himfelf; although it is poffible that fometimes a friend may give you a lucky one just suited to your own imagination. But all this is almoft past with me: My invention and judgment are perpetually at fifty-cuffs, until they have quite difabled each other; and the meerest trifles I ever wrote are serious philofophical lucubrations in comparison to what I now bufy myself about; as (to fpeak in the author's phrafe) the world may one day fee.

LETTER LIV.

Dr. SWIFT to Mr. GAY.

Sept. 10, 1731. F your ramble were on horfeback, I am glad of it on account of your health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between ftage-coaches and friends coaches; for you are as arrant a cockney as any hofier in Cheapfide. One clean fhirt with two cravats, and as many handkerchiefs make up your equipage; and as for a night-gown, it is clear from Homer, that Agamemnon rofe without one. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours, that you ought to have fome great work in fcheme, which may take up feven years to finish, befides two or three under-ones that may add another thousand pounds to your stock;

and

I

and then I fhall be in lefs pain about you. know you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well, without confidering that the intereft of a whole thousand pounds bringeth you but half a crown a day. I find a greater longing than ever to come among you; and reafon good, when I am teazed with Dukes and Dutcheffes for a vifit, all my demands complied with, and all excufes cut off. You remember, "O happy Don Quixot, Queens "held his horfe, and Dutcheffes pull'd off his

armour," or fomething to that purpose. He was a mean-fpirited fellow, I can fay ten times more; O happy, &c. fuch a Dutchess was defigned to attend him, and fuch a Duke invited him to command his Palace. * Nam iftos reges ceteros memorare nolo, hominum mendica

bula: go read your Plautus, and obferve Strobilus vapouring after he had found the pot of gold.I will have nothing to do with that Lady. I have long hated her on your account, and the more because you are fo forgiving as not to hate her; however the hath good qualities enough to make her efteemed; but not one grain of feeling. I only wish fhe were a fool. I have been feveral months writing near five hundred lines on a pleasant fubject, only to tell what my friends and enemies will

fay

* I pass by those other Princes,.poor Mendicants of Mankind.

fay of me after I am dead. I fhall finish it foon, for I add two lines every week, and blot out four and alter eight. I have brought in you and my other friends, as well as enemies and detractors-It is a great comfort to see how Corruption and ill conduct are inftrumental in uniting virtuous perfons and lovers of their country of all denominations: Whig and Tory, High and Low-church, as foon as they are left to think freely, all joining in opinion. If this be difaffection, pray God fend me always among the difaffected! and I heartily with you joy of your fcurvy treatment at Court, which hath given you leifure to cultivate both publick and private Virtue, neither of them likely to be foon met with within the walls of St. James's or Weftminster. But I muft here difmifs you, that I may pay my acknowledgments to the Duke for the great honour he hath done

me.

My Lord,

I could have fworn that my Pride would be always able to preferve me from vanity; of which I have been in great danger to be guilty for fome months paft, firft by the conduct of my Lady Dutchefs, and now by that of your Grace, which had like to finish the work: And I should have certainly gone about fhewing my letters under the charge of fecrecy to every blab of my acquaintance, if I could have the leaft hope of prevailing on any of them to

believe

believe that a man in fo obfcure a corner, quite. thrown out of the present world and within a few steps of the next, fhould receive such condescending invitations, from two such persons to whom he is an utter ftranger, and who know no more of him than what they have. heard by the partial representations of a friend. But in the mean time I must defire your Grace not to flatter yourself, that I waited for your confent to accept the invitation: I must be ignorant indeed not to know, that the Dutchess, ever fince you met, hath been most politickly employed in encreafing those forces, and sharpening those arms with which the fubdued you at first, and to which, the braver and wiser you grow, you will more and more fubmit. Thus I knew myself on the fecure fide, and it was a mere piece of good manners to infert that claufe, of which you have taken the advantage. But, as I cannot forbear informing your Grace that the Dutchefs's great fecret in the art of government, hath been to reduce both your wills into one; fo I am content, in due observance to the forms of the world, to return my most humble thanks to your Grace for fo great a favour as you are pleased to offer me, and which nothing but impoffibilities fhall prevent me from receiving, fince I am, with the greatest reafon, truth, and respect, my Lord, your Grace's most obedient, &c.

Madam,

Madam,

I have confulted all the learned in occult sciences of my acquaintance, and have fate up eleven nights to discover the meaning of those two hieroglyphical lines in your Grace's hand at the bottom of the last Aimsbury letter, but all in vain. Only it is agreed, that the language is Coptick, and a very profound Behmist affureth me, the ftyle is poetick, containing an invitation from a very great perfon of the female sex to a strange kind of man, whom she never faw: And this is all I can find, which after fo many former invitations, will ever confirm me in that refpect wherewith I am, Madam, your Grace's moft obedient, &c.

LETTER