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enough to furnish every family in England with one. And because other nations may also reap the benefit of your labours, I have not only prevailed with my learned acquaintance, Mr Griffith Evans ap Rice, professor of the Cambrian tongue at Oxford, to translate them into Welch, but have sent also copies of them into Ireland, to the renowned antiquary Cormack O Cuillinane, and to old Gillaspick Mackentosh, chief Chronographer of the Highland Clans of Scotland; from whom I have lately received some curious memoirs, with which I may perhaps, one of these days, oblige the commonwealth of learning. And as I am well satisfied of the place which I have gained in your most wise esteem, by this my vast undertaking, so I beg leave to assure you, that I shall be ready, upon all occasions, to let the world know of your great merit, and how much I am,

Learned, wise, and venerable Sir,

Your most humble,

And most devoted servant,

Bath, Nov. 16, 1713.

A. TRIPE, M. D.

POSTSCRIPT.

I HAD no sooner finished my letter, most venerable sage, but, reflecting on the happiness, which we that are learned do now enjoy, by living in the same age with you, I could not but be pleased to think, that when posterity shall peruse your learned productions, and inquire who were your contemporaries, what a handsome men

tion will be made of myself, upon the account of my correspondence with you. This, as it could not but be a most sensible satisfaction to me, so it naturally led me into the melancholy thought, of what an irreparable loss the public would sustain by the death of so valuable a person; and remembering, that I heard of your being lately afflicted with a continual dizziness in your head, and a sudden dimness in your sight, I immediately writ to my two worthy friends, Sir William R-d, and Cornelius a Tilb-rg, who, as they were formerly the ornament of the stage itinerant, so now they are an honour to the profession, and begged of them to send me a full account of the causes, nature, rise, and progress of your malady. They acquitted themselves herein with a great deal of generosity and erudition; and from their learned observations, I immediately comprehended, that the chief origin of those chronical distempers proceeded from your immoderate feeding upon sallads; not only such as were picked and prepared by master-cooks, as Sidney and Locke, but likewise those that were hastily dished up by the unskilful, Tutchin and Ridpath, &c., which, creating too many crudities in the stomach, do continually transmit to the upper region a strange chaos of black, heavy, and indigested vapours, that do not only overpower the innate imbecility of the brain, but also obstruct the passages of the optic nerves, from whence those stubborn affections of your head and eyes do naturally follow.

Hereupon I zealously applied myself, night and day, to consult the most valuable nostrums of all our celebrated oracles, and with joy and satisfaction have excerpted from them a medicine of the greatest virtue, which, in the name of the worshipful Mr Mayor, and the rest of

his brethren, I have sent you by the carrier, in three gallipots, as a grateful return for your late present.

This, by the natural antipathy of the ingredients, will work powerfully upon the crudities, correct the peccant humours, and you will soon find the powerful effects of it. It is a sudorific, diuretic, carminative, and a soporific. It immediately puts all the humours in a ferment, separates the good from the bad, attracts to itself, by an occult sympathy, all the rebellious particles, dissolves them in a trice, and scowers all before it like a scavinger. Take the quantity of a nutmeg, horis medicis.

Outwardly, you must apply to the region of the heart, a plaster of the rubrum henrici, and wash your eyes twice a day with the ophthalmic water I prescribed to you when at Bath.

But in case your distemper should prove so obstinate as not to yield to these most sovereign remedies, your last refuge must be a cataplasm of hemp, applied cravat. wise to your neck, which, though in its operation it be somewhat violent, yet it is an infallible one, if rightly used, according to that celebrated observation of one of our learned predecessors :

This, with a jirk, will do your work, and cure you o'er and o'er ; Read, judge, and try, and if you die, never believe me more.

Let your diet be regular, and drink good wines, and of the best growth. But, by all means, you must renounce Holland geneva, and Brunswick mum; for one corrupts your lungs, and the other stupifies your intellects.

If you observe exactly the method of these prescrip

tions, as I hope you will, I don't doubt, but that, in a little time, you will be generous enough to acknowledge, that our present is a match for your own; and that whatever advantage you may have over us in years and learning, you have none in the point of liberality.

Yours,

Ut Supra.

THE

CONDUCT OF THE ALLIES;

AND OF

THE LATE MINISTRY,

IN BEGINNING AND CARRYING ON THE

PRESENT WAR.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1712.

Partem tibi Gallia nostri

Eripuit: Partem duris Hispania bellis :

Pars jacet Hesperia, totoque exercitus orbe

Te vincente perit.

Odimus accipitrem quia semper vivit in armis.
Victrix Provincia plorat.

THE Composition of this tract was one of the most effectual services which Swift rendered to Oxford's administration. The brilliancy of a long and unvaried current of success, and a tacit feeling of shame, had hitherto withheld the Tories from openly opposing the Duke of Marlborough, or gravely impeaching the conduct of a war, which, under his guidance, had added so many victories to the military annals of England. But the most successful general that ever lived was doomed finally to experience, that even a long train of victory will, like manna, pall upon the public taste. Envy, and malignant faction, whom the glare of successful services had long dazzled, at length claimed their victim. The Tories were inimical to the cause for which Marlborough fought, and still more to the domestic influence of his duchess, on which his greatness had arisen. The nobles felt themselves overshadowed; the new ministry were

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