Hic es diabolus et omne agere. Visne tu esse tam bonus, quam tuum verbum Ego faciam porcum vel canem de id. Ego servo hoc pro pluvioso die. Ego possum facere id cum digito madido. Profecto ego habui nullum manum in id. Tu es homo extranei renis. Precor, ambula super. Ego feci amorem virgini honoris. Quomodo venit id cireum, quod tu ludis stultum ita? Vos ibi, fac viam pro meo domino. Omnes socii apud pedem pilam. Fæminæ et linteum aspiciunt optimè per candelæ lucem. TO MR. RICHARDSON. April 9, 1737. SIR, I have wondered, since I have had the favor to know you, what could possibly put you upon your civility to me. You have invited me to your house, and proposed everything according to my own scheme that would make me easy. You have loaded me with presents, although it never lay in my power to do you any sort of favor or advantage. I have had a salmon from you of 261b. weight, another of 181b., and the last of 14lb.: upon which my ill-natured friends descant that I am declining in your good-will by the declining of weight in your salmon. They would have had your salmon double the weight: the second should have been of 52lb., the third of 104lb., and the last of 2081b. It seems this is the way of Dublin computors, who think you country gentlemen have nothing to do but to oblige us citizens, who are not bound to make you the least return further than, when you come hither, to mect you by chance in a coffeehouse, and ask you what tavern you dine in, and there pay your club. I intend to deal with you in the same manner; and if you come to town for three months I will invite you once to dinner, for which I shall expect to stay a whole year with you; and you will be bound to thank me for honoring your house. You saw me ill enough when I had the honor to see you at the deanery. Mrs. Whiteway, my cousin, and the only cousin I own, remembers she was here in your company, and desires to present her humble service to you; and no wonder, for you sent so much salmon that I was forced to give her a part. Some ten days ago there came to see me one Mr. Lloyd, a clergyman who lives, as have not raised them a sixth part in twenty-three years, and took very moderate fines. On the other side, I confess there is no reason why an honorable society should rent their estate for a trifle; and therefore I told Mr. Lloyd my opinion, that if you could be prevailed on just to double the old rent, and no more, I hoped the tenants might be able to live in a tolerable manner; for I am as much convinced as I can be of anything human that this wretched oppressed country must of necessity decline every year. If, by a miracle, things should mend, you may in a future renewal make a moderate increase of rent, but not by such leaps as you are now taking; for you ought to remember the fable of the hen who laid every second day a golden egg, upon which her mistress killed her to get the whole lump at once. I am told that one condition in your charter obliges you to plant a colony of English in those parts: if that be so you are too wise to make it a colony of Irish beggars. Some ill consequences have already happened by your prodigious increase of the rent. Many of your old tenants have quitted their houses in Colrane; others are not able to repair their habitations, which are daily going to ruin, and many of those who live on your lands in the country owe great arrears, which they will never be in a condition to pay. I would not have said thus much in an affair and about persons to whom I am an utter stranger, if I had not been assured, by some whom I can trust, of the poor condition those people in and about Colrane have lain under since that enormous increase of their rents. The bearer, Mr. Lloyd, whom I never saw till yesterday, seems to be a gentleman of great truth and good sense; he has no interest in the case, for although he lives at Colrane his preferment is some miles farther; he is now going to visit his father, who lives near Wrexham, not far from Chester, and from thence, at the desire of your tenants in and near Colrane, he is content to go to London and wait on you there with his credentials. If he has misrepresented this matter to me in any one particular I shall never be his advocate again. is And now, my dear friend, I am forced to tell you that my health very much decayed, my deafness and giddiness are more frequent; spirits I have none left; my memory is almost gone. The public corruptions in both kingdoms allow me no peace or quiet of mind. I sink every day, and am older by twenty years than many you. May you live as long as you desire; for I have lost so many old friends without getting any new, that I must keep you as a handsel of the former. I am, my long dear friend, with great esteem and love, your most obedient humble servant. TO DR. SHERIDAN. April 9, 1737. ABOUT a month ago I received your last letter, wherein you complain of my long silence; what will you do when I am so long in answering? I have one excuse which will serve all my friends; I am quite worn out with disorders of mind and body; a long fit of deafness, which still continues, hath unqualified me for conversing, or thinking, or reading, or hearing; to all this is added an apprehension of giddiness, whereof I have frequently some frightful touches. Besides, I can hardly write ten lines without twenty blunders, as you will see by the number of scratchings and blots before this letter is done: into the bargain, I have not one rag of memory left; and my friends have all forsaken me except Mrs. Whiteway, who preserves some pity for my condition, and a few others who love wine that costs them nothing. As to my taking a journey to Cavan, I am just as capable as of a voyage to China, or of running races at Newmarket. But, to speak in the Latinitas Grattaniana, Tu clamas meretrix primus; for we have all expected you here at Easter as you were used to do. Your musterroll of meat is good, but of drink in sup port able. Yew wan twine. My stress Albavia has eaten here all your hung beef, and said it was very good. The affair of high importance in their family is that Miss Molly hath issued out orders, with great penalties, to be called Mrs. Harrison; which caused many speck you'll ash owns.. -I am now come to the noli me tan jerry, which begg inns wyth mad dam. — So I will go on by the strength of my own wit upon points of the high est imp or taunts. I have been very curious in considering that fruitful word ling; which explains many fine qualities in ladies, such as grow ling, ray ling, tip ling, (seldom) toy ling, mumb ling, grumb ling, cur ling, puss ling, buss ling, stow ling, ramb ling, quarry ling, tatt ling, whiff ling, dabb ling, doubling. These are but as ample o fan hunn dread mower; they have all got cold this winter, big owing tooth in lick lad ink old wet her, an dare ink you rabble. Well, I triumph over you, Is I remember, near Colrane. He had a commission from the people in and about that town, which belongs to the London Society. It seems that three years ago the society increased their rents from 3007. to 12007. a-year; since which time the town is declined, the tenants neglect their houses, and the country tenants are not able to live. I writ a letter by him to alderman Barber, because their demands seem very extravagant; but I had no other reason for doing so than the ample commission he had from the town of Colrane. I wish I knew your sentiments in this affair. I never saw the gentleman before; but the commission he had encouraged me so far that I could not refuse him the letter. Although I was ill enough when I saw you, I am forty times worse at present, and am no more able to be your guest this summer than to travel to America. I have been this month so ill with a giddy head, and so very deaf, that I am not fit for human conversation: besides, my spirits are so low that I do not think anything worth minding; and most of my friends with very great injustice have forsaken me. I find you deal with Faulkner. I have read his "Rollin's History." The translator did not want knowledge enough, but is a coxcomb by running into those cant words and phrases which have spoiled our. language and will spoil it more every day. Your presents are so numerous that I had almost forgot to thank you for the cheese; against which there can be no objection but that of too much rennet, for which I so often wish ill to the housewife. I am, sir, with true esteem, your most obedient humble servant. TO MR. RICHARDSON. Dublin, April 30, 1737. SIR, If it had pleased God to restore me to any degree of health, I should have been setting out on Monday next to your house; but I find such a weakly decay, that has made it impossible for me to ride above five or six miles at farthest, and I always return the same day heartily tired. I have not an ounce of flesh or a dram of spirits left me; yet my greatest load is not my years but my infirmities. In England, before I was twenty, I got a cold which gave me a deafness that I could never clear myself of. Although it came but seldom, and lasted but a few days, yet my left ear has never been well since; but when the deafness comes on I can hear with neither ear, except it be a woman with a treble and conversation: and the fits of deafness increase; for I have now been troubled with it near seven weeks, and it is not yet lessened, which extremely adds to my mortification. I should not have been so particular in troubling you with my ailments, if they had not been too good an excuse for my inability to venture anywhere beyond the prospect of this town. I am the more obliged to your great civilities because I declare, without affectation, that it never lay in my power to deserve any one of them. I find by the conversation I have had with you that you understand a court very well for your time, and are well known to the minister on the other side The consequence of which is, that it lies in my power to undo you, only by letting it be known at St. James's that you are perpetually sending me presents and holding a constant correspondence with me by letters. Another unwary step of yours is, inviting me to your house, which will render your election desperate, by making all your neighbor squires represent you as a person disaffected to the government. Thus I have you at my mercy on two accounts, unless you have some new court refinements to turn the guilt upon me. I wrote a long letter some weeks ago but I could not find by the messenger of your last salmon that he knew anything of that letter; for you take, in every circumstance, a special care that I may know nothing more than of a salmon being left at the deanery. Thus there is a secret commerce between your servant and my butler. The first writes a letter to the other says the carriage is paid, that the salmon weighs so much, and was sent by his master to me. If some of our patriots should happen to discover the management of this intrigue, they would inform the privy council, from which an order would be brought by a messenger to seize on the salmon, have it opened, and search all its entrails to find some letter of dangerous consequence to the state. I believe I told you in my former letter that Mr. Lloyd, a clergyman, minister of Colrane, but who lives four miles from it, came to me upon his going to England, to see his old father in Chester, and from thence goes to London to wait upon the society. He showed me very ample credentials from the magistrates of Colrane to deliver to the society, upon some hard things that colony lies under. It seems, about three years ago their lease was out; the rent was 3007. a-year; but upon the renewal it was raised to 12007., which was beyond what I have known in leases |