hat you will hardly find a young person of quality
with the least tincture of knowledge, at the same time that many of the
clergy were never more learned, or so scurvily treated. Here among us,
at least, a man of letters out of the three professions, is almost a
prodigy. And those few who have preserved any rudiments of learning are
(except perhaps one or two smatterers) the clergy's friends to a man:
and I dare appeal to any clergyman in this kingdom, whether the greatest
dunce in the parish be not always the most proud, wicked, fraudulent,
and intractable of his flock.

[Footnote 12: What Swift calls learning was, in his day, the property,
so to speak, of professional men, such as divines, lawyers, and
university teachers. The common man was too poor or too much taxed to
acquire it; the aristocrat often too lazy or too fond of
pleasure-seeking to bother about it. The Pre-Reformation days, to which
Swift refers, could boast such men as Fabyan, Hall, Chaucer, Gower, and
Caxton, as well as Lord Berners, Sir Thomas More, and Lydgate, who were
not, in any sense, professional men. [T.S.]]

I think the clergy have almost given over perplexing themselves and
their hearers with abstruse points of Predestination, Election, and the
like; at least it is time they should; and therefore I shall not trouble
you further upon this head.

I have now said all I could think convenient with relation to your
conduct in the pulpit: your behaviour in life[13] is another scene, upon
which I shall readily offer you my thoughts, if you appear to desire
them from me by your approbation of what I have here written; if not, I
have already troubled you too much.

[Footnote 13: Scott and Hawkesworth print "your behaviour in the world."
The above is the reading of the first edition. [T. S.]]

I am, Sir,
Your Affectionate
Friend and Servant
A.B.

January 9th.
1719-20.

***** ***** ***** *****

SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST ENLARGING

THE POWER OF BISHOPS IN

LETTING OF LEASES.

NOTE.

The years between that which saw the publication of the "Drapier
Letters," and that which rang with the fame of "Gulliver's Travels,"
were busy fighting years for Swift. Apart from his vigorous championship
of the Test, and his war against the Dissenters, he espoused the cause
of the inferior clergy of his own Church, as against the bishops. The
business of filling the vacant sees of Ireland had degenerated into what
w