DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.
DUBLIN, JAN. 28, 1715.
MY lord bishop of Clogher[1] gave me your kind letter full of reproaches for my not writing. I am naturally no very exact correspondent, and when I leave a country without probability of returning, I think as seldom as I can of what I loved or esteemed in it, to avoid the desiderium which of all things makes life most uneasy. But you must give me leave to add one thing, that you talk at your ease, being wholly unconcerned in publick events: For, if your friends the whigs continue, you may hope for some favour; if the tories return[2], you are at least sure of quiet. You know how well I loved both lord Oxford and Bolingbroke, and how dear the duke of Ormond is to me: do you imagine I can be easy while
- ↑ Dr. St. George Ash, formerly a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, (to whom the dean was a pupil) afterward bishop of Clogher, and translated to the see of Derry in 1716-17. It was he who married Swift to Mrs. Johnson, 1716; and performed the ceremony in a garden.
- ↑ In a manuscript letter of lord Bolingbroke it is said, "that George I set out from Hanover with a resolution of oppressing no set of men that would be quiet subjects. But as soon as he came into Holland a contrary resolution was taken at the earnest importunity of the allies, and particularly of Heinsius, and some of the whigs. Lord Townshend came triumphing to acquaint lord Somers with all the measures of proscription and of persecution which they intended, and to which the king had at last consented. The old peer asked what he meant, and shed tears on the foresight of measures like those of the Roman triumvirate".
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