sions, solicitations, remonstrances, crowded about him; he was expected to do every man's business, to procure employment for one, and to retain it for another. In assisting those who addressed him, he represents himself1as sufficiently diligent; and desires to have others believe, what he probably believed himself, that by his interposition many Whigs of merit, and among them Addison and Congreve, were continued in their places. But every man of known influence has so many petitions which he cannot grant, that he must necessarily offend more than he gratifies, because the preference given to one affords all the rest a reason for complaint. When I give away a place, said Lewis XIV. I make an hundred discontented, and one ungrateful.

Much has been said of the equality and independence which he preserved in his conversation with the Ministers, of the frankness of his remonstrances, and the familiarity of his friendship. In accounts of this kind a few single incidents are set against the general tenour of behaviour. No man, however, can pay a more servile tribute to the Great, than by suffering his liberty in their presence to aggrandize him in his own esteem. Between different ranks of the community there is necessarily some distance: he who is called by his superior to pass the interval, may properly accept the invitation; but petulance and obtrusion are rarely produced by magnanimity; nor have often any nobler cause than the pride of importance, and the malice of inferiority. He who knows himself necessary may set,

1 In his History of the Four last Years of the Queen. This history, which Swift himself termed "the best work he had ever written," and on which he bestowed more than ordinary labour, was laid aside upon the accession of George I. In 1736, the author again intended to make it public; but the prudential fears of his friends probably interfered to prevent its then seeing the light. In 1758, a nameless editor of opposite political principles gave the volume to the press, with a preface, in which he severely censures its scope and tendency. S. S. vol. v. pp. 1-231.

while that necessity lasts, a high value upon himself; as, in a lower condition, a servant eminently skilful may be saucy; but he is saucy only because he is servile. Swift appears to have preserved the kindness of the great when they wanted him no longer; and therefore it must be allowed, that the childish freedom, to which he seems enough inclined, was overpowered by his better qualities.

His disinterestedness has been likewise mentioned; a strain of heroism, which would have been in his condition romantick and superfluous. Ecclesiastical benefices, when they become vacant, must be given away; and the friends of Power may, if there be no inherent disqualification, reasonably expect them. Swift accepted (1713) the deanery of St. Patrick,' the best preferment that his friends could venture to give him. That Ministry was in a great degree supported by the Clergy, who were not yet reconciled to the author of the "Tale of a Tub," and would not without much discontent and indignation have born to see him installed in an English Cathedral.

He refused, indeed, fifty pounds from Lord Oxford; but he accepted afterwards a draught of a thousand upon the Exchequer, which was intercepted by the Queen's death, and which he resigned, as he says himself, multa gemens, with many a groan.

In the midst of his power and his politicks, he kept a journal of his visits, his walks, his interviews with

2

1 The Warrant for the Deanery of St. Patrick's was signed February 23rd, and Swift set out for Ireland early in June, 1713, to take possession of a preferment which was at best but an honourable exile. S. S. vol. i. p. 172.

2 Forster, pp. 292-314. Mr. Forster thus describes the wonderful Journal to Stella, " that unrivalled picture of the time, in which he set down day by day the incidents of three momentous years; which received every hope, or fear, or fancy, in its undress as it came to him; which was written for one person's private pleasure, and has had indestructible attractions for every one since; which has no parallel in literature for the

Ministers, and quarrels with his servant, and transmitted it to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, to whom he knew that whatever befel him was interesting, and no accounts could be too minute. Whether these diurnal trifles were properly exposed to eyes which had never received any pleasure from the presence of the Dean, may be reasonably doubted: they have, however, some odd attraction; the reader, finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to consider as important, goes on in hope of information; and, as there is nothing to fatigue attention, if he is disappointed he can hardly complain. It is easy to perceive, from every page, that though ambition pressed Swift into a life of bustle, the wish for a life of ease was always returning.

He went to take possession of his deanery, as soon as he had obtained it; but he was not suffered to stay in Ireland more than a fortnight before he was recalled to England, that he might reconcile Lord Oxford and Lord Bolingbroke, who began to look on one another with malevolence, which every day increased, and which Bolingbroke appeared to retain in his last years.

Swift contrived an interview, from which they both departed discontented: he procured a second, which only convinced him that the feud was irreconcileable; he told historic importance of the men and events that move along its pages, or the homely vividness of the language that describes them, and of which the loves and hates, the joys and griefs, the expectations and disappointments, the great and little in closest neighbourhood, the alternating tenderness and bitterness, and above all the sense and nonsense in marvellous mixture and profusion, remain a perfect microcosm of human life. Forster, p. 198. This Journal was written 1710-1713, from Swift in England to Stella in Ireland. Afterwards, when Swift was engaged with the History of the last years of Queen Anne, he resumed possession of the Journal, probably to refresh his memory as to facts, and it subsequently came into the hands of Dr. Lyons, the gentleman who had charge of Swift in the last miserable years of his derangement. S. S. vol. ii. p. 3.

them his opinion, that all was lost. This denunciation was contradicted by Oxford, but Bolingbroke whispered that he was right.

Before this violent dissension had shattered the Ministry, Swift had published, in the beginning of the year (1714), "The publick Spirit of the Whigs,' in answer to "The Crisis," a pamphlet for which Steele was expelled from the House of Commons. Swift was now so far alienated from Steele as to think him no longer entitled to decency, and therefore treats him sometimes with contempt, and sometimes with abhorrence.2

In this pamphlet the Scotch were mentioned in terms so provoking to that irritable nation, that, resolving not to be offended with impunity, the Scotch Lords in a body demanded an audience of the Queen, and solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred pounds was offered for discovery of the author. From this storm he was, as he relates, secured by a sleight; of what kind, or by whose prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his reputation, that the Scottish Nation applied again that he would be their friend.

He was become so formidable to the Whigs, that his familiarity with the Ministers was clamoured at in Parliament, particularly by two men, afterwards of great note, Aislabie and Walpole.

But, by the disunion of his great friends, his importance. and his designs were now at an end; and seeing his services

1 S. S. vol. iv. pp. 220-278. Scott remarks that it was not the least remarkable circumstance, that, while the violence of party was levelled against Swift, in the House of Lords, no less injustice was done to his adversary, Steele, by the Commons, who expelled him from their House for writing the Crisis, that very pamphlet which called forth Swift's

answer.

2 "Mr. Steele might have been safe enough if his continually repeated indiscretions, and a zeal mingled with scurrilities, had not forfeited all title to lenity." Hist. of the Four last Years. S. S. vol. v. p. 16.

at last useless, he retired about June (1714) into Berkshire, where, in the house of a friend,' he wrote what was then suppressed, but has since appeared under the title of Free Thoughts on the present State of Affairs.”

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While he was waiting in this retirement for events which time or chance might bring to pass, the death of the Queen broke down at once the whole system of Tory Politicks; and nothing remained but to withdraw from the implacability of triumphant Whiggism, and shelter himself in unenvied obscurity.

The accounts of his reception in Ireland, given by Lord Orrery and Dr. Delany,' are so different, that the credit of the writers, both undoubtedly veracious, cannot be saved, but by supposing, what I think is true, that they speak of different times. When Delany says that he was received with respect, he means for the first fortnight, when he came to take legal possession; and when Lord Orrery tells that he was pelted by the populace, he is to be understood of the time when, after the Queen's death, he became a settled resident.

The Archbishop of Dublin3 gave him at first some disturbance in the exercise of his jurisdiction; but it was soon discovered, that between prudence and integrity he was seldom in the wrong; and that, when he was right. his spirit did not easily yield to opposition.

Having so lately quitted the tumults of a party and the intrigues of a court, they still kept his thoughts in agita

1 The Reverend Mr. Gery, Vicar of Upper Letcombe, Berkshire. See Swift's letter to Esther Vanhomrigh, describing his old friend and his too quiet life. S. S. vol. xix. p. 336.

2 Dr. Patrick Delany's Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, 1734, 8vo, p. 87.

3 Dr. William King, who, as Bishop of Derry, had ordained Swift, both as deacon and priest. Swift maintained a more or less amicable correspondence with him till the Archbishop's death in 1729. See their

letters, S. S. vol. xv.