C.Q.

“Everything that is above written is so plain and clear that it needs no comment; the writer I know to be so strictly addicted to truth, that I believe every word of it; if it is not written in the fashionable expression, I conclude you will impute it to her manner.  She was really concerned very much, that, after she knew you were ill, we were so long before we could get a letter from you:  let her contradict this if she can.  You tell her you are riding for your life; I fancy she would do it for yours, though she will not for her own.  I believe that she will not like that I should say anything more about her; so that I shall leave you to your own thoughts about what she hath said herself; for I find she doth not much care to be talked to, and as little likes to be talked of:  if she writes truth, I hope she will allow me the liberty to do the same....  I have sometimes a great mind to answer the above letter, but I know she will do what she will; and as little as she likes herself, she likes her own advice better than anybody’s else, and that is a reason, in my opinion, that should prevail with her to take more care of herself.  I just before said I would say no more upon this subject; but if I do not lay down the pen, I find I cannot help it.  I have no desire to come to town at all; for if I were there I cannot see you; so that unless she turns me away I am fixed for life at Amesbury:  so that, as to everything that relates to me, I refer you to her letters.”

J.G.

[Footnote 1:  Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XVII, p. 292.]

[Footnote 2:  ’Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XVII, p. 295.]

[Footnote 3: 

  Neither good nor bad, nor fool nor wise,
  They would not learn nor could advise;
  Without love, hatred, joy, or fear,
  They led a kind of—­as it were;
  Nor wish’d nor cared, nor laugh’d nor cried: 
  And so they lived, and so they died.]

[Footnote 4:  Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XVII, p. 308.]

[Footnote 5:  Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XVII, p. 319.]

[Footnote 6:  Swift:  Works (ed.  Scott), XVII, p. 333]

CHAPTER XII

1731

CORRESPONDENCE

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

  Dublin, April 13th, 1731.

“Your situation is an odd one.  The Duchess is your treasurer, and Mr. Pope tells me you are the Duke’s.  And I had gone a good way in some verses on that occasion, prescribing lessons to direct your conduct, in a negative way, not to do so and so, etc., like other treasurers; how to deal with servants, tenants, or neighbouring squires, which I take to be courtiers, parliaments, and princes in alliance, and so the parallel goes on, but grew too long to please me."[1]

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.