RIOR. Mr. Dean, I am sorry to see you up, if any of your private
Affairs disturb you. I came to call at your Grave, and have a little
Discourse with you; but unless 'tis the Publick has rouz'd you, I am
troubled to find you walking as well as my self.

SWIFT. 'Tis my Country keeps me walking! why who can lie still? I don't
believe there are many Ghosts now, that have any share of Understanding,
or any regard for _Ireland_, that are to be found in their Graves at
Midnight. For my part I can no more keep in my Den than if it were the
Day of Judgment. I have been earth'd now eight Years last _October_,
and I think on my Conscience (and you know _Tom_ the Conscience of one
dead Man is worth ten of those that are living) I have had very few
good Days Sleep since I got there. Ah _Tom_! poor _Ireland_! poor
_Ireland_! it plagued my Heart while I was trifling away Life there;
but my Curse on it, I never thought it would have broke my Rest thus
when I was dead. I have tumbled and toss'd from one Side to the other
(and by the by, they make these cursed Coffins so narrow 'tis a Plague
to be in them) first one Thing would come into my Head, and then
another, and often wrought me so, that I have many a time been forced
to walk a whole Moon to rest me and get the better Nap when I lay down.
Prithee how have you done?

PRIOR. Why, very little better; only as I have not been so long shut up
in my Dormitory as you, the Confinement is less irksome. But I was not
affected the same way with you, for I sometimes slept for Months
together like a Dormouse; but when _Ireland_ once gets into my Head and
its present melancholy Circumstances, it works my Thoughts upwards and
downwards from the Great Ones to their Slaves, like a poor Patient with
_Ward_'s Drop and Pill.

SWIFT. That has often been my Case _Tom_. When I get into that Train of
thinking, and consider the present Situation of our Country, it makes
me as uneasy in my Coffin as a Rat shut up in a Trap. I remember an old
She[1] Fool, that was fonder of scribling than reigning, used to say,
that the Dead have that melancholy Advantage over the Living of first
forgetting them; but 'tis as false as ten thousand other Truths, that
your Philosophers and Politicians above Ground keep such a babling with
over our Heads. For my part I never had that Pleasure, for since my
first Nap under my Gravestone, which did not last three Weeks, I have
been as much perplex'd about _Ireland_, as if I was s