[Footnote:  1 It is only the excess of party spirit that could lead Walpole to call Bolingbroke’s abilities moderate; and he had no attacks on his father to resent, since, though Bolingbroke was in 1724 permitted to return to England, he only received a partial pardon, and was not permitted to take his seat in Parliament.  Walpole has more reason to pronounce his character detestable; for which opinion he might have quoted Dr. Johnson, who, in reference to an infidel treatise which he bequeathed to Mallet for publication, 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 miser, Lord Bath, presumed to talk of virtue too!