Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/100

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LETTERS TO AND FROM

a great deal of business with you that relates to posterity. Mr. Mynett has, for some time, led me an uncomfortable life, with his ill accounts of your health; but, God be thanked, his style of late is much altered for the better.

My hearty and constant prayers are perpetually offered up for the preservation of you and your excellent family. Pray, my lord, write to me; or you never loved me, or I have done something to deserve your displeasure. My lord and lady Harriot, my brother and sister[1], pretend to atone by making me fine presents; but I would have his lordship know, that I would value two of his lines, more than two of his manors, &c.




FROM MR. GAY.


DEAR SIR,
LONDON, DEC. 22, 1722.


AFTER every postday, for these eight or nine years, I have been troubled with an uneasiness of spirit, and at last, I have resolved to get rid of it, and write to you. I do not deserve you should think so well of me as I really deserve; for I have not professed to you, that I love you as much as ever I did: but you are the only person of my acquaintance almost that does not know it. Whomever I see that comes from Ireland, the first question I ask

  1. The members of the club of sixteen all called one another brothers, and consequently their wives were sisters to the several members.
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