Ewers. Butt If here they rare mist eaks. I few fine day nigh, Eye may Kit mire eak quest Tom end dumb. They'll aid Eyes Name Lee Mad damn Harry Son, White Whey, Sigh Cann, air ray dye Two join new, Sow add Yew Too Ale eveu. Ewer Mow Stumble Add my rare, THOUGH MASS She rid ANN Wan thou Sand Say vain Hun dread, &c. Tooth ay Revere End Dock tore Jo Nathan Dray Peer, Gull Liver, Inn They Dane a wry. FROM DR. SHERIDAN. DE ARMIS TEr de an, Julij 15, 1735. URIT tome sum time ago an diam redito anser it thus. A lac a de mi illinc, ducis in it, is notabit fit fora de an; it is more fit fora puppi. I lusit toti. Irritato ripam flet an Dicti toral e ver ibit. Dic is abest. Dic is a serpenti se. Dic is a turdi se. Dic is a fartor. Dic is pisti se. Dic is a vix en. Dic is as qui ter in nasti fusti musti cur. Dic is arantur. Dic is ab a boni se. Sed Ito Dicti cantu cum in as a dans in mas ter an dans ab ori ora minuet. Da me I fido sed Dic. Quis mi ars se diu puppi. Ure as turdi rufi an sed I. Ure a tori villa in sed Dic. fit fora gallus sed calli cur sed Dic. Ure I; an dume dia dans in. Ure aras Tanti vi sed I tanti vi Hi fora Dic in apri vi. Ime Dic as te mas amo use foralis angor. I recollecta piper, sed I, an dat rumpetur, an da sume cur, an ad rumor, an das qui re, an ab lac a more in ure cum pani, an da de al more me ac in a gesto uti. It is ali ad a me sed Dic, as suras istinc. Sensu cæso I cæno more. apparent I canta ve I I cum here formo ni. Itis mi mærent, mi tenentis tardi. I cursim e veri de nota peni cani res. I ambit. Mi stomachis a cor morante ver re ad ito digesta me ale in a minute. cat nolam, nôram, no dux. I generali eat a quale carbone dedat super an da qualis as fine abit as arabit. I es ter de I eat atro ut at a bit. De vilis in mi a petite. A crustis mi de lite. (I neu Eumenides ago eat tuenti times more.) As unde I eat offa buccas fatas mi arsis. On nam unde I eat sum pes. A tu es de I eat apud in migra num edit. A venis de I eat sum pasti. Post de notabit. Afri de abit ab re ad. A satur de sum tripes. Luis is mus ter in an armi an de sines carri in it as far as I tali, sum se germani. It do es alarum mus; De vel partum. I fani nues is fito ritu me directo me at cava ni Virgini a. Miservice tomi da ter an, capta in Pari, doctor de lanij, major Folli ut; an mi complemento mi de armis tresses, especiali WRLL. I amat ure re verens his cervice fore ver an de ver. A LETTER ΤΟ THE WRITER OF THE OCCASIONAL PAPER. SEE THE "CRAFTSMAN," 1727.-This piece refers to the wellknown struggles between Pulteney and Walpole, in which Swift assisted the former. SIR,-Although in one of your papers you declare an intention of turning them, during the dead season of the year, into accounts of domestic and foreign intelligence; yet I think we, your correspondents, should not understand your meaning so literally as if you intended to reject inserting any other paper which might probably be useful for the public. Neither, indeed, am I fully convinced that this new course you resolve to DEAR MISTER DEAN, July 15, 1735. You writ to me some time ago, and I am ready to answer it thus. Alack-a-day, my ill ink; deuce is in it; it is not a bit fit for a dean; it is more fit for a puppy. I'll use it to Tighe, I writ a Tory pamphlet, and Dick Tighe tore all, every bit. Dick is a beast. Dick is a serpent, I say. Dick is a turd, I say. Dick is a farter. Dick is pist. I say. Dick is a vixen. Dick is a squittering, nasty, fusty, musty cur. Dick is a ranter. Dick is a baboon, I say. Said I to Dick Tighe, can't you come in as a dancing-master, and dance a bory or a minuet? Damme if I do, said Dick. K-my a-, said I, you puppy. You're a sturdy ruffian, said I. You're a Tory villain, said Dick. You're fit for a gallows, said I, and you may die a dancing. You're a rascally cur, said Dick. Dick Tighe, said I, your rage is a fart to me. I come here for money. It is apparent I can't have my Mayrent, my tenant is tardy. I curse him every day, not a penny can I raise. I am bit. My stomach is a cormorant, ever ready to digest a meal every minute. I eat no lamb, no ram, no ducks. I generally eat a quail carbonaded at supper, and a quail is as fine a bit as a rabbit. Yesterday I ate a trout at a bit. Devil is in my appetite. A crust is my delight. (I knew you, many days ago, eat twenty times more.) A' Sunday I eat of a buck as fat as my arse is. On a Monday I cat some peas. A' Tuesday I eat a pudding; my grannum made it. A' Wednesday I eat some pasty. Post-day not a bit. A' Friday a Lit of bread. A' Saturday some tripes. Lewis is mustering an army, and designs carrying it as far as Italy, some say Germany. It does alarm us; devil part em. If any news is fit to write, you may direct to me at Cavan in Virginia. My service to my daughter Ann, captain Parry, doctor Delany, major Folliot: and my compliment to my dear mistresses, especially Worrall. I am at your reverence his service for ever and ever. take will render you more secure than your former laudable practice of inserting such speculations as were sent you by several well-wishers to the good of the kingdom, however grating such notices might be to some who wanted neither power nor inclination to re sent them at your cost; for, since there is a direct law against spreading false news, if you should venture to tell us, in one of the "Craftsmen," that the dey of Algiers had got the tooth-ache, or the king of Bantam had taken a purge, and the facts should be contradicted in succeeding packets, I do not see what plea you could offer to avoid the utmost penalty of the law, because you are not supposed to be very gracious among those who are most able to hurt you. Besides, as I take your intentions to be sincerely meant for the public service, so your original method of entertaining and instructing us will be more general and more useful in this season of the year, when people are retired to amusements more cool, more innocent, and much more reasonable than those they have left; when their passions are subsided or suspended; when they have no occasions of inflaming themselves or each other; where they will have opportunity of hearing common sense, every day in the week, from their tenants or neighbouring farmers; and thereby be qualified, in hours of rain or leisure, to read and consider the advice or information you shall send them. Another weighty reason why you should not alter your manner of writing by dwindling to a newsmonger, is, because there is no suspension of arms agreed on between you and your adversaries, who fight with a sort of weapons which have two wonderful qualities,-that they are never to be worn out, and are best wielded by the weakest hands, and which the poverty of our language forces me to call by the trite appellations of scurrility, slander, and Billingsgate. I am far from thinking that these gentlemen, or rather their employers, (for the operators themselves are too obscure to be guessed at,) should be answered after their own way, although it were possible to drag them out of their obscurity; but I wish you would inquire what real use such a conduct is to the cause they have been so largely paid to defend. The author of the three first "Occasional Letters," a person altogether unknown, has been thought to glance (for what reason he best knows) at some public proceedings, as if they were not agreeable to his private opinions. In answer to this, the pamphleteers retained on the other side are instructed by their superiors to single out an adversary whose abilities they have most reason to apprehend, and to load himself, his family, and friends, with all the infamy that a perpetual conversation in Bridewell, Newgate, and the Stews, could furnish them; but at the same time, so very unluckily, that the most distinguishing parts of their characters strike directly in the face of their benefactor, whose idea, presenting itself along with his guineas perpetually to their imagination, occasioned this desperate blunder. But, allowing this heap of slander to be truth, and applied to the proper person, what is to be the consequence? Are our public debts to be the sooner paid; the corruptions that author complains of to be the sooner cured; an honourable peace, or a glorious war, the more likely to ensue; trade to flourish; the Ostend Company to be demolished; Gibraltar and Port Mahon left entire in our possession; the balance of Europe to be preserved; the malignity of parties to be for ever at an end; none but persons of merit, virtue, genius, and learning to be encouraged? I ask, whether any of these eflects will follow upon the publication of this author's libel, even supposing he could prove every syllable of it to be true? At the same time, I am well assured that the only reason of ascribing those papers to a particular person is built upon the information of a certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself; a sort of persons who, although without much love, esteem, or dread of people in present power, yet have too much common prudence to speak their thoughts with freedom before such an intruder; who, therefore, imposes grossly upon his masters, if he makes them pay for anything but his own conjectures. It is a grievous mistake in agre at minister to neglect or despise, much more to irritate, men of genius and learning. I have heard one of the wisest persons in my time observe, that an administration was to be known and judged by the talents of those who appeared their advocates in print. This I must never allow to be a general rule; yet I cannot but think it prodigiously unfortunate, that, among the answerers, defenders, repliers and panegyrists, started up in defence of present persons and proceedings, there has not yet arisen one whose labours we can read with patience, however we may applaud their loyalty and good will; and all this with the advantages of constant ready pay, of natural and acquired venom, and a grant of the whole fund of slander, to range over and riot in as they please. On the other side, a turbulent writer of "Occasional Letters," and other vexatious papers, in conjunction, perhaps, with one or two friends as bad as himself, is able to disconcert, tease, and sour us, whenever he thinks fit, merely by the strength of genius and truth; and, after so dexterous a manner, that when we are vexed to the soul, and well know the reasons why we are so, we are ashamed to own the first, and cannot tell how to express the other. In a word, it seems to me that all the writers are on one side, and all the railers on the other. However, I do not pretend to assert that it is impossible for an ill minister to find men of wit, who may be drawn, by a very valuable consideration, to undertake his defence; but the misfortune is, that the heads of such writers rebel against their hearts; their genius forsakes them when they would offer to prostitute it to the service of injustice, corruption, party rage, and false representation of things and persons. And this is the best argument I can offer in defence of great men, who have been of late so very unhappy in the choice of their paper-champions; although I cannot much commend their good husbandry in those exorbitant payments of twenty and sixty guineas at a time for a scurvy pamphlet; since the sort of work they require is what will all come within the talents of any one who has enjoyed the happiness of a very bad education, has kept the vilest company, is endued with a servile spirit, is master of an empty purse, and a heart full of malice. But, to speak the truth in soberness; it should seem a little hard, since the old whiggish principle has been recalled, of standing up for the liberty of the press, to a degree that no man, for several years past, durst venture out a thought which did not square, to a point, with the maxims and practices that then prevailed: I say, it is a little hard that the vilest mercenaries should be countenanced, preferred, rewarded, for discharging their brutalities against men of honour only upon a bare conjecture. If it should happen that these profligates have attacked an innocent person, I ask, what satisfaction can their hirers give in return? Not all the wealth raked together by the most corrupt, rapacious ministers, in the longest course of unlimited power, would be sufficient to atone for the hundredth part of such an injury. In the common way of thinking, it is a situation sufficient in all conscience to satisfy a reasonable ambition, for a private person to command the laws, the forces, the revenues of a great kingdom; to reward and advance his followers and flatterers as he pleases; and to keep his enemies (real or imaginary) in the dust. In such an exaltation, why should he be at the trouble to make use of fools to sound his praises, (because I always thought the lion was hard set when he chose the ass for his trumpeter,) or knaves to revenge his quarrel at the expense of innocent men's reputations? With all those advantages, I cannot see why persons in the height of power should be under the least concern on account of their reputation, for which they have no manner of use; or to ruin that of others, which may perhaps be the only possession their enemies have left them. Supposing times of corruption, which I am very far from doing; if a writer displays them in their proper colours, does he do anything worse than sending customers to the shop? "Here only, at the sign of the Brazen Head, are to be sold places and pensions: beware of counterfeits, and take care of mistaking the door." For my own part, I think it very unnecessary to give the character of a great minister in the fulness of his power, because it is a thing that naturally does itself, and is obvious to the eyes of all mankind; for his personal qualities are all derived into the most minute parts of his administration. If this be just, prudent, regular, impartial, intent upon the public good, prepared for present exigencies, and provident of the future; such is the director himself, in his private capacity if it be rapacious, insolent, partial, palliating long and deep diseases of the public with empirical remedies, false, disguised, impudent, malicious, revengeful; you shall infallibly find the private life of the conductor to answer in every point: nay, what is more, every twinge of the gout or gravel will be felt in their consequences by the community; as the thief-catcher, upon viewing a house broke open, could immediately distinguish, from the manner of the workmanship, by what hand it was done. : SIR, A pamphlet was lately sent me, entitled "A Letter from the Right Honourable Sir R. W. to the Right Honourable W. P., occasioned by the late Invectives on the King, her Majesty, and all the Royal Family." By these initial letters of our names, the world is to understand that you and I must be meant. Although the letter seems to require an answer, yet because it appears to be written rather in the style and manner used by some of your pensioners than your own, I shall allow you the liberty to think the same of this answer, and leave the public to determine which of the two actors can better personate their principals. That frigid and fustian way of haranguing, wherewith your representer begins, continues, and ends his declamation, I shall leave to the critics in eloquence and propriety to descant on, because it adds nothing to the weight of your accusations, nor will my defence be one grain the better by exposing its puerilities. I shall therefore only remark, upon this particular, that the frauds and corruptions in most other arts and sciences, as law, physic, (I shall proceed no further,) are usually much more plausibly defended than in that of politics; whether it be that, by a kind of fatality, the vindication of a corrupt minister is always left to the management of the meanest and most prostitute writers, or, whether it be that the effects of a wicked or unskilful administration are more public, visible, pernicious, and universal; whereas the mistakes in other sciences are often matters that affect only speculation;, or at worst, the bad consequences fall upon few and private persons. A nation is quickly sensible of the miseries it feels, and little comforted by knowing what account it turns to by the wealth, the power, the honours conferred on those who sit at the helm, or the salaries paid to their penmen, while the body of the people is sunk into poverty and despair. A Frenchman in his wooden shoes may, from the vanity of his nation and the constitution of that government, conceive some imaginary pleasure in boasting the grandeur of his monarch in the midst of his own slavery; but a freeborn Englishman, with all his loyalty, can find little satisfaction at a minister overgrown in wealth and power from the lowest degree of want and contempt, when that power or wealth is drawn from the bowels and blood of the nation, for which every fellow-subject is a sufferer, except the great man himself, his family, and his pensioners; I mean such a minister (if there has ever been such a one) whose whole management has been a continued link of ignorance, blunders, and mistakes in every article, besides that of enriching and aggrandizing himself. For these reasons, the faults of men who are most trusted in public business are, of all others, the most difficult to be defended. A man may be persuaded into a wrong opinion, wherein he has small concern; but no oratory can have the power over a sober man against the conviction of his own senses; and therefore, as I take it, the money thrown away on such advocates might be more prudently spared, and kept in such a minister's own pocket, than lavished in hiring a corporation of pamphleteers to defend his conduct, and prove a kingdom to be flourishing in trade and wealth, which every particular subject (except those few already excepted) can lawfully swear, and by dear experience knows, to be a falsehood. to suppose Give me leave, noble sir, in the way of argument, this to be your case: could you, in good conscience or moral justice, chide your paper-advocates for their ill success in persuading the world against manifest demonstration? Their miscarriage is owing, alas! to want of matter. Should we allow them to be masters of wit, raillery, or learning, yet the subject would not admit them to exercise their talents; and consequently they can have no recourse but to impudence, lying, and scurrility. I must confess, that the author of your letter to me has carried this last qualification to a greater height than any of his fellows; but he has, in my opinion, failed a little in point of politeness, from the original, which he affects to imitate. If I should say to a primeminister, "Sir, you have sufficiently provided that Dunkirk should be absolutely demolished and never repaired; you took the best advantages of a long and general peace to discharge the immense debts of the nation; you did wonders with the fleet; you made the Spaniards submit to our quiet possession of Gibraltar and Port Mahon; you never enriched yourself and family at the expense of the public."-Such is the style of your supposed letter; which, however, if I am well informed, by no means comes up to the refinements of a fishwife at Billingsgate. never had a bastard by Tom the waterman; you never stole a silver tankard; you were never whipped at the cart's tail." "You In the title of your letter, it is said to be " occasioned by the late invectives on the king, her majesty, and all the royal family;" and the whole contents of the paper (stripped from your eloquence) go on upon a suppo sition affectedly serious, that their majesties and the whole royal family have been lately bitterly and publicly inveighed against, in the most enormous and treasonable manner. Now, being a man, as you well know, altogether out of business, I do sometimes lose an hour in reading a few of those controversial papers upon politics, which have succeeded for some years past to the polemical tracts between Whig and Tory; and in this kind of reading, (if it may deserve to be so called,) although I have been often but little edified or entertained, yet has it given me occasion to make some observations. First, I have observed, that however men may sincerely agree in all the branches of the Low Church principle, in a tenderness for dissenters of every kind, in a perfect abhorrence of popery and the pretender, and in the most firm adherence to the Protestant succession in the royal house of Hanover, yet plenty of matter may arise to kindle their animosities against each other, from the various infirmities, follies, and vices inherent in mankind. Secondly, I observed, that although the vulgar reproach, which charges the quarrels between ministers and their opposers to be only a contention for power between those who are in and those who would be in if they could; yet, as long as this proceeds no further than a scuffle of ambition among a few persons, it is only a matter of course, whereby the public is little affected. But, when corruptions are plain, open, and undisguised, both in their causes and effects, to the hazard of a nation's ruin, and so declared by all the principal persons and the bulk of the people, those only excepted who are gainers by those corruptions; and when such ministers are forced to fly for shelter to the throne, with a complaint of disaffection to majesty against all who durst dislike their administration; such a general disposition in the minds of men cannot, I think, by any rules of reason be called "the clamour of a few disaffected incendiaries" grasping after power. It is the true voice of the people, which must, and will at last, be heard, or produce consequences that I dare not mention. I have observed, thirdly, that among all the offensive printed papers which have come to my hand, whether good or bad, the writers have taken particular pains to celebrate the virtues of our excellent king and queen, even where these were, strictly speaking, no part of the subject; nor can it be properly objected that such a proceeding was only a blind to cover their malice toward you and your assistants; because, to affront| the king, queen, or the royal family, as it would be directly opposite to the principles that those kind of writers have always professed, so it would destroy the very end they have in pursuit. And it is somewhat remarkable, that those very writers against you and the regiment you command, are such as most distinguish themselves upon all, or upon no occasions, by their panegyrics on their prince; and, as all of them do this without favour or hire, so some of them continue the same practice under the severest prosecution by you and your janizaries. You seem to know, or at least very strongly to conjecture, who those persons are that give you so much weekly disquiet. Will you dare to assert that any of these are Jacobites, endeavour to alienate the hearts of the people, to defame the prince, and then dethrone him, (for these are your expressions,) and that I am their patron, their bulwark, their hope, and their refuge? Can you think I will descend to vindicate myself against an aspersion so absurd? God be thanked, we have had many a change of ministry without changing our prince; for, if it had been otherwise, perhaps revolutions might have been more frequent. Heaven forbid that the welfare of a great kingdom, and of a brave people, should be trusted with the thread of a single subject's life; for I suppose it is not yet in your view to entail the ministryship in your family. Thus I hope we may live to see different ministers and different measures, without any danger to the succession in the royal Protestant line of Hanover. You are pleased to advance a topic which I could never heartily approve of in any party, although they have each in their turn advanced it, while they had the superiority. You tell us it is hard that, while every private man shall have the liberty to choose what servant he pleases, the same privilege should be refused to a king. This assertion, crudely understood, can hardly be supported. If by servants be only meant those who are purely menial, who provide for their master's food and clothing, or for the convenience and splendour of his family, the point is not worth debating. But, the bad or good choice of a chancellor, a secretary, an ambassador, a treasurer, and many other officers, is of very high consequence to the whole kingdom: so is likewise that amphibious race of courtiers between servants and ministers; such as the steward, chamberlain, treasurer of the household, and the like, being all of the privy council, and some of the cabinet; who, according to their talents, their principles, and their degree of favour, may be great instruments of good or evil, both to the subject and the prince; so that the parallel is by no means adequate between a prince's court and a private family. And yet, if an insolent footman be troublesome in the neighbourhood; if he breaks the people's windows, insults their servants, breaks into other folks' houses to pilfer what he can find, although he belong to a duke, and be a favourite in his station; yet those who are injured may, without just offence, complain to his lord, and, for want of redress, get a warrant to send him to the stocks, to Bridewell, or to Newgate, according to the nature and degree of his delinquencies. Thus the servants of the prince, whether menial or otherwise, if they be of his council, are subject to the inquiries and prosecutions of the great council of the nation, even as far as to capital punishment; and so must ever be in our constitution, till a minister can procure a majority even of that council to shelter him; which I am sure you will allow to be a desperate crisis, under any party of the most plausible denomination. 66 The only instance you produce, or rather insinuate, to prove the late invectives against the king, queen, and royal family, is drawn from that deduction of the English history published, in several papers, by the Craftsman;" wherein are shown the bad consequences to the public, as well as to the prince, from the practices of evil ministers in most reigns, and at several periods, when the throne was filled by wise monarchs as well as by weak. This deduction, therefore, cannot reasonably give the least offence to a British king, when he shall observe that the greatest and ablest of his predecessors, by their own candour, by a particular juncture of affairs, or by the general infirmity of human nature, have sometimes put too much trust in confident, insinuating, and avaricious ministers. Wisdom, attended by virtue and a generous nature, is not unapt to be imposed on. Thus Milton describes Uriel, "the sharpest-sighted spirit in heaven," and "regent of the sun," deceived by the dissimulation and flattery of the devil, for which the poet gives a philosophical reason, but needless here to quote. Is anything more common, or more useful, than to caution wise men in high stations against putting too much trust in undertaking servants, cringing flatterers, or designing friends? Since the Asiatic custom of governing by prime-ministers has prevailed in so many courts of Europe, how careful should every prince be in the choice of the person on whom so great a trust is devolved, whereon depend the safety and welfare of himself and all his subjects! Queen Elizabeth, whose administration is frequently quoted as the best pattern for English princes to follow, could not resist the artifices of the earl of Leicester; who, although universally allowed to be the most ambitious, insolent, and corrupt person of his age, was yet her greatest and almost her only favourite (his religion indeed being partly puritan, and partly infidel, might have better tallied with present times); yet this wise queen would never suffer the openest enemies of that overgrown lord to be sacrificed to his vengeance; nor durst he charge them with a design of introducing popery, or the Spanish pretender. How many great families do we all know, whose masters have passed for persons of good abilities during the whole course of their lives, and yet the greatest part of whose estates have sunk in the hands of their stewards and receivers; their revenues paid them in scanty portions, at large discount, and treble interest, though they did not know it; while the tenants were daily racked, and at the same time accused to their landlords of insolvency. Of this species are such managers, who, like honest Peter Waters, pretend to clear an estate, keep the owner pennyless, and after seven years leave him five times more in debt, while they sink half a plum into their own pockets. Those who think themselves concerned, may give you thanks for that gracious liberty you are pleased to allow them of "taking vengeance on the ministers, and there shooting their envenomed arrows." As to myself, I neither owe you vengeance, nor make use of such weapons but it is your weakness, or ill fortune, or perhaps the fault of your constitution, to convert wholesome remedies into poison; for you have received better and more frequent instructions than any minister of your age and country, if God had given you the grace to apply them. I dare promise you the thanks of half the kingdom, if you please to perform the promise you have made of suffering the "Craftsman" and company, or whatever other infamous wretches and execrable villains you mean, to take their vengeance only on your own sacred ministerial person, without bringing any of your brethren, much less the most remote branch of the royal family, into the debate. This generous offer I suspected from the first, because there were never heard of so many, so unnecessary, and so severe prosecutions as you have promoted during your ministry, in a kingdom where the liberty of the press is so much pretended to be allowed. But in reading a page or two, I found you thought it proper to explain away your grant; for there you tell us, that "these miscreants" (meaning the writers against you) "are to remember, that the laws have ABUNDANTLY LESS generous, less mild and merciful sentiments," than yourself; and into their secular hands the poor authors must be delivered to fines, prisons, pillories, whippings, and the gallows. Thus your promise of impunity, which began somewhat jesuitically, concludes with the mercy of a Spanish inquisitor. sun. If it should so happen that I am neither abettat, patron, protector, nor supporter of these imaginary invectives "against the king, her majesty, or any of the royal family," I desire to know what satisfaction I am to get from you, or the creature you employed in writing the libel which I am now answering? It will be no excuse to say, that I differ from you in every particular of your political reason and practice; be cause that will be to load the best, the soundest, and most numerous part of the kingdom with the denomi nations you are pleased to bestow upon me, that they are "Jacobites, wicked miscreants, infamous wretches, execrable villains, and defamers of the king, queen, and all the royal family," and "guilty of high treason." You cannot know my style; but can easily know your works, which are performed in the sight of the Your good inclinations are visible; but I begin to doubt the strength of your credit even at court, that you have not power to make his majesty believe me the person which you represent in your libel; as most infallibly you have often attempted, and in vain, because I must otherwise have found it by the marks of his royal displeasure. However, to be angry with you, to whom I am indebted for the greatest obliga tion I could possibly receive, would be the highest ingratitude. It is to you I owe that reputation I have acquired for some years past of being a lover of my country and its constitution: to You I owe the libels and scurrilities conferred upon me by the worst of men, and consequently some degree of esteem and friendship from the best. From you I learned the skill of distinguishing between a patriot and plunderer of his country: and from you I hope in time to acquire the knowledge of being a loyal, faithful, and useful servant to the best of princes, king George II.; and therefore I can conclude, by your example, but with greater truth, that I am not only with humble submission and respect, but with infinite gratitude, sir, your most obedient and obliged servant, W. PULTENEY. EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE. "In a series of familiar letters between the same friends for thirty years, their whole life, as it were, passes in review before us: we live with them, we hear them talk, we mark the vigour of life, the ardour of expectation, the hurry of business, the jollity of their social meetings. and the sport of their fancy in the sweet intervals of leisure and retirement; we see the scene gradually change; hope and expectation are at an end; they regret pleasures that are past, and friends that are dead; they complain of disappointment and infirmity; they are conscious that the sands of life which remain are few; and while we hear them regret the approach of the last, it falls, and we lose them in the grave. Such as they were we feel ourselves to be; we are conscious to sentiments, connections, and situations like theirs; we find ourselves in the same path, urged forward by the same necessity, and the parallel in what has been is carried on with such force to what shall be, that the future almost becomes present, and we wonder at the new power of those truths, of which we never doubted the reality and importance. "These letters will therefore contribute to whatever good may be hoped from a just estimate of life; and for that reason, if for no other, are by no means unworthy the attention of the public." HAWKESWORTH. TO THE REV. JOHN KENDALL." Moor-park, February 11, 1691. SIR,-If anything made me wonder at your letter, it was your almost inviting me to do so in the beginning, which, indeed, grew less upon knowing the occasion; since it is what I have heard from more than one in a Vicar of Thornton in Leicestershire. and about Leicester. And for the friendship between us, as I suppose yours to be real, so I think it would be proper to imagine mine, until you find any cause to believe it pretended; though I might have some quarrel at you in three or four lines, which are very ill bestowed in complimenting me. And as to that of my great prospects of making my fortune, on which as your kindness only looks on the best side, so my own cold temper and unconfined humour is a much greater hinderance than any fear of that which is the subject of your letter. I shall speak plainly to you, that the very ordinary observations I made with going half a mile beyond the university, have taught me experience enough not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be in some years; and even then itself, I am so hard to please, that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world. How all that suits with my behaviour to the woman in hand you may easily imagine, when you know that there is something in me which must be employed, and when I am alone turns all, for want of practice, into speculation and thought; insomuch, that these seven weeks I have been here, I have writ and burnt, and writ again upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any man in England. And this is |