Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/390

378. God forbid that your lordship should continue in an employment, however great and honourable, where you only can be an ornament to the court so long, until you have an opportunity to provide offices for a dozen low people like the poor man whom I took the liberty to mention! and God forbid that, in one particular branch of the king's family, there should ever be such a mortality, as to take away a dozen of his meaner servants in less than a dozen years!

Give me leave, in farther excuse of my weakness, to confess, that beside some hints from my friends, your lordship is in great measure to blame for your obliging manner of treating me in every place where I had the honour to see you; which I acknowledge to have been a distinction that I had not the least pretence to, and consequently as little to ground upon it the request of a favour.

As I am an utter stranger to the present forms of the world, I have imagined more than once, that your lordship's proceeding with me may be a refinement introduced by yourself: and that, as in my time the most solemn and frequent promises of great men usually failed, against all probable appearances, so that single slight one of your lordship may, by your generous nature, early succeed against all visible impossibilities. I am, &c.

DEAR SIR,

MONG the many compliments I have received from my friends on the birth of my son, I assure you none