Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/52

44 you of. So adieu. What remains worth telling you? Dean Berkeley is well, and happy in the prosecution of his scheme. Lord Oxford and lord Bolingbroke in health, Duke Disney so also; sir William Wyndham better, lord Bathurst well. These and some others, preserve their ancient honour, and ancient friendship. Those who do neither, if they were dd, what is it to a protestant priest, who has nothing to do with the dead? I answer for my own part as a papist, I would not pray them out of Purgatory.

My name is as bad a one as yours, and hated by all bad people, from Hopkins and Sternhold, to Gildon and Cibber. The first prayed against me with the Turk; and a modern imitator of theirs (whom I leave you to find out) has added the Christian to them, with proper definitions of each in this manner:

NOV. 26, 1725.

SHOULD sooner have acknowledged yours, if a feverish disorder and the relicks of it had not disabled me for a fortnight. I now begin to make excuses,