Prior I saw, and he was the earthen pot swimming
with the pots of brass down the stream, and always and justly frightened
lest he should break in the voyage. I met him both at London and Paris,
where he was performing piteous congees to the Duke of Shrewsbury, not
having courage to support the dignity which his undeniable genius and
talent had won him, and writing coaxing letters to Secretary St. John,
and thinking about his plate and his place, and what on earth should
become of him should his party go out. The famous Mr. Congreve I saw
a dozen of times at Button's, a splendid wreck of a man, magnificently
attired, and though gouty, and almost blind, bearing a brave face
against fortune.

The great Mr. Pope (of whose prodigious genius I have no words to
express my admiration) was quite a puny lad at this time, appearing
seldom in public places. There were hundreds of men, wits, and pretty
fellows frequenting the theatres and coffee-houses of that day--whom
"nunc perscribere longum est." Indeed I think the most brilliant of that
sort I ever saw was not till fifteen years afterwards, when I paid my
last visit in England, and met young Harry Fielding, son of the Fielding
that served in Spain and afterwards in Flanders with us, and who for fun
and humor seemed to top them all. As for the famous Dr. Swift, I can say
of him, "Vidi tantum." He was in London all these years up to the death
of the Queen; and in a hundred public places where I saw him, but no
more; he never missed Court of a Sunday, where once or twice he was
pointed out to your grandfather. He would have sought me out eagerly
enough had I been a great man with a title to my name, or a star on my
coat. At Court the Doctor had no eyes but for the very greatest. Lord
Treasurer and St. John used to call him Jonathan, and they paid him
with this cheap coin for the service they took of him. He writ their
lampoons, fought their enemies, flogged and bullied in their service,
and it must be owned with a consummate skill and fierceness. 'Tis said
he hath lost his intellect now, and forgotten his wrongs and his rage
against mankind. I have always thought of him and of Marlborough as the
two greatest men of that age. I have read his books (who doth not know
them?) here in our calm woods, and imagine a giant to myself as I think
of him, a lonely fallen Prometheus, groaning as the vulture tears him.
Prometheus I saw, but when first I ever had any words with him, the
giant st