Ask your own heart, my lord; if this be true,
Then how unblest am I! how blest are you!"
"'Tis true--but, doctor, let us wave all that--
Say, if you had your wish, what you'd be at?"
"Excuse me, good my lord--I won't be sounded,
Nor shall your favour by my wants be bounded.
My lord, I challenge nothing as my due,
Nor is it fit I should prescribe to you.
Yet this might Symmachus himself avow,
(Whose rigid rules[5] are antiquated now)--
My lord; I'd wish to pay the debts I owe--
I'd wish besides--to build and to bestow."
[Footnote 1: Delany, by the patronage of Carteret, and probably through
the intercession of Swift, had obtained a small living in the north of
Ireland, worth about one hundred pounds a-year, with the chancellorship
of Christ-Church, and a prebend's stall in St. Patrick's, neither of
which exceeded the same annual amount. Yet a clamour was raised among the
Whigs, on account of the multiplication of his preferments; and a charge
was founded against the Lord-Lieutenant of extravagant favour to a Tory
divine, which Swift judged worthy of an admirable ironical confutation
in his "Vindication of Lord Carteret.
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