Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/275

Rh inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair of a wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle, as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestick animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematicks) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person.

I am glad, answered the bee, to hear you grant, at least that I am come honestly by my wings and my voice; for then, it seems, I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my musick; and Providence would never have bestowed on me two such gifts, without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit indeed all the flowers and blossoms of the field and garden; but whatever I collect thence, enriches myself, without the least injury to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. Now, for you and your skill in architecture, and other mathematicks, I have little to say: in that building of yours there might, for aught I know, have been labour and method enough; but by woeful experience for us both, it is plain, the materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, and consider duration and matter, as well as method and art. You boast indeed of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel, by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; and, though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet, I doubt you are