Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/331

Rh ought to wish hanged. Since I am likely to wait here for a wind, I shall have leisure to talk with you more than you will like perhaps. If that should be so, you will never tell it me grossly; and my vanity will secure me against taking a hint.

In your letter to Pope, you agree that a regard for fame becomes a man more toward his exit, than at his entrance into life; and yet you confess that the longer you live, the more you grow indifferent about it. Your sentiment is true and natural; your reasoning, I am afraid, is not so upon this occasion. Prudence will make us desire fame, because it gives us many real and great advantages in all the affairs of life. Fame is the wise man's means; his ends are his own good, and the good of society. You poets and orators have inverted this order; you propose fame as the end; and good, or at least great actions as the means. You go farther: you teach our self love to anticipate the applause which we suppose will be paid by posterity to our names; and with idle notions of immortality you turn other heads beside your own: I am afraid this may have done some harm in the world.

CALAIS, OCT. 9.

I go on from this place, whither I am come in hopes of getting to sea, which I could not do from the port of Ostend.

Fame is an object which men pursue successfully by various and even contrary courses. Your doctrine leads them to look on this end as essential, and on the means as indifferent; so that Fabricius and Crassus, Cato and Cæsar, pressed forward to the same goal. After all, perhaps, it may appear, from a consideration