Autograph letter : [place not specified], to Charles Ford, 1720 January 29.

Commenting, at length, on the health of the Dean [Jonathan Swift] saying "the ill State of this health gives me very much concern. change of air, the exercise of a journey, and the life of amusement which I would make him live, could I once get him to this side of the water, would reestablish him perfectly. if you offer'd to be his conductor, might you not determine him? this expedient would procure me a double satisfaction. I know very well & by cruel experience, how implacable the persons he lives in fear of are, but surely he has nothing att this time of day to apprehend from them. nothing att least which he may not conduct himself so as to avoid. for godsake press him again in the strongest terms you can. it is ridiculous to neglect his health, to deny himself so reasonable & so easy an amusement, and to deprive his friends after so long a separation of the pleasure of seeing him, for a parcel of ill founded apprehensions which are sent up to his brain in a spleenatick vapour;" commenting on the influence of John Miller in the City of Westminster; discussing his investments and his subscription to "new Stocks. I did so, & the rise of them has procur'd me att least as much as I have been hitherto robb'd of;" adding that his secretary has sent him "...Priors works which I was very indifferent about, & not Mr. Popes which I am impatient to see..."