The poem on Legion Club is so altered and enlarged, as I hear (for I only saw the original) and so damnably murdered, that they have added many of the club to the true number. I hear it is charged to me, with great personal threatenings from the puppies offended. Some say they will wait for revenge to their next meeting. Others say the privy council will summon the suspected author. If I could get the true copy I would send it you. Your bishop[1] writes me word, that the real author is manifest by the work. Your loss of flesh is nothing, if it be made up with spirit. God help him who hath neither, I mean myself. I believe I shall say with Horace, Non omnis moriar; for half my body is already spent.
TO THE EARL OF OXFORD.
I HAD the honour of a letter from your lordship, dated April the 7th, which I was not prepared to answer until this time. Your lordship must needs have known, that the history you mention, of the four last years of the queen's reign, was written at Windsor, just upon finishing the peace; at which time, your father and my lord Bolingbroke had a misunderstanding with each other, that was attended with very bad consequences. When I came to Ireland to take this deanery (after the peace was made) I could not stay here above a fortnight, being re-
called
