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In accounts of this kind a few fingle incidents are fet against the general tenour of behaviour. No man, however, can' pay a more fervile tribute to the Great, than by fuffering his liberty in their prefence to aggrandize him in his own: efteem. Between different ranks of the community there is neceffarily fome diftance he who is called by his fuperior, to pass the interval, may very properly accept the invitation; but petulance, and obtrufion are rarely produced by magnanimity; nor have often any. nobler cause than the pride of impor tance, and the malice of inferiority. He who knows himself neceffary may fet, while that neceffity lafts, a high value upon himself; as, in a lower condition,

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dition, a fervant eminently fkilful may be faucy; but he is faucy only because he is fervile. Swift appears to have preferved the kindness of those that 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 difintereftednefs has been likewife mentioned; a strain of heroism, which would have been in his condition romantick and fuperfluous. Ecclefiaftical benefices, when they become vacant, must be given away; and the friends of if there be no inherent dif

Power may,

qualification, reasonably expect them.

Swift accepted (1713) the deanery of

St.

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 borne 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 refigned, as he fays himself, multa gemens, with many a groan.

and his po

In the midst of his power liticks, he kept a journal of his vifits,

his walks, his interviews with Ministers,

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and quarrels with his fervant, and tranfmitted it to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, to whom he knew that whatever befel him was interefting, and to whom. no accounts could be too minute. Whether thefe diurnal trifles were properly exposed to eyes which had never received any pleafure from the prefence of the Dean, may be reasonably doubted: they have, however, fome odd attraction; the reader, finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to confider as important, goes on in hope of information; and, as there is nothing to fatigue attention, if he is difappointed he can hardly complain. It is eafy to perceive, from every page, that though ambition preffed Swift into a life

of

of buftle, the wifh was always returning

for a life of ease.

He went to take poffeffion of his deanery, as foon as he had obtained it; but he was not fuffered to ftay in Ircland 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 laft years.

Swift contrived an interview, from which they both departed difcontented : he procured a fecond, which only con-' vinced him that the feud was irreconcilable; he told them his opinion, that all was loft. This denunciation was contradicted

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