Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/131

Rh world is grown so inveterate in iniquity, that I fear we shall all lose our labour. It will have just the same effect to flog, as to tickle them. However, if there be any room for a grave, sullen fellow, that has been one of the merriest fellows in Europe, in Mentor's academy, I offer myself: and, to pay my entrance, as I did in Newgate, I send him a kilderkin of the best wine on this side of the country, to drink their healths, and mine, if he pleases. I accept, with a great deal of acknowledgment, the present of books offered me by Mentor, and desire he will send along with them doctor Jonathan Swift's Miscellanies, which they tell me are worth them all. I can give him nothing in return, but some heads of the Saracens of Oran, which I shall be ordered to cut off, because they will not become christians. I must be their executioner in my own defence; for, with all my spleen and vexation of spirit, I am the most inoffensive creature in the world in regard of religion. I would not shed one ounce of blood in anger or enmity, or wrong any man living of a cracked sixpence, to make all the world catholicks; yet I am as staunch a one myself as any pope in the universe. I am all for the primitive church, in which people made proof of their religion only at their own expense. But I laugh, with great contempt, at those who will force others to Heaven their way, in spite of charity.

Though I should be in the deserts of Lybia, I can still hear from Mentor. It is not necessary he should submit his criticism or correction to me, since I constitute him my judge, without appeal. The gentleman of my family mentioned by him, is the honestest, but the idlest fellow breathing. I cannot even get a letter from him. Thus my reliance for the revising Rh