not had the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years after written a foul epigram about you. -watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue ribbon, 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 humor, 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;1 he would have done your errands, but pause, even after his Irish almost-royal position was established. But he brought himself into greater danger on a certain occasion, and the amusing circumstances may be once more repeated here. He had unsparingly lashed the notable Dublin lawyer, Mr. Serjeant Bettesworth: : "Thus at the bar, the booby Bettesworth, Though half a crown o'er-pays his sweat's worth, Calls Singleton his brother-serjeant ! The Serjeant, it is said, swore to have his life. He presented himself at the deanery. The Dean asked his name. “Sir, I am Serjeant Bett-es-worth." "In what regiment, pray? "" asked Swift. A guard of volunteers formed themselves to defend the Dean at this time. 1 "But, my Hamilton, I will never hide the freedom of my sentiments from you. I am much inclined to believe that the temper of my friend Swift might occasion his English friends to wish him happily and properly promoted at a distance. His spirit,, for I would give it the softest name, was ever untractable. The motions of his genius were often irregular. He assumed more the air of a patron than of a friend. He affected rather to dictate than advise." - ORRERY. 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.1 He says as much himself in one of his letters to Bolingbroke: "All my endeavors 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 ribbon or a coach and six." 2 1 "An anecdote, which, though only told by Mrs. Pilkington, is well attested, bears, that the last time he was in London he went to dine with the Earl of Burlington, who was but newly married. The Earl, it is supposed, being willing to have a little diversion, did not introduce him to his lady nor mention his name. After I dinner said the Dean, 'Lady Burlington, I hear you can sing; sing me a song.' The lady looked on this unceremonious manner of asking a favor with distaste, and positively refused. He said, 'She should sing, or he would make her. Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor English hedge-parsons; sing when I bid you.' As the Earl did nothing but laugh at this freedom, the lady was so vexed that she burst into tears and retired. His first compliment to her when he saw her again was, 'Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last?' To which she answered with great good-humor, 'No, Mr. Dean; I'll sing for you if you please.' From which time he conceived a great esteem for her."- SCOTT's Life. "He had not the least tincture of vanity in his conversation. He was, perhaps, as he said himself, too proud to be vain. When he was polite, it was in a manner entirely his own. In his friendships he was constant and undisguised. He was the same in his enmities.” -ORRERY. 2 "I make no figure but at court, where I affect to turn from a lord to the meanest of my acquaintances.” Journal to Stella. "I am plagued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me their books and poems, the vilest I ever saw; but I have given |