e to me! If happy, I am to partake of your elevation; if
unhappy, you have still a warm corner in my heart, and a retreat at
Benfield in the worst of times at your service. If you are a Tory,
or thought so by any man, I know it can proceed from nothing but
your gratitude to a few people who endeavoured to serve you, and
whose politics were never your concern. If you are a Whig, as I
rather hope, and as I think your principles and mine (as brother
poets) had ever a bias to the side of liberty, I know you will be an
honest man and an inoffensive one. Upon the whole, I know you are
incapable of being so much of either party as to be good for
nothing. Therefore, once more, whatever you are or in whatever state
you are, all hail!

"One or two of your own friends complained they had nothing from you
since the Queen's death; I told them no man living loved Mr. Gay
better than I, yet I had not once written to him in all his voyage.
This I thought a convincing proof, but truly one may be a friend to
another without telling him so every month. But they had reasons,
too, themselves to allege in your excuse, as men who really value
one another will never want such as make their friends and
themselves easy. The late universal concern in public affairs threw
us all into a hurry of spirits: even I, who am more a philosopher
than to expect anything from any reign, was borne away with the
current, and full of the expectation of the successor. During your
journeys, I knew not whither to aim a letter after you; that was a
sort of shooting flying: add to this the demand Homer had upon me,
to write fifty verses a day, besides learned notes, all of which are
at a conclusion for this year. Rejoice with me, O my friend! that my
labour is over; come and make merry with me in much feasting. We
will feed among the lilies (by the lilies I mean the ladies). Are
not the Rosalindas of Britain as charming as the Blousalindas of the
Hague? or have the two great Pastoral poets of our own nation
renounced love at the same time? for Philips, unnatural Philips,
hath deserted it, yea, and in a rustic manner kicked his Rosalind.
Dr. Parnell and I have been inseparable ever since you went. We are
now at the Bath, where (if you are not, as I heartily hope, bette