Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/104

dence to be done? I think, to be oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus & illis. What can be the design of your letter but malice, to wake me out of a scurvy sleep, which however is better than none? I am toward nine years older since I left you, yet that is the least of my alterations; my business, my diversions, my conversations, are all entirely changed for the worse, and so are my studies and my amusements in writing; yet, after all, this humdrum way of life might be passable enough, if you would let me alone. I shall not be able to relish my wine, my parsons, my horses, nor my garden for three months, until the spirit you have raised shall be dispossessed. I have sometimes wondered that I have not visited you, but I have been stopped by too many reasons, beside years and laziness, and yet these are very good ones. Upon my return after half a year among you, there would be to me desiderio nec pudor nec modus. I was three years reconciling myself to the scene, and the business, to which fortune had condemned me, and stupidity was what I had recourse to. Besides, what a figure should I make in London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, distress, or imprisonment, and my enemies with rods of iron? Yet I often threatened myself with the journey, and am every summer practising to get health to bear it: the only inconvenience is, that I grow old in the experiment. Although I care not to talk to you as a divine, yet I hope you have not been author of your colick: do you drink bad wine, or keep bad company? Are you not as many years older as I? It will not be always et tibi quos mihi dempserit apponet annos. I am heartily sorry you have any dealings with that ugly distemper, and I believe our

friend