(975) This alludes to an epigrammatic passage in the article “Bolingbroke” in the Noble Authors.  “He wrote against Sir Robert Walpole, who did forgive him; and against the clergy, who never will forgive him."@.

(976) this seems a singular reason for excluding him from a list of authors@-C.

462 Letter 291 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, Oct. 24, 1758.

I am a little sorry that my preface, like the show-cloth to a sight, entertained you more than the bears it invited you in to see.  I don’t mean that I am not glad to have written any thing that meets your approbation, but if Lord Whitworth’s work is not better than my preface, I fear he has much less merit than I thought he had.

Your complaint of your eyes makes me feel for you:  mine have been very weak again, and I am taking the bark, which did them so much service last year.  I don’t know how to give up the employment of them, I mean reading; for as to writing, I am absolutely winding up my bottom, for twenty reasons.  The first, and perhaps the best, I have writ enough.  The next; by what I have writ, the world thinks I am not a fool, which was just what I wished them to think, having always lived in terror of that oracular saying Ermu naidex luchoi, which Mr. Bentley translated with so much more parts than the vain and malicious hero could have done that set him the task, —­I mean his father, the sons of heroes are loobies.  My last reason is, I find my little stock of reputation very troublesome, both to maintain and to undergo the consequences—­it has dipped me in erudite correspondences—­I receive letters every week that compliment my learning; now, as there is nothing I hold so cheap as a learned man, except an unlearned one, this title Is insupportable to me; if’ I have not a care, I shall be called learned, till somebody abuses me for not being learned, as they, not I, fancied I was.  In short, I propose to have nothing more to do with the world, but divert myself in it as an obscure passenger—­pleasure, virt`u, politics, and literature, I have tried them all, and have had enough of them.  Content and tranquillity, with now and then a little of three of them, that I may not grow morose, shall satisfy the rest of a life that is to have much idleness, and I hope a little goodness; for politics—­a long adieu!  With some of the Cardinal de Retz’s experience, though with none of his genius, I see the folly of taking a violent part without any view, (I don’t mean to commend a violent part with a view, that is still worse;) I leave the state to be scrambled for by Mazarine, at once cowardly and enterprising, ostentatious, jealous, and false; by Louvois, rash and dark; by Colbert, the affecter of national interest, with designs not much better; and I leave the Abb`e de la Rigbi`ere to sell the weak Duke of Orleans to whoever has money to buy him, or would buy him to get money; at least these are my present reflections—­if I should change them to-morrow, remember I am not