afraid it may do your proposals more harm than good.

My Lord Halifax talked of a design to send for you to Bushy-Park, I believe with a coach-and-six, or light chaise, but did not name the precise time. I publish your having done the first book and begun-I received the cloak-bag safe-I hope you did not pay carriage. I cannot yet guess when I shall be ready for Sir William's service.

Shall I send you the 1007. in bills or cash? and when?

Gay had a copy of the Farewell, with your injunctions. No other extant.

Lord Harvey had the Homer and letter, and bids me thank the author.

I hear nothing of the Sermon. The generality will take it for the Dean's, and that will hurt neither you nor him.

Gay will be with you on Saturday next. He also works hard.

Your old sword went with the carrier, and was tied to the other things with a cord, and my folks say, very fast. You must make the carrier responsible. Mine will swear to the delivery, &c.

No books for you from Lintot.

Mrs. Raines, a young lady in the city, and one of my shepherdesses, takes one of the volumes, has paid her two guineas, and is to be a subscriber in your next list.

I also got two guineas from the Marquis of Dorchester.

Philip* sent me a note for receipts to be conveyed to the eleven members of the late Hanover club. Pray let me have their names by the first. I sent to Mr. Merril's to-day, &c.

Lintot sent me Tickell's Homer for your government. I could not forbear comparing, and do not know what the devil is got into my head, but I fancy I could make a more poetical translation in a fortnight (excepting a very few lines).

It seems it is published merely to show as a specimen of his ability for the Odyssey. Fortescue would have Gay publish a version of the first book of the Odyssey, and tell the world it is only to bespeak their approbation and favour for a translation of Statius, or any other poet. In short, we are merry, whether we are wise or no.-My respects to dear Sir William, and his good lady and son,† and am concerned for any deficiency in his countenance, but I am in no pain for the paltry Basso Relievo. Yours, &c.

* Probably Philips, secretary to the Hanover club.

+ Charles Wyndham, afterwards Earl of Egremont. There are in the Egremont collection of papers, communicated to me by Mr. Coxe, many curious letters to him from Bolingbroke, when abroad.

Bowles.

DEAR SIR,

LETTER XII.

FROM MR. JERVAS.

Saturday Night.

you

I REALLY intended to have been with to-day; but having been disappointed yesterday of meeting Mr. Selwyn, and going to the Exchequer about my salary to-day, and to Mrs. Howard's to meet him, made it too late; so that I made a visit this morning to Mr. Congreve, where I found Lord Cobham. They both inquired kindly for you, and wished to see you soon. Mr. Fortescue could not have come with me, but intends the latter end of next week to see you at Twickenham. I have seen our friend Dean Berkeley, who was very solicitous about your health and welfare. He is now so full of his Bermudas project, that he hath printed his proposal, and hath been with the Bishop of London about it. Mrs. Howard desired me to tell you that she had a present of beechmast, which this year hath been particularly good. When it is wanted she would have you send to her. I writ to you yesterday, and am in hopes that Mrs. Pope will soon be so well that you may be able to come to town for a day or so about your business. I really am this evening very much out of order with the cholic, but I hope a night's rest will relieve me. I wish Mrs. Pope and you all health and happiness. Pray give my service to her.

LETTER XIII.

TO MR. JERVAS IN IRELAND.

June 9, 1716.

THOUGH, as you rightly remark, I pay my tax but once in half a year, yet you shall see by this letter upon the neck of my last, that I pay a double tax, as we non-jurors ought to do. Your acquaintance on this side of the sea are under terrible apprehensions from your long stay in Ireland, that you may grow too polite for them; for we think (since the great success of such a play as the Non-juror)* that politeness is gone over the water; but others are of opinion it has been longer among you, and was introduced much about the same time with Frogs, and with equal success. Poor poetry the little that is left of it here longs to cross the seas, and leave Eusden in full and peaceable possession of the British laurel: and we begin to wish you had the singing of our poets, as well as the croaking of our frogs, to yourselves, in sæcula sæculorum. It would be well in exchange, if Parnelle, and two or three more of your swans, would come hither, especially that swan, who, like a true modern one, does not sing at all, Dr. Swift. I am (like the rest of the world) a sufferer by his idleness. Indeed I hate that any man

*The Non-juror was written by Colley Cibber, on the idea of the Tartuffe; and nothing ever gave so much offence to the Tories and Catholics. Bowles.

should be idle, while I must translate and comment; and I may the more sincerely wish for good poetry from others, because I am become a person out of the question; for a translator is no more a poet, than a tailor is a man.

You are, doubtless, persuaded of the validity of that famous verse,

"Tis expectation makes a blessing dear:

but why would you make your friends fonder of you than they are? There is no manner of need of it. We begin to expect you no more than antichrist; a man that hath absented himself so long from his friends, ought to be put into the ga

zette.

Every body here has great need of you. Many faces have died for want of your pencil, and blooming ladies have withered in expecting your return. Even Frank and Betty (that constant pair)* cannot console themselves for your absence; I fancy they will be forced to make their own picture in a pretty babe, before you come home: it will be a noble subject for a family-piece. Come then, and having peopled Ireland with a world of beautiful shadows, come to us, and see with that eye (which, like the eye of the world, creates beauties by looking on them); see, I say, how England has altered the airs of all its heads in your absence; and with what sneaking city-attitudes our most ce*These were domestic servants of Jervas.

Bowles.