DOMIMINA NUS TIO ORIGINAL LETTERS. Mr. POPE to Dean SWIFT. * Dear Sir, to boob so pakvi sa Find a Rebuke in a late Letter of yours that both I stings and pleases me extreamly. Your faying. that I ought to have writ a Postscript to my Friend GAY's, makes me not content to write less than a whole Letter; and your feeming to *Written in the Year, 1723. B take take his kindly, gives me Hopes you will look upon this as a fincere Effect of Friendfhip: Indeed, as I cannot but own the Lazinefs with which you tax me, and with which I may equally charge you, for both of us have had (and one of us has both had and given) a Surfeit of Writing, fo I really thought you would know yourself to be fo certainly intitled to my Friendship, thatit was a Poffeffion you could not imagine needed any farther Deeds or Writings to affure you of it. -2 It is an honeft Truth, there is no one living or dead of whom I think oftner or better than yourself. I look upon you to be (as to me) in a State between both; you have from me, all the Paffions and good Wishes that can attend the Living, and all that Refpect and tender Senfe of Lofs that we feel for the Dead. Whatever you feem to think of your withdrawn and separate State, at this Distance, and in in this Abfence, Dean SWIFT lives fill in England, in every Place and Company where he would chufe to live, and I find him in all the Converfations I keep, and in all the Hearts, in which I would have any Share. We have never met these many Years without mention of you; befides my old Acquaintance, I have found that all my Friends of a later Date, are fuch as were yours before. Lord Oxford, Lord HARCOURT, and Lord HARLEY, may look upon me as one intailed upon them by you. Lord BOLINGBROKE is now returned (as I hope) to take me with all his other Hereditary-Rights; and, indeed, he seems grown fo much a Philofopher, as to fet his Heart upon fome of them as little, as upon the Poet you gave him. It is fure my ill Fate, that all those I most loved, and with whom I have moft lived, must be Banifhed! after both of you left England, my conftant Hoft B 2 Hoft was the Bishop of ROCHESTER; fure this is a Nation that is curfedly afraid of being over-run with too much Politeness, and cannot regain one great Genius, but at the Expence of another: I tremble for my Lord PETERBOROW (whom I now lodge with) he has too much Wit, as well as Courage, to make a folid General; and if he escapes being Banished by others, I fear he will Banish himself. This leads me to give you fome Account of my Manner of Life and Conversation, which has been infinitely more various and diffipated, than when you knew me and cared for me; and among all Sexes, Parties, and Profeffions, a Glut of Study and Retirement, in the first Part of my Life, caft me into This; and This I begin to fee will throw me again into Study and Retirement. The Civilities I have met with from oppofite Sets of People, have hindred me from being violent or four to any Party; Party; but at the fame time the Obfervations and Experiences I cannot but have collected, have made me lefs fond of, and lefs furprized at, any; I am therefore the more afflicted and the more angry at the Violences and Hardships I fee practised by either. The Merry Vein you knew me in, is funk into a Turn of Reflection, that has made the World pretty indifferent to me, and yet I have acquired a Quietnefs of Mind which by Fits improves into a certain degree of Chearfulness, enough to make me juft fo good humoured as to wish That World well: My Friendships are increased by new ones, yet no part of the Warmth I felt for the old is diminifhed: Averfions I have none but to Knaves (for Fools I have learned to bear with) and those I cannot be commonly civil to, for I think thofe next to Knaves who converse with them; the greatest Man in Power, of this Sort, shall hardly make me Bow to him, unlefs I had a perfonal Obligation to him, B 3 and |