Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/18

6 or did he die then, and every body forget to send me word of it?

Those sermons you have thought fit to transcribe will utterly disgrace you, unless you have so much credit that whatever comes from you will pass: They were what I was firmly resolved to burn, and especially some of them the idlest trifling stuff that ever was writ, calculated for a church without company or a roof, like our * * * * * * * * * Oxford. They will be a perfect lampoon upon me, whenever you look on them, and remember they are mine.

I remember those letters to Eliza; they were writ in my youth; you might have sealed them up, and nobody of my friends would have opened them: Pray burn them. There were parcels of other papers, that I would not have lost; and I hope you have packed them up so that they may come to me. Some of them were abstracts and collections from reading.

You mention a dangerous rival for an absent lover; but I must take my fortune: If the report proceeds, pray inform me; and when, you have leisure and humour, give me the pleasure of a letter from you: And though you are a man full of fastenings to the world, yet endeavour to continue a friendship in absence; for who knows but fate may jumble us together again: And I believe, had I been assured of your neighbourhood, I should not have been so unsatisfied with the region I was planted in.

J. SWIFT. P. S. Pray