livery, a fine image? One of the menials wrote it, who did not
like that Temple livery nor those twenty-pound wages. Cannot one fancy
the uncouth young servitor, with downcast eyes, books and papers in hand,
following at his honour's heels in the garden walk; or taking his
honour's orders as he stands by the great chair, where Sir William has
the gout, and his feet all blistered with moxa? When Sir William has the
gout or scolds it must be hard work at the second table; the Irish
secretary owned as much afterwards: and when he came to dinner, how he
must have lashed and growled and torn the household with his gibes and
scorn! What would the steward say about the pride of them Irish
schollards--and this one had got no great credit even at his Irish
college, if the truth were known--and what a contempt his Excellency's
own gentleman must have had for Parson Teague from Dublin. (The valets
and chaplains were always at war. It is hard to say which Swift thought
the more contemptible.) And what must have been the sadness, the sadness
and terror, of the housekeeper's little daughter with the curling black
ringlets and the sweet smiling face, when the secretary who teaches her
to read and write, and whom she loves and references above all
things--above mother, above mild Dorothea, above that tremendous Sir
William in his square-toes-and periwig,--when _Mr. Swift_ comes down from
his master with rage in his heart, and has not a kind word even for
little Hester Johnson?

Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency's condescension was even
more cruel than his frowns. Sir William _would_ perpetually quote Latin
and the ancient classics _apropos_ of his gardens and his Dutch statues
and _plates-bandes_, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius,
Julius Caesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the Hesperides, Maecenas,
Strabo describing Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. _Apropos_ of beans,
he would mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that
this precept probably meant that wise men should abstain from public
affairs. _He_ is a placid Epicurean; _he_ is a Pythagorean philosopher;
_he_ is a wise man--that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so? One
can imagine the downcast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of
scorn which they emit. Swift's eyes were as azure as the heavens; Pope
says nobly (as everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good
and noble), "His eyes are as azure as t