If once in your cellar my Phoebus should shine,
I tell you I'd not give a fig for your wine;
So I'll leave him behind, for I certainly know it,
What he ripens above ground, he sours below it.
But why should we fight thus, my partner so dear
With three hundred and sixty-five poems a-year?
Let's quarrel no longer, since Dan and George Rochfort
Will laugh in their sleeves: I can tell you they watch for't.
Then George will rejoice, and Dan will sing highday:
Hoc Ithacus velit, et magni mercentur Atridae.
JON. SWIFT.
Written, signed, and sealed, five minutes and eleven seconds after the
receipt of yours, allowing seven seconds for sealing and superscribing,
from my bed-side, just eleven minutes after eleven, Sept. 15, 1718.
Erratum in your last, 1. antepenult, pro "fear a _Dun_" lege "fear a
_Dan_:" ita omnes MSS. quos ego legi, et ita magis congruum tam sensui
quam veritati.
TO DR. SHERIDAN[1]
Dec. 14, 1719, Nine at night.
SIR,
It is impossible to know by your letter whether the wine is to be bottled
to-morrow, or no.
If it be, or be not, why did not you in plain English tell us so?
For my part, it was by mere chance I came to sit with the ladies[2] this
night.
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