emonstrances, and the familiarity of his friendship. In accounts of
this kind a few single incidents are set against the general tenour of
behaviour. No man, however, can pay a more servile tribute to the great,
than by suffering his liberty in their presence to aggrandize him in his
own esteem. Between different ranks of the community there is
necessarily some distance; he who is called by his superiour to pass the
interval, may properly accept the invitation; but petulance and
obtrusion are rarely produced by magnanimity; nor have often any nobler
cause than the pride of importance, and the malice of inferiority. He
who knows himself necessary may set, while that necessity lasts, a high
value upon himself; as, in a lower condition, a servant eminently
skilful may be saucy; but he is saucy only because he is servile. Swift
appears to have preserved the kindness of the great when they wanted him
no longer; and, therefore, it must be allowed, that the childish
freedom, to which he seems enough inclined, was overpowered by his
better qualities.

His disinterestedness has been likewise mentioned; a strain of heroism,
which would have been in his condition romantick and superfluous.
Ecclesiastical benefices, when they become vacant, must be given away;
and the friends of power may, if there be no inherent disqualification,
easonably expect them. Swift accepted, 1713, the deanery of St.
Patrick, the best preferment that his friends could venture[101] to give
him. That ministry was, in a great degree, supported by the clergy, who
were not yet reconciled to the author of the Tale of a Tub, and would
not, without much discontent and indignation, have borne to see him
installed in an English cathedral.

He refused, indeed, fifty pounds from lord Oxford; but he accepted,
afterwards, a draught of a thousand upon the exchequer, which was
intercepted by the queen's death, and which he resigned, as he says
himself, "multa gemens," with many a groan[102].

In the midst of his power and his politicks, he kept a journal of his
visits, his walks, his interviews with ministers, and quarrels with his
servant, and transmitted it to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, to whom he
knew that whatever befell him was interesting, and no accounts could be
too minute. Whether these diurnal trifles were properly exposed to eyes
which had never received any pleasure from the presence of the dean, may
be reasonably doubted: they have, however, some odd a