Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/62

50 the terrible expense of eight shillings and threepence per yard, if she will descend to honour Ireland with receiving and wearing it. And in recompense I, who govern the vulgar, will take care to have her royal highnesses health drunk by five hundred weavers, as an encourager of the Irish manufactory. And I command you to add, that I am no courtier, nor have any thing to ask. May all courtiers imitate me in that! I hope the whole royal family about you is in health. Dr. Arbuthnot lately mortified me with an account of a great pain in your head. I believe no head that is good for any thing is long without some disorder, at least that is the best argument I had for any thing that is good in my own.

I pray God preserve you; and I entreat you to believe that I am, with great respect, madam, your most obedient and most obliged servant,

JONATH. SWIFT.

MADAM,

HEN I received your letter I thought it the most unaccountable one I ever saw in my life, and was not able to comprehend three words of it together. The perverseness of your lines astonished me, which tended downward to the right in one page, and upward in the two others. This I thought impossible to be done by any one who did not squint with