Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/452

440 your design, by inciting people's curiosity. And in such a case, I would have writ a short acknowledgment of your letter, and published it in the next page after your epistle; but giving you no name, nor confessing my conjecture of it. This scheme I am still upon, as soon as my health permits me to return to England.

As I am conjectured to have generally dealt in raillery and satire, both in prose and verse, if that conjecture be right, although such an opinion has been an absolute bar to my rising in the world; yet that very world must suppose that I followed what I thought to be my talent; and charitable people will suppose I had a design to laugh the follies of mankind out of countenance, and as often to lash the vices out of practice. And then it will be natural to conclude, that I have some partiality for such kind of writing, and favour it in others. I think you acknowledge, that in some time of your life, you turned to the rallying part; but I find at present your genius runs wholly into the grave and sublime; and therefore I find you less indulgent to my way by your dislike of the Beggar's Opera, in the persons particularly of Polly Peachum and Macheath; whereas we think it a very severe satire upon the most pernicious villanies of mankind. And so you are in danger of quarrelling with the sentiments of Mr. Pope, Mr. Gay the author, Dr. Arbuthnot, myself, Dr. Young, and all the brethren whom we own. Dr. Young is the gravest among us, and yet his satires have many mixtures of sharp raillery. At the same time you judge very truly, that the taste of England is infamously corrupted by shoals of wretches who write for their bread; and therefore I Rh