cific.-Pope is now in my library with me, and writes to the world, to the present and to future ages, whilst 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 less than you have done before him. I have fometimes thought, that if preachers, hangmen, and moral-writers keep vice at a stand, or fo much as retard the progress of it, they do as much as human nature admits: a real reformation is not to be brought about by ordinary means; it requires thofe 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.

*Bolingbroke has enlarged on this topic in his Philosophical works, intending to depreciate Chriftianity by shewing that it has not had a general effect on the morals of mankind, nor produced a real Reformation :-an argument nothing to the purpose, nor any impeachment of the Doctrines of the Gospel; even if it were well founded, as it certainly is not. WARTON.

LETTER XLVII.

LORD B. TO DR. SWIFT.

March 29.

I

HAVE delayed feveral pofts answering your letter of January last, in hopes of being able to speak to you about a project which concerns us both, but me the moft, 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 paid 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 phyfical 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 fhall of course grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interefts of a fyftem out of which we are

foon

foon to go. This is much better than stupidity. The decay of paffion strengthens philofophy, for paffion may decay, and stupidity not fucceed. Paffions (fays Pope, our Divine *, as you will fee one time or other) are the Gales of life: let us not complain that they do not blow a ftorm. 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 business 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, serene, and calm? that the past, and even the present affairs of life ftand like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the disagreeable so as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to ine? Paffions, in their force, would bring all these, nay even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and reafon would but ill defend me in the fcuffle.

I leave Pope to speak for myself, but I must tell you how much my Wife is obliged to you. she would find strength enough to nurse

She fays you, if you

was

Pope took the image from Lord Bacon :-" The mind would be temperate and ftayed, if the affections, as winds, did not put it

into tumult," &c.

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was here, and yet, God knows, fhe is extremely weak the flow fever works under, and mines the constitution; 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 say to you, that I admire her more every hour of my life: death is not to her the King of Terrors; fhe beholds him without the least. When fhe fuffers much, fhe wishes for him as a deliverer from pain; when life is tolerable, fhe looks on him with dislike, because he is to separate her from thofe friends to whom fhe is more attached than to life itself. You fhall not ftay for my next, as long as you have for this letter; and in every one, Pope fhall write fomething much better than the scraps of old Philofophers, which were the prefents, Munufcula, that Stoical Fop Seneca used to fend in every Epiftle to his friend Lucilius.

P. S. My Lord has fpoken juftly of his Lady: why not I of my Mother? Yesterday was her birthday, now entering on the ninety-first year of her age; her memory much diminished, but her fenfes very little

hurt,

* She was niece to Madame de Maintenon, educated at St. Cyr, and was a woman of a very beautiful person, and very agree. able manners. Her Letters are written in very elegant French. She was a woman of much obfervation. Madame de Maintenon mentions her in her Letters. Dr. Trapp told me that Lord Bolingbroke boafting one day of his former gallantries, she said to him, fmiling, "When I look at you, methinks I fee the ruins of a fine old Roman aqueduct." WARTON.

hurt, her fight and hearing good; she sleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks water, fays her prayers; this is all fhe does. I have reason 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 ties of the like domeftic nature, when one finds how painful it is even to enjoy the tender pleasures. I have formerly made fome ftrong efforts to get and to deferve a friend: perhaps it were wifer never to attempt it, but live extempore, and look upon the world only as a place to pass through, just pay your hofts their due, disperse a little charity, and hurry on. Yet am I just now writing (or rather planning) a book, to make mankind look upon this life with comfort and pleasure, and put morality in good humour.-And just now too I am going to fee one I love very tenderly; and to-morrow to entertain several civil people, whom if we call friends, it is by the courtefy of

England.

* He means his Effay on Man; and alludes to the arguments he uses to make men fatisfied even with their prefent ftate, without looking to another. Young wrote his Night Thoughts in direct oppofition to this view of human life, but which, in truth, Young has painted in colours too dark and uncomfortable,

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WARTON.