Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/31

Rh of sixteen marrying a woman of thirty for love; she decays every year, while he grows up to his prime; and when it is too late, he wonders how he could think of so unequal a match, or what is become of the beauty he was so fond of. — I am told, he outdoes himself in every quality for which we used to quarrel with him. I do not think, that leisure of life, and tranquillity of mind, which fortune and your own wisdom has given you, could be better employed than in drawing up very exact memoirs of those affairs, wherein, to my knowledge, you had the most difficult and weighty part: and I have often thought, in comparing periods of time, there never was a more important one in England, than that which made up the four last years of the late queen. Neither do I think any thing could be more entertaining, or useful, than the story of it fully and exactly told, with such observations, in such a spirit, style, and method, as you alone are capable of performing it. One reason why we have so few memoirs written by principal actors, is, because much familiarity with great affairs makes men value them too little; yet such persons will read Tacitus and Commines with wonderful delight. Therefore I must beg two things; first, that you will not omit any passage because you think it of little moment; and secondly, that you will write to an ignorant world, and not suppose your reader to be only of the present age, or to live within ten miles of London. There is nothing more vexes me in old historians, than when they leave me in the dark in some passages which they suppose every one to know. It is this laziness, pride, or incapacity of great men, that has given way to the impertinents of the nation Rh