years ago, while I had all my senses, and health and spirits enough to
carry on business; but now that I have lost my hearing, and that I find
my constitution declining daily, they are become my necessary and only
refuge. I know myself (no common piece of knowledge, let me tell you), I
know what I can, what I cannot, and consequently what I ought to do. I
ought not, and therefore will not, return to business when I am much less
fit for it than I was when I quitted it. Still less will I go to Ireland,
where, from my deafness and infirmities, I must necessarily make a
different figure from that which I once made there. My pride would be too
much mortified by that difference. The two important senses of seeing and
hearing should not only be good, but quick, in business; and the business
of a Lord-lieutenant of Ireland (if he will do it himself) requires both
those senses in the highest perfection. It was the Duke of Dorset's not
doing the business himself, but giving it up to favorites, that has
occasioned all this confusion in Ireland; and it was my doing the whole
myself, without either Favorite, Minister, or Mistress, that made my
administration so smooth and quiet. I remember, when I named the late Mr.
Liddel for my Secretary, everybody was much surprised at it; and some of
my friends represented to me, that he was no man of business, but only a
very genteel, pretty young fellow; I assured them, and with truth, that
that was the very reason why I chose him; for that I was resolved to do
all the business myself, and without even the suspicion of having a
minister; which the Lord-lieutenant's Secretary, if he is a man of
business, is always supposed, and commonly with reason, to be. Moreover,
I look upon myself now to be emeritus in business, in which I have been
near forty years together; I give it up to you: apply yourself to it, as
I have done, for forty years, and then I consent to your leaving it for a
philosophical retirement among your friends and your books. Statesmen and
beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay; and,
too often sanguinely hoping to shine on in their meridian, often set with