Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/470

458 not often care to exert it, lest you should grow weary of me and my correspondence; but the slowness of my answers does not come from the emptiness of my heart, but the emptiness of my head; and that you know is nature's fault, not mine. I was not learned enough to know non credo has been so long in fashion: but every day convinces me more of the necessity of it, not but that I often wish against myself; as for example, I would fain believe you are coming to England, because most of your acquaintance tell me so; and yet I turn, and wind, and sift your letters to find any thing like it being true; but instead of that, there I find a lawsuit, which is a worse tie by the leg than your lameness. And pray what is "this hurt above my heel?" Have you had a fellow feeling with my lord lieutenant of the gout, and call it a sprain, as he does? who has lied so long and often to disguise it, that I verily think he has not a new story left. Does he do the same in Ireland; for there I hoped he would have given a better example?

I find you are grown a horrid flatterer, or else you could never have thought of any thing so much to my taste as this piece of marble you speak of for my sister Penelope, which I desire may be at my expense. I cannot be exact, neither as to the time nor Rh