Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/392

380 and sent me a dozen bottles, which cost him three pounds. He next was told "That as I never drank malt liquors, so I was not able to drink Dublin claret without mixing it with a little sweet Spanish wine:" he found out the merchant with whom I deal, by the treachery of my butler, and sent me twelve dozen pints of that wine, for which he paid six pounds. But what can I say of a man, who, some years before I ever saw him, was loading me every season with salmons, that surfeited myself and all my visitors; whereby it is plain that his malice reached to my friends as well as to myself? At last, to complete his ill designs, he must needs force his niece into the plot; because it can be proved that you are his prime minister, and so ready to encourage him in his bad proceedings, that you have been his partaker and second in mischief, by sending me half a dozen of shirts, although I never once gave you the least cause of displeasure. And what is yet worse, the few ladies that come to the deanery assure me, they never saw so fine linen, or better worked up, or more exactly fitted. It is a happinesss they were not stockings, for then you would have known the length of my foot. Upon the whole, madam, I must deal so plainly as to repeat, that you are more cruel even than your uncle; to such a degree, that if my health and a good summer can put it in my power to travel to Summer-Seat, I must take that journey on purpose to expostulate with you for all the unprovoked injuries you have done me. I have seen some persons who live in your neighbourhood, from whom I have inquired into your character; but I found you had bribed them all, by never sending them any such dangerous presents: for they swore