XI.

DUBLIN. June 28. 1715

I write to you so soon again, contrary to my nature and Custom which never suffered me to be a very exact Correspondent. I find you passed y' Time well among Ladyes and Lyons and St. Georges and Dragons-Yesterday's post brought us an Acc1 that the D of O-[Duke of Ormond] is voted to be impeached for high Treason. You see the Plot thickens; I know not the present Disposition of People in Engl" but I do not find myself disposed to be sorry at this news-However in generall my Spirits are disturbed, and I want to be out of this Town. A Whig of this Country now in Engla has writt to his Friends, that the Leaders there talk of sending for me to be examined upon these Impeachments; I believe there is nothing [in] it; but I had this notice from one who said he saw the Letter or saw somebody that saw it. I write this Post to Dr Raymd [Raymond] to provide next Sunday for M1 Sub, so I suppose he may be at ease, and I wish I were with him. I hope Dame has established her Credit with you for ever, in the point of Valor and Hardyness-You surprise me with the Acc' [account] of a Disorder in y' head; I know what it is too well and I think Dame does so too. You must drink

If Sub. had no better a

There is a Collegian

words; and I hear

less small beer, eat less sallad, think less, walk and drink more, I mean Wine and Ale, and for the rest, Emeticks and bitters are certainly the best Remedyes. What Legnth has the River walk to 30 foot bredth? I hope 8 thousand at least. tast for Bief and Claret than he has for Improvemts of Land, he should provide no Dinners for me— Does Madam gamble now and then to see it? How is the Dean's field? So it cost a bottle of wine excdy [?] to dry poor Sub. I hope he sometimes loses his eyes to please Dame. found guilty of speaking some they design in mercy to whip or Pillory him. I went yesterday to the Courts on purpose to show I was not run away. I had warning given me to beware of a fellow that stood by while some of us were talking--It seems there is a Trade going of carrying stories to the Govrt, [Government] and many honest Folks turn the Penny by it. I can not yet leave this Place but will as soon as possible. Tom this minute brought me up word that the Baron's man was here, and that his master is in Town. I hope to see him, and give him half a breast of mutton before he goes back. He is now with a Lawyer. I believe old Lombard Street is putting out money. The Report of the Secret Committee is published. It is a large volume.

I

onely just saw it Manly [? at Manly's].

It is

but a Part, and probably there will be as much

more.

I do not believe or see one word is offered to prove their old Slander of bringing in the Pretender. The Treason lyes wholly in making the Peace. Ch. Ford is with Ld Bol-[Lord Bolingbroke] in Dauphinè within a League of Lyons, where his L'ship is retired; till he sees what the Secret Committee will do. That is now determined and his L'ship [Lordship] will certainly be attainted by Act of Parlt [Parliament]. The Impeachm's are not yet carryed up to the Lds [Lords]. I suppose they intend to make one work

of it.

NOTES ON XI.

How correspondence between friends is too apt to come to an end Swift shows in one of the earliest of his published letters: “At first one omits writing for a little while, and then one stays a while longer to consider of excuses, and at last it grows desperate, and one does not write at all."

The Duke of Ormond was impeached on June 21st-the news reached Dublin on the 27th. In this same year Swift, writing of the attainder, says: "Now it is done, it looks like a dream to those who consider the nobleness of his birth, the great merits

of his ancestors and his own; his long unspotted loyalty, his affability, generosity, and sweetness of nature. I knew him long and well." That the Dean was not disposed to be sorry at the news" was, I suppose, due to the belief that the attainder of so popular a man would bring unpopularity on the ministry. While the House of Commons without a division resolved to impeach Oxford, against the impeachment of Ormond 187 members voted. The Duke was safe abroad. Arbuthnot sent Swift the news of his flight in the following passage of a letter dated November, 1714: "The honest gentleman at whose lodgings we wrote is gone for France."

Dr. Raymond was the Vicar of Trim, where Stella often was his guest. Swift in his Journal wrote to her: "Dr. Raymond has sat with me two hours, and drank a pint of ale cost me fivepence, and smoked his pipe, and it is now past eleven that he is just gone." A few weeks later he wrote: "Poor Raymond just came in and took his leave of me; he is summoned by high order from his wife, but pretends he has had enough of London. I was a little melancholy to part with him. He was so easy and manageable that I almost repent I suffered him to see me so seldom. But he is gone,

and will save Patrick some lies in a week; Patrick is grown admirable at it, and will make his fortune.' Raymond was troubled with a family larger than his means could well support. "Will Mrs. Ray

mond never have done lying-in?" wrote Swift. "He intends to leave beggars enough."

"Mr. Sub." was the Sub-dean of St. Patrick's.

The disorder in the head, of which Swift knew what it was too well, marred his whole life. "I have had my giddiness twenty-three years by fits," he wrote as early as 1712. Mr. Craik quotes the report published in 1882 by Dr. Bucknil on this disorder: "The two maladies of giddiness and deafness from which he suffered had their common origin in a disease in the region of the ear, to which the name of Labyrinthine vertigo has been given." He was, however, well advanced in life. before these disorders attacked him at the same time. In 1734 he said: "It is only of late years that they have begun to come together." "I got my giddiness," he said, "by eating a hundred golden pippins at a time." On this Johnson remarks, "The original of diseases is commonly obscure. Almost every boy eats as much fruit as he can get without any great inconvenience." Thinking little, exercise, and wine were Swift's chief remedies. Vive la bagatelle was his favourite maxim. He was like Johnson in thinking weather and seasons of slight importance. “I never impute any illness or health I have to good or ill weather, but to want of exercise, or ill air, or something I have eaten, or hard study, or sitting up; and so I fence against those as well as I can but who a deuce can help the weather?"