into a twofold scene of action: one with regard to the publick at large; the other, with respect to private individuals. In the former, out of compassion to the blindness and infatuation of the people, he laid open, in a variety of publications, the chief sources of the distresses and miseries under which that unhappy country laboured; at the same time pointing out the means by which they might be alleviated, or removed. In the latter, he increased his attention to some of the best planned, and best conducted charities, that ever were sup ported from a private purse. In this respect, there probably was no man in the British dominions, who either gave so much in proportion to his fortune, or disposed of it to such advantage. From the time he was out of debt, after his settlement at the deanery, he divided his income into three equal shares. One of these he appropriated to his own immediate support, and his domestick expenses; which, in those cheap times, with the aid of strict economy, enabled him to live in a manner perfectly agreeable to his own ideas, and not unsuitable to his rank. The second he laid up as a provision against the accidents of life, and ultimately with a view to a charitable foundation at his death. And the third, he constantly disposed of in charities to the poor, and liberalities to the distressed. As he sought out proper objects for this, with great caution and attention, trusting little to the representation of others, but seeing every thing with his own eyes, perhaps no equal sum disposed of in that way was ever productive of so much good. There was one species of charity first struck out by him, which was attended with the greatest benefit to numbers of the lowest class of tradesmen. Soon after he was out of debt, the first five hundred pounds which he could call his own, he lent out to poor industrious tradesmen in small sums of five,

and ten pounds, to be repaid weekly, at two or four shillings, without interest. As the sums thus

weekly paid in, were lent out again to others at a particular day in each month, this quick circulation doubled the benefit arising from the original sum. In order to ensure this fund from diminution, he Faid it down as a rule that none should be partakers of it, who could not give good security for the regular repayment of it in the manner proposed: for it was a maxim with him, that any one known by his neighbours to be an honest, sober, and industrious man, would readily find such security; while the idle and dissolute would by this means be excluded. Nor did they who entered into such securities run any great risk; for if the borrower was not punctual in his weekly payments, immediate notice of it was sent to them, who obliged him to be more punctual for the future. Thus did this fund continue undiminished to the last and small as the spring was, yet, by continual flowing, it watered and enriched the humble vale through which it ran, still extending and widening its course. I have been well assured from different quarters, that many families in Dublin, now living in great credit, owed the foundation of their fortunes to the sums first borrowed from this fund.

His reputation for wisdom and integrity was so great, that he was consulted by the several corporations in all matters relative to trade, and chosenumpire of any differences among them, nor was there ever any appeal from his sentence. In a city where the police was perhaps on a worse footing than that of any in Europe, he in a great measure supplied the deficiency, by his own personal authority, taking notice of all publick nuisances, and seeing them removed. He assumed the office of censor general, which he rendered as formidable as

that of ancient Rome. In short, what by the acknowledged superiority of his talents, his inflexible integrity, and his unwearied endeavours in serving the publick, he obtained such an ascendency over his countrymen, as perhaps no private citizen ever attained in any age or country. He was known over the whole kingdom by the title of THE DEAN, given to him by way of preeminence, as it were by common consent; and when THE DEAN was mentioned, it always carried with it the idea of the first and greatest man in the kindom. THE DEAN said this; THE DEAN did that; whatever he said or did was received as infallibly right; with the same degree of implicit credit given to it, as was paid to the Stagyrite of old, or to the modern popes. We may judge of the greatness of his influence, from a passage in a letter of lord Carteret to him, March 24, 1732, who was at that time chief governor of Ireland, "I know by experience how much the city of Dublin thinks itself under your protection; and how strictly they used to obey all orders fulminated from the sovereignty of St. Patrick's." And in the postscript to another of March 24, 1736, he says, "When people ask me how I governed Ireland? I say, that I pleased Dr. Swift."

But great as his popularity was, it was chiefly confined to the middling, and lower class of mankind. To the former of these his chief applications were made, upon a maxim of his own, "That the little virtue left in the world, is chiefly to be found among the middle rank of mankind, who are neither allured out of her paths by ambition, nor driven by poverty."

All of this class he had secured almost to a man. And by the lower ranks, and rabble in general, he was reverenced almost to adoration. They were possessed with an enthusiastick love to his person,

to protect which they would readily hazard their lives; yet on his appearance among them, they felt something like a religious awe, as if in the presence of one of a superiour order of beings. At the very sight of him, when engaged in any riotous proceedings, they would instantly fly different ways, like school-boys at the approach of their master; and he has been often known, with a word, and lifting up his arm, to disperse mobs, that would have stood the brunt of the civil and military power united.

As to the upper class of mankind, he looked upon them as incorrigible, and therefore had scarce any intercourse with them. He says himself, that he had little personal acquaintance with any lord spiritual or temporal in the kingdom; and he considered the members of the house of commons in general, as a set of venal prostitutes, who sacrificed their principles, and betrayed the interests of their country, to gratify their ambition or avarice. With these he lived in a continued state of warfare, making them feel severely the sharp stings of his satire; while they, on the other hand, dreading, and therefore hating him more than any man in the world, endeavoured to retaliate on him by every species of obloquy.

During this period, his faculties do not seem to have been at all impaired by the near approaches of old age, and his poetical fountain, though not so exuberant as formerly, still flowed in as clear and pure a stream. One of his last pieces, "Verses on his own Death," is perhaps one of the most excellent of his compositions in that way. Nor are two of his other productions, written about the same time, intitled, "An Epistle to a Lady;" and "A Rhapsody on Poetry," inferiour to any of his former pieces. The two last were written chiefly with a view to gratify his resentment to the court, on a

count of some unworthy treatment he met with from that quarter. We have already seen, by what extraordinary advances on her part, he was allured to pay his attendance on the princess, during his two last visits to England; and the seemingly well founded expectations of his friends, that some marks of royal favour would be shown him, both from the uncommonly good reception he had always met with, and the many assurances given to that effect. But from the time that the princess mounted the throne, all this was forgot. Nor was this productive of any disappointment to Swift, who had been too conversant with courts, not to look upon the most favourable appearances there, with distrust. Accordingly on his last return to Ireland, finding himself so utterly neglected by the queen, as not even to receive some medals which she had promised him, he gave up all hopes of that kind,. and remained in a state of perfect indifference with regard to it. But, when he found that his enemies had been busy, instilling into the royal ear many prejudices against him, he entered upon his defence with his usual spirit. Among other artifices employed to lessen him in her majesty's esteem, there were three forged letters delivered to the queen signed with his name, written upon a very absurd subject, and in a very unbecoming style, which she either did, or affected to believe to be genuine. Swift had notice of this from his friend Pope, who procured one of the original letters from the countess of Suffolk, formerly Mrs. Howard, and sent it to him. In his indignant answer to Pope on this occasion, he has the following passages. * As for those three letters you mention, supposed all to be written by me to the queen, on Mrs. Barber's account, especially the letter which bears my name; I can only say, that the apprehensions one may be apt to have of a friend's doing a foolish thing, is