Our record of the two following years is a long blank, first broken by a letter to Percival in July, 1715, dated at London. Whether he spent any time at Fulham with Lord Peterborough after their return from Italy does not appear, nor whether he visited Ireland in those years, which is not likely. We have no glimpses of brilliant London society as in the preceding year. Steele was now in Parliament. Swift had returned to Dublin, and Addison was the Irish chief secretary. But Pope was still at Binfield, among the glades of Windsor, and Berkeley congratulated him after receiving the first volume of his _Homer_. Of his own literary pursuits we hear nothing. Perhaps the Second Part of the _Principles_, which was lost afterwards in his travels, engaged him. In the end of July he wrote to Lord Percival(9) from Flaxley(10) on the Severn; and in August, September, October, and November he wrote from London, chiefly interested in reports about “the rebels in Scotland,” and “the forces under Lord Mar, which no doubt will languish and disperse in a little time. The Bishop of Bristol assured me the other day that the Court expect that the Duke of Orleans would, in case of need, supply them with forces against the Pretender.” Our next glimpse of him is in May, 1716, when he writes to Lord Percival that he is “like soon to go to Ireland, the Prince of Wales having recommended him to the Lords Justices for the living of St. Paul’s in Dublin.” This opening was soon closed, and the visit to Ireland was abandoned. A groundless suspicion of Jacobitism was not overcome by the interest of Caroline, Princess of Wales. In June, 1716, Charles Dering wrote from Dublin, that “the Lords Justices have made a strong representation against him.” He had to look elsewhere for the immediate future.