MY DEAR LORD,
I am infinitely obliged to your lordship for the honour of your letter, and kind remembrance of me. I do here confess, that I have more obligations to your lordship than to all the world besides. You never deceived me, even when you were a great minister of state: and yet I love you still more, for your condescending to write to me, when you had the honour to be an exile. I can hardly hope to live till you publish your history, and am vain enough to wish that my name could be squeezed in among the few subalterns, quorum pars parva fui: if not, I will be revenged, and contrive some way to be known to futurity, that I had the honour to have your lordship for my best patron; and I will live and die, with the highest veneration and gratitude, your most obedient, &c.
P. S. I will here in a postscript correct (if it be possible) the blunders I have made in my letter. I have showed my cousin the above letter, and she assures me, "that a great collection of your
my letters to me
you[1] are put up and sealed, and in some very safe hand."
I am, my most dear and honoured friend, entirely yours,
It is now Aug. 24, 1738.
- ↑ It is written just thus in the original. The series of correspondence in the present volume seems to be part of the collection here spoken of, as it contains not only the letters of Mr. Pope, but of Dr. Swift, both to him and Mr. Gay, which were returned to Mr. Pope after Mr. Gay's death: though any mention made by Mr. P. of the return or exchange of letters has been industriously suppressed in the publication, and only appears by some of the answers.
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