where you will come to us if you are not already engaged.

I am grown a bad bailiff toward the end of my service. Your hay is well brought in, and better stacked than usual. All here are well.

I know not what you mean by my having some sport soon; I hope it is no sport that will vex me. Pray do not forget to seal the enclosed before you send it.

I send you back your letter to the lord-lieutenant.

TO DR SHERIDAN.

Quilca, Sept. 25, 1725.

sup

YOUR Confusion hindered you from giving any rational account of your distress, till this last letter, and therein you are imperfect enough. However, with much ado, we have now a tolerable understanding how things stand. We had a paper sent enclosed, subscribed by Mr Ford, as we suppose; it is in print, and we all approve it, and this I pose is the sport I was to expect. * I do think it is agreed, that all animals fight with the weapons natural to them (which is a new and wise remark out of my own head), and the devil take that animal, who will not offend his enemy when he is provoked, with his proper weapon; and though your old dull horse little values the blows I give him with the butt end of my stick, yet I strike on and make him wince in spite of his dulness; and he shall not fail of them

* Some satire on Richard Tighe.

while I am here; and I hope you will do so too to the beast who has kicked against you, and try how far his insensibility will protect him, and you shall have help, and he will be vexed, for so I found your horse this day, though he would not move the faster. I will kill that flea or louse which bites me, though I get no honour by it.

Laudari ab iis, quos omnes laudant, is a maxim; and the contrary is equally true. Thank you for the offer of your mare; and how a pox could we come without her? They pulled off her and your horses shoes for fear of being rid, and then they rode them without shoes, and so I was forced to shoe them again. All the fellows here would be Tighes, if they were but privy-counsellors. You will never be at ease for your friend's horses or your own, till you have walked in a park of twenty acres, which I would have done next spring.

You say not a word of the letter I sent you for Mr Tickell, whether you sent it him or not; and yet it was very material that I should know it. The two devils of inadvertency and forgetfulness have got fast hold on you. I think you need not quit his and Balaguer's company for the reason I mentioned in that letter, because they are above suspicions, as whiggissimi and unsuspectissimi. When the lordlieutenant goes for England, I have a method to set you right with him, I hope, as I will tell you when I come to town, if I do not Sheridan it, I mean forget it.

I did a Sheridanism; I told you I had lost your letter enclosed, which you intended to Lord Carteret, and yet I have it safe here.

TO MR POPE.

Sept. 29, 1725.

I AM now returning to the noble scene of Dublin, into the grande monde, for fear of burying my parts, to signalize myself among curates and vicars, and correct all corruptions crept in, relating to the weight of bread and butter, through those dominions where I govern. * I have employed my time (beside ditching) in finishing, correcting, amending, and transcribing my travels, † in four parts complete, newly augmented, and intended for the press, when the world shall deserve them, or rather when a printer shall be found brave enough to venture his ears. I like the scheme of our meeting after distresses and dispersions, but the chief end I propose to myself in all my labours is, to vex the world rather than divert it; and if I could compass that design, without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen without reading. I am exceedingly pleased that you have done with translations: Lord-treasurer Oxford often lamented that a rascally world should lay you under a necessity of misemploying your genius for so long a time. But since But since you will now be so much better employed, when you think of the world, give it one lash the more, at my request. I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities; and all my love is toward individuals: for

*The liberties of St Patrick's Cathedral.

+ Those of Gulliver.

instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love counsellor such a one, and judge such a one: It is so with physicians (I will not speak of my own trade), soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years (but do not tell) and I shall go on till I have done with them. I have got materials toward a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it would be only rationis capax.* Upon this great foundation of misanthropy (though not in Timon's manner) the whole building of my travels is erected; and I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are of my opinion: by consequence you are to embrace it immediately, and procure that all who deserve my esteem may do so too. The matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute; nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point.

I did not know your Odyssey was finished, being yet in the country, which I shall leave in three days. I thank you kindly for the present, but shall like it three-fourths the less, from the mixture you mention of other hands; however, I am glad you saved yourself so much drudgery.-I have been long told by Mr Ford of your great achievements in

These and similar passages contain a great deal of wild and violent invective against mankind, which has been perhaps too hastily adopted as expressive of Swift's actual sentiments. It ought, however, to be remembered, that if the Dean's principles were misanthropical, his practice was benevolent. Few have written so much with so little view either to fame or to profit, or to aught but benefit to the public.

building and planting, and especially of your subterranean passage to your garden, whereby you turned a blunder into a beauty, which is a piece of

Ars Poetica.

*

I have almost done with harridans, and shall soon become old enough to fall in love with girls of fourteen. The lady whom you describe to live at court, to be deaf, and no party woman, I take to be mythology, but know not how to moralize it. She cannot be Mercy, for Mercy is neither deaf, nor lives at court: Justice is blind, and perhaps deaf, but neither is she a court lady: Fortune is both blind and deaf, and a court lady, but then she is a most damnable party woman, and will never make me easy, as you promise. It must be Riches, which answers all your description: I am glad she visits you, but my voice is so weak that I doubt she will never hear me.

. Mr Lewis sent me an account of Dr Arbuthnot's illness, which is a very sensible affliction to me, who, by living so long out of the world, have lost that hardness of heart contracted by years and general conversation. I am daily losing friends, and neither seeking nor getting others. O if the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my travels! but, however, he is not without fault : there is a passage in Bede highly commending the piety and learning of the Irish in that age, where, after abundance of praises, he overthrows them all, by lamenting that, alas! they kept Easter at a wrong time of the year. So our doctor has every quality and virtue that can make a man amiable or useful; but, alas! he hath a sort of slouch in his walk! I

* Pope meant Mrs Howard, as appears by his answer.