be at most but half your friend, and sincerely I am wholly so. Adieu, write often, and come soon, for many wish you well, and all would be glad of your company.

FROM MRS HOWARD.

Nov. 1726.

I DID not expect that the sight of my ring would produce the effect it has. I was in such a hurry to show your plaid to the princess, that I could not stay to put it into the shape you desired. It pleased extremely, and I have orders to fit it up according to the first design; but as this is not proper for the public, you are desired to send over, for the same princess's use, the height of the Brobdingnag dwarf multiplied by 2. The young princesses must be taken care of; theirs must be in three shares for a short method, you may draw a line of 20 feet, and upon that, by two circles, form an equilateral triangle; then measuring each side, you will find the proper quantity and proper division. If you want a more particular or better rule, I refer you to the academy of Lagado. † I am of opinion many in this kingdom will soon appear in your plaid. To this end it will be highly necessary, that care be taken of disposing of the purple, the yellow, and the white silks; and though the gowns are for princesses, the officers are very vigilant; so take

*Endorsed, "Nov. 1726. Answered 17th."-N. + See Gulliver's Travels.-H.

care they are not seized. Do not forget to be observant how you dispose the colours. I shall take all particular precautions to have the money ready, and to return it the way you judge safest. I think it would be worth your reflecting in what manner the checker might be best managed.

*

The princess will take care, that you shall have pumps sufficient to serve you till you return to England; but thinks you cannot, in common decency, appear in heels, and therefore advises your keeping close till they arrive. Here are several Lilliputian mathematicians, so that the length of your head, or of your foot, is a sufficient measure. Send it by the first opportunity. Do not forget our good friends the 500 weavers. You may omit the gold thread. Many disputes have arisen here, whether the big-endians, and lesser-endians, ever differed in opinion about the breaking of eggs, when they were to be either buttered or poached? or whether this part of cookery was ever known in Lilliput?

I cannot conclude without telling you, that our island is in great joy; one of our yahoos having been delivered of a creature, half ram and half yahoo; and another has brought forth four perfect black rabbits. May we not hope, and with some probability expect, that in time our female yahoos will produce a race of Houyhnhnms! I am, Sir, your most humble servant, SIEVE YAHOO.‡

* In Gulliver's Travels, high and low heels are made the distinction of political parties.-H. Whig and Tory were alluded to in this familiar metaphor.

+ An impostor called Mary Tofts put such a trick upon the public at this time, and met with credit even among medical practitioners.

Sieve is a name given by Swift, in Gulliver's Travels, to a court lady.

MADAM,

TO MRS HOWARD.

Nov. 17, 1726.

WHEN 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 both eyes; an infirmity I never observed in you. However, one thing I was pleased with, that after you had writ down, you repented, and writ me up again. But I continued four days at a loss for your meaning, till a bookseller sent me the Travels of one Captain Gulliver, who proved a very good explainer,* although, at the same time, I thought it hard to be forced to read a book of seven hundred pages, in order to understand a letter of fifty lines; especially as those of our faculty are already but too much pestered with commentators. The stuffs you require are making, because the weaver piques himself upon having them in perfection. But he has read Gulliver's book, and has no conception what you mean by returning money; for he has become a proselyte of the Houyhnhnms, whose great principle, if I rightly remember, is benevolence; and as to myself, I am so highly offended with such a base proposal,

* In which it is said that the Liliputians, like the ladies of England, write from one corner of the paper to the other. Vol. XII. p. 76.

that I am determined to complain of you to her royal highness, that you are a mercenary yahoo, fond of shining pebbles. What have I to do with you or your court, further than to shew the esteem I have for your person, because you happen to deserve it; and my gratitude to her royal highness, who was pleased a little to distinguish me; which, by the way, is the greatest compliment I ever paid, and may probably be the last; for I am not such a prostitute flatterer as Gulliver, whose chief study is to extenuate the vices, and magnify the virtues, of mankind, and perpetually dins our ears with the praises of his country in the midst of corruption, and for that reason alone has found so many readers, and probably will have a pension, which, I suppose, was his chief design in writing. As for his compliments to the ladies, I can easily forgive him, as a natural effect of the devotion which our sex ought always to pay to yours. You need not be in pain about the officers searching or seizing the plaids, for the silk has already paid duty in England, and there is no law against exporting silk manufacture from hence. I am sure the princess and you have got the length of my foot, and Sir Robert Walpole says he has the length of my head, so that I need not give you the trouble of sending you either. I shall only tell you in general, that I never had a long head, and, for that reason few people have thought it worth while to get the length of my foot.. I cannot answer your queries about eggs buttered or poached; but I possess one talent which admirably qualifies me for roasting them; for as, the world, with respect to eggs, is divided into pelters and roasters, it is my unhappiness to be one of the latter, and consequently. to be persecuted by the former. I have been five days turning over old books to discover the meaning

of those monstrous births you mention. That of the four black rabbits seems to threaten some dark court intrigue, and perhaps some change in the administration; for the rabbit is an undermining animal, that loves to walk in the dark. The blackness denotes the bishops, whereof some of the last you have made are persons of such dangerous parts and profound abilities: But rabbits being clothed in furs, may perhaps glance at the judges. However, the ram, by which is meant the ministry, butting with his two horns, one against the church, and the other against the law, shall obtain the victory. And whereas the birth was a conjunction of ram and yahoo, this is easily explained by the story of Chiron, governor, or which is the same thing, chief minister to Achilles, who was half man and half brute; which, as Machiavel observes, all good governors of princes ought to be. But I am at the end of my line, and my lines. This is without a cover, to save money, and plain paper, because the gilt is so thin it will discover secrets between us. In a little room for words, I assure you of my being, with truest respect, Madam,

Your most obedient humble servant,

JON. SWIFT.

TO MR POPE.

Dublin, Nov. 17, 1726.

I AM just come from answering a letter of Mrs Howard's, writ in such mystical terms, that I should never have found out the meaning, if a book had not been sent me called Gulliver's Travels, of which