Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/180

168 very times, although he be a man of virtue and learning in a great degree. Dear sir, you have nothing to desire in this world but good health, good times, the prosperity of your family (wherein you have my constant prayers) and deserving friends. I have often said, that I never knew a more easy man to live with than yourself; and if you had only a poor forty thousand pounds a year, I would command you to settle one thousand of it on me to live in your next neighbourhood; but as for our friends at Twickenham and Dawley, I have told them plainly that they are both too speculative and temperate for me to accept their invitation, and infinitely too philosophical. The bearer, Mr. Stopford, has such infinite obligations to you for your favours to him, and is, in all respects, so very deserving a gentleman, that I am sure you never repented the good office you have done him at my recommendation. But he only attends you on perfect gratitude; for he knows very well you are what is now called a disaffected person. You are, in the modern sense, a friend to popery, arbitrary power, and the pretender; and therefore he has just politicks enough not to trouble you with helping him by the hand to better preferment; and I pray God, while things continue as they are, that it may be never in your power to make a curate, or an exciseman.

You will hear, perhaps, that one Faulkner has printed four volumes, which are called my works; he has only prefixed the first letters of my name; it was done utterly against my will; for there is no property in printers or booksellers here, and I was not able to hinder it. I did imagine, that after my death, the several London booksellers would agree among themselves