Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/24

 reduce the exorbitant power of Spain? I really think there is no such good reason for living till seventy, as curiosity. You say you are ready to resent it as an affront, if I thought a beautiful lady a curiosity in Ireland; but pray is it an affront to say that a lady, hardly known or observed for her beauty in Ireland, is a curiosity in France? All deans naturally fall into paralogisms. My wife gives you her kind love and service, and, which is the first thing that occurs to all wives, wishes you well married. I have not clean paper more than to bid you — Adieu.

FROM LORD BOLINGBROKE.

MARCH, 17, 1719.

HAVE not these several years tasted so sensible a pleasure, as your letters of the 6th of January and 6th of February gave me; and I know enough of the tenderness of your heart, to be assured, that the letter I am writing will produce much the same effect on you. I feel my own pleasure, and I feel your's. The truest reflection, and at the same time, the bitterest satire, which can be made on the present age, is this; that to think as you think, will make a man pass for romantick. Sincerity, constancy, tenderness, are rarely to be found. They are so much out of use, that the man of mode imagines them to be out of nature. We meet with few friends; the greatest part of those who pass for such, are, properly speaking, nothing more than acquaintance; and