Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/43

MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.

SEPT. 14, 1725.

I NEED not tell you, with what real delight I should have done any thing you desired, and in particular any good offices in my power toward the bearer of your letter, who is this day gone for France. Perhaps it is with poets as with prophets, they are so much better liked in another country than their own, that your gentleman, upon arriving in England, lost his curiosity concerning me. However, had he tried he had found me his friend; I mean he had found me yours. I am disappointed at not knowing better a man whom you esteem, and comfort my self only with having got a letter from you with which (after all) I sit down a gainer; since to my great pleasure it confirms my hope of once more seeing you. After so many dispersions, and so many divisions, two or three of us may yet be gathered together; not to plot, not to contrive silly schemes of ambition, or to vex our own or others hearts with busy vanities (such as perhaps at one time of life or other take their tour in every man) but to divert ourselves, and the world too if it pleases; or at worst, to laugh at others as innocently and as unhurtfully as at ourselves. Your travels^[1] I hear much of; my own I promise you shall never more be in a strange land, but a diligent, I hope useful investigation^[2] of my own territories^[3]. I mean

1. Gulliver.
2. The Essay on Man.
3. This is the first notice he gives Swift of his great work, and we presume that Swift certainly could but guess at the subject.