Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/156

148

JAN. 6, 1733-4.

NEVER think of you and can never write to you, without drawing many of those short sighs of which we have formerly talked: the reflection both of the friends we have been deprived of by death, and of those from whom we are separated almost as eternally by absence, checks me to that degree, that it takes away in a manner the pleasure (which yet I feel very sensibly too) of thinking I am now conversing with you. You have been silent to me as to your works? whether those printed here are, or are not genuine? but one I am sure is yours; and your method of concealing yourself puts me in mind of the Indian bird I have read off, who hides his head in a hole, while all his feathers and tail stick out. You will have immediately by several franks (even before it is here published) my Epistle to lord Cobham, part of my Opus Magnum, and the last Essay on Man; both which I conclude will be grateful to your bookseller on whom you please to bestow them so early. There is a woman's war declared against me by a certain lord; his weapons are the same which women and children use, a pin to scratch, and a squirt to bespatter: I writ a sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists with him, and after showing it to some people, suppressed it: otherwise it was such as was worthy of him, and worthy of me. I was three weeks this autumn with lord