Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/103

  with grief in one hand, and sorrow in the other. What fowl have you but the weep? what hairs, but Mrs. Macfaden's gray hairs? what pease but your own? Your mutton and your wether are both very bad, and so is your wedder mutton. Wild fowl is what we like. — How will this letter get to you? A fortnight good from this morning, you will find Quilca not the thing it was last August; nobody to relish the lake; nobody to ride over the downs; no trout to be caught; no dining over a well; no night heroicks, no morning epicks; no stolen hour when the wife is gone; no creature to call you names. Poor miserable master Sheridan! No blind harpers! no journies to Rantavan! — Answer all this, and be my magnus Apollo. We have new plays and new libels, and nothing valuable is old but Stella, whose bones she recommends to you. Dan desires to know whether you saw the advertisement of your being robbed — and so I conclude,

Yours, &c.

T.

TO MR. GAY.

DUBLIN, JAN. 8, 1722-3.

OMING home after a short Christmas ramble, I found a letter upon my table, and little expected when I opened it to read your name at the bottom. The best and greatest part of my life, until these last eight years, I spent in England; there I made my friendships, and there I left my desires. I am condemned for ever to another country; what is in  dence