Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/133

N° 28.

Shall you Cotytto's feasts deride, Yet safely triumph in your pride?

SIR,

LTHOUGH I have wanted leisure to acknowledge the honour of a letter you were pleased to write to me about six months ago; yet I have been very careful in obeying some of your commands, and am going on as fast as I can with the rest. I wish you had thought fit to have conveyed them to me by a more private hand than that of the printing house: for, although I was pleased with a pattern of style and spirit which I proposed to imitate, yet I was sorry the world should be a witness how far I fell short in both.

I am afraid you did not consider what an abundance of work you have cut out for me; neither am I at all comforted by the promise you are so kind to make, that when I have performed my task, Dn shall blush in his grave among the dead, Walpole among the living, and even Volpone shall feel some remorse. How the gentleman in his grave may have kept his countenance, I cannot inform you, having no acquaintance at all with the sexton; but for the other two, I take leave to assure you, there have not yet appeared the least signs of