ffice which he knew him not
able to discharge. Swift therefore resolved to enter into the Church,
in which he had at first no higher hopes than of the chaplainship to the
Factory at Lisbon; but being recommended to Lord Capel, he obtained the
prebend of Kilroot in Connor, of about a hundred pounds a year. But the
infirmities of Temple made a companion like Swift so necessary, that he
invited him back, with a promise to procure him English preferment in
exchange for the prebend, which he desired him to resign. With
this request Swift complied, having perhaps equally repented their
separation, and they lived on together with mutual satisfaction; and, in
the four years that passed between his return and Temple's death, it
is probable that he wrote the "Tale of a Tub," and the "Battle of the
Books."

Swift began early to think, or to hope, that he was a poet, and wrote
Pindaric Odes to Temple, to the king, and to the Athenian Society, a
knot of obscure men, who published a periodical pamphlet of answers to
questions, sent, or supposed to be sent, by letters. I have been told
that Dryden, having perused these verses, said, "Cousin Swift, you will
never be a poet;" and that this denunciation was the motive of Swift's
perpetual malevolence to Dryden. In 1699 Temple died, and left a legacy
with his manuscripts to Swift, for whom he had obtained, from King
William, a promise of the first prebend that should be vacant at
Westminster or Canterbury. That this promise might not be forgotten,
Swift dedicated to the king the posthumous works with which he was
intrusted; but neither the dedication, nor tenderness for the man
whom he once had treated with confidence and fondness, revived in King
William the remembrance of his promise. Swift awhile attended the Court;
but soon found his solicitations hopeless. He was then invited by
the Earl of Berkeley to accompany him into Ireland, as his private
secretary; but, after having done the business till their arrival
at Dublin, he then found that one Bush had persuaded the earl that a
clergyman was not a proper secretary, and had obtained the office for
himself. In a man like Swift, such circumvention and inconstancy must
have excited violent indignation. But he had yet more to suffer. Lord
Berkeley had the disposal of the deanery of Derry, and Swift expected
to obtain it; but by the secretary's influence, supposed to have been
secured by a bribe, it was bestowed on somebody else; and Swift