Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/140

the month of June; but a very prudent consideration, and one of the greatest strains of policy I ever exercised in my life. Should I answer you in a month, you might think yourself obliged to answer me in six; and scared at the sore fatigue of writing twice a year to an absent friend, you might (for aught either you or I can tell) stop short, and not write at all. Now this would disappoint all my projects; for, to confess the truth, I have been drawing you in these several years, and, by my past success, I begin to hope, that in about ten more, I may establish a right of hearing from you once a quarter. The gout neither clears my head, nor warms my imagination, and I am ashamed to own to you, how near the truth I kept in the description of what passed by my bedside in the reading of your letter. The scene was really such as I painted it; and the company was much better than you seem to think it. When I, who pass a great part, very much the greatest of my life alone, sally forth into the world, I am very far from expecting to improve myself by the conversation I find there; and still farther from caring one jot of what passes there. In short, I am no longer the bubble you knew me: and therefore, when I mingle in society, it is purely for my amusement. If mankind divert me (and I defy them to give me your distemper, the spleen) it is all I expect or ask of them. By this sincere confession you may perceive, that your great masters of reason are not for my turn; their thorough bass benumbs my faculties. I seek the fiddle or the flute, something to raise, or something to calm my spirits agreeably; gay flights, or soothing images. I do not dislike a fellow, whose imagination runs away

with