Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 11.djvu/248

236 found you had neither sent pens, ink, nor paper, sufficient for such an undertaking. But I ought to tell your ladyship in order, that I first got there a much more valuable thing: and I cannot do greater honour to my scrutoire, than to assure your ladyship that your letter is the first thing I have put in it, and shall be the last I will ever take out. I must tell your ladyship, that I am this moment under a very great concern. I was fully convinced that I should write with a new spirit by the influence of the materials you sent me; but it is quite otherwise: I have not a grain of invention, whether out of the confusion which attends us when we strive too much to acquit ourselves, or whether your pens and ink are sullen, and think themselves disgraced, since they have changed their owner. I heartily thank your ladyship, for making me a present that looks like a sort of establishment. I plainly see, by the contrivance, that if you were first minister, it would have been a cathedral. As it is, you have more contributed toward fixing me, than all the ministry together; for it is difficult to travel with this equipage, and it will be impossible to travel or live without it. You have an undoubted title to whatever papers this table shall ever contain (except your letter) and I desire you will please to have another key made for it; that when the court shall think fit to give me a room worth putting it into, your ladyship may come and search it whenever you please.

I beg your ladyship to join in laughing with me, at my unreasonable vanity, when I wished that the motto written about the wax was a description of yourself. But, if I am disappointed in that, your ladyship will be so in all the rest; even this ink will never