The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 13/From Alexander Pope to John Boyle - 3
FROM MR.POPE TO THE EARL OF ORRERY.
I WRITE by the same post that I received your very obliging letter. The consideration you show toward me, in the just apprehension that any news of the dean's condition might alarm me, is most kind and generous. The very last post I writ to him a long letter, little suspecting him in that dangerous circumstance. I was so far from fearing his health, that I was proposing schemes, and hoping possibilities for our meeting once more in this world. I am weary of it; and shall have one reason more, and one of the strongest that nature can give me (even when she is shaking my weak frame to pieces) to be willing to leave this world, when our dear friend is on the edge of the other. Yet I hope, I would fain hope, he may yet hover a while on the brink of it, to preserve to this wretched age a relick and example of the last.