Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/106

54 for my slender abilities. If I should venture in a windy day to affirm to your highness, that there is a large cloud near the horizon, in the form of a bear; another in the zenith, with the head of an ass; a third to the westward, with claws like a dragon; and your highness should in a few minutes think fit to examine the truth, it is certain, they would all be changed in figure and position; new ones would arise, and all we could agree upon would be, that clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the zoography, and topography of them.

But your governor perhaps may still insist, and put the question: What is then become of those immense bales of paper, which must needs have been employed in such numbers of books? can these also be wholly annihilate, and so of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an objection? it ill befits the distance between your highness and me, to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes, or an oven; to the windows of a bawdy-house, or to a sordid lantern. Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.

I profess to your highness in the integrity of my heart, that what I am going to say is literally true this minute I am writing: what revolutions may happen before it shall be ready for your perusal, I can by no means warrant: however, I beg you to accept it as a specimen of our learning, our politeness, and our wit. I do therefore affirm upon the word of a sincere man, that there is now actually in being a certain poet, called John Dryden, whose translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large folio,