Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/101

Rh a maxim, that should be writ in letters of diamonds, that a wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart. Pray my lord inquire whether your prototype, my lord Digby, after the restoration when he was at Bristol, did not take some care of his fortune, notwithstanding that quotation I once sent you out of his speech to the H. of commons? In my conscience, I believe Fortune, like other drabs, values a man gradually less for every year he lives. I have demonstration for it; because if I play at piquet for sixpence with a man or woman two years younger than myself, I always lose; and there is a young girl of twenty who never fails of winning my money at backgammon, though she is a bungler, and the game be ecclesiastick. As to the publick, I confess nothing could cure my itch of meddling with it but these frequent returns of deafness, which have hindred me from passing last winter in London; yet I cannot but consider the perfidiousness of some people, who, I thought, when I was last there, upon a change that happened, were the most impudent in forgetting their professions that I have ever known. Pray will you please to take your pen, and blot me out that political maxim from whatever book it is in, that Res nolunt diu male administrari ; the commonness makes me not know who is the author, but sure he must be some modern.

I am sorry for lady Bolingbroke's ill health; but I protest I never knew a very deserving person of that sex, who had not too much reason to complain of