“Dear Sir,
“My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense I have of ye many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long lived as Methusaleh, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can't forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to ye owners of them, and desiring you to believe me always,
“Dear Sir,
“To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty's Resident at Hambourg,
“May, 1703.”
—From the Life of Addison, by Miss Aikin, vol. i, p. 146.
It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory, from first to last. The value of Swift's testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his vision or warped his judgement, can be doubted by nobody.
“Sept. 10, 1710.—I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele.
“11.—Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of this evening.
“18.—To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison's retirement near Chelsea.... I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison.
“27.—To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland's, with Steele and Addison, too.