Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/445

Rh submit. Thus I knew myself on the secure side, and it was a mere piece of good manners to insert that clause, of which you have taken the advantage. But as I cannot forbear informing your grace that the duchess's great secret in her art of government, has been to reduce both your wills into one; so I am content, in due observance to the forms of the world, to return my most humble thanks to your grace for so great a favour as you are pleased to offer me, and which nothing but impossibilities shall prevent me from receiving, since I am, with the greatest reason, truth, and respect, my lord, your grace's most obedient, &c.

MADAM,

I have consulted all the learned in occult sciences of my acquaintance, and have sat up eleven nights to discover the meaning of those two hieroglyphical lines in your grace's hand at the bottom of the last Amesbury letter, but all in vain. Only it is agreed, that the language is Coptick, and a very profound Behmist assures me, the style is poetick, containing an invitation from a very great person of the female sex, to a strange kind of man whom she never saw, and this is all I can find, which after so many former invitations, will ever confirm me in that respect, wherewith I am, madam, your grace's most obedient, &c. . XII.