a maxim, that should be writ in letters of diamonds, that a wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart[1]. Pray my lord inquire whether your prototype, my lord Digby, after the restoration when he was at Bristol, did not take some care of his fortune, notwithstanding that quotation I once sent you out of his speech to the H. of commons? In my conscience, I believe Fortune, like other drabs, values a man gradually less for every year he lives. I have demonstration for it; because if I play at piquet for sixpence with a man or woman two years younger than myself, I always lose; and there is a young girl of twenty who never fails of winning my money at backgammon, though she is a bungler, and the game be ecclesiastick. As to the publick, I confess nothing could cure my itch of meddling with it but these frequent returns of deafness, which have hindred me from passing last winter in London; yet I cannot but consider the perfidiousness of some people, who, I thought, when I was last there, upon a change that happened, were the most impudent in forgetting their professions that I have ever known. Pray will you please to take your pen, and blot me out that political maxim from whatever book it is in, that Res nolunt diu male administrari[2]; the commonness makes me not know who is the author, but sure he must be some modern.
I am sorry for lady Bolingbroke's ill health; but I protest I never knew a very deserving person of that sex, who had not too much reason to complain
- ↑ "I am afraid that he had money as much in his heart as his head. As he advanced in years, he grew shamefully parsimonious." Dr. Warton.
- ↑ Publick affairs cannot remain long in a state of ill management.
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