freely in his notes to the
"Verses on his own Death."

On the morning of Swift's installation as Dean, the following scurrilous
lines by Smedley, Dean of Clogher, were affixed to the doors of St.
Patrick's Cathedral:

To-day this Temple gets a Dean
Of parts and fame uncommon,
Us'd both to pray and to prophane,
To serve both God and mammon.
When Wharton reign'd a Whig he was;
When Pembroke--that's dispute, Sir;
In Oxford's time, what Oxford pleased,
Non-con, or Jack, or Neuter.
This place he got by wit and rhime,
And many ways most odd,
And might a Bishop be in time,
Did he believe in God.
Look down, St. Patrick, look, we pray,
On thine own church and steeple;
Convert thy Dean on this great day,
Or else God help the people.
And now, whene'er his Deanship dies,
Upon his stone be graven,
A man of God here buried lies,
Who never thought of heaven.

It was by these lines that Smedley earned for himself a niche in "The
Dunciad." For Swift's retaliation, see the poems relating to Smedley at
the end of the first volume, and in volume ii, at p. 124, note.

This bitterness of spirit reached its height in "Gulliver's Travels,"
surely the severest of all satires upon humanity, and writ, as he tells
us, not to divert, but to vex the world; and ultimately, in the fierce
attack upon the Irish Parliament in the poem entitled "The Legion Club,"
dictated by his hatred of tyranny and oppression, and his consequent
passion for exhibiting human nature in its most degraded aspect.

But, notwithstanding his misanthropical feelings towards mankind in
general, and his "scorn of fools by fools mistook for pride," there never
existed a warmer or sincerer friend to those whom he loved--witness the
regard in which he was held by Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot,
and Congreve, and his readiness to assist those who needed his help,
without thought of party or politics. Although, in some of his poems,
Swift rather severely exposed the follies and frailties of the fair sex,
as in "The Furniture of a Woman's Mind," and "The Journal of a Modern
Lady," he loved the companionship of beautiful and accomplished women,
amongst whom he could count some of his dearest and truest friends; but
He loved to be bitter at
A lady illiterate;
and therefore delighted in giving them literary instruction, most notably
in the cases of Stella and Vanessa, whose relations with him arose
entirely from the tuition in letters whi