his house. I doubt he has disobliged both sides so much that neither will ever own him; and his enemies tell stories of him that I shall not believe till I find you allow them."

"Poor Jo" was Joseph Beaumont, “an eminent tallow-chandler in Trim." He is

"The grey old fellow, poet Joe,"

"I

in Swift's verses on Archdeacon Walls' house. received," wrote Swift to Stella, "three pair of fine thread stockings from Jo lately. Pray thank him when you see him; and that I say they are very fine and good. I never looked at them yet, but that's no matter." He was a projector," who hoped to win the government reward for the discovery of a method of ascertaining the longitude. His disappointment, it was believed, turned his brain, and he made away with himself. Swift said that he had known only two projectors, one of whom ruined himself, and the other hanged himself.

Jeremy Bentham looked with indignation on Swift's frequent attacks on projectors. "I have sometimes been tempted," he wrote, "to think that were it in the power of laws to put words under proscription, as it has put men, the cause of inventive industry might perhaps derive scarcely less assistance from a bill of attainder against the word project or projectors than it has derived from the act authorising the grant of patents. I should add, however, for a time,' for even then the envy and

vanity and wounded pride of the uningenious herd would sooner or later infuse their venom into some other word, and set it up as a new tyranny to hover, like its predecessor, over the birth of infant genius, and crush it in its cradle."

Swift, I believe, had thought of taking out a Licence of Absence from his Deanery, that he might visit the Earl of Oxford in the Tower. As I have shown, he had on July 19th offered him his poor service and attendance." In his letter to Chetwode of the following December 17th (post p. 70) he refers to this intention. He was a faithful friend. A year earlier, when the Earl was falling from power, he wrote to him: "If I only look toward myself, I could wish you a private man to-morrow . . . and then and then you would see whether I should not with much more willingness attend you in a retirement, whenever you please to give me leave, than ever I did at London or Windsor."

The Dean began his correspondence with his friend with such briskness that his first thirteen letters were written within a period of little more than ten months. We are now coming to a great gap; for in the next three years he wrote but twice,

-once to Mrs. Chetwode after her husband had left for England, and once to Chetwode himself at an address in London. Between December 17, 1715, and September 2, 1718, at which latter date we find Chetwode once more in London, we have not

a single letter. In the interval he had been out of the country. I am informed by the present owner of Woodbrooke that "he was a great Jacobite, and found it well to spend a good deal of his time abroad. In the library here, there are many books bought by him in different foreign towns." If on his travels he heard from Swift, it is likely enough that on his way home he destroyed the letters, for fear of bringing his friend into trouble. So strict was the search after Jacobite papers that the coffin of Bishop Atterbury, who died in France, was opened in England, whither his body was brought for burial, in the expectation that in it would be found treasonable correspondence.

XIV.

[To Mrs. Chetwode.]

Oct. 7. 1715.

MADAM,-I find you are resolved to feed me wherever I am. I am extremely obliged to your Care and Kindness, but know not how to return it other wise than by my Love and Esteem for you. I had one Letter from Mr Chetwode from Chester, but it came late, and he talked of staying there onely a Week. If I knew where to write to him I would. I said a good deal to him before he went. And I

believe he will keep out of harms way in these troublesome Times. God knows what will become

of us all. I intend when the Parlt [Parliament] meets here, to retire some where into the Country: Pray God bless and protect you, and your little fire side believe me to be Ever with true Esteem Madam

Your most obed' humble Serv

J. SWIFT.

NOTES ON XIV.

Chester, or rather Park Gate, a few miles farther down the Dee, was the usual port of embarkation for Ireland. It was from Chester that Milton's Lycidas sailed, and it was at Chester that the poet Parnell died on his way home. Swift arriving there from London on June 6, 1713, wrote to Stella: "I am come here after six days. A noble rider, faith! and all the ships and people went off yesterday with a rare wind. This was told me to my comfort upon my arrival. Having not used riding these three years made me terrible weary ; yet I resolve on Monday to set out for Holyhead, as weary as I am. I will be three days going to Holysay what you will. I am upon Stay-behind's mare. I have the whole inn to myself. I would fain scape this Holyhead journey; but I have no prospect of ships."

head; I cannot ride faster

He wrote at least three epigrams on the windows of his inn at Chester, the best of which is the following:

"The church and clergy here, no doubt,

Are very near akin;

Both weather-beaten are without,

And empty both within."

Mrs. Pendarves, better known as Mrs. Delany, in 1731, wrote from Chester, where she was waiting for a fair wind for Dublin: "At dinner-time our company meet, and we pay a shilling a-head for our meal, and find our own wine; we are very well provided for. We have secured places in the Pretty Betty. The best cabin Mrs. Donnellan and I have taken to ourselves, and are to pay five guineas." In 1747 she wrote: "Park Gate consists of about fifty or sixty houses in an irregular line by the water side; the River Dee runs from Chester, but is not navigable further than to this place."

According to her "the passage was seldom more than forty hours, and often not much more than half that time." In 1754 she crossed in thirteen hours, "a surprisingly quick passage, but a very rough. All on board excessively sick."

How troublesome these times were Swift shows in a letter written a little later. The parliament sitting in Dublin had passed a bill authorising the government to imprison whom they please for three months, without any trial or examination. I expect,"