Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/26

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
14
LETTERS TO AND FROM

ness and good nature. I fancy Arsalla[1] has cured the lady of her spleen.

I heartily wish you many new years, with health and happiness; and am, most entirely, &c.


I am told poor Gay's play is now in rehearsal, and will please. It was that brought him to town a little before he died[2]; though, without his fever, he could not probably have held out long any where.




MADAM,
DEANERY HOUSE, JAN. 1, 1732-3.


I SEND you your bit of a newspaper with the verses[3], than which I never saw better in their kind. I have the same opinion of those you were pleased to

write

  1. The seat of Peter Ludlow, esq., father to the first earl of Ludlow.
  2. Nov. 16, 1732, Mr. Gay tells the dean, "I am at last come to London before the family, to follow my own inventions. — If my present object succeeds, you may expect a better account of my fortune a little while after the holidays. But I promise myself nothing." See the preceding letter. He died Dec. 4, only eighteen days after.
  3. Mrs. Pilkington, when she was about sixteen, having been teased by her brother to write some verses as a school exercise for him, asked him what she should write upon: Why, said he pertly, what should you write upon but paper? So taking it for her subject, she writ the following lines; which, four years after, were printed in one of the London newspapers. See Pilkington's Memoirs, vol. I, p. 88.

O spotless