mistress. He was on the point of starting for France when the news came from Hanover of the King's death. "Since then," he wrote, "we have been all in a hurry with millions of schemes. I deferred kissing the King's and Queen's hands till the third day, when my friends at Court chid me for deferring it so long. . . . I was with great vehemence dissuaded from going to France by certain persons whom I could not disobey." Mrs. Howard was one of those who dissuaded him, and Bolingbroke was another. "Much less," his Lordship wrote to him, "ought you to think of such an unmeaning journey, when the opportunity for quitting Ireland for England is, I believe, fairly before you." Swift thought that Walpole's power was at end. "It is agreed," he wrote, "the ministry will be changed, but the others will have a soft fall; although the King must be excessive generous if he forgives the treatment of some people." Walpole, no doubt, is aimed at here. The very day on which this was written the great minister was restored to power. "There I am sure I see a friend," said the Queen at her first drawing-room, looking at his wife, who was almost hidden behind a great crowd. Instantly the whole company made way. She approached the Queen and kissed her hand. She told her son that "in returning she might have walked upon their heads, so eager were they to pay their court to her." Swift's last chance had gone. horse. He had laid his stake on the wrong His "hard Journy" was the long ride from London to Holyhead, in Wales, where he was kept some days by contrary winds, "in a scurvy unprovided comfortless place without one companion," as he wrote in his Journal. "I cannot read at night, and I have no books to read in the day. I am afraid of joining with passengers for fear of getting acquaintance with Irish. The days are short, and I have five hours at night to spend by myself before I go to bed. I should be glad to converse with farmers or shopkeepers, but none of them speak English. A dog is better company than the vicar, for I remember him of old. The Master of the pacquet boat, one Jones, hath not treated me with the least civility, altho' Watt gave him my name. In short I come from being used like an Emperor to be used worse than a Dog at Holyhead. Yet my hat is worn to pieces by answering the civilities of the poor inhabitants as they pass by. Pray pity poor Wat, for he is called dunce, puppy, and liar 500 times an hour, and yet he means not ill, for he means nothing. Oh! for a dozen bottles of deanery wine and a slice of bread and butter. If the vicar could but play at back-gammon I were an Emperor; but I know him not. I am as insignificant here as Parson Brooke is at Dublin. By my conscience, I believe Cæsar would be the same without his army." His taste for ridicule of Irish politicians was not wholly gone. A few years later he attacked them in the lines beginning 'Ye paltry underlings of state; Ye senators, who love to prate ; Ye bishops far removed from saints, Why all this rage? why these complaints ?" The life he led in Dublin he thus described to Pope: "I keep humble company, who are happy to come when they can get a bottle of wine without paying for it. I give my vicar a supper and his wife a shilling to play with me an hour at backgammon once a fortnight. To all people of quality and especially of titles I am not within; or at least am deaf a week or two after I am well." 66 Even when he was a much younger man he did not take a cheerful view of "the publick." So early as 1709, in a letter to Archbishop King, he says: The world is divided into two sects, those that hope the best, and those that fear the worst ; your Grace is of the former, which is the wiser, the nobler, and most pious principle; and although I endeavour to avoid being of the other, yet upon this article I have sometimes strange weaknesses." Mrs. Pendarves, in 1732, after crossing the island from Dublin to Killala, wrote: "The roads are much better in Ireland than England, mostly causeways, a little jumbling, but very safe." In 1742, after she had visited Down Patrick, she wrote: "I never travelled such fine roads as are all over this country." In the winter of 1750, writing of returning home by moonlight from a friend's house, she said: "A comfortable circumstance belonging to this country is, that the roads are so good and free from robbers that we may drive safely any hour of the night." Arthur Young, who visited Ireland in 1776, thus writes of the roads: "A turnpike in Ireland is a synonymous term for a vile road; the bye roads are the finest in the world. It is the effects of jobs and imposition which disgrace the Kingdom." Though Mrs. Pendarves had not been "accustomed to Dublin from her youth," and though she was by birth a Granville, nevertheless, by no means did she find that town "the most disagreeable Place in Europe." On her first visit to Ireland in 1731 she wrote: "There is a heartiness among the people that is more like Cornwall than any I have known, and great sociableness." On her return to England in 1733 she wrote to her sister: "I wish you and I could be conveniently transported to Ireland for one year; no place could suit your taste so well; the good-humour and conversableness of the people would please you extremely." XLVIII. DUBLIN. Decbr 12th 1727. S",-I thought to have seen your Son, or to have spoken to his Tutor. But I am in a condition to see nobody; my old disorder of Deafness being returned upon me, so that I am forced to keep at home and see no company; and this disorder seldom leaves me under two months. I I do not understand your son's fancy of leaving the University to study Law under a Teacher. doubt he is weary of his Studyes, and wants to be in a new Scene; I heard of a fellow some years ago who followed that practice of reading Law, but I believe it was to Lads, who had never been at a University; I am ignorant of these Scheams, and you must advise with some who are acquainted with them. I only know the old road of getting some good learning in a university and when young men are well grounded then going to the Inns of Court. This is all I can say in the matter, my Head being too much confused by my present Disorder. I am y1 obd' &c. NOTES ON XLVIII. Swift in his Letter to a Young Clergyman says: "What a violent run there is among too many |