a more servile tribute to the great,
than by suffering his liberty in their presence to aggrandise him in
his own esteem. Between different ranks of the community there is
necessarily some distance; he who is called by his superior to pass
the interval, may properly accept the invitation; but petulance and
obtrusion are rarely produced by magnanimity; nor have often any nobler
cause than the pride of importance, and the malice of inferiority. He
who knows himself necessary may set, while that necessity lasts, a
high value upon himself; as, in a lower condition, a servant eminently
skilful may be saucy; but he is saucy only because he is servile. Swift
appears to have preserved the kindness of the great when they wanted him
no longer; and therefore it must be allowed, that the childish freedom,
to which he seems enough inclined, was overpowered by his better
qualities. His disinterestedness has likewise been mentioned; a
strain of heroism which would have been in his condition romantic and
superfluous. Ecclesiastical benefices, when they become vacant, must
be given away; and the friends of power may, if there be no inherent
disqualification, reasonably expect them. Swift accepted (1713) the
deanery of St. Patrick, the best preferment that his friends could
venture to give him. That Ministry was in a great degree supported by
the clergy, who were not yet reconciled to the author of the "Tale of a
Tub," and would not without much discontent and indignation have borne
to see him installed in an English cathedral. He refused, indeed, fifty
pounds from Lord Oxford; but he accepted afterwards a draught of a
thousand upon the Exchequer, which was intercepted by the queen's death,
and which he resigned, as he says himself, "multa gemens, with many a
groan." In the midst of his power and his politics, he kept a journal of
his visits, his walks, his interviews with Ministers, and quarrels with
his servant, and transmitted it to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, to
whom he knew that whatever befell him was interesting, and no accounts
could be too minute. Whether these diurnal trifles were properly exposed
to eyes which had never received any pleasure from the presence of the
Dean may be reasonably doubted: they have, however, some odd attraction;
the reader, finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to
consider as important, goes on in hope of information; and as there
is nothing to fatigue attention, if he is disappoi