with Mrs Howard, who has a most intolerable pain in one side of her head. I had a great deal of discourse with your friend, her royal highness. She insisted upon your wit, and good conversation. I told her roval highness, that was not what I valued you for, but for being a sincere, honest man, and speaking truth when others were afraid to speak it. I have been

for near three weeks together every day at the Duchess of Marlborough's, with Mr Congreve, who has been likely to die with a fever, and the gout in his stomach; but he is now better, and likely to do well. My brother was near being cast away going to France: there was a ship lost just by him. Í write this in a dull humour, but with most sincere affection to an ungrateful man as you are, that minds every body more than me, except what concerns my interest.

My dear friend, farewell.

FROM LORD BOLINGBROKE.

London, Sept. 22, 1726.

A BOOKSELLER, * who says he is in a few days going to Dublin, calls here, and offers to carry a letter to you. I cannot resist the temptation of writing to you, though I have nothing to say more by this conveyance, than I should have by that of the post; though I have lately clubbed with Pope to make a most elegant epistle to you in prose and verse; and though I wrote the other day the first paragraph of that Chedder† letter which is preparing for you.

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* George Faulkner.-F.

+ A Chedder letter is a letter written by the contribution of several friends, each furnishing a paragraph. The name is borrowed from that of a large and excellent cheese made at Chedder, in Somersetshire, where all the dairies contribute to make the cheese, which is thus made of new milk, or fresh cream; of which one dairy not furnishing a sufficient quantity, the common practice is to make cheese of milk or cream that has been set by,

The only excuse then, which I can plead for writing now is, that the letter will cost you nothing. Have you heard of the accident which befel poor Pope in going lately from me? A bridge was down, the coach forced to go through the water, the bank steep, a hole on one side, a block of timber on the other, the night as dark as pitch. In short, he overturned, the fall was broke by the water; but the glasses were up, and he might have been drowned, if one of my men had not broke a glass, and pulled him out through the window. His right hand* was severely cut; but the surgeon thinks him in no danger of losing the use of his fingers: however, he has lately had very great pains in that arm from the shoulder downward, which might create a suspicion that some of the glass remains still in the flesh. St André says there is none. If so, these pains are owing to a cold he took in a fit of gallantry, which carried him across the water to see Mrs Howard, who has been extremely ill, but is much better. Just as I am writing, I hear that Dr Arbuthnot says that Mr Pope's pains are rheumatic, and have no relation to his wound. He suffers very much; I will endeavour to see him to-morrow. Let me hear from you as often as you can afford to write. I would say something to you of myself, if I had any good to say; but I am much in the same way in which you left me, eternally busy about trifles, disagreeable in themselves, but rendered support

till a proper quantity is procured, and then part of it at least is stale.-H.

* Pope afterwards felt some difficulty in writing, and otherwise using his right hand. See a subsequent letter of the 8th March.

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