SECTION IV. Swift takes possession of his Deanery-Is recalled to England to reconcile Harley and St John-Increases in favour with Oxford-Engages again in political controversy—Writes the Public Spirit of the Whigs—A reward offered for discovery of the Author-The dissensions of the ministers increase-Swift retires to the country-Writes Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs-Writes to Lord Oxford on his being displaced-And retires to Ireland on the Queen's Death —His reception-His Society-The interest he displayed in the misfortunes of his Friends. THE biographers of Swift have differed in their account of Swift's reception as Dean of St Patrick's. According to Lord Orrery, it was unfavourable in the extreme. He was shunned by the better class, hissed, hooted, and even pelted by the rabble. This is contradicted by Delany and Sheridan, who argue on the improbability of his experiencing such affronts, when the high-church interest, which he had so ardently served, was still in its zenith. Indeed, there is no doubt, that Lord Orrery's account is greatly exaggerated, or rather that his lordship has confounded the circumstances which attended Swift's first reception with those of his final retirement to his deanery after the death of the queen. Yet, even on his first arrival, his reception was far from cordial. Many, even among his own order, beheld with envy the Vicar of Laracor elevated by mere force of talents to a degree of power and consequence seldom attained by the highest dignitaries of the church; and they scarce forgave him for his success, even in the very negotiation of which they reaped the benefit. << I remit them,» says Swift, with indignant contempt, « their first fruits of ingratitude, as freely as I got the others remitted to them." He had also more legitimate enemies. The violent Whigs detested him as an apostate from their party; the dissenters regarded his high-church principles with dread and aversion; and both had at that time considerable influence in the city of Dublin.' « 'The following copy of verses occurs in the works of Jonathan Smedley, and are said to have been fixed on the door of St Patrick's Cathedral on the day of Swift's instalment: To-day this temple gets a Dean, Of parts and fanie uncommon; To serve both God and Mammon. When Wharton reign'd, a Whig he was; The temper and manners of Swift were ill qualified to allay these prejudices, In assuming his new offices, with perhaps too much an air of authority, he soon provoked opposition from the Archbishop of Dublin, and from his own chapter; and he was thwarted and disappointed both in his arrangements with his predecessor, and in the personal promotions which he wished to carry through for his friends. Besides, he had returned to Ireland This place he got by wit and rhyme, For High Church men and policy Four lessons, Dean, all in one day! 'T were better hear thy own Peter say, Hard! to be plagued with bible, still, Look down, St Patrick, look, we pray, And now whene'er his Deanship dies, A man of God here buried lies, Who never thought of heaven. a dissatisfied, if not a disappointed man, neither hoping to give nor receive pleasure, and such unhappy expectations are usually the means of realizing themselves. His intimate friendship with Vanessa already embittered the pleasure of rejoining Stella; and it was therefore no wonder, that, after hurrying from Dublin to his retirement at Laracor, he should write to the former in the following strain of despondency. « I staid but a fortnight in Dublin, very sick, and returned not one visit of a hundred that were made me; but all to the Dean, and none to the Doctor. I am riding here for life; and I think I am something better. I hate the thoughts of Dublin, and prefer a field-bed, and an earthen-floor, before the great house there, which they say is mine.»-« At my first coming, I thought I should have died with discontent, and was horribly melancholy while they were installing me, but it begins to wear off, and change to dulness,»1 He writes Archbishop King in the same strain of discontented melancholy,' and it is still more strongly expressed in his verses. While Swift was in a state of seclusion, so different from the bustling scene in which he · The letter is dated Laracor, 8th July, 1713. « I can tell your grace nothing from Dublin. I was there between business and physic, and paid no visits, nor received but one day." Letter, 16th July, 1713. any, had been for three years engaged, he received from the Tory administration the most anxious summons, pressing his instant return to England. Swift had early observed to Harley and St John, that the success and stability of their government depended upon their mutual confidence and regard for each other. But this was soon endangered by a variety of minute grounds of mistrust, as well as by the differing genius of these two statesmen. Oxford was slow, mysterious, and irresolute; St John vehement, active, and irregularly ambitious. The former was desirous of engrossing from his colleague, not only the essentials of ministerial power, but all its outward show and credit; the latter was ambitious of sharing the honours, as well as the fatigues, of public employment. These dissensions sometimes smouldered in secret, sometimes burst out into open flame; were frequently suppressed, but never extinguished. The disunion became visible to Swift, so early as within the first six months of their administration,' and in about four months after it, it was apparent both to friends and I Journal, 27th April, 1711.—«I am heartily sorry to find my friend the secretary stand a little ticklish with the rest of the ministry; there have been one or two disobliging things that have happened. I will, if I meet Mr St. John alone on Sunday, tell him my opinion, and beg him to set himself right, else the consequences may be very bad, for I see not how they can well want him neither, and he would make a troublesome enemy.» |