The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 11/From Erasmus Lewis to Jonathan Swift - 10

by Erasmus Lewis

FROM ERASMUS LEWIS, ESQ.

I HAVE yours of the twenty-seventh. I write this in the morning, for I go in the evening to Kensington. If I am well received, I will continue my homage; if not, they shall hear of me no more. Where shall I write to you again? for I cannot stir from hence till the sixteenth of August at soonest. Nothing could please me more than to pass a few months with you at Abercothy^[1]; but I am yet uncertain whether I shall go there at all. All I am sure of is, that I will go out of town to some place for some time; first to the Bath, for I cannot bear staying in this room. I want physick to help my digestion of these things, though the 'squire^[2] is kinder to me than before. I am not mortified at what you tell me of Mercurialis; only I would know, whether any disrespectful conduct of mine has brought it upon me; or whether it is only a general dislike of me, because I am not a man of parts, or because I am in other interests? They would not give the dragon the least quarter, excepting only a pension, if he will work journeywork by the quarter. I have long thought his parts decayed, and am more of that opinion than ever. The new commission is not yet named. Would not the world have roared against the dragon for such a thing? Mercurialis entertained Stanhope, Craggs, Pulteney, and Walpole. What if the dragon had done so? The duke of Somerset dines to day with the fraternity at Greenwich, with Withers. Nobody goes out with the dragon; but many will sit very loose. Some say the new men will be Lexington, Wyndam, Strangeways, sir John Stonehouse, and Campion.

1. In Caermarthenshire, of which county Mr. Lewis was a native.
2. William Bromley, esq., secretary of state.