Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/143

ence may be joined with mine to suppress whatever we may judge proper of his papers. To be plunged in my neighbours and my papers, will be your inevitable fate as soon as you come. That I am an author whose characters are thought of some weight, appears from the great noise and bustle that the court and town make about any I give; and I will not render them less important or less interesting, by sparing vice and folly, or by betraying the cause of truth and virtue. I will take care they shall be such as no man can be angry at, but the persons I would have angry. You are sensible with what decency and justice I paid homage to the royal family, at the same time that I satirized false courtiers, and spies, &c. about them. I have not the courage however to be such a satirist as you, but I would be as much, or more, a philosopher. You call your satires, libels; I would rather call my satires, epistles: they will consist more of morality than of wit, and grow graver, which you will call duller. I shall leave it to my antagonists to be witty (if they can) and content myself to be useful, and in the right. Tell me your opinion as to lady Mary Wortley's or lord Harvey's performance? they are certainly the top wits of the court, and you may judge by that single piece what can be done against me; for it was laboured, corrected, precommended and postdisapproved, so far as to be disowned by themselves, after each had highly cried it up for the other's. I have met with some complaints, and heard at a distance of some threats, occasioned by my verses: I sent fair messages to acquaint them where I was to be found in town, and to offer to call at their houses to satisfy them, and so it dropped. It is very poor in