aviour which we
contract by having too much conversation with persons of high station
and eminency: these qualifications being reckoned, by the vulgar of all
ranks, to be marks of levity, which is the last crime the world will
pardon in a clergyman; to this I may add a free manner of speaking in
mixed company, and too frequent an appearance in places of much resort,
which are equally noxious to spiritual promotion.

I have known, indeed, a few exceptions to some parts of these
observations.[2] I have seen some of the dullest men alive aiming at
wit, and others, with as little pretensions, affecting politeness in
manners and discourse: But never being able to persuade the world of
their guilt, they grew into considerable stations, upon the firm
assurance which all people had of their discretion, because they were of
a size too low to deceive the world to their own disadvantage. But this,
I confess, is a trial too dangerous often to engage in.

[Footnote 2: This word is "regulations" in "The Intelligencer." [T.S.]]

There is a known story of a clergyman, who was recommended for a
preferment by some great men at court, to an archbishop.[3] His grace
said, "he had heard that the clergyman used to play at whist and
swobbers;[4] that as to playing now and then a sober game at whist for
pastime, it might be pardoned, but he could not digest those wicked
swobbers;" and it was with some pains that my Lord Somers could
undeceive him. I ask, by what talents we may suppose that great prelate
ascended so high, or what sort of qualifications he would expect in
those whom he took into his patronage, or would probably recommend to
court for the government of distant churches?

[Footnote 3: Archbishop Tenison, who, by all contemporary accounts, was
a very dull man. There was a bitter sarcasm upon him usually ascribed to
Swift, "That he was as hot and heavy as a tailor's goose." [S.]

In "The Intelligencer" the word "archbishop" is replaced by the letters
A.B.C.T. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4: "Swobbers" were four privileged cards used, at one time,
for betting purposes, in the game of whist. [T.S.]]

Two clergymen, in my memory, stood candidates for a small free school in
Yorkshire, where a gentleman of quality and interest in the country, who
happened to have a better understanding than his neighbours, procured
the place for him who was the better scholar, and more gentlemanly
person, of the two, very much to the regret of all the paris