laugh at, or be angry with: but if we laugh at it, they say we are proud; and if we are angry with it they say we are ill-natured. So the most politic way is to seem always better pleased than one can be, greater admirers, greater lovers, and in short, greater fools, than we really are: so shall we live comfortably with our families, quietly with our neighbours, favoured by our masters, and happy with our mistresses. I have filled my paper, and so adieu.

LETTER IX.

Sept. 8, 1717.

I THINK your leaving England was like a good man's leaving the world, with the blessed conscience of having acted well in it; and I hope you have re⇒ ceived your reward, in being happy where you are. I believe in the religious country you inhabit, you will be better pleased to find I consider you in this light, than if I compared you to those Greeks and Romans, whose constancy in suffering pain, and whose resolution in pursuit of a generous end, you would rather imitate than boast of.

But I had a melancholy hint the other day, as if you were yet a martyr to the fatigue your virtue made you undergo on this side the water. I beg, if your health be restored to you, not to deny me the joy of knowing it. Your endeavours of service and good advice to the poor Papists, put me in mind of Noah's preaching forty years to those folks that

were to be drowned at last. At the worst I heartily wish your Ark may find an Ararat, and the wife and family (the hopes of the good patriarch) land safely after the deluge upon the shore of Totness.

If I durst mix prophane with sacred history, I would cheer you with the old tale of Brutus the wandering Trojan, who found on that very coast the happy end of his peregrinations and adventures.

I have very lately read Jeffery of Monmouth (to whom your Cornwall is not a little beholden), in the translation of a clergyman in my neighbourhood. The poor man is highly concerned to vindicate Jeffery's veracity as an historian; and told me he was perfectly astonished, we of the Roman communion could doubt of the legends of his Giants, while we believe those of our Saints. I am forced to make a fair composition with him; and, by crediting some of the wonders of Corinæus and Gogmagog, have brought him so far already, that he speaks respectfully of St. Christopher's carrying Christ, and the resuscitation of St. Nicholas Tolentine's chicken. Thus we proceed apace in converting each other from all manner of infidelity.

2

Ajax and Hector are no more to be compared to

Pope gave to this clergyman the following lines, being a translation of a prayer of Brutus, which ought to be preserved : Goddess of woods, tremendous in the chase, To mountain wolves and all the savage race, Wide o'er th' aërial vault extend thy sway, And o'er th' infernal regions void of day. On thy third reign look down; disclose our fate, In what new station shall we fix our seat? When shall we next thy hallow'd altars raise, And choirs of virgins celebrate thy praise?

Corinæus and Arthur, than the Guelphs and Ghibellines are to the Mohocks of ever-dreadful memory. This amazing writer has made me lay aside Homer for a week, and when I take him up again, I shall be very well prepared to translate, with belief and reverence, the speech of Achilles' Horse.

You will excuse all this trifling, or any thing else which prevents a sheet full of compliment: And believe there is nothing more true (even more true than any thing in Jeffery is false) than that I have a constant affection for you, and am, etc.

P. S. I know you will take part in rejoicing for the victory of Prince Eugene over the Turks, in the zeal bear to the Christian interest, though your you

Cousin of Oxford (with whom I dined yesterday) says, there is no other difference in the Christians beating the Turks, or the Turks beating the Christians, than whether the Emperor shall first declare war against Spain, or Spain declare it against the Emperor.

LETTER X.

Nov. 27, 1717.

THE question you proposed to me is what at present I am the most unfit man in the world to answer by my loss of one of the best of Fathers.

"At which General Oglethorpe was present, and of which I have heard him give a lively description.

He had lived in such a course of Temperance as was enough to make the longest life agreeable to him, and in such a course of Piety as sufficed to make the most sudden death so also. Sudden indeed it was: However, I heartily beg of God to give me such a one, provided I can lead such a life. I leave him to the mercy of God, and to the piety of a religion that extends beyond the grave: Si qua est ea

cura, etc.

He has left me to the ticklish management of so narrow a fortune, that any one false step would be fatal. My mother is in that dispirited state of resignation, which is the effect of long life, and the loss of what is dear to us. We are really each of us in want of a friend, of such an humane turn as yourself, to make almost any thing desirable to us. I feel your absence more than ever, at the same time I can less express my regards to you than ever; and shall make this, which is the most sincere letter I ever writ to you, the shortest and faintest perhaps of any you have received. It is enough if you reflect, that barely to remember any person when one's mind is taken up with a sensible sorrow, is a great degree of friendship. I can say no more but that I love you, and all that are yours; and that I wish it may be very long before any of yours shall feel for you what I now feel for my father. Adieu.

LETTER XI.

Rentcomb in Gloucestershire, Oct. 3, 1721.

YOUR kind letter has overtaken me here, for I have been in and about this country ever since your departure. I am well pleased to date this from a place so well known to Mrs. Blount, where I write as if I were dictated to by her ancestors, whose faces are all upon me. I fear none so much as Sir Christopher Guise, who, being in his shirt, seems as ready to combat me, as her own Sir John was to demolish Duke Lancastere. I dare say your Lady will recollect his figure. I looked upon the mansion, walls, and terraces; the plantations, and slopes, which nature has made to command a variety of valleys and rising woods; with a veneration mixed with a pleasure, that represented her to me in those puerile amusements, which engaged her so many years ago in this place. I fancied I saw her sober over a sampler, or gay over a jointed baby. I dare say she did one thing more, even in those early times; “remembered her Creator in the days of her youth."

You describe so well your hermitical state of life, that none of the ancient anchorites could go beyond you, for a cave in a rock, with a fine spring, or any of the accommodations that befit a solitary. Only I don't remember to have read, that any of those venerable and holy personages took with them a lady, and begat sons and daughters. You must modestly be content to be accounted a patriarch. But were you a little younger, I should rather rank you with