Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/63

with both eyes; an infirmity I never observed in you. However, one thing I was pleased with, that after you had writ down, you repented, and writ me up again. But I continued four days at a loss for your meaning, till a bookseller sent me the Travels of one captain Gulliver, who proved a very good explainer, although, at the same time, I thought it hard to be forced to read a book of seven hundred pages, in order to understand a letter of fifty lines; especially as those of our faculty are already but too much pestered with commentators. The stuffs you require are making, because the weaver piques himself upon having them in perfection. But he has read Gulliver's book, and has no conception what you mean by returning money; for he has become a proselyte of the Houyhnhnms, whose great principle, if I rightly remember, is benevolence; and, as to myself, I am so highly offended with such a base proposal, that I am determined to complain of you to her royal highness, that you are a mercenary Yahoo, fond of shining pebbles. What have I to do with you or your court, farther than to show the esteem I have for your person, because you happen to deserve it; and my gratitude to her royal highness, who was pleased a little to distinguish me; which, by the way, is the greatest compliment I ever paid, and may probably be the last; for I am not such a prostitute flatterer as Gulliver, whose chief study is to extenuate the vices, and magnify the virtues, of mankind, and perpetually dins our ears with the praises of his country in the midst of corruption, and for that reason alone has found so many readers, and probably will have a pension, which, I suppose, was his chief design in writing. As for his