Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/114

106

NOV. 28, 1729.

HIS letter (like all mine) will be a rhapsody; it is many years ago since I wrote as a wit. How many occurrences or informations must one omit, if one determined to say nothing that one could not say prettily? I lately received from the widow of one dead correspondent, and the father of another, several of my own letters of about fifteen and twenty years old; and it was not unentertaining to myself to observe, how and by what degrees I ceased to be a witty writer; as either my experience grew on the one hand, or my affection to my correspondents on the other. Now as I love you better than most I have ever met with in the world, and esteem you too the more, the longer I have compared you with the rest of the world; so inevitably I write to you more negligently, that is more openly, and what all but such as love one another, will call writing worse. I smile to think how Curll would be bit, ere our epistles to fall into his hands, and how gloriously they would fall short of every ingenious reader's expectations?

You cannot imagine what a vanity it is to me, to have something to rebuke you for in the way of economy. I love the man that builds a house subito ingenio and makes a wall for a horse; then cries,