you not to forget me, for I can never cease to love and esteem you, being ever your most affectionate and obliged humble servant,

JO. ARBUTHNOT,

FROM THE SAME.

DEAR BROTher,

LONDON, DEC. 11, 1718,

FOR so I had called you before, were it not for a certain reverence I pay to deans. I find you wish both me and yourself to live to be old and rich. The second goes in course along with the first; but you cannot give seven (that is the tithe of seventy) good reasons for either. Glad at my heart should I be, if Dr. Helsham* or I could do you any good. My service to Dr. Helsham; he does not want my advice in the case. I have done good I have done good lately to a patient and a friend in that complaint of a vertigo, by cinnabar of antimony and castor, made up into boluses with confect. of alkermes. I had no great opinion of the cinnabar; but trying it amongst other things, my friend found good of this prescription. I had tried the castor alone before, not with so much success. Small quantities of tinctura sacra, now and then, will do you good. There are twenty lords, I believe, would send you horses, if they knew how. One or two have offered to me, who, I believe,

*Of whom see some pleasantries, in the poetical part of this collection, in vol. VIII.

would

would be as good as their word. Mr. Rowe, the poet laureat, is dead, and has left a damned jade of a Pegasus. I will answer for it, he will not do as your mare did, having more need of Lucan's present, than sir Richard Blackmore. I would fain have Pope get a patent for life for the place, with a power of putting in Durfey his deputy. I sent for the two Rosingraves, and examined the matter of fact. The younger had no concern in the note of 201. The elder says, that he thought the 201. due to him, for the pains and some expense he had been at about the young fellow; and his master Bethel, who had given Mr. Rosingrave the elder ten guineas before, thought the same reasonable. He says, he did not take it by way of bribe, but as his due; and did never intend to make use of it but when the young fellow was in circumstances to pay him. The younger Rosingrave was begged and intreated both by Bethel and the young fellow (who would not go without him) to accompany him to Ireland; and did believe that bearing his expenses, which was done by Bethel, was the least he could take. There is one thing in this fellow's paper that I know to be a lie, his being ill used by Rosingrave at lord Carnarvon's, He sung there, I believe once or twice for his own instruction or trial; and lord Carnarvon gave him a guinea, He went some times to hear the musick for his improvement. This is what they tell me. However, I have reprimanded the elder Rosingrave for taking the note. When this fellow came first to town, I thought his voice might do, but found it did not improve. It is mighty hard to get such a sort of a voice. There is an excellent one in the king's chapel; but he will not go. The top one of the

world

world is in Bristol choir; and I believe might be managed; though your Rosingrave is really much improved so do not totally exclude the young fellow till you have more maturely considered the matter. The dragon is come to town, and was entering upon the detail of the reasons of state that kept him from appearing at the beginning, &c, when I did believe at the same time, it was only a law of nature, to which the dragon is most subject, Remanere in statu in quo est, nisi deturbetur ab extrinseco. Lord Harley and lady Harley give you their service. Lewis is in the country with lord Bathurst, and has writ me a most dreadful story of a mad dog, that bit their huntsman; since which accident, I am told, he has shortened his stirrups three bores; they were not long before. Lord Oxford presented him with two horses. He has sold one, and sent the other to grass, avec beaucoup de sagesse. I do not believe the story of lord Bolingbroke's marriage, for I have been consulted about the lady; and, by some defects in her constitution, I should not think her appetite lay much toward matrimony. There is some talk about reversing his attainder; but I wish he may not be disappointed. I am for all precedents of that kind. They say the pretender is likely to have his chief minister impeached too. He has his wife prisoner like a ****, The footmen of the house of commons chose their speaker, and impeach, &c. I think it were proper, that all monarchs should serve their apprenticeships as pretenders, that we might discover their defects. Did you ever expect to live to see the duke of Ormond fighting against the protestant succession, and the duke of Berwick fighting for it? France, in confederacy with England, to

reduce

reduce the exorbitant power of Spain? I really think there is no such good reason for living till seventy, as curiosity. You say you are ready to resent it as an affront, if I thought a beautiful lady a curiosity in Ireland; but pray is it an affront to say that a lady, hardly known or observed for her beauty in Ireland, is a curiosity in France? All deans naturally fall into paralogisms. My wife gives you her kind love and service, and, which is the first thing that occurs to all wives, wishes you well married. I have not clean paper more than to bid you-Adieu.

FROM LORD BOLINGBROKE.

MARCH, 17, 1719.

I HAVE not these several years tasted so sensible a pleasure, as your letters of the 6th of January and 6th of February gave me; and I know enough of the tenderness of your heart, to be assured, that the letter I am writing will produce much the same effect on you. I feel my own pleasure, and I feel your's. The truest reflection, and at the same time, the bitterest satire, which can be made on the present age, is this; that to think as you think, will make a man pass for romantick. Sincerity, constancy, tenderness, are rarely to be found. They are so much out of use, that the man of mode imagines them to be out of nature. We meet with few friends; the greatest part of those who pass for such, are, properly speaking, nothing more than acquaintance;

and

and no wonder, since Tully's maxim is certainly true, that friendship can subsist non nisi inter bonos. At that age of life, when there is balm in the blood, and that confidence in the mind, which the innocency of our own heart inspires, and the experience of other men's destroys, I was apt to confound my acquaintance and my friends together. I never

doubted but that I had a numerous cohort of the latter. I expected, if ever I fell into misfortune, to have as many, and as remarkable instances of friendship to produce, as the Scythian, in one of Lucian's Dialogues, draws from his nation. Into these misfortunes I have fallen. Thus far my propitious stars have not disappointed my expectations. The rest have almost entirely failed me. The fire of my adversity has purged the mass of my acquaintance; and the separation made, I discover, on one side, a handful of friends; but on the other, a legion of enemies, at least of strangers. Happily this fiery trial has had an effect on me, which makes me some amends. I have found less resources in other people, and more in myself, than I expected. I make good, at this hour the motto which I took nine years ago, when I was weak enough to list again under the conduct of a man*, of whom nature meant to make a spy, or, at most, a captain of miners; and whom fortune, in one of her whimsical moods, made a general.

I enjoy, at this hour, with very tolerable health, great tranquillity of mind. You will, I am sure, hear this with satisfaction; and sure it is, that I tell it you without the least affectation. I live, my friend,

* Robert, earl of Oxford.

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