Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/283

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DEAR SIR,

HOUGH you have left off corresponding with me these two years and a half, I cannot leave you off yet; and I think this is the sixth letter I have sent you, since I have heard one word of you from your own hand. My lord Oxford told me last winter that he had heard from you, and you were then well. Mr. Cæsar very lately told me the same. It is always the most welcome news that can come to me: but it would be a great addition to my pleasure to have it from yourself; and you know my sincere regard for you may in some measure claim it.

I have been engaged these five months in a most troublesome lawsuit with an Irish chairman. Those fellows swarm about St. James's, and will hardly allow you to walk half a street, or even in the Park, on the fairest day. This rascal rushed into the entry of a tavern to force me into his chair, ran his poles against me, and would not let me pass till I broke his head. He made a jest of it that night; but the next morning an Irish solicitor came, out of profound respect, to advise me to make the fellow amends: he told a dismal story of the surgeon and the bloody shirt, and spoke against his own interest, merely to hinder me, whom he had never seen before, from being exposed. Neither his kind persuasions, nor the prudent counsels of our friends Mr. L, and a few more, could prevail on me. A few days after, the solicitor brought me a bill found by the grand jury, and a warrant