Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/308

296

SIR,

NEVER will accept of the writ of ease you threaten me with; do not flatter yourself with any such hopes: I receive too many advantages from your letters to drop a correspondence of such consequence to me. I am really grieved that you are so much persecuted with a giddiness in your head: the Bath and travelling would certainly be of use to you. Your want of spirits is a new complaint, and what will not only afflict your particular friends, but every one that has the happiness of your acquaintance. I am uneasy to know how you do, and have no other means for that satisfaction, but from your own hand; most of my Dublin correspondents being removed to Cork, to Wicklow mountains, and the Lord knows where. I should have made this inquiry sooner, but that I have this summer undertaken a work that has given me full employment, which is making a grotto in sir John Stanley's garden at North End: it is chiefly composed of shells I had from Ireland. My life, for two months past, has been very like a hermit's; I have had all the comforts of life but society, and have found living quite alone a pleasanter thing than I imagined. The hours I could spend in reading have been entertained by Rollin's History of the Ancients, in French. I am very well pleased with it; and think your Annibals, Scipios, and Cyruses, prettier fellows than are to be met with nowadays. Painting and musick have had their share in my amusements.