Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/385

Rh

DEC. 24, 1730.

INCE you, with a modest assurance, affirm you understand and practise good manners better than any other person in either kingdom, I wish you would therefore put into very handsome terms my excuse to dean Swift, that I have not answered his letter I received before the last: for even prebendary Head assured my brother Harry, that he, in all form and justice, took place of a colonel, as being a major general in the church; and therefore you need not have called a council to know, whether you or I were to write last; because, as being but a poor courtesy lady, I can pretend to no place but what other people's goodness gives me. This being settled, I certainly ought not to have writ again; but however, I fear I should have been wrong enough to have desired the correspondence to be kept up, but that I have been ill this fortnight, and of course lazy, and not in a writing mood.

First, as to Mrs. Barber; as I told you before, so I tell you the same again, that upon your recommendation, I shall be very glad to serve her, though I never did see her; and as I had not your letter till I went from Tunbridge, she passed unmarked by me in the crowd; nor have I met with her since. She writ to me to present ****'s poems to the duke and duchess of Dorset. I answered her letter, and obeyed her commands. And as to her own, I shall most willingly subscribe; though I am of the opinion, we Rh