court expedient of keeping me in prison for a plotter; but at the same
time I must tell you, that such journeys very much shorten my life,
for a month here is very much longer than six at Twickenham.

How comes friend Gay to be so tedious? Another man can publish fifty
thousand lies sooner than he can publish fifty fables.... Let me add,
that if I were Gulliver's friend, I would desire all my acquaintance
to give out that his copy was basely mangled and abused, and added to,
and blotted out by the printer; for so to me it seems in the second
volume particularly.

Adieu.



TO JOHN GAY

_Enquiries into Mr. Gay's pursuits_


Dublin, 4 _May_, 1732.

I am now as lame as when you writ your letter, and almost as lame as
your letter itself, for want of that limb from my lady duchess, which
you promised, and without which I wonder how it could limp hither. I
am not in a condition to make a true step even on Amesbury Downs, and
I declare that a corporeal false step is worse than a political one:
nay, worse than a thousand political ones, for which I appeal to
courts and ministers, who hobble on and prosper without the sense of
feeling. To talk of riding and walking is insulting me, for I can