P. S. I hope what goes before will be a strong motive to your coming. God knows if ever I shall see Ireland; I shall never desire it, if you can be got hither, or keep here. Yet I think I shall be, too soon, a freeman. Your recommendations I constantly give to those you mention; though some of them I see but seldom, and am every day more retired. I am less fond of the world, and less curious about it; yet no way out of humour, disappointed, or angry: though in my way I receive as many injuries as my betters; but I do not feel them, therefore I ought not to vex other people, nor even to return injuries. I pass almost all my time at Dawley and at home; my lord (of which I partly take the merit to myself) is as much estranged from politicks as I am. Let philosophy be ever so vain it is less vain now than politicks, and not quite so vain at present as divinity: I know nothing that moves strongly but satire, and those who are ashamed of nothing else, are so of being ridiculous. I fancy if we three were together but for three years, some good might be done even upon this age.
I know you will desire some account of my health: It is as usual, but my spirits rather worse. I write little or nothing. You know I never had either taste or talent for politicks, and the world minds nothing else. I have personal obligations which I will ever preserve, to men of different sides, and I wish nothing so much as publick quiet, except it be my own quiet. I think it a merit, if I can take off any man from grating or satyrical subjects, merely on the score of party: and it is the greatest vanity of my life that I have contributed to turn my lord Bolingbroke to subjects moral, useful, and more worthy his pen. Dr.
