Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/225

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HONOURED SIR,

HAVE not had an opportunity of writing to you otherwise than by the post for above a twelvemonth, and though in that time I did trouble you with a letter or two relating to Mr. Lancelot's business, yet I thought proper to mention only what related to that particular, considering I was then under the hands of the law, whence I was not discharged till the last day of the last term. I do not doubt but you have heard before now, that Mrs. Barber was discharged at the same time.

I desired, therefore, Mrs. Hyde to deliver this to your own hand, and make bold to trouble you with an account of some transactions which have happened within these two years, which I have long wished for the pleasure of doing by word of mouth, in hopes my behaviour would be excused at least (if not approved) by you, the assurance whereof I should receive with the utmost satisfaction.

Soon after Mr. Pilkington had received the twenty guineas you ordered me to pay him, the Life and Character was offered me, though not by his own hands, yet by his means, as I was afterward convinced by many circumstances: one was, that he corrected the proof sheets with his own hand; and as he said he had seen the original of that piece, I could not imagine he would have suffered your name to be Rh