Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/76

64 If in a year's time you should find leisure to write to me, send me some mottoes for groves, and streams, and fine prospects, and retreat, and contempt of grandeur, &c. I have one for my greenhouse, and one for an alley, which leads to my apartment, which are happy enough. The first is Hic ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus æstas. The other is, fallentis semita vitæ.

You see I amuse myself de la bagatelle as much as you; but here lies the difference; your bagatelle leads to something better; as fiddlers flourish carelesly, before they play a fine air. But mine begins, proceeds, and ends in bagatelle.

Adieu: it is happy for you that my hand is tired.

I will take care that you shall have my picture, and I am simple enough to be obliged to you for asking for it. If you do not write to me soon, I hope it will fall down as soon as you have it, and break your head.

SIR,

DO not know how to account for your long silence, unless your time has been taken up in making an interest with those in power here, for one of the two archbishopricks, that we heard were void, but I am very glad, are not so. Set your heart at rest, for they are promised; and therefore Rh