Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/477

Rh corporeal false step is worse than a political one: nay worse than a thousand political ones, for which I appeal to courts and ministers, who hobble on and prosper, without the sense of feeling. To talk of riding and walking is insulting me, for I can as soon fly as do either. It is your pride or laziness, more than chairhire, that makes the town expensive. No honour is lost by walking in the dark; and in the day, you may beckon a black guard boy under a gate, near your visiting place, (experto crede) save eleven pence, and get half a crown's worth of health. The worst of my present misfortune is, that I eat and drink, and can digest neither for want of exercise; and, to increase my misery, the knaves are sure to find me at home, and make huge void spaces in my cellars. I congratulate with you, for losing your great acquaintance; in such a case, philosophy teaches that we must submit, and be content with good ones. I like lord Cornbury's refusing his pension, but I demur at his being elected for Oxford; which, I conceive, is wholly changed; and entirely devoted to new principles; so it appeared to me the two last times I was there.

I find by the whole cast of your letter, that you are as giddy and as volatile as ever: just the reverse of Mr. Pope, who has always loved a domestick life from his youth. I was going to wish you had some little place that you could call your own, but, I profess, I do not know you well enough to contrive any one system of life that would please you. You pretend to preach up riding and walking to the duchess, yet, from my knowledge of you after twenty years, you always joined a violent desire of perpetually shifting places and company, with a rooted laziness, and. XII.