Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/37

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DR. SWIFT.
25

reste du genre humain. Quelles bêtes en jupes sont les plus excellentes de celles, que je vois semées dans le monde, au prix de vous: en les voyant, en les entendant, je dis cent fois le jour; ne parlez, ne regardez, ne pensez, ne faites rien comme ces misérables. Quelle calamité à faire mépriser autant de gens, qui sans songer de vous, seroient assez supportables: mais il est temps de vous délasser, et de vous dire Adieu: avec tout le respect, la sincérité, et l'estime du monde, je suis, et serai toujours.





SIR,
DEC. 14, 1719.NINE AT NIGHT.


IT is impossible to know by your letter whether the wine is to be bottled to morrow, or no.

If it be, or be not, why did not you in plain English tell us so?

For my part, it was by mere chance I came to sit with the ladies this night.

And if they had not told me there was a letter from you, and your man Alexander had not gone, and come back from the deanery, and the boy here had not been sent to let Alexander know I was here, I should have missed the letter outright.

Truly I do not know who is bound to be sending for corks to stop your bottles, with a vengeance.

Make a page of your own age, and send your man

  1. In this letter, though written in prose, every paragraph ends with a rhime to the foregoing one.
Alexander