Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/335

and the reflections upon it now begin when I wake in the morning, and end when I am going to sleep. I writ to Mr. Pope and not to you. My birth, although from a family not undistinguished in its time, is many degrees inferiour to yours; all my pretensions from person and parts infinitely so; I a younger son of younger sons; you born to a great fortune: yet I see you with all your advantages, sunk to a degree that you could never have been without them: — But yet I see you as much esteemed, as much beloved, as much dreaded, and perhaps more (though it be almost impossible) than ever you were in your highest exaltation — only I grieve like an alderman that you are not so rich. And yet, my lord, I pretend to value money as little as you, and I will call five hundred witnesses (if you will take Irish witnesses) to prove it. I renounce your whole philosophy, because it is not your practice. By the figure of living, (if I used that expression to Mr. Pope) I do not mean the parade, but the suitableness to your mind; and as for the pleasure of giving, I know your soul suffers when you are debarred of it. Could you, when your own generosity and contempt of outward things (be not offended, it is no ecclesiastical but an Epictetian phrase) could you, when these have brought you to it, come over and live with Mr. Pope and me at the deanery? I could almost wish the experiment were tried — No, God forbid, that ever such a scoundrel as Want should dare to approach you. But, in the mean time, do not brag, retrenchments are not your talent. But as old Weymouth said to me in his lordly latin, Philosopha verba, ignava opera; I wish you could learn arithmetick, that three and two make five, and will never make more. My philoso-