he heavens, and have a charming
archness in them." And one person in that household, that pompous,
stately, kindly Moor Park, saw heaven nowhere else.

But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with Swift. He
was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins; and in a garden-seat
which he devised for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured greedily
the stock of books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness
which punished and tormented him through life. He could not bear the
place or the servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condolence, from
which we have quoted a few lines of mock melancholy, he breaks out of the
funereal procession with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying
his own grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by
fortune, and even hope.

I don't know anything more melancholy than the letter to Temple, in
which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches
piteously towards his cage again, and deprecates his master's anger. He
asks for testimonials for orders. "The particulars required of me are
what relate to morals and learning; and the reasons of quitting your
honour's family--that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill
action. They are left entirely to your honour's mercy, though in the
first I think I cannot reproach myself for anything further than for
_infirmities_. This is all I dare at present beg from your honour, under
circumstances of life not worth your regard: what is left me to wish
(next to the health and prosperity of your honour and family) is that
Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving my
acknowledgments at your feet. I beg my most humble duty and service be
presented to my ladies, your honour's lady and sister."--Can prostration
fall deeper? could a slave bow lower?

Twenty years afterwards Bishop Kennet, describing the same man, says,
"Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had a bow from everybody but
me. When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers,
Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting
the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a
place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake, with
my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a salary of 200L. per annum as
member of the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq.,
going into the Queen with the red bag, and told