f the Books_:--"The
difference was greatest among the horse" says he of the moderns,
"where every private trooper pretended to the command, from Tasso
and Milton to Dryden and Withers." And in _Poetry, a Rhapsody_, he
advises the poetaster to--

Read all the Prefaces of Dryden,
For these our critics much confide in,
Though merely writ, at first, for filling,
To raise the volume's price a shilling.

"Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet," was the phrase of Dryden
to his kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such
matters.

23 "Miss Hetty" she was called in the family--where her face, and her
dress, and Sir William's treatment of her, all made the real fact
about her birth plain enough. Sir William left her a thousand
pounds.

24 Sometimes, during his mental affliction, he continued walking about
the house for many consecutive hours; sometimes he remained in a
kind of torpor. At times, he would seem to struggle to bring into
distinct consciousness, and shape into expression, the intellect
that lay smothering under gloomy obstruction in him. A pier-glass
falling by accident, nearly fell on him. He said, he wished it had!
He once repeated, slowly, several times, "I am what I am." The last
thing he wrote was an epigram on the building of a magazine for arms
and stores, which was pointed out to him as he went abroad during
his mental disease:--

Behold a proof of Irish sense:
Here Irish wit is seen;
When nothing's left that's worth defence,
They build a magazine!

25 Besides these famous books of Scott's and Johnson's, there is a
copious _Life_ by Thomas Sheridan (Dr. Johnson's "Sherry"), father
of Richard Brinsley, and son of that good-natured, clever, Irish
Doctor, Thomas Sheridan, Swift's intimate, who lost his chaplaincy
by so unluckily choosing for a text on the king's birthday,
"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!" Not to mention less
important works, there is also the _Remarks on the Life and Writings
of Dr. Jonathan Swift_, by that polite and dignified writer, the
Earl of Orrery. His lordship is said to have striven for literary
renown, chiefly that he might make up for the slight passed on him
by his father, who left his library away from him. It is to be