Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/185

Rh communicate with them the joy of my recovery. I did not want a most kind paragraph in your letter to Mr. Pope, to convince me, that you are of the number; and I know, that I give you a sensible pleasure in telling you, that I think myself at this time almost perfectly recovered of a most unusual and dangerous distemper, an imposthume in the bowels; such a one, that had it been in the hands of a chirurgeon, in an outward and fleshy part, I should not have been well these three months. Duke Disney, our old friend, is in a fair way to recover of such another. There have been several of them, occasioned, as I reckon, by the cold and wet season. People have told me of new impostures (as they called them) every day. Poor Sir William Wyndham has an imposthume: I hope the Bath, where he is going, will do him good. The hopes of seeing once more the dean of St. Patrick's, revives my spirits. I cannot help imagining some of our old club met together like mariners after a storm. For God's sake do not tantalize your friends any more. I can prove by twenty unanswerable arguments, that it is absolutely necessary, that you should come over to England; that it would be committing the greatest absurdity that ever was, not to do it the next approaching winter. I believe, indeed, it is just possible to save your soul without it, and that is all. As for your book (of which I have framed to myself such an idea, that I am persuaded there is no doing any good upon mankind without it) I will set the letters myself, rather than that it should not be published. But before you put the finishing hand