Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/61

Rh there are as many bad heads in England as in Ireland; I am sure none worse than my own; that I am made for pain, and pain for me; for, of late, we have been inseparable. It is a most dispiriting distemper! and brings on pain of mind, whether real or imaginary, it is all one.

While I had that very sincere good friend, I could some times lay open all my rambling thoughts, and he and I would often view and dissect them; but now they come and go, and I seldom find out whether they be right or wrong, or if there be any thing in them. Poor man! he was most truly every thing you could say of him. I have lost, in him, the usefullest limb of my mind. This is an odd expression; but I cannot explain my notion otherwise.

I deny that I am techy; yet am going to seem so again, by assuring you my letters are never false copies of my mind. They are often, I believe, imperfect ones, of an imperfect mind; (which, however, to do it justice, often directs me better than I act.) Though I will not take upon me to declare my way of thinking to be eternally the same, yet whatever I write is at that instant true. I would rather tell a lie, than write it down; for words are wind it is said; but the making a memorandum of one's own false heart, would stare one in the face immediately, and should put one out of countenance. Now, as a proof of my unsettled way of thinking, and of my sincerity, I shall tell you, that I am not so much in the wrong as you observed I was in my last: for, my regard to you is lessened extremely, since I observed you are just like most other people, viz. disobliged at trifles, and obliged at nothings; for what else are bare words? Therefore pray never. XIII.