Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/344

338 Now G—d damn all folios, quartoes, octavoes, and duodecimoes! ungrateful varlets that you are, who have so long taken up my house without paying for your lodging! Are you not the beggarly brood of fumbling journeymen; born in garrets among lice and cobwebs, nursed up on gray pease, bullock's liver, and porters ale? —— Was not the first light you saw, the farthing candle I paid for? Did you not come before your time into dirty sheets of brown paper? — And have I not clothed you in double royal, lodged you handsomely on decent shelves, laced your backs with gold, equipped you with splendid titles, and sent you into the world with the names of persons of quality? Must I be always plagued with you? Why flutter ye your leaves and flap your covers at me? Damn ye all, ye wolves in sheep's clothing; rags ye were, and to rags ye shall return. Why hold you forth your texts to me, ye paltry sermons? — Why cry ye, at every word to me, ye bawdy poems? — To my shop at Tunbridge ye shall go, by G—, and thence be drawn like the rest of your predecessors, bit by bit, to the passage-house; for in this present emotion of my bowels, how do I compassionate those, who have great need, and nothing to wipe their breech with?

Having said this, and at the same time recollecting that his own was yet unwiped, he abated of his fury, and with great gravity applied to that function the unfinished sheets of the conduct of the earl of Nottingham.