w and a dirty bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue
riband, who flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he would
have been the most delightful company in the world. He would have been
so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, that you might
think he had no object in view but the indulgence of his humour and that
he was the most reckless, simple creature in the world. How he would
have torn your enemies to pieces for you! and made fun of the Opposition!
His servility was so boisterous that it looked like independence; he
would have done your errands, but with the air of patronizing you, and
after fighting your battles, masked, in the street or the press, would
have kept on his hat before your wife and daughters in the drawing-room,
content to take that sort of pay for his tremendous services as a bravo.

He says as much himself in one of his letters to Bolingbroke:--"All my
endeavours to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and
fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of
my parts; whether right or wrong is no great matter. And so the
reputation of wit and great learning does the office of a blue riband or
a coach and six."

Could there be a greater candour? It is an outlaw, who says, "These are
my brains; with these I'll win titles and compete with fortune. These
are my bullets; these I'll turn into gold;" and he hears the sound of
coaches and six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand
and deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord
bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue riband, and my lady's brocade
petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a
patent place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives
them over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come yet.
The coach with the mitre and crosier in it, which he intends to have for
his share, has been delayed on the way from St. James's; and he waits and
waits until nightfall, when his runners come and tell him that the coach
has taken a different road, and escaped him. So he fires his pistols
into the air with a curse, and rides away into his own country.

Swift's seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral or adorn a tale
of ambition, as any hero's that ever lived and failed. But we must
remember that the morality was lax--that other gentlemen besides himself
took the road in his day--that publi