better company was not to be had, he was
honoured by being invited to play at cards with his patron; and on such
occasions Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a little
silver to begin with. [406] The humble student would not have dared to
raise his eyes to a lady of family; but, when he had become a clergyman,
he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of that generation, to make
love to a pretty waitingmaid who was the chief ornament of the servants'
hall, and whose name is inseparably associated with his in a sad and
mysterious history.

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when he found
himself on his way to Court. His spirit had been bowed down, and might
seem to have been broken, by calamities and humiliations. The language
which he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far as we can
judge from the specimens which still remain, was that of a lacquey,
or rather of a beggar. [407] A sharp word or a cold look of the master
sufficed to make the servant miserable during several days. [408] But
this tameness was merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, caged
and starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humble
menial was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the most
vindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at length a great, a
boundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was already
slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host was
confined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by the secretary about
the grounds. His Majesty had condescended to teach his companion the
Dutch way of cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously asked
whether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's commission in a cavalry
regiment. But now for the first time the young man was to stand in
the royal presence as a counsellor. He was admitted into the closet,
delivered a letter from Temple, and explained and enforced the arguments
which that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless with clearness and
ability. There was, he said, no reason to think that short Parliaments
would be more disposed than long Parliaments to encroach on the just
prerogatives of the Crown. In fact the Parliament which had, in the
preceding generation, waged war against a king, led him captive, sent
him to the prison, to the bar, to the scaffold, was known in our annals
as emphatically the Long Parliament. Never would such disasters have
befallen th