Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/136

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124
LETTERS TO AND FROM


P. P. I would subscribe my name, if I had not a very bad one; so I leave you to guess it. If I can be of any service to you in this kingdom, I shall be glad you will employ me.




REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,
APRIL 12, 1734.


I HAVE received yours of the 16th of February very lately; but have not yet seen the person who brought it, nor am likely to see him, unless he finds me out in my retreat. Our friend Pope is in town, and to him I send this letter; for he tells me, he can forward it to you by the hands of one of our common friends. If I can do Mr. Faulkner any service, I shall certainly do it, because I shall catch at any opportunity of pleasing you; but my help, in a project of subscription, will, I fear, avail him little. I live much out of the world, and I do not blush to own, that I am out of fashion in it. My wife, who is extremely obliged to you, for your kind remembrance of her, and who desires me to say all the fond things from her to you, which I know she thinks, enjoys a precarious health, easily shaken, and sometimes interrupted by fits of severe pain: but, upon the whole, much better than it has been these five years. I walk down hill easily and leisurely enough, except when a strong disposition to the jaundice (that I have long carried about me) gives me a shove. I guard against it as well as I can; the censors say, not as well as I

might.