left the prelate in tears, and from which Swift rushed away with marks of strong terror and agitation in his countenance; upon which the Archbishop said to Delany, "You have just inet the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question." Yet, at this time all the great wits of England had been at his feet. All Ireland had shouted after him, and worshipped as a liberator the greatest Irish patriot and citizen. The most famous statesman, and the greatest poets of his day, had applauded him, and done him homage; and at this time writing over to Bolingbroke from Ireland, he says: "It is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called to the best, and not to die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”

Pope relates that when B- told Swift he loved him more than all his friends and relations, the Dean made him no manner of answer, but said afterwards, "The man's a fool." Pope once said to him, “There's a lady, Doctor, that longs to see you, and admires you above all things.” “Then I despise her heartily !" said he.

Charles Fox had a theory about Swift, that he could not have written the heaps of nonsense he entertained his friends with, unless he had been at heart a good-natured man. All, at any rate, were agreed as to his wonderful and unequalled fascination in society, at such times as he pleased to exert it.

Mr. Monck Mason may be considered to have vindicated Swift from "personal envy, faction, and national prejudice. In fact, the reputation of Swift had been again and again rendered next to infamous by Scotch compliments, buried under Johnson's criticisms, and absolutely damned by Irish panegyric. Notes and Queries, 2nd S. vol. vi.

SWIFT AT MOOR PARK.

Moor Park and House lie at the base of the hills which bound the heaths towards Farnham. in Surrey; and near a place of earlier celebrity, Waverley Abbey. The house is a spacious mansion of three stories; and near its east end is the sun-dial, beneath which the heart of Sir William Temple was buried his body was interred in Westminster Abbey. The park and gardens were much altered early in the present century: the latter were in the formal Dutch style, and were the great delight of William Cobbett, who when a boy

G

many a time walked over from Farnham to see the stately gardens. At the entrance of the Park, near the Waverley gate, is a cottage, where Swift is said to have first seen Stella, and where, the people in the neighbourhood tell you, Jonathan used to sleep when he resided at Moor Park with Sir William Temple. The age of the cottage, however, scarcely supports this fame; and, were it old enough, Swift is not likely to have slept there.

Many depreciatory sketches have been drawn of the kind of life Swift led at the household of his great patron; and irksome as much of it was, in this service Swift laid in a store of knowledge for his after-life, which was, indeed, roughhewn here. Mr. Thackeray, who is not very tender towards Temple, concedes that Swift's initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his knowledge of polite life, his acquaintance with literature even, which he could not have pursued very sedulously during his reckless career at Dublin, were got under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telling in after-life what quantities of books he devoured there; as well as of describing the garden-seat which he devised for his study.

Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious deal of veneration from his household, and to have been coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled by the people round about him, as delicately as any of the plants he loved. When he fell ill in 1693, the household was aghast at his indisposition: mild Dorothea, his wife, the best companion of the best of

men

"Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great,

Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate."

As for Dorinda, his sister,

"Those who would grief describe, might come and trace
Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face.

To see her weep, joy every face forsook,

And grief flung sables on each menial look.

The humbled tribe mourned for the quickening soul
That furnished life and spirit through the whole."

"Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting the menials into a mourning livery, a fine image? One of the menials wrote it, who did not like the Temple livery nor those twenty pound wages."-(Thackeray.)

Doubtless, "the hard work at the second table" suggested to Swift these " Thoughts on Hanging," in his Directions to Servants.

“To grow old in the office of a footman is the highest of all indignities; therefore, when you find years coming on without hopes of a place at court, a command in the army, a succession to the stewardship, an employment in the revenue (which two last you cannot obtain without reading and writing), or running away with your master's niece or daughter, I directly advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of honour left you there you will meet many of your old comrades, and live a short life and a merry one, and making a figure at your exit, wherein I will give you some instructions.

"The last advice I give you relates to your behaviour when you are going to be hanged; which, either for robbing your master, for housebreaking, or going upon the highway, or in a drunken quarrel by killing the first man you meet, may very probably be your lot, and is owing to one of these three qualities: either a love of good fellowship, a generosity of mind, or too much vivacity of spirits. Your good behaviour on this article will concern your whole community: deny the fact with all solemnity of imprecations: a hundred of your brethren, if they can be admitted, will attend about the bar, and be ready upon demand to give you a character before the Court; let nothing prevail on you to confess, but the promise of a pardon for discovering your comrades: but I suppose all this to be in vain ; for if you escape now, your fate will be the same another day. Get a speech to be written by the best author of Newgate some of your kind wenches will provide you with a holland shirt and white cap, crowned with a crimson or black ribbon take leave cheerfully of all your friends in Newgate: mount the cart with courage; fall on your knees; lift up your eyes; hold a book in your hands, although you cannot read a word; deny the fact at the gallows; kiss and forgive the hangman, and so farewell; you shall be buried in pomp at the charge of the fraternity; the surgeon shall not touch a limb of you; and your fame shall continue until a successor of equal renown succeeds in your place.

SWIFT'S BENEVOLENCE.

:

Soon after Swift had left Moor Park, and accepted the prebend of Kilroot, as described at p. 9, Sir William Temple was anxious that he should return he hesitated, when his resolution was determined by a circumstance characteristic of his exalted benevolence. In an excursion, he became acquainted with a clergyman, who proved to be learned, modest, well-principled, the father of eight children, and a curate at the rate of forty pounds a-year. Without explaining his purpose, Swift borrowed this gentleman's black mare, having no horse of his own-rode to Dublin, resigned the prebend of Kilroot, and obtained a grant of it for his new friend.

When he gave the presentation to the poor clergyman, he kept his eyes steadily fixed on the old man's face, which, at first, only expressed pleasure at finding himself preferred to a living; but when he found that his benefactor had resigned in his favour, his joy assumed so touching an expression of surprise and gratitude, that Swift, himself deeply affected, declared he had never experienced so much pleasure as at that moment. The poor clergyman, at Swift's departure, prevailed upon him to accept the black mare; and thus, with fourscore pounds in his purse, Swift again embarked for England, and resumed his situation at Moor Park, as Sir William Temple's confidential secretary.*

Mr. Monck Mason has, though with regret, thrown a good deal of doubt on the authenticity of this affecting anecdote; proving that the clergyman was neither an old man, nor that he had any family, and that Swift returned to Moor Park long before he resigned the prebend. Still, the anecdote, in the main, is probably true. Upon this transaction, long after Swift's death, malice or madness endeavoured to fix a construction fatal to his reputation. This was a charge of criminality towards a farmer's daughter, in consequence of which Swift resigned, and quitted the kingdom. Sir Walter Scott has taken great pains to disprove this atrocious charge, and has, upon the authority of the Rev. Dr. Hutchinson, of Donaghadee, stated the first circulator of the calumny to have been the Rev. Mr. Pr, a successor of Dean Swift in the prebend of Kilroot. He told the tale at the Bishop of Dromore's, who committed it to writing: his authority he alleged to be a Dean Dobbs, who informed him that the informations were in existence. But Mr. Pr subsequently denied most obstinately ever having promulgated such a charge; and whether the whole story was the creation of incipient insanity, or whether he had felt the discredit attached to his tergiversation so acutely as to derange his understanding, it is certain the unfortunate Mr. P- -r died raving mad, a patient in that very hospital for lunatics, established by Swift, against whom he had propagated this cruel calumny. Yet, although P--r thus fell a victim to his own rash assertions, or credulity, it has been supposed that this inexplicable figment did really originate with Dean Dobbs, and that he had been led into a mistake, by the initial letters, J. S., upon the alleged papers, which might apply to Jonathan Smedley (to whom, indeed, the tale has been supposed properly to belong), or to John Smith, as well as to Jonathan Swift. It is sufficient for Swift's vindication to observe, that he returned to Kilroot after his resignation, and inducted his successor in face of the church and of the public; that during all his public life, in England and Ireland, where he was the butt of a whole faction,

The Dean was a tolerable horseman, fond of riding, and a judge of the noble animal which he chose to celebrate, as the emblem of moral merit, under the name of Houyhnhnın.

this charge was never heard of; that when adduced so many years after his death, it was unsupported by aught but sturdy and general averment; and that the chief propagator of the calumny first retracted his assertions, and finally died insane.

SWIFT AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

It was believed by the Dean's friends that the office of flapper was suggested by the habitual absence of mind of Newton. The Dean told Mr. D. Swift that Sir Isaac was the worst companion in the world, and that, if you asked him a question, "he would revolve it in a circle in his brain, round, and round, and round," (here Swift described a circle on his own forehead,) "before he could produce an answer."

The Dean used also to tell of Sir Isaac, that his servant having called him one day to dinner, and returning, after waiting some time, to call him a second time, found him mounted on a ladder placed against the shelves of his library, a book in his left hand, and his head reclined upon his right, sunk in such a fit of abstraction, that he was obliged, after calling him once or twice, actually to jog him, before he could awake his attention. This was precisely the office of the flapper.

Though Swift disliked mathematics, it was not for want of capacity for that science. Sheridan one day gave him a problem to solve. He desired Sheridan to leave the room; and in about half an hour the Dean called out to him, heureka, heureka. Sheridan assured Mrs. Whiteway that Swift had resolved the problem in the clearest manner, though he, who was himself a good mathematician, had chosen, on purpose, a very difficult one.

The ardent patriot had not forgotten the philosopher's opinion in favour of Wood's halfpence. Under the parable of the tailor, who computed Gulliver's altitude by a quadrant, and took his measure by a mathematical diagram, yet brought him his clothes very ill made and out of shape, by the mistake of a figure in the calculation, Swift is supposed to have alluded to an error of Sir Isaac Newton's printer, who, by carelessly adding a cipher to the astronomer's computation of the distance between the sun and the earth, had increased it to an incalculable amount.

Swift's intimacy with Miss Barton, the niece of Sir Isaac Newton, will be found noticed at p. 119.