whether it will be of any account for me to come to England. I would not trouble you for advice, if I knew where else to ask it. We expect every day to hear of my lord president's* removal; if he were to continue, I might, perhaps, hope for some of his good offices. You ordered me to give you a memorial of what I had in my thoughts. There were two things, Dr. So-th's prebend and sinecure, or the place of historiographer. But if things go on in the train they are now, I shall only beg you, when there is an account to be depended on for new government here, that you will give me early notice, to procure an addition to my fortunes. And, with saying so, I take my leave of troubling you with myself.

"I do not desire to hear from you till you are out of [the] hurry at Malmsbury. I long till you have some good account of your Indian affairs, so as to make public business depend upon you, and not you upon that. I read your character in Mrs. Manly's noble Memoirs of Europe. It seems to me, as if she had about two thousand epithets and fine words packed up in a bag; and that she pulled them out by handfuls, and strewed them on her paper, where about once in five hundred times they happen to be right.

"My lord-lieutenant, I reckon, will leave us in a fortnight; I led him, by a question, to tell me he did not expect to continue in the government, nor would, when all his friends were out. Pray take some occasion to let my [Lord] Halifax know the sense I have of the favour he intended me."

Swift's departure for England was, however, nearer

Somers.

+ The celebrated Dr. South, Prebendary of Westminster, was then very infirin, and far advanced in years. He survived, however, until 1716, and died aged 83. On the subject of Swift's expectations, see Halifax's letter, Swift's Works, Vol. XV. p. 348.

For which borough Addison was a candidate.

"Memoirs of Europe towards the close of the eighth century, written by Eginardus, secretary and favourite of Charlemagne, and done into English by the translator of the New Atalantis." In this scandalous lampoon, Addison is introduced under the name of Maro.

than this letter announces. The hopes which were now entertained that Queen Anne would once more favour the High interest, had already extended themselves to Ireland, and it was thought by the clergy of that kingdom, a propitious season for renewing their suit for remission of the first-fruits and twentieth-parts, in which they had formerly been unsuccessful. The Bishops of Ossory and Killaloe were employed to solicit a favourable answer to this supplication, and, by a letter from the prelates of Ireland, dated 31st August 1710, Swift was united with them in commission, with a provision, that, in case the bishops should leave London before bringing the business to effect, the charge of further solicitation should entirely devolve upon him * On the 1st September, therefore, Swift left Ireland, and on the 9th of the same month reached London, where he was at once plunged into that tide of public business,

* Swift has been injuriously charged with having intruded himself into the management of this matter, less from any real concern for its success, than to serve his own interested purposes of self.aggrandizement. The leading fact on which this accusation is founded, is, that, whereas the Bishops of Ossory and Killaloe had their expenses defrayed while engaged in this solicitation, Swift was, on the contrary, left to carry on the warfare on his own charges. And hence it is shrewdly concluded that he must have had some interested purpose of his own to serve, by undertaking an office which could be attended with no other direct reward than the pleasure of advancing his character among his brethren, and essentially serving the church establishment, of which he was a zealous member. To this argument, it seems unnecessary to reply, especially as Swift's nomination appeared natural and proper on so many accounts. His talents could not surely be doubted, nor his zeal, nor his opportunities of obtaining access to the great, nor his acquaintance with the business in which he had formerly been agent.

Indeed, the state of the affair obviously required different management, and more earnest attention than it had yet received. The grant had been first unsuccessfully solicited from Godolphin. It was then submitted to Lord Wharton, while lord-lieutenant of Ireland, in the form of an address and memorial from the Irish convocation. But Wharton, irritated at a dispute which occurred in the lower House of Convocation, in which he conceived himself to be insulted in the person of his chaplain, refused to interest himself in the petition submitted to him, and thus the matter was given up as desperate. Here, therefore, the matter rested, and it required both attention and dexterity to put it once more in motion.

of which his Journal to Stella affords such a singular record.

This extraordinary diary is addressed ostensibly to Mrs. Dingley, as well as Stella; but there is no doubt that all the unbounded confidence and tenderness which it exhibits, were addressed to the latter alone. It is a wonderful medley, in which grave reflections and important facts are at random intermingled with trivial occurrences and the puerile jargon of the most intimate tenderness. From Stella, nothing is to be either concealed or disguised; and as the Journal is written during the hurry of every day's occurrences, it rather resembles the author's thoughts expressed aloud, as they passed through his mind, than a connected register of his opinions. What it wants, however, in system and gravity, it gains in authenticity and interest, for the readiness with which the author's pen expresses, in the "little language," every whim which crossed his brain, vouches for his ample and unreserved confidence :—a circumstance which ought to propitiate the offended gravity of those deep critics, who deem the publication of these frolicsome expansions of the heart and spirits derogatory to the character of a great and distinguished author. With gratitude, therefore, for the light afforded upon our author's habits, opinions, and actions, by a record at once so minute and so authentic, we proceed to trace, by its assistance, the principal events of his life during this its most busy period.

Swift arrived in London, already prepossessed with a strong feeling of the neglect which he had experienced from the Whig administration. His old friends, however, appeared ravished to see him; offered apologies for the mode in which he had been treated, and caught at him as at a twig when they were drowning. The influence of Swift's talents upon the public opinion had already been manifested, and the Whigs were doubtless unwilling that their weight should be cast into the opposite scale. Godolphin alone despised to court in his fall the genius which he had neglected while possessed of power. His reception of Swift was short, dry, and morose; and he, who thought he deserved the con

trary from a minister whose principles he had professed and supported, departed, almost vowing revenge.* With Somers, also, he seems at this juncture to have quarrelled. He saw him on his arrival in London, but it was for the last time. This great statesman used some efforts to convince him, that he was serious in his recommending him to Lord Wharton's favour, and had written twice to that nobleman on the subject without receiving an answer. To this Swift answered, that he never expected any thing from Lord Wharton, and that Wharton knew he understood it so. In short, he retained his opinion, that he had been treated with duplicity by Lord Somers, nor does he ever appear to have retracted it. To his literary friends, his arrival was as acceptable as ever. He resumed his intimacy with Addison and Steele, but refused to pledge Lord Halifax, when he proposed as a toast the Resurrection of the Whigs, unless he would add, "and their Reformation." Thus indifferent to the interests of the falling ministry, Swift was still astonished, and shocked at the bold steps taken by the court, in removing so many great statesmen from employment, and promised himself to be an unconcerned spectator of the struggles which such measures were likely to occasion. But let no man promise on his own neutrality. By 1st October, he had written a lampoon on Lord Godolphin,† and on the 4th, he was for the first time presented to Harley; and it is remarkable, that, on the very same day, he refused an invitation from Lord Halifax, thus making his option between those distinguished statesmen ‡

*See Swift's Works, Journal, Vol. II. p. 10; and Letter to Archbishop King, Vol. XV. p. 374.

+ Sid Hamet's Rod; composed on occasion of Godolphin's breaking his treasurer's staff, in a manner not very respectful to the queen, his mistress.

Mr. Deane Swift has the following note upon Swift's connexion with Lord Halifax :-"What obligation Swift had to that lord, and his party, may be seen by his endorsement on a letter, dated Oct. 6, 1709. I kept this letter as a true original of courtiers, and court promises. And in the first leaf of a small printed book, entitled, Poesies Chrétiennes des Mons. Jolivet,' he wrote these words, Given me by my Lord Halifax, May 3, 1709. I begged it of him, and desired him to remember, it was the only favour I ever received from him or his party.'"--S,

Harley had been prepared to meet Swift as one whose political tenets resembled his own, (for he also had been bred up in revolution principles,) but who was now a discontented person, ill used, for not being "Whig enough," by the last administration. He was received, accordingly, with all that kindness and respect which statesmen know so well how to show towards those whose attachment they deem worth securing. In the same paragraph which acquaints Stella with this first interview with the new prime minister, Swift announces that he has given his lampoon against Godolphin to the press, and already threatens "to go round with them all." They met, therefore, with mutual views of union, Swift anxious to avenge the neglect with which he had been treated by the Whigs, and to advance the mission of which he was the solicitor, and Harley desirous of bringing to the support of the new administration an author of talents so formidable and so popular. By Harley Swift was introduced to St. John, (afterwards Lord Bolingbroke,) and the intercourse which he enjoyed with these ministers approached to intimacy with a progress more rapid than can well be conceived in such circumstances.*

The following passages in the Journal to Stella, with the dates, mark how rapidly Swift passed from acquaintance to intimate friendship, and a conformity of views and interests:

"Oct. 4, 1710.-Mr. Harley received me with the greatest respect and kindness imaginable, and appointed me an hour, two or three days after, to open my business to him."

"Oct. 7.-I had no sooner told him my business, but he entered into it with all kindness; asked me for my powers, and read them; and read likewise the memorial I had drawn up, and put it into his pocket to show the queen told me the measures he would take; and, in short, said every thing I could wish. Told me he must bring Mr. St. John and me acquainted; and spoke so many things of personal kindness and esteem, that I am inclined to believe what some friends had told me, that he would do every thing to bring me over. He desired me to dine with him on Tuesday; and, after four hours being with him, set me down at St. James's coffee-house in a hackney-coach.

"I must tell you a great piece of refinement in Harley. He charged me to come and see him often; I told him I was loth to trouble him, in so much business as he had, and desired might have leave to come at his levee; which he immediately refused, and said, 'That was no place for friends."

"Oct