ttraction; the
reader finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to
consider as important, goes on in hope of information; and, as there is
nothing to fatigue attention, if he is disappointed he can hardly
complain. It is easy to perceive, from every page, that though ambition
pressed Swift into a life of bustle, the wish for a life of ease was
always returning.

He went to take possession of his deanery as soon as he had obtained it;
but he was not suffered to stay in Ireland more than a fortnight, before
he was recalled to England, that he might reconcile lord Oxford and lord
Bolingbroke, who began to look on one another with malevolence, which
every day increased, and which Bolingbroke appeared to retain in his
last years.

Swift contrived an interview, from which they both departed
discontented: he procured a second, which only convinced him that the
feud was irreconcilable: he told them his opinion, that all was lost.
This denunciation was contradicted by Oxford; but Bolingbroke whispered
that he was right.

Before this violent dissension had shattered the ministry, Swift had
published, in the beginning of the year 1714, the publick Spirit of the
Whigs, in answer to the Crisis, a pamphlet for which Steele was expelled
from the house of commons. Swift was now so far alienated from Steele,
as to think him no longer entitled to decency, and, therefore, treats
him sometimes with contempt, and sometimes with abhorrence.

In this pamphlet the Scotch were mentioned in terms so provoking to that
irritable nation, that resolving "not to be offended with impunity," the
Scotch lords, in a body, demanded an audience of the queen, and
solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred
pounds were offered for the discovery of the author. From this storm he
was, as he relates, "secured by a sleight;" of what kind, or by whose
prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his reputation,
that the Scottish "nation applied again that he would be their friend."

He was become so formidable to the whigs, that his familiarity with the
ministers was clamoured at in parliament, particularly by two men,
afterwards of great note, Aislabie and Walpole.

But, by the disunion of his great friends, his importance and designs
were now at an end; and seeing his services at last useless, he retired,
about June, 1714, into Berkshire, where, in the house of a friend, he
wrote what was then suppressed