He had heard of the last illness of Stella, which was finally to crush his happiness.
Unable to endure the company of friends, he went to London in very bad health, and thence, after a short stay, to Ireland, leaving behind him a letter which, says Pope, "affected me so much that it made me like a girl." It was a gloomy parting, and the last.

The stern Dean retired to die "like a poisoned rat in a hole," after long years of bitterness, and finally of slow intellectual decay.

He always retained perfect confidence in his friend's affection.

Poor Pope, as he says in the verses on his own death,-- will grieve a month, and Gay A week, and Arbuthnot a day; and they were the only friends to whom he attributes sincere sorrow.
Meanwhile two volumes of Miscellanies, the joint work of the four wits, appeared in June, 1727, and a third in March, 1728.

A fourth, hastily got up, was published in 1732.