self my master,' and corrects me when I speak bad English, or do not pronounce my words correctly."

Swift wrote to her on January 29, 1735-6: "Dr. Delany hath long given up his house in town. His Dublin friends seldom visit him till the swallows come in. He is too far from town for a winter visit, and too near for staying a night in the country manner; neither is his house large enough; it minds me of what I have heard the late Duchess [of Northumberland] complain, that Sion House was a hobbedehoy, neither town nor country.'

When of the "witty club" no one was left but the aged Mrs. Delany, Delville was still not without the charm of letters. It was the town house of Bishop Percy, of Dromore, to whom we owe the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

XLII.

July 19th 1725.

SR-I had y' of the 10th and y' former of earlye date. Can you imagine there is anything in this Scene to furnish a Letter? I came here for no other Purpose but to forget and to be forgotten. I detest all News or Knowledge of how the World passes. I am again with a Fitt of Deafness. The Weather is so bad and continues so beyond any

Example in memory, that I cannot have the Beneffit of riding and I am forced to walk perpetually in a great Coat to preserve me from Cold and wett, while I amuse myself with employing and inspecting Laborers digging up and breaking Stones, building dry Walls, and cutting thro Bogs, and when I cannot stir out, reading some easy Trash merely to divert me. But if the Weather does not mend, I doubt I shall change my Habitation to some more remote and comfortable Place, and there stay till ye Parlm' is over, unless it sits very late.

I send this directed as the former, not knowing how to do better, but I wonder how you can continue in that Dirty Town. I am told there is very little Fruit in the Kingdom, and that I have but 20 Apples where I expected 500-I hear Sale expected Harrison's whole Estate, and is much disappointed. Harrison's Life and Death were of a piece and are an Instance added to Millions how ridiculous a Creature is Man.

You agree with all with all my Friends in complaining I do not write to them, yet this goes so far that my averseness from it in this Place has made me neglect even to write on Affairs of great Consequence to my Self.

I am y1 most obd' &c.

NOTES ON XLII.

"That Dirty Town" was probably Dublin. A few months later Swift dated a letter: "Wretched Dublin, in miserable Ireland," and ended it by saying: "Pray God bless you, and send you safe back to this place, which it is a shame for any man of worth to call his home." Mrs. Pendarves wrote of it in 1731: "I must say the environs are delightful. The town is bad enough, narrow streets and dirty-looking houses, but some very good ones scattered about."

On July 12 of this year Swift had written to a friend: "We have had but five good days these twelve weeks." A month later he wrote: "The weather continues as foul as if there had not been a day of rain in the summer, and it will have some very ill effect on the Kingdom."

"How ridiculous a Creature is Man" Swift was at this time doing his best to show in his Gulliver's Travels. In this same year he described himself as "sitting like a toad in a corner of his great house, with a perfect hatred of all public actions and persons." When the kindly Arbuthnot read Gulliver's Travels he wrote to Swift: "Gulliver is a happy man that at his age can write such a merry work."

XLIII.

SR-You are to understand that I design to stay out a night, being no very active Rider, and it is very possible that may be inconvenient to you: I know not what to say nor how far your civility In that case I carryes you beyond your Ease. should be under much constraint. But if the journey be what you are inclined to, and that you think M' Archdeacon Walls and me worth riding so far with, I will contrive to have y' Mare reedy saddled for my selfe between six and seven to-morrow morning at the Deanery-House, which the Archdeacon tells me is directly in the way.

I am St your most obedient humble serv',

Thursday 9 at night.

J: SWIFT.

NOTES ON XLIII.

Though Swift calls himself "no very active Rider," nevertheless in his visits to England he used to go on horseback all the way between either Holyhead or Chester and London. In 1734 he wrote: "I ride every fine day a dozen miles on a large Strand or Turnpike road." Seven years before his death he wrote: "I seldom walk less than four miles, sometimes six, eight, ten or more, never beyond my own limits; or, if it rains, I walk

as much through the house, up and down stairs; and if it were not for the cruel deafness I would ride through the Kingdom, and half through England."

We have now reached the last batch of Swift's letters. The correspondence which opened so briskly has grown sluggish with the lapse of time. In the beginning of their acquaintance Swift wrote more frequently to Chetwode in ten months than we now find him writing in five or six years. For a while his attention was drawn away from his friends in Ireland by two visits which he paid to England, and by the hopes raised in him by the accession of a new king. His health, moreover, was failing, and the attacks of giddiness and deafness from which he had suffered much in late years, returned oftener and lasted longer. His thoughts were narrowed, finding their centre in his own misery. Nevertheless, he is still ready to help his friend with his counsel for some time, till at last neglect on his part, or perhaps only the suspicion of neglect, leads to a quarrel. They close their correspondence with bandying insults.