Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/81

Rh you will lose their favour for ever: I am commanded to tell you so; and therefore at the peril of your life, and of their good graces, look to your health.

I hear the bishop of Bangor, despairing of doing any good with you, has taken up with Hereford. I am a plain man, and would be glad at any time to see fifty such bishops hanged, if I could thereby have saved the life of his predecessor, for whom I had a great esteem and friendship. I do not much approve the compliments made you by comparisons drawn from good and bad emperors, because the inference falls short on both sides. If Julian had immediately succeeded Constantine, it would have been more to the purpose. Sir James of the Peak said to Bouchier the gamester, "Sirrah, I shall look better than you, when I have been a month in my grave." A great man in England was blaming me for despising somebody or other; I assured him I did not at all despise the man he mentioned; that I was not so liberal of my contempt; nor would bestow it where there was not some degree of merit. Upon this principle, I can see no proper ground of opposition between your grace, and that wretch of Bangor. I have read indeed, that a dog was once made king of Norway, but I forget who was his predecessor; and therefore am at a loss for the other part of the comparison. Rh