I send you a very odd thing, a paper printed in Boston, in New
England, wherein you will find a real person, a member of their
parliament, of the name of Jonathan Gulliver. If the fame of that
traveller has travelled thither, it has travelled very quick, to have
folks christened already by the name of the supposed author. But if
you object that no child so lately christened could be arrived at
years of maturity to be elected into parliament, I reply (to solve the
riddle) that the person is an Anabaptist, and not christened till
full age, which sets all right. However it be, the accident is very
singular that these two names should be united.
Mr. Gay's opera has been acted near forty days running, and will
certainly continue the whole season. So he has more than a fence about
his thousand pounds; he will soon be thinking of a fence about his two
thousand. Shall no one of us live as we would wish each other to live?
Shall he have no annuity, you no settlement on this side, and I
no prospect of getting to you on the other? This world is made for
Caesar,--as Cato said, for ambitious, false, or flattering people to
domineer in; nay, they would not, by their good will, leave us our
very books, thoughts, or words in quiet. I despise the world yet, I
assure you, more than either Gay or you, and the court more than all
the rest of the world. As for those scribblers for whom you apprehend
I would suppress my _Dulness_ (which, by the way, for the future you
are to call by a more pompous name, the _Dunciad_), how much that nest
of hornets are my regard will easily appear to you when you read the
_Treatise of the Bathos_.
At all adventures, yours and mine shall stand linked as friends
to posterity, both in verse and prose, and (as Tully calls it) _in
consuetudine studiorum_. Would to God our persons could but as well
and as surely be inseparable! I find my other ties dropping from me;
some worn off, some torn off, some relaxing daily: my greatest, both
by duty, gratitude, and humanity, time is shaking every moment, and
it now hangs but by a thread! I am many years the older for living so
much with one so old; much the more helpless for having been so long
helped and tendered by her; much the more considerate and tender, for
a daily commerce with one who required me justly to be both to her;
and consequently the more melancholy and thoughtful; and the less fit
for others, who want only in a companion or a friend to be amused or
entertained. My constitution too has had its share of decay as well as
my spirits, and I am as much in the decline at forty as you at sixty.
I believe we should be fit to live together could I get a little more
health, which might make me not quite insupportable. Your deafness
would agree with my dulness; you would not want me to speak when
you could not hear. But God forbid you should be as destitute of the
social comforts of life as I must when I lose my mother; or that ever
you should lose your more useful acquaintance so utterly, as to turn
your thoughts to such a broken reed as I am, who could so ill supply
your wants. I am extremely troubled at the return of your deafness;
you cannot be too particular in the accounts of your health to me;
everything you do or say in this kind obliges me, nay, delights me,
to see the justice you do me in thinking me concerned in all your
concerns; so that though the pleasantest thing you can tell me be that
you are better or easier; next to that it pleases me that you make me
the person you would complain to.
As the obtaining the love of valuable men is the happiest end I
know of this life, so the next felicity is to get rid of fools and
scoundrels; which I cannot but own to you was one part of my design in
falling upon these authors, whose incapacity is not greater than their
insincerity, and of whom I have always found (if I may quote myself),
That each bad author is as bad a friend.
This poem will rid me of these insects.
Cedite, Romani scriptores, cedite, Graii;
_Nescio quid_ maius nascitur Iliade.
I mean than _my Iliad_; and I call it _Nescio quid_, which is a degree
of modesty; but however, if it silence these fellows, it must be
something greater than any _Iliad_ in Christendom. Adieu.