EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE. SWIFT's familiar correspondence has been always accounted a most valuable part of his works. He used to say of himself, that when he began a letter he never leaned on his elbow till he had finished it. In other words, his stile is free from that over-care which, in many instances, render the letters of professed authors as stiff and pedantic as if composed for the eye of the public. In those of the Dean, we see his mind in undress, and his opinions exposed with the open freedom due to the sincerity of friendship. The Dean's regularity in his private affairs extended itself to the preservation of his familiar letters; and at the end of his accounts of personal expence for the year, he frequently ad. ded a list of the letters he had written and received. The value of this correspondence to the public is well expressed by Hawkesworth. "In a series of familiar letters between the same friends for thirty years, their whole life, as it were, passes in review before us; we live with them, we hear them talk, we mark the vigour of life, the ardour of expectation, the hurry of business, the jollity of their social meetings, and the sport of their fancy in the sweet intervals of leisure and retirement; we see the scene gradually change; hope and expectation are at an end; they regret pleasures that are past, and friends that are dead; they complain of disappointment and infirmity; they are conscious that the sands of life which remain are few; and while we hear them regret the approach of the last, it falls, and we lose them in the grave. Such as they were, we feel ourselves to be; we are conscious to sentiments, connections, and situa tions like theirs; we find ourselves in the same path, urged forward by the same necessity, and the parallel in what has been is carried on with such force to what shall be, that the future al most becomes present, and we wonder at the new power of those truths, of which we never doubted the reality and importance. "These letters will therefore contribute to whatever good may be hoped from a just estimate of life; and for that reason, if for no other, are by no means unworthy the attention of the public." EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE. TO THE REV. JOHN KENDALL. * SIR, Moor-Park, Feb. 11, 1691-2. If any thing made me wonder at your letter, it was your almost inviting me to do so in the beginning, which, indeed, grew less upon knowing the occasion; since it is what I have heard from more than one in and about Leicester. And for the friendship between us, as I suppose yours to be real, so I think it would be proper to imagine mine; until you find any cause to believe it pretended though I might have some quarrel at you in three or four lines, which are very ill bestowed in complimenting me. And as to that of my great prospects of making my fortune, on which as your kindness only looks on the best side, so my own cold temper, and unconfined humour, is a much greater hindrance than any fear of that which is the subject of your letter. I shall speak plainly to you, that the very ordinary observations I made with going half a mile beyond the University, have taught me experience enough not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be in some years; and even then itself, I am so hard to please, that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world. How all that suits * Vicar of Thornton, in Leicestershire. with my behaviour to the woman in hand,* you may easily imagine, when you know that there is something in me which must be employed, and when I am alone turns all, for want of practice, into speculation and thought; insomuch that these seven weeks I have been here, I have writ and burnt, and writ again upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any man in England. And this is it which a person of great honour † in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to look into my mind) used to tell me, that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that would do mischief if I would not give it employment. It is this humour that makes me so busy when I am in company, to turn all that way; and since it commonly ends in talk, whether it be love, or common conversation, it is all alike. This is so common, that I could remember twenty women in my life, to whom I have behaved myself just the same way; and I profess, without any other design than that of entertaining myself when I am very idle, or when something goes amiss in my affairs. This I always have done as a man of the world, when I had no design for any thing grave in it, and what I thought at worst a harmless impertinence; but, whenever I begin to take sober resolutions, or, as now, to think of entering into the Church, I never found it would be hard to put off this kind of folly at the porch. Besides, perhaps, in so general a conversation among that sex, I might pretend a little to understand where I am when I am going to * This was a certain Betty Jones, to whom Swift's mother apprehended he would form an imprudent attachment. She afterwards married an inn-keeper in Loughborough. See a letter from Swift to Dr Worrall, 18th January 1728-9. + His early patron, Lord Berkeley.-N. |