Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/155

Rh for having caught you, and for having kept you: I only reserve a little charity for her for knowing your value, and esteeming you: you are the only patriot I know, who is not hated for serving his country. The man who drew your character and printed it here was not much in the wrong in many things he said of you: yet he was a very impertinent fellow, for saying them in words quite different from those you had yourself employed before on the same subject: for surely to alter your words is to prejudice them: and I have been told, that a man himself can hardly say the same thing twice over with equal happiness: nature is so much a better thing than artifice.

I have written nothing this year: it is no affectation to tell you, my mother's loss has turned my frame of thinking. The habit of a whole life is a stronger thing than all the reason in the world. I know I ought to be easy, and to be free: but I am dejected, I am confined: my whole amusement is in reviewing my past life, not in laying plans for my future. I wish you cared as little for popular applause as I; as little for any nation in contradistinction to others, as I; and then I fancy, you that are not afraid of the sea, you that are a stronger man at sixty than ever I was at twenty, would come and see several people who are (at last) like the primitive christians, of one soul and of one mind. The day is come, which I have often wished, but never thought to see; when every mortal that I esteem is of the same sentiment in politicks and in religion.

Adieu. All you love, are yours, but all are busy, except (dear sir) your sincere friend. Rh