is to succeed it, where we lie utterly forgetful of that world from which we are gone, and ripening for that to which we are to go. If you retain any memory of the past, let it only image to you what has pleased you best; sometimes present a dream of an absent friend, or bring you back an agreeable conversation. But upon the whole, I hope you will think less of the time past than of the future; as the former has been less kind to you than the latter infallibly will be. Do not envy the world your studies; they will tend to the benefit of men against whom you can have no complaint, I mean of all Posterity: and perhaps, at your time of life, nothing else is worth your care. What is every year of a wise man's life, but a censure or critic on the past? Those whose date is the shortest, live long enough to laugh at one half of it: the boy despises the infant, the man the boy, the philosopher both, and the Christian all. You may now begin to think your manhood was too much a puerility; and you'll never suffer your age to be but a second infancy. The toils and baubles of your childhood are hardly now more below you, than those toys of our riper and of our declining years, the drums and rattles of Ambition, and the dirt and

My motive in thus simply offering them to your notice, arose from an honest wish to remove unmerited obloquy from the dead.

"I should sincerely rejoice if it was in my power to remove, with equal ease and success, the cloud which, in some other respects, still obscures the lustre of the Bishop's memory.

"I have the honour to be, with great esteem,

"Reverend Sir,

"Your very humble Servant,

"S. BADCOCK."

bubbles of Avarice. At this time, when you are cut off from a little society, and made a citizen of the world at large, you should bend your talents not to serve a Party or a few, but all mankind. Your Genius should mount above that mist in which its participation and neighbourhood with earth long involved it; to shine abroad and to heaven, ought to be the business, and the glory of your present situation. Remember it was such a time, that the greatest lights of antiquity dazzled and blazed the most, in their retreat, in their exile, or in their death: But why do I talk of dazzling or blazing? it was then that they did good, that they gave light, and that they became Guides to mankind.

Those aims alone are worthy of spirits truly great, and such I therefore hope will be yours. Resentment indeed may remain, perhaps cannot be quite extinguished, in the noblest minds; but Revenge never will harbour there: Higher principles than those of the first, and better principles than those of the latter, will infallibly influence men, whose thoughts and whose hearts are enlarged, and cause them to prefer the Whole to any part of mankind, especially to so small a part as one's single self.

Believe me, my Lord, I look upon you as a spirit entered into another life, as one just upon the edge of immortality; where the passions and affections must be much more exalted, and where you ought to despise all little views, and all mean retrospects.

The Bishop of Rochester went into exile the month following, and continued in it till his death, which happened at Paris, on the fifteenth day of February in the year 1732. P.

Nothing is worth your looking back; and therefore look forward, and make (as you can) the world look But take care that it be not with pity,

after you.

but with esteem and admiration.

I am, with the greatest sincerity, and passion for

your fame as well as happiness,

Your, etc.

LETTER XXIV.

FROM THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER.

Paris, Nov. 23, 1731.

You will wonder to see me in print; but how could I avoid it? The dead and the living, my friends and my foes, at home and abroad, called upon me to say something; and the reputation of an' history' which I and all the world value, must have suffered, had I continued silent. I have printed it here, in hopes that somebody may venture to reprint it in England, notwithstanding those two frightening words at the close of it. Whether that

Dr. John Burton, Fellow of Eton College, published a complete vindication of the authenticity of this invaluable History of Clarendon; a history written with almost unparalleled dignity of style and manner; though perhaps, in some instances, leaning to a partiality for the character of his unfortunate, but unwise, Master. It has been very lately proved, that there were some omissions made in the Oxford edition of this History.

2 The Bishop's Name set to his Vindication of Bishop Smalridge, Dr. Aldrich, and himself, from the scandalous Reflections of Oldmixon, relating to the Publication of Lord Clarendon's History. Paris, 1731, 4to. since reprinted in England. P.

happens or not, it is fit you should have a sight of it, who, I know, will read it with some degree of satisfaction, as it is mine, though it should have (as it really has) nothing else to recommend it. Such as it is, Extremum hoc munus morientis habeto; for that may well be the case, considering that within a few months I am entering into my seventieth year: after which, even the healthy and the happy cannot much depend upon life, and will not, if they are wise, much desire it. Whenever I go, you will lose a friend who loves and values you extremely, if in my circumstances I can be said to be lost to any one, when dead, more than I am already whilst living. I expected to have heard from you by Mr. Morice, and wondered a little that I did not; but he owns himself in a fault, for not giving you due notice of his motions. It was not amiss that you forbore writing, on a head wherein I promised more than I was able to perform. Disgraced men fancy sometimes that they preserve an influence, where, when they endeavour to exert it, they soon see their mistake. I did so, my good friend, and acknowledge it under my hand. You sounded the coast, and found out my error, it seems, before I was aware of it but enough on this subject.

What are they doing in England to the honour of letters and particularly what are you doing? Ipse quid audes? Quæ circumvolitas agilis Thyma? Do you pursue the Moral plan you marked out, and seemed sixteen years ago3 so intent upon? Am I to

3 So that the plan for the Essay on Man was laid 1729.

see it perfected ere I die, and are you to enjoy the reputation of it while you live? Or do you rather choose to leave the marks of your friendship, like the legacies of a will, to be read and enjoyed only by those who survive you? Were I as near you as I have been, I should hope to peep into the manuscript before it was finished. But alas! there is, and will ever probably be, a great deal of land and sea between us. How many books have come out of late in your parts, which you think I should be glad to peruse? Name them: The catalogue, I believe, will not cost you much trouble. They must be good ones indeed, to challenge any part of my time, now I have so little of it left. I, who squandered whole days heretofore, now husband hours when the glass begins to run low, and care not to mispend them on trifles. At the end of the Lottery of Life, our last minutes, like tickets left in the wheel, rise in their valuation; They are not of so much worth perhaps in themselves as those which preceded, but we are apt to prize them more, and with reason. I do so, my dear friend, and yet think the most precious minutes of my life are well employed, in reading what you write. But this is a satisfaction I cannot much hope for, and therefore must betake myself to others less entertaining. Adieu! dear Sir, and forgive me engaging with one, whom you, I think, have reckoned among the heroes of the Dunciad. It was necessary for me either to accept of his dirty challenge, or to have suffered in the esteem of the world by declining it.

My respects to your Mother: I send one of these