Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/262

254 found that my servants had imbellished it all: for which I am resolved to give them some hippocockeny to bring it up again. I fear that I have been too turbulent in this long and tedious crawl; which I hope you will excuse from, your very humble servant.

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HAVE been lately looking over the advertisements in some of your Dublin news-papers, which are sent me to the country; and was much entertained with a large list of denominations of lands, to be sold or let. I am confident they must be genuine; for it is impossible that either chance, or modern invention, could sort the alphabet in such a manner, as to make those abominable sounds; whether first invented to invoke or fright away the Devil, I must leave among the curious.

If I could wonder at any thing barbarous, ridiculous, or absurd among us, this should be one of the first. I have often lamented that Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, was not prevailed on by that petty king from Ireland, who followed his camp, to come over and civilize us with a conquest, as his countrymen did Britain, where several Roman appellations remain to this day; and so would the rest have done, if that inundation of Angles, Saxons, and other northern people had not changed them so much for the worse, although in no comparison 4