Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

go. Eat no supper. Writ a whim to divert the Earl of Oxford. Resolved to adjourn all further considerations till to-morrow. Smoke. Take a dram. Go to bed. Domestic affairs not worth inserting.

Wednesday.

Had a very bad night last night. Rise early. Repeat the prayer for a person troubled in mind. Tumble over the History of the Civil Wars. Pop upon the words Obadiah and Titus. Shut the book. Take pen in hand: Write some oddnesses; lay it down again. Call for a glass of sack. Think of my friends. Receive an express that the Earl of Oxford is displaced. And is Bolingbroke, said I, and all the rest, continued? Can Lucifer fall without his angels? Write a meditation on a White Rod. Grow faint. Smoke. Drink. Hang myself. Die.

This squib concludes with a dull parody on Swift's Meditation on a Broomstick, not worth transcribing. The jest succeeded so well, that shortly afterwards appeared by the same, or some equally witty writer," Dean Swift's real Diary, being a true and faithful account of himself for that week, wherein he is traduced by the author of a scandalous and malicious Hue and Cry after him; containing his entire Journal from the time he left London to his settling in Dublin, 1715." Both these petty efforts at satire, with many others, are engrossed in the Gulliveriana.

LETTERS

FROM AUGUST 1714 TO JANUARY 1724--5.

LETTERS

FROM 1714 TO 1724-5.

FROM MR GAY TO DR ARBUTHNOT, OR THE DEAN OF ST PATRICK'S.

of state.

Hanover, Aug. 16, 1714.

You remember, I suppose, that I was to write you abundance of letters from Hanover; but as one of the most distinguishing qualities of a politician is secrecy, you must not expect from me any arcanas There is another thing, that is necessary to establish the character of a politician; which is, to seem always to be full of affairs of state; to know the consultations of the cabinet council, when at the same time all his politics are collected from news, papers. Which of these two causes my secrecy is owing to, I leave you to determine. There is yet one thing more that is extremely necessary for a foreign minister, which he can no more be without than an artizan without his tools; I mean the terms of his art. I call it an art, or a science, because I think the King of France has established an academy to instruct the young Machiavelians of his country in

« AnteriorContinuar »