Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/190

182 The world will certainly be the better for his change of life. He seems, in the whole turn of his letters, to be a settled and principled philosopher, thanking fortune for the tranquillity he has been led into by her aversion, like a man driven by a violent wind, from the sea into a calm harbour. You ask me if I have got any supply of new friends to make up for those that are gone? I think that impossible; for not our friends only, but so much of ourselves is gone by the mere flux and course of years, that were the same friends to be restored to us, we could not be restored to ourselves, to enjoy them. But, as when the continual washing of a river takes away our flowers and plants, it throws weeds and sedges in their room; so the course of time brings us something, as it deprives us of a great deal; and instead of leaving us what we cultivated, and expected to flourish and adorn us, gives us only what is of some little use, by accident. Thus I have acquired, without my seeking, a few chance acquaintance, of young men, who look rather to the past age than the present, and therefore the future may have some hopes of them. If I love them, it is because they honour some of those whom I, and the world, have lost, or are losing. Two or three of them have distinguished themselves in parliament; and you will own in a very uncommon manner, when I tell you it is by their asserting of independency, and contempt of corruption. One or two are linked to me by their love of the same studies and the same authors: but I will own to you, my moral capacity has got so much the better of my poetical, that I have few acquaintance on the latter score, and none without a casting weight on the former. But I find