The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 18/Letter from Unknown Person to Jonathan Swift - 4
FROM AN UNKNOWN GENTLEMAN[1].
THIS letter is not to return you country thanks for your royal bounty to the army of Parnassus. Every body knows that Lewis the 14th built and endowed the noblest foundation in the world for his invalides; we in imitation have our Greenwich, Chelsea, and Killmainham; and it was but fit that the king of poets should provide for his jingling subjects, that are so maimed and wounded in reputation, they have no other way of subsistence[2]. The occasion of this is as follows: This evening two learned gentlemen (for aught I know) laid a wager on the matter following, and referred it to you to decide; viz. Whether Homer or Tacitus deserves most praise on the following account; Homer makes Helen give a character of the men of gallantry and courage upon the wall; but, as if it were not a fine lady's province to describe wisdom in Ulysses, the hero of his second poem, he makes Antenor, the wisest of all Troy, interrupt her. The passage in Tacitus is as follows, viz. On this year died Junia, being the sixtieth after the Philippi battle, wife to Cassius, sister to Brutus, niece to Cato, the images of twenty houses were carried before her, &c. Sed præfulgebant Brutus & Cassius, eo ipso quod imagines eorum non visebantur. These gentlemen beg they may not have apartments assigned them in your observatory. Your most obedient humble servant.
Be pleased to direct to the reverend Mr. Birch at Roscrea.
- ↑ This letter is endorsed, "whimsical, and little in it."
- ↑ The writer seems to allude to Swift's then designed hospital for idiots and lunaticks.