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all its varieties; and others, perhaps with equal probability, to a paffion which feems to have been deep fixed in his heart, the love of a fhilling.

In time he began to think that his attendance at Moor-park deferved fome other recompence than the pleafure, however mingled with improvement, of Temple's converfation; and grew fo impatient, that (1694) he went away in difcontent.

Temple, confcious of having given reafon for complaint, is faid to have made him Deputy Mafter of the Rolls in Ireland; which, according to his kinfman's account, was an office which he knew him not able to difcharge. Swift therefore refolved to enter into the Church, in which he had at firft no higher hopes than of the chaplainship to the Factory at Lisbon; but being recommended to Lord Capel, he obtained the prebend of Kilroot in Connor, of about a hundred pounds a year.

But the infirmities of Temple made a companion like Swift fo neceffary, that he invitCc 2

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ed him back, with a promise to procure him English preferment, in exchange for the prebend which he defired him to refign. With this request Swift quickly complied, having perhaps equally repented their feparation, and they lived on together with mutual fatisfaction; and, in the four years that paffed between his return and Temple's death, it is probable that he wrote the Tale of a Tub and the Battle of the Books.

Swift began early to think, or to hope, that he was a poet, and wrote Pindarick Odes to Temple, to the King, and to the Athenian Society, a knot of obfcure men, who published a periodical pamphlet of anfwers to queftions, fent, or fuppofed to be fent, by Letters. I have been told that Dryden, having perused these verses, faid, " Cousin Swift, 66 you will never be a poet;" and that this denunciation was the motive of Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden.

In 1699 Temple died, and left a legacy with his manuscripts to Swift, for whom he had obtained, from King William, a promise of the first prebend that should be vacant at Weftininfter or Canterbury.

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That this promise might not be forgotten, Swift dedicated to the King the pofthumous works with which he was intrufted, but neither the dedication, nor tenderness for the man whom he once had treated with confidence and fondness, revived in King William the remembrance of his promise. Swift awhile attended the Court; but foon found his folicitations hopeless.

He was then invited by the Earl of Berk. ley to accompany him into Ireland, as his private fecretary; but after having done the bufinefs till their arrival at Dublin, he then found that one Bush had perfuaded the Earl that a clergyman was not a proper fecretary, and had obtained the office for himself. a man like Swift, fuch circumvention and inconftancy must have excited violent indig

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But he had yet more to fuffer. Lord Berkley had the difpofal of the deanery of Derry, and Swift expected to obtain it; but by the fecretary's influence, fuppofed to have been fecured by a bribe, it was bestowed on fomebody else; and Swift was difmiffed with the livings of Laracor

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and Rathbeggin in the diocese of Meath, which together did not equal half the value of the deanery.

At Laracor he increased the parochial duty by reading prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and performed all the offices of his profeffion with great decency and exactness,

Soon after his fettlement at Laracor, he invited to Ireland the unfortunate Stella, a young woman whofe name was Johnson, the daughter of the fteward of Sir William Temple, who, in confideration of her father's virtues, left her a thousand pounds. With her came Mrs. Dingley, whofe whole fortune was twenty-feven pounds a year for her life. With these Ladies he paffed his hours of relaxation, and to them he opened his bofom; but they never refided in the fame houfe, nor did he fee either without a witnefs. They lived at the Parfonage, when Swift was away; and when he returned, removed to a lodging, or to the houfe of a neighbouring clergyman.

Swift was not one of thofe minds which amaze the world with early pregnancy: his first work, except his few poetical Effays, was the Diffentions in Athens and Rome, publifhed (1701) in his thirty-fourth year. After its appearance, paying a visit to some bishop, he heard mention made of the new pamphlet that Burnet had written, replete with political knowledge. When he feemed to doubt Bur-net's right to the work, he was told by the Bishop, that he was a young man; and, still perfifting to doubt, that he was a very pofitive young man.

Three years afterward (1704) was publifhed The Tale of a Tub: of this book charity may be perfuaded to think that it might be written by a man of a peculiar character, without ill intention, but it is certainly of dangerous example. That Swift was its author, though it be univerfally believed, was never owned by himself, nor very well proyed by any evidence; but no other claimant can be produced, and he did not deny it when Archbishop Sharpe and the Duchefs of Somerset, by fhewing it to the Queen, debarred him from a bishoprick.

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