Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/138

130 totally to his disposal, who will do the same that I would with them. He has managed the comedy (which our poor friend gave to the playhouse the week before his death) to the utmost advantage for his relations; and proposes to do the same with some fables he left finished.

There is nothing of late which I think of more than mortality, and what you mention, of collecting the best monuments we can of our friends, their own images in their writings: for those are the best, when their minds are such as Mr. Gay's was, and as yours is. I am preparing also for my own, and have nothing so much at heart, as to show the silly world that men of wit, or even poets, may be the most moral of mankind. A few loose things sometimes fall from them, by which censorious fools judge as ill of them as possibly they can, for their own comfort: and indeed, when such unguarded and trifling jeux d'esprit have once got abroad, all that prudence or repentance can do, since they cannot be denied, is to put them fairly upon that foot; and teach the publick (as we have done in the preface to the four volumes of Miscellanies) to distinguish betwixt our studies and our idlenesses, our works and our weaknesses. That was the whole end of the last vol. of Miscellanies, without which our former declaration in that preface, "That these volumes contained all that we have ever offended in, that way," would have been discredited. It went indeed to my heart, to omit what you called the libel on Dr. D and the best panegyrick on myself, that either my own times or any other could have afforded, or will ever afford to me. The book as you observe was printed in great haste; the cause whereof was,