NOV. 19, 1729.
I FIND that you have laid aside your project of building in Ireland, and that we shall see you in this island cum zephyris, & hirundine prima[1]. I know not whether the love of fame increases as we advance in age; sure I am that the force of friendship does. I loved you almost twenty years ago: I thought of you as well as I do now, better was beyond the power of conception, or to avoid an equivoque, beyond the extent of my ideas. Whether you are more obliged to me for loving you as well when I knew you less, or for loving you as well after loving you so many years, I shall not determine. What I would say is this: while my mind grows daily more independent of the world, and feels less need of leaning on external objects, the ideas of friendship return oftener, they busy me, they warm me more: Is it that we grow more tender as the moment of our great separation approaches? or is it that they who are to live together in another state, (for vera amicitia non nisi inter bonos[2]) begin to feel more strongly that divine sympathy which is to be the great band of their future society? There is no one thought which sooths my mind like this: I encourage my imagination to pursue it, and am heartily afflicted when another fa-
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