Deanry Puddings; Suit and Plumbs are threefourths of the Ingredients; I had them from my Aunt Giffard, who preserved the succession from the time of Sir William Temple." Mrs. Pendarves these same years found a good deal of "the old hospitality." Thus of the Bishop of Killala's Dublin house she wrote: "A universal cheerfulness reigns in it. They keep a very handsome table, six dishes of meat are constantly at dinner and six plates at supper." Of a Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton she said: "Their house, like themselves, looks cheerful and neat. We had a very pretty supper neatly served." "At Mrs. Usher's," she added, "we are always handsomely entertained."

Though Swift says that he had "no thought of a Villa," nevertheless about this time, we are told, he had intended to build a house on some land which he took of Sir Arthur Acheson. It was to bear the name of Drapier's Hill. He celebrated it in the following lines :—

"We give the world to understand,

Our thriving Dean has purchased land;
A purchase which will bring him clear
Above his rent four pounds a year;
Provided to improve the ground
He will but add two hundred pound;
And from his endless hoarded store,
To build a house, five hundred more.
Sir Arthur too shall have his will,
And call the mansion Drapier's Hill;
That when a nation long enslaved
Forgets by whom it once was saved;

When none the Drapier's praise shall sing,
His signs aloft no longer swing,
His medals and his prints forgotten,
And all his handkerchiefs are rotten,1
His famous Letters made waste paper,
This hill may keep the name of Drapier;
In spite of envy flourish still,

And Drapier's vie with Cooper's Hill."

LV.

[Knightley Chetwode to Dean Swift.]

[No date.]

S', I came to Towne ye 12th of Dec' and leave it the 12th of March, and could never see you but in ye streete, the last time I met you I merryly thought of Horace's 9th Satire, and upon it pursued you to y' next house tho' not "prope Cæsaris hortos."—I had a desire to catch you by y' best ear for halfe an hour and something to tell you, wh I imagined wd surprize and please you, but with the cunning of experienced Courtiers, grown old in politicks, you put me off with a I'll send to you; wh probably you never intended. I am now returning to Wodebrook from an amour wh has proved little profitable to myselfe-Business here I've none but with women; those pleasures have not (with me) as yet [? lost] their charms

"Medals were cast, many signs hung up, and handkerchiefs made with devices in honour of the Dean, under the name of M. B. Drapier."

and tho' when I am at home I do not like my neighbourhood and shall therefore probably seldom stir beyond the limits of my gardens and Plantations, wh. are full big enough for my purse, or what is even more insatiable my ambition, yet if my amusements there are scanty my thoughts are unmolested. I see not ye prosperity of Rascalls, I hear not ye Complaints of the worthy-I enjoy the sun and fresh air without paying a fruitless attendance upon his Eminence of St. Patricks, my fruit will bloom, my Herbs be fragrant, my flowers smile tho' the Deane frowns, and looks gloomy, take this as some sort of returne for ye greatest neglect of me, I 've mett since my last coming to this Towne, many ill offices, and what is far more extraordinary wth halfe a dozen Females who have cleared up the truth of it to a mathematical demonstration; this causes me to reflect upon the Jewishe method formerly to make Proselytes wh I think St. Ambrose well expresses in y following words "Hi arte immiscent se hominibus, Domos penetrant, ingrediuntur Prætoria, aures judicum et publica inquietant, et ideo magis prævalent quo magis impudenter." I saw you pass last friday by my windowe like a Lady to take horse, with y handcirchiefe and whipp in y' hand together; y' petticoats were of ye shortest, and you wanted

a black capp or I might have thought of Lady Harriett Harley now Lady Oxford.

NOTES ON LV.

Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, heiress of Holles, Duke of Newcastle, had married Lord Harley, son of the Earl of Oxford, in 1713. Swift celebrated the marriage in verse. Bolingbroke described it, in a letter to the Dean, as “the ultimate end of a certain administration." The administration was the one in which he himself had held the post of Secretary of State. He asserted, and asserted it moreover to a man who had been deep in the confidence of the minister, that his chief, Lord Treasurer Oxford, in all his measures had had one end in view-to secure for his son the wealthiest heiress in England. Of this same Lord Treasurer Swift wrote: "I do impartially think him the most virtuous minister, and the most able that ever I remember to have read of." Both Bolingbroke and Swift wrote the history of their own time. Who can wonder that Sir Robert Walpole exclaimed: Anything but history, for history must be false."

The second Lady Oxford had her troubles. Mrs. Pendarves wrote in 1741, just before the Earl's death: "My Lord Oxford has of late been so entirely given up to drinking that his life has been no pleasure to him or satisfaction to his

friends; my Lady Oxford never leaves his bedside, and is in great trouble. He has had no enjoyment of the world since his mismanagement of his affairs." It was with a folio belonging to his library that Johnson beat Osborne, the bookseller.

LVI.

[Knightley Chetwode to Dean Swift.]

S-I am truly concerned at y' having been so long lame which you say I can't see you, tho' I imputed it to your having taken something amiss in my last letter, wherein when I thought I was only plaine perhaps I've been blunt, and yt is a fault for I am of opinion with my old friend Wycherly, that some degree of ceremony sh [should] be preserved in the strictest friendship. However I write again to you, upon my old maxim y' [that] he who forbears to write because his last letter is unanswered shews more regard to forms and punctillios than to friendship. I've mett you handed about in print and as the Coffey Houses will have it of your owne doing-I am afraid y' using y' legg too soon will not let it be too soon well, the very shaking of a chair tho' yo had a stole under it, I believe harm'd you for