and with want of plainness in my letters to you. If you will be abundant in your favours to me, how can I forbear thanking you? and if you will call that by a wrong name, that is your fault, and not mine. I hope I shall be able to convince you of your mistake, by putting you in the place of the party obliged; and then I will show you that I can be as ready as you are in doing good offices for a friend, and when I have done them, can treat you as you do me, as if you were the benefactor, and I had received the favour: I am sorry I did not keep a copy of my letter to you, that I might compare it with that which I shall have from you, whenever I shall be so happy as to receive one from you upon that subject; for I am thoroughly persuaded, you will then as much outdo me in civility of expression, as you do now in the power of conferring favours.

By this time I hope, I have satisfied you, that it is fit for me (and I am resolved) to express the sense I have of your friendship in as high a manner as I can, until I have an opportunity of making a better return but to show you, that it is as uneasy to me to write civil things, as it can be to you to read them, I will, as often as I can, do you services, that I may not be at the trouble or bear the reproach of being complaisant.

I am so much a philosopher as to know that to be great, is to be, but not to be thought, miserable; and I am of the opinion of those among them, who allow retaliation; and therefore since

when his circumstances were much in the decline, received a most noble benefaction from that benevolent physician.-..F.

you have declared your intention of loading me with cares, I will, as far as I can, make you sensible of the hurt you do me, by laying a like burden upon you.

I thank you most sincerely for the clear and full information you have given me of your grand church affair. It entirely agrees with my judgment; for I do think that what you propose will be the best service that has been done to this church and kingdom since the restoration, and the doing it soon will be of great advantage to the queen's affairs at this juncture. For, it has been given out among the party, that the ministry have an eye toward the whigs, and that if they now exert themselves, they will soon have an open declaration in their favour: we have a remarkable proof of this; for Mr Broderick has engaged a considerable number of the parliament men (many of them not of his party) to promise him their yotes for speaker, by telling them he has the approbation of the ministry and lord-lieutenant; and since his grace has made known her majesty's pleasure, a new word is given out that the liberties of the people are in the last danger, and that the crown is attempting the nomination of a speaker. I own I am no politician; but I think I understand the posture of affairs here, and I am assured that the church party is so strong, that if any thing be done on your side to excite their zeal, and discourage their adversaries, there will be but a short struggle here. But if the whigs are permitted to hope, or what is as bad, to boast of their expectations, and nothing is done to enable others to confute them, they will, it is probable, be able to give trouble to the government; and what is now easy to be effected, will become difficult by delay; and I fear the want of doing this in time will occa

sion some uneasiness to the Duke of Shrewsbury for to this is owing the doubtful dispute, who shall be speaker.

I have showed your letter to the gentleman chiefly concerned in it: this I did, because I knew it would produce a full expression of his sentiments; and I can assure you, whatever occasion may have been given you to think what you say in your letter, he has a true sense of your friendship to him. I will be guarantee, that according to the power he has he will be ready to serve you, and that in kind. My lord-chancellor will send you his own thanks. am, most truly and sincerely,

I

Yours, &c.

FROM MR POPE.*

Binfield, Dec. 8, 1713.

SIR,

NoT to trouble you at present with a recital of all my obligations to you, I shall only mention two things, which I take particularly kind of you: your desire that I should write to you, and your proposal

*This is the opening of the correspondence between these cele brated men, which began in favours on Swift's part, and gratitude on that of Pope, and ended in the most strict friendship on both. From the memorandum extracted from Bishop Kennet's Diary, the interest which Swift took in the subscription to Homer is fully proved; and one would almost think Pope's ludicrous proposal to change his religion was calculated to meet Kennet's sagacious inuendo upon that subject.

of giving me twenty guineas to change my religion; which last you must give me leave to make the subject of this letter.

Sure no clergyman ever offered so much out of his own purse for the sake of any religion. It is almost as many pieces of gold as an Apostle could get of silver, from the priests of old, on a much more valuable consideration. I believe it will be better worth my while to propose a change of my faith by subscription, than a translation of Homer. And, to convince you how well disposed I am to the reformation, I shall be content, if you can prevail with my lord-treasurer and the ministry to rise to the same sum each of them, on this pious account, as my Lord Halifax has done on the profane one. I am afraid there is no being at once a poet and a good Christian; and I am very much straitened between the two, while the whigs seem willing to contribute as much to continue me the one, as you would to make me the other. But, if you can move every man in the government, who has above ten thousand pounds a-year, to subscribe as much as yourself, I shall become a convert, as most men do, when the Lord turns it to my interest. I know they have the truth of religion so much at heart, that they would certainly give more to have one good subject translated from popery to the church of England, than twenty Heathenish authors out of any known tongue into ours. Ι therefore commission you, Mr Dean, with full authority to transact this affair in my name, and to propose as follows. First, that as to the head of our church, the pope, I may engage to renounce his power, whensoever I shall receive any particular indulgencies from the head of your church, the

queen.

As to communion in one kind, I shall also promise to change it for communion in both, as soon as the ministry will allow me.

For invocations to saints, mine shall be turned to dedications to sinners, when I shall find the great ones of this world as willing to do me any good, as I believe those of the other are.

You see I shall not be obstinate in the main points; but there is one article I must reserve, and which you seemed not unwilling to allow me, prayer for the dead. There are people to whose souls I wish as well as to my own; and I must crave leave, humbly to lay before them, that, though the subscriptions above-mentioned will suffice for myself, there are necessary perquisites and additions, which I must demand on the score of this charitable article. It is also to be considered, that the greater part of those, whose souls I am most concerned for, were unfortunately heretics, schismatics, poets, painters, or persons of such lives and manners, as few or no churches are willing to save. The expense will therefore be the greater, to make an effectual provision for the said souls.

Old Dryden, though a Roman Catholic, was a poet; and it is revealed in the visions of some ancient saints, that no poet was ever saved under some hundreds of masses. I cannot set his delivery from purgatory at less than fifty pounds sterling.

Walsh was not only a Socinian, but (what you will own is harder to be saved) a whig. He cannot modestly be rated at less than a hundred.

L'Estrange being a tory, we compute him but at twenty pounds; which I hope no friend of the party can deny to give, to keep him from damning in the next life, considering they never gave him sixpence to keep him from starving in this.