e him deputy-master of the rolls, in Ireland; which, according to his
kinsman's account, was an office which he knew him not able to
discharge. Swift, therefore, resolved to enter into the church, in which
he had at first no higher hopes than of the chaplainship to the factory,
at Lisbon; but being recommended to lord Capel, he obtained the prebend
of Kilroot, in Connor, of about a hundred pounds a year.

But the infirmities of Temple made a companion like Swift so necessary,
that he invited him back, with a promise to procure him English
preferment in exchange for the prebend, which he desired him to
resign[95]. With this request Swift complied, having, perhaps, equally
repented their separation, and they lived on together with mutual
satisfaction; and, in the four years that passed between his return and
Temple's death, it is probable that he wrote the Tale of a Tub, and the
Battle of the Books.

Swift began early to think, or to hope, that he was a poet, and wrote
Pindarick odes to Temple, to the king, and to the Athenian society, a
knot of obscure men[96], who published a periodical pamphlet of answers
to questions, sent, or supposed to be sent, by letters. I have been told
that Dryden, having perused these verses, said, "Cousin Swift, you will
never be a poet;" and that this denunciation was the motive of Swift's
perpetual malevolence to Dryden.

In 1699 Temple died, and left a legacy with his manuscripts to Swift,
for whom he had obtained, from king William, a promise of the first
prebend that should be vacant at Westminster or Canterbury.

That this promise might not be forgotten, Swift dedicated to the king
the posthumous works with which he was intrusted; but neither the
dedication, nor tenderness for the man whom he once had treated with
confidence and fondness, revived in king William the remembrance of his
promise. Swift awhile attended the court; but soon found his
solicitations hopeless.

He was then invited by the earl of Berkeley to accompany him into
Ireland, as his private secretary; but, after having done the business
till their arrival at Dublin, he then found that one Bush had persuaded
the earl that a clergyman was not a proper secretary, and had obtained
the office for himself. In a man like Swift, such circumvention and
inconstancy must have excited violent indignation.

But he had yet more to suffer. Lord Berkeley had the disposal of the
deanery of Derry, and Swift expected to obtain it; b