on, called him "a scoundrel and a
coward--a scoundrel who spent his life in charging a popgun against
Christianity, which he had not the courage to let off, but left it to a
hungry Scotchman to pull the trigger after he was dead."]

This is not a letter, but a codicil to my last. You will soon probably
have news enough--yet appearances are not always pregnancies. When there
are more follies in a nation than principles and system, they counteract
one another, and sometimes, as has just happened in Ireland, are
composed _pulveris exigui jactu_. I sum up my wishes in that for peace:
but we are not satisfied with persecuting America, though the mischief
has recoiled on ourselves; nor France with wounding us, though with
little other cause for exultation, and with signal mischief to her own
trade, and with heavy loss of seamen; not to mention how her armies are
shrunk to raise her marine, a sacrifice she will one day rue, when the
_disciplined_ hosts of Goths and Huns begin to cast an eye southward.
But I seem to choose to read futurity, because I am not likely to see
it: indeed I am most rational when I say to myself, What is all this to
me? My thread is almost spun! almost all my business here is to bear
pain with patience, and to be thankful for intervals of ease. Though
Emperors and Kings may torment mankind, they will not disturb my
bedchamber; and so I bid them and you good-night!

P.S.--I have made use of a term in this letter, which I retract, having
bestowed a title on the captains and subalterns which was due only to
the colonel, and not enough for his dignity. Bolingbroke was more than a
rascal--he was a villain. Bathurst, I believe, was not a dishonest man,
more than he was prejudiced by party against one of the honestest and
best of men. Gay was a simple poor soul, intoxicated by the friendship
of men of genius, and who thought _they_ must be good who condescended
to admire _him_. Swift was a wild beast, who baited and worried all
mankind almost, because his intolerable arrogance, vanity, pride, and
ambition were disappointed; he abused Lady Suffolk, who tried and wished
to raise him, only because she had not power to do so: and one is sure
that a man who could deify that silly woman Queen Anne, would have been
more profuse of incense to Queen Caroline, who had sense, if the Court
he paid to her had been crowned with success. Such were the men who
wrote of virtue to one another; and even that mean, exploded mise