Autograph letter : [France], to Charles Ford, 1724 September 12.

Discussing, at length, the transition out of government and commenting, at length, on Stella and Swift; thanking him for "...the continu'd marks of your friendship. the transition from a minister of State to an hermit is a very great one in the eye of the world. But there is nothing in it hard to be bore by a man, who whilst he is in the first station, supposes he may one time or another fall into the second, and who takes care, even amidst the dissipations of pleasure and of business, to temper & harden his mind by philosophy. Repulses and disappointments, diminution or less of Estate & Rank, Exil & Calumny itself, are unable to make a painful impression upon such a man, and to constitute him unhappy. if the mind has not been thus prepar'd, I think it no misfortune, but the contrary, to be recall'd from a dependance on those things whose price we overrate, & whose instabillity we can not fix, and to be taught forcibly in the school of affliction those necessary lessons which we would not learn voluntarily in the school of prosperity. I know not whether to be pleas'd or sorry that Stella has so many good quallitys. the easy hours which she procures to our friend are reasons for the first; and his attachment to Ireland, which I beleive owing to his attachment to her, is a reason for the latter. my chief hopes are plac'd on his inconstancy. I have known several persons of lively imaginations, fond of their houses & their gardens, as long as there were improvements to be made, and as these houses & gardens were incitements to their fancy, & continual subjects for the exercise of it. But the same persons grew tir'd of them when they were once adorn'd beyond a possibillity of being so any more. the Deans fancy is like that Devil which a certain Conjurer had rais'd, and which threaten'd to carry him away, if he left him a moment unemploy'd. When the Dean therefore has sung all Stellas perfections over in Sonnet, Ode, Pastoral &c, his Devil having no more employment will certainly run away with him. You may know enuff of the black art perhaps to direct this Devils flight into France;" relating news of Lady Bolingbroke's trip to England in the summer and informing him, in a final paragraph dated October 10th, 1724, that she is about to return to England and will carry this letter to him.