Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/333

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SIR,

MUST begin by assuring you, that I did never intend to engage you in a settled correspondence with so useless a man as I here am; and still more so, by the daily increase of ill health and old age; and yet I confess that the high esteem I preserve for your publick and private virtues, urges me on to retain some little place in your memory, for the short time I may expect to live.

That I no sooner acknowledged the honour of your letter is owing to your civility, which might have compelled you to write, while you were engaged in defending the liberties of your country with more than an old Roman spirit; which has reached this obscure enslaved kingdom, so far, as to have been the constant subject of discourse and of praise among the whole few of what unprostituted people here remain among us.

I did not receive the letter you mentioned from Bath; and yet I have imagined, for some months past, that the meddlers of the postoffices here and in London have grown weary of their curiosity, by finding the little satisfaction it gave them. I agree heartily in your opinion of physicians; I have esteemed many of them as learned ingenious men; but I never received the least benefit from their advice or prescriptions. And poor Dr. Arbuthnot was the only man of the faculty who seemed to understand my case; but could not remedy it. But to. XIII