shall be there, God willing, on Thursday, the eighteenth instant. This is enough to say, in my present situation. I am, &c.

My humble service and thanks to Mrs. Worrall for the care of our friend, which I shall never forget.

TO THE SAME.

AUG. 15, 1726.

THIS is Saturday, and on Monday I set out for Ireland. I desired you would send me a letter to Chester. I suppose I shall be in Dublin, with moderate fortune, in ten or eleven days hence; for I will go by Holyhead. I shall stay two days at Chester, unless I can contrive to have my box sent after me. I hope I shall be with you by the end of August; but however, if I am not with you by the second of September, which is the time that my license is out, I desire you will get me a new one ; for I would not lie at their mercy, though I know it signifies nothing. I expect to be very miserable when I come; but I shall be prepared for it. I desired you would write to me to Chester, which I hope you will do; and pray hinder Dr. Sheridan from writing to me any more.

This is all I have to say to you at present.

I am, &c.

FROM WILLIAM PULTENEY, ESQ.

DEAR SIR,

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 3, 1726.

I RECEIVED the favour of your kind letter at my lord Chetwynd's; and though you had so much goodness as to forbid my answering it at that time; yet I should be inexcusable, now I have perfectly recovered my health and strength, if I did not return you my very hearty thanks for your concern for me during my illness. Though our acquaintance has not been of long date, yet I think I may venture to assure you, that even among your old friends, you have not many, who have a juster regard for your merit than I have. I could wish that those who are more able to serve you than I am, had the same desire of doing it. And yet methinks, now I consider it, and reflect who they are, I should be sorry they had the merit of doing so right a thing. As well as I wish you, I would rather not have you provided for yet, than provided for by those that I do not like. Mr. Pope tells me, that we shall see you in spring. When we meet again, I flatter myself we shall not part so soon; and I am in hopes you will allow me a larger share of your company than you did. All I can say to engage you to come a little oftener to my house, is, to promise, that you shall not have one dish of meat at my table so disguised, but you shall easily know what it is. You shall have a cup of your own for small beer and wine mixed together; you shall have no women at

table,

table, if you do not like them, and no men, but such as like you. I wished mightily to be in London before you left it, having something which I would willingly have communicated to you, that I do not think so discreet to trust to a letter. Do not let your expectation be raised, as if it was a matter of any great consequence: it is not that, though I should be mighty glad you knew it, and perhaps I may soon find a way of letting you do so.

Our parliament, they now say, is not to meet till after Christmas. The chief business of it being to give money, it may be proper the ministers should know, a little before it meets, how much farther they have run the nation in debt, that they may prudently conceal or provide what they think fit. I am told, that many among us begin to grumble, that England should be obliged to support the charge of a very expensive war, while all the other powers of Europe are in peace. But I will enter no farther into publick matters, taking it for granted, that a letter directed to you, and franked by me, cannot fail of raising the curiosity of some of our vigilant ministers, and that they will open it; though we know it is not customary for them so to do... Mrs. Pulteney is very much your humble servant, and I am, with great truth, sir, your most obedient humble servant,

DEAR SIR,

FROM MR. GAY.

LONDON, SEPT. 16, 1726.

SINCE I wrote last, I have been always upon the

ramble. I have been in Oxfordshire with the duke and duchess of Queensberry, and at Petersham, and wheresoever they would carry me; but as they will go to Wiltshire without me, on Tuesday next, for two or three months, I believe I shall then have finished my travels for this year, and shall not go farther from London, than now and then to Twickenham. I saw Mr. Pope on Sunday, who has lately escaped a very great danger; but is very much wounded across his right hand. Coming home in the dark, about a week ago, alone in my lord Bolingbroke's coach from Dawley, he was overturned, where a bridge has been broke down, near Whitton, about a mile from his own house. He was thrown into the river, with the glasses of the coach up, and was up to the knots of his periwig in water. The footman broke the glass to draw him out; by which, he thinks, he received the cut across his hand. He was afraid he should have lost the use of his little finger and the next to it; but the surgeon, whom he sent for last Sunday from London to examine it, told him that his fingers were safe, that there were two nerves cut, but no tendon. He was in very good health, and very good spirits, and the wound in a fair way of being soon healed. The instructions you sent me to communicate to the doctor about the

singer,

singer, I transcribed from your own letter, and sent to him; for, at that time, he was going every other day to Windsor park to visit Mr. Congreve, who has been extremely ill, but is now recovered, so that I was prevented from seeing of him by going out of town. I dined and supped on Monday last with lord and lady Bolingbroke, at lord Berkeley's, at Cranford, and returned to London, with the duke and duchess of Queensberry, on Tuesday by two o'clock in the morning. You are remembered always with great respect by all your acquaintance, and every one of them wishes for your return. The lottery begins to be drawn on Monday next, but my week of attendance will be the first in October. I am obliged to follow the engravers to make them dispatch my plates for the fables; for without it, I find they proceed but very slowly. I take your advice in this, as I wish to do in all things, and frequently revise my work, in order to finish it as well as I can. Mr. Pulteney takes the letter you sent him in the kindest manner; and I believe he is, except a few excursions, fixed in town for the winter. As for the particular affair, that you want to be informed in, we are as yet wholly in the dark; but Mr. Pope will follow your instructions. Mr. Lancelot sent for the spectacles you left behind you, which were delivered to him. Mr. Jervas's sheets are sent home to him, mended, finely washed, and neatly folded up. I intend to see Mr. Pope to morrow or on Sunday. I have not seen Mrs. Howard a great while, which you know must be a great mortification and self-denial; but in my case, it is particularly unhappy, that a man cannot contrive to be in two places at the same time: if I could, while you are