time is now some years past, and you will never mend in my opinion. But really, Brother, you have a sort of shuffle in your gait; and now I have said the worst that your most mortal enemy would say of you with truth. I defy Pope and his burning glasses. 10 A man cannot amuse himself 50 miles from London, after four years jading himself with Ministers of State, but all the town must hear of it. However, if Pope makes the right use of your hint for an epigram, or a longer copy, I shall not be angry. It was a malicious satire of yours upon Whiston, that what you intended as a ridicule, should be any way struck upon by him for a reality. Go on for the sake of wit and humour, and cultivate that vein which no man alive possesses but yourself, and which lay like a mine in the earth, which the owner for a long time never knew of. Lady M-m, who talked of writing to me, but yet has not answered my letter: put her not in mind, I beg you. I believe she has heard of my letter to the Dragon, and dislikes it as partial. I hear he has shown it to every living soul, and I believe has done so in malice, as the French understand that word. My humble service to Lord and Lady M- and Mrs. Hill. By what I heard at Oxford Lord Trevor is fallen off with the rest; and indeed the circle of the Dragon's friends seemed very narrow, by the loss they were at for healths :-we came to yours six glasses before the usual time. SWIFT TO ARBUTHNOT. [Now first published.] [Dublin, 1733 ?] MY DEAR FRIEND,-I never once suspected your forgetfulness or want of friendship, but very often dreaded your want of health, to which alone I I imputed every delay longer than ordinary in hearing from you. should be very ungrateful indeed if I acted otherwise to you, who are pleased to take such generous constant care of my health, my interests, and my reputation, who represented me so favourably to that blessed Queen your mistress, as well as to her Ministers, and to all your friends. The letters you mention which I did not answer, I cannot find, and yet I have all that ever came from you, for I constantly endorse yours and those of a few other friends, and date them; only if there be anything particular, though of no consequence, when I go to the country I send them to some friends among other papers for fear of accidents in my absence. I thank you kindly for your favour to the young man who was bred in my quire. The people of skill in music represent him to me as a lad of virtue, and hopeful and endeavouring in his way. It is your own fault if I give you trouble, because you never refused me anything in your life. You tear my heart with the ill account of your health; yet if it should please God to call you away before me, I should not pity you in the least, except on the account of what pains you might feel before you passed into a better life. I should pity none but your friends, and among them chiefly myself, although I never can hope to have health enough to leave this country till I leave the world. I do not know among mankind any person more prepared to depart from us than yourself, not even the 101 Swift alludes to a news-letter (as yet unpublished) from Pope to Arbuthnot. Bishop of Marseilles, 102 if he be still alive; for among all your qualities that have procured you the love and esteem of the world, I ever most valued your moral and Christian virtues, which were not the product of years or sickness, but of reason and religion, as I can witness after above five-and-twenty years' acquaintance. I except only the too little care of your fortune; upon which I have been so free as sometimes to examine and to chide you, and the consequence of which hath been to confine you to London, when you are under a disorder for which I am told, and know, that the clear air of the country is necessary. The great reason that hinders my journey to England, is the same that drives you from Highgate: I am not in circumstances to keep horses and servants in London. My revenues by the miserable oppressions of this kingdom are sunk 3007. a year, for tithes are become a drug, and I have but little rents from the Deanery lands, which are my only sure payments. I have here a large convenient house; I live at two-thirds cheaper here than I could there; I drink a bottle of French wine myself every day, though I love it not; but it is the only thing that keeps me out of pain. I ride every fair day a dozen miles, on a large strand or turnpike road. You in London have no such advantages. I can buy a chicken for a groat, and entertain three or four friends, with as many dishes, and two or three bottles of French wine, for 10 shillings. When I dine alone, my pint and chicken with the appendices cost me about 15 pence. I am thrifty in everything but wine, of which though I be not a constant housekeeper, I spend between five and six hogsheads a year. When I ride to a friend a few miles off, if he be not richer than I, I carry my bottle, my bread and chicken, that he may be no loser. I talk thus foolishly to let you know the reasons which, joined to my ill-health, make it impossible for me to see you and my other friends. And perhaps this domestic tattle may excuse me, and amuse you. I could not live with my Lord Bo- or Mr. Pope: they are both too temperate and too wise for me, and too profound and too poor. And how could I afford horses? And how could I ride over their cursed roads in winter, and be turned into a ditch by every carter or hackney coach? Every parish minister of this city is governor of all carriages, and so are the two Deans, and every carter, &c., makes way for us at their peril. Therefore, like Cæsar, I will be one of the first here rather than the last among you. I forget that I am so near the bottom. I am now with one of my Prebendaries five miles in the country, for five days. I brought with me 8 bottles of wine, with bread and meat for three days, which is my club: he is a bachelor, with 3007. a year. Pray God preserve you, my dear friend. Entirely yours, Dr. John Arbuthnot, at his house, Cork Street, Burlington Gardens. 102 The Bishop immortalized by Pope. J. SWIFT.103 103 Lord Mahon has published for the first time an able character of Arbuth not by no less an observer than Lord Chesterfield. (Letters, vol. ii. p. 446.) BROOM E. 1689?-1745. Born at Haslington, in Cheshire - Educated at Eton and Cambridge Enters into Holy Orders - Introduced to Pope-Assists Pope in the Notes to the Iliad - Assists him in translating the Odyssey - His Quarrel with Pope- His Miscellany Poems - Marries Death and Burial in Bath Abbey Church - Works and Character. WILLIAM BROOME was born in Cheshire, as is said, of very mean parents. Of the place of his birth, or the first part of his life, I have not been able to gain any intelligence.' He was educated upon the foundation at Eton, and was captain of the school a whole year, without any vacancy, by which he might have obtained a scholarship at King's College. Being by this delay, such as is said to have happened very rarely, superannuated, he was sent to St. John's College [Cambridge] by the contributions of his friends, where he obtained a small exhibition.3 At his College he lived for some time in the same chamber with the well-known Ford, by whom I have formerly heard him described as a contracted scholar and a mere versifier, unacquainted with life, and unskilful in conversation. His addiction He was born at Haslington, in the parish of Barthomley and county of Chester, about the year 1689. His father (Randle Broome) was a farmer. See Barlow's Memoir of Broome,' 12mo., 1854, p. 7. On his portrait before his 'Poems-D. Heins, p. 1725, G. Vertue, sculp.—is this inscription: “William Broome, ætat. xxxvii. 1726." He was therefore born in 1688 or 1689, and consequently of the same age as Pope. 2 It happened but four times in 160 years, viz., in 1619, 1653, 1707, 1756.— Gent.'s Mag. for 1780, p. 269. He was matriculated a sizar the 10th of July, 1708, took his B.A. degree in January, 1711-12, and his A.M. degree in 1716.-BARLOW's Broome, p. 7. * See Johnson's Life of Fenton, vol. ii. p. 276, and Mr. Croker's note in Boswell, ed. 1847, p. 9. VOL. III. Р |