Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/205

 dispute—nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point "Dr. Lewis sent me an account of Dr. Arbuthnot's illness, which is a very sensible affliction to me, who, by living so long out of the world, have lost that hardness of heart contracted by years and general conversation. I am daily losing friends, and neither seeking nor getting others. Oh if the world had but a dozen of Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my 'Travels!

"October 15, 1725. "I am wonderfully pleased with the suddenness of your kind answer. It makes me hope you are coming towards us, and that you incline more and more to your old friends Here is one [Lord Bolingbroke] who was once a powerful planet, but has now (after long experience of all that comes of shining) learned to be content with returning to his first point without the thought or ambition of shining at all. Here is another [Edward, Earl of Oxford], who thinks one of the greatest glories of his father was to have distinguished and loved you, and who loves you hereditarily. Here is Arbuthnot, recovered from the jaws of death, and more pleased with the hope of seeing you again than of reviewing a world, every part of which he has long despised but what is made up of a few men like yourself "Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs—and generally by Tories too. Because he had humour, he was supposed to have dealt with Dr. Swift, in like manner as when anyone had learning formerly, he was thought to have dealt with the devil "Lord Bolingbroke had not the least harm by his fall; I wish he had received no more by his other fall. But Lord Bolingbroke is the most improved mind since you saw him, that ever was improved without shifting into a new body, or being paullo minus ab angelis. I have often imagined to myself, that if ever all of us meet again, after so many varieties and changes, after so much of the old world and of the old man in each of us has been altered, that scarce a single thought of the one, any more than a single action of the other, remains just the same; I have fancied, I say, that we should meet like the righteous in the millennium, quite at peace, divested of all our former passions, Swift, the greatest wit of all times; Gay, the kindliest laugher—it is a privilege to sit in that company.