that both summers and winters are milder here than with you; all things for life in general better for a middling fortune: you will have an absolute command of your company, with whatever obsequiousness or freedom you may expect or allow. I have an elderly housekeeper, who has been my Walpole above thirty years, whenever I lived in this kingdom. I have the command of one or two villas near this town: you have a warm apartment, in this house, and two gardens for amusement. I have said enough, yet not half. Except absence from friends, I confess freely that I have no discontent at living here, beside what arises from a silly spirit of liberty, which as it neither sours my drink, nor hurts my meat, nor spoils my stomach, farther than in imagination, so I resolve to throw it off.
You talk of this Dunciad, but I am impatient to have it volare per ora[1] there is now a vacancy for fame; the Beggar's Opera has done its task, discedat uti conviva satur[2]. Adieu.
JAN. 1, 1728-9.
I LOOK upon my lord Bolingbroke and us two, as a peculiar triumvirate, who have nothing to expect, or to fear; and so far fittest to converse with one another: only he and I are a little subject to schemes, and one of us (I would not say which) upon
very
