so long
before we could get a letter from you: let her contradict this if she
can. You tell her you are riding for your life; I fancy she would do it
for yours, though she will not for her own. I believe that she will not
like that I should say anything more about her; so that I shall leave
you to your own thoughts about what she hath said herself; for I find
she doth not much care to be talked to, and as little likes to be talked
of: if she writes truth, I hope she will allow me the liberty to do the
same.... I have sometimes a great mind to answer the above letter, but I
know she will do what she will; and as little as she likes herself, she
likes her own advice better than anybody's else, and that is a reason,
in my opinion, that should prevail with her to take more care of
herself. I just before said I would say no more upon this subject; but
if I do not lay down the pen, I find I cannot help it. I have no desire
to come to town at all; for if I were there I cannot see you; so that
unless she turns me away I am fixed for life at Amesbury: so that, as to
everything that relates to me, I refer you to her letters."

J.G.

[Footnote 1: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 292.]

[Footnote 2: 'Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 295.]

[Footnote 3:

Neither good nor bad, nor fool nor wise,
They would not learn nor could advise;
Without love, hatred, joy, or fear,
They led a kind of--as it were;
Nor wish'd nor cared, nor laugh'd nor cried:
And so they lived, and so they died.]

[Footnote 4: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 308.]

[Footnote 5: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 319.]

[Footnote 6: Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), XVII, p. 333]

CHAPTER XII

1731

CORRESPONDENCE

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

Dublin, April 13th, 1731.

"Your situation is an odd one. The Duchess is your treasurer, and Mr.
Pope tells me you are the Duke's. And I had gone a good way in some
verses on that occasion, prescribing lessons to direct your conduct, in
a negative way, not to do so and so, etc., like other treasurers; how to
deal with servants, tenants, or neighbouring squires, which I take to be
courtiers, parliaments, and princes in alliance, and so the parallel
goes on, but grew too long to please me."[1]

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

April 21st, 1731.

"Since I have got over the impediment to a writer, of water drinking, if
I can persuade myself that I have any wit, and find I have inc