Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/199

Rh licence of absence, conditionally you will be present with me; for to morrow morning I shall be a private person. When I have settled my domestick affairs here, I go to Wimple; thence, alone, to Herefordshire. If I have not tired you tête à tête, fling away so much time upon one, who loves you. And I believe, in the mass of souls, ours were placed near each other. I send you an imitation of Dryden, as I went to Kensington.

"To serve with love, And shed your blood, Approved is above: But here below, Th' examples show, Tis fatal to be good."

In these two letters, there were two roads opened to Swift. One, leading to preferment, power, and all that his most ambitious hopes could aspire after. The other to the melancholy cell of a disgraced minister, abandoned by an ungrateful world. Where he might have the satisfaction of affording him in his distress, that sovereign balm of consolation, which can only be administered by a sincere friend. Swift hesitated not a moment in his choice of the alternative, as may be seen by his letter to miss Vanhomrigh, written soon after his receipt of the other two.

"Who told you I was going to Bath? No such thing. But poor lord Oxford desires I will go with him to Herefordshire; and I only expect Rh