e best and most scholarly edition of 'Gulliver's
Travels.'"--_University Correspondent._

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Jonathan Swift_

_From an engraving by Andrew Miller after the painting by Francis Bindon
in the Deanery of St. Patrick's Dublin._]

THE PROSE WORKS

OF

JONATHAN SWIFT, D. D.

EDITED BY

TEMPLE SCOTT.

VOL. VII

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL TRACTS--IRISH

LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1905
CHISWICK PRESS. CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE,
LONDON.

INTRODUCTION

Swift took up his permanent residence in the Irish capital in 1714. The
Harley Administration had fallen never to rise again. Harley himself was
a prisoner in the Tower, and Bolingbroke a voluntary exile in France,
and an open adherent of the Pretender. Swift came to Dublin to be met by
the jeers of the populace, the suspicion of the government officials,
and the polite indifference of his clerical colleagues. He had time
enough now in which to reflect and employ his brain powers. For several
years he kept himself altogether to his duties as Dean of the Cathedral
of St. Patrick's, only venturing his pen in letters to dear friends in
England--to Pope, Atterbury, Lady Howard. His private relations with
Miss Hester Vanhomrigh came to a climax, also, during this period, and
his peculiar intimacy with "Stella" Johnson took the definite shape in
which we now know it.

He found himself in debt to his predecessor, Sterne, for a large and
comfortless house and for the cost of his own installation into his
office. The money he was to have received (L1,000) to defray these
expenses, from the last administration, was now, on its fall, kept back
from him. Swift had these encumbrances to pay off and he had his Chapter
to see to. He did both in characteristic fashion. By dint of almost
penurious saving he accomplished the former and the latter he managed
autocratically and with good sense. His connection with Oxford and
Bolingbroke had been of too intimate a nature for those in power to
ignore him. Indeed, his own letters to Knightley Chetwode[1] show us
that he was in great fear of arrest. But there is now no doubt that the
treasonable relations between Harley and St. John and the Pretender were
a great surprise to Swift when they were discovered. He himself had
always been an ardent supporter of the Protestant succession, and his
writings during his later period in