MARBLE HILL

Then let him come and take a nap
In summer on my verdant lap;
Prefer our villas, where the Thames is,
To Kensington, or hot St. James’s;
Nor shall I dull in silence sit;
For ’tis to me he owes his wit;
My groves, my echoes, and my birds,
Have taught him his poetic words. 
We gardens, and you wildernesses,
Assist all poets in distresses. 
Him twice a-week I here expect,
To rattle Moody[7] for neglect;
An idle rogue, who spends his quartridge
In tippling at the Dog and Partridge;
And I can hardly get him down
Three times a-week to brush my gown.

RICHMOND LODGE

I pity you, dear Marble Hill;
But hope to see you flourish still. 
All happiness—­and so adieu.

MARBLE HILL

Kind Richmond Lodge, the same to you.

[Footnote 1:  The King left England on the 3rd June, 1727, and after supping heartily and sleeping at the Count de Twellet’s house near Delden on the 9th, he continued his journey to Osnabruck, where he arrived at the house of his brother, the Duke of York, on the night of the 11th, wholly paralyzed, and died calmly the next morning, in the very same room where he was born.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 2:  Swift was probably not aware how nearly he described the narrowed situation of Mrs. Howard’s finances.  Lord Orford, in a letter to Lord Strafford, 29th July, 1767, written shortly after her death, described her affairs as so far from being easy, that the utmost economy could by no means prevent her exceeding her income considerably; and states in his Reminiscences, that, besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve thousand pounds, she did not leave above twenty thousand pounds to her family.—­See “Lord Orford’s Works,” vol. iv, p. 304; v, p. 456.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 3:  Who was “often in Swift’s thoughts,” and “high in his esteem”; and to whom Pope dedicated his second “Moral Epistle.”—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 4:  This also proved a prophecy more true than the Dean suspected.]

[Footnote 5:  Lady Charlotte de Roussy, a French lady.—­Dublin Edition.]

[Footnote 6:  Marquis de Mirmont, a Frenchman, who had come to England after the Edict of Nantes (by which Henri IV had secured freedom of religion to Protestants) had been revoked by Louis XIV in 1685.  See Voltaire, “Siecle de Louis XIV.”—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 7:  The gardener.]

DESIRE AND POSSESSION 1727