Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/71

Rh and setting the rest of mankind at nought: but in a free, unimportant, natural, easy manner; diverting others, just as we diverted ourselves. The third volume consists of verses, but I would choose to print none but such as have some peculiarity, and may be distinguished for ours, from other writers. There's no end of making books, Solomon said, and above all of making miscellanies, which all men can make. For unless there be a character in every piece, like the mark of the elect, I should not care to be one of the twelve thousand signed.

You received, I hope, some commendatory verses from a horse and a Lilliputian, to Gulliver; and an heroick epistle of Mrs. Gulliver. The bookseller would fain have printed them before the second edition of the book, but I would not permit it without your approbation: nor do I much like them. You see how much like a poet I write, and if you were with us, you would be deep in politicks. People are very warm, and very angry, very little to the purpose, but therefore the more warm and the more angry: Non nostrum est, tantas componere lites. I stay at Twitnam, without so much as reading newspapers, votes, or any other paltry pamphlets: Mr. Stopford will carry you a whole parcel of them, which are sent for your diversion, but not imitation. For my own part, methinks, I am at Glubdubdrib, with none but ancients and spirits about me.

I am rather better than I use to be at this season, but my hand (though as you see, it has not lost its cunning) is frequently in very awkward sensations, rather than pain. But to convince you it is pretty well,