Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/206

192 an author, as chewing is to taste and digestion. However, I must take upon me to admonish him of one great mistake; and I know that the modesty of the man, and the good nature familiar to him, and which shines as much in his conversation, as wit and true poetry do in his works, will bear it from a friend: he has more than once, as I remember, put jasmine for sweet marjoram, the true version; but as this, and a few more, are his only variations from the letter of the original, it may well be excused; my fear is, that school boys may come to suffer by his mistake. I dare venture to affirm, in favour of that good potherb, that sweet marjoram is not improper either in broth or heroicks.

Though I think what has been urged is sufficient to weigh in favour of the faculty I have here espoused; yet, upon occasion, I could allow all this to go for nothing, and place the controversy upon another footing, and argue from the natural dignity of medicine itself, and the universal use and benefit of it to mankind; for it is well known, that physick has been always necessary to the world, and what mankind cannot be without. It has been requisite in all ages and places; which is more than can be asserted in behalf of law, either civil or canon. I do not believe they know any thing of these in China or the mogul's country; but we know they do of physick, which prevails in the east, which supplies us with great part of our materia medica; and no Englishman ought in gratitude to forget, that the great genius and honour of England was cured of a fit of the gout by a salutary moss from the east. But