Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/217

 enough ourselves.’ This, it is suggested, caused Swift's desertion of the whigs. Swift, however, writing at the time, states that he made no application to Wharton (to King, 30 Nov. 1708, and to Sterne same day). Before he left England Somers asked him to take a letter (no doubt of recommendation) to Wharton, but he ‘absolutely refused,’ though he finally consented to deliver it in Dublin some months later. Swift's account is clear and consistent, and Salter is described by Bishop Percy as a repeater of silly anecdotes (, Illustrations, viii. 160). The story is merely an instance of the calumnies suggested by Swift's change of party (the story told originally by Salter in the Gentleman's Magazine is given in the annotated Tatler, 1786, vol. v., with an answer by Theophilus Swift [q. v.] It is also discussed in Literary Relics, 1789, pp. xl, &c.; and see  Swift, i. 99, &c., and, p. 154 n.)

Swift had still hopes of success in the ‘first-fruits’ business, and on 6 Jan. 1708–9 tells King that he has heard from Lord Pembroke that the concession had been made. On 26 March he has to explain that this was a delusion. He was suffering from bad attacks of his old complaint and greatly dispirited. He lingered in London till 3 May, when he called upon Halifax and begged a book, asking the donor to remember that it was the only favour he had ever received from him or his party. A few months later he endorsed a complimentary letter from the great man as a ‘true original of courtiers and court promises’ (, p. 97). He sent two adulatory letters, however, to Halifax (, Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, iii. 201) to remind him of his promise in case of accident. He left London on 3 May, and, after staying five weeks at Chester, reached Ireland on 30 June. He retired at once to Laracor, and saw nothing of any friends except Esther Johnson and Addison, who was now Wharton's secretary (Journal to Stella, 3 May 1711).

When the whig ministry was breaking up in 1710, Swift remarked that he might expect something in ‘a new world, since’ he ‘had the merit of suffering by not complying with the old’ (to Tooke, 29 June 1710); he considered, that is, that preferment had been withheld by the whigs because he would not support their policy. There can in fact be no doubt that the secret of Swift's alienation from the whigs was his intense devotion to his order. He had imbibed in an intensified form all the prejudices of the Irish churchmen of his day. He hated with exceeding bitterness the presbyterians of the north, their Scottish allies, and the English dissenters. But he also heartily despised the Jacobites. James II had taught him and his friends a lesson in 1688, and his relations to Temple had thrown him into a whig connection at starting. As it became evident that whiggism meant alliance with dissent, Swift's distrust of the leaders deepened into aversion. He is indeed more to be blamed for adhering so long to so uncongenial a connection than for breaking it off so early. Unfortunately, Swift could never separate personal from public questions. He complained of not being rewarded for his services, not the less bitterly because he also boasted that he had never rendered them. He would not exculpate the whigs from ingratitude, though as whigs they had no reasons to be grateful. His complaints have therefore given plausibility to imputations of ‘ratting’ when in fact he was really discovering his genuine affinities, at a time, it is true, when the discovery coincided with his personal interests. In the summer of 1710 Swift was requested by the Irish bishops to take up once more the first-fruits negotiation, which would have better chance under a change of administration. He went to England, as he writes to Esther Johnson, with less desire than ever before. The famous ‘Journal to Stella’ begins from Chester on 2 Sept., and records his history minutely in the following years. He reached London on 7 Sept., and on the 9th writes to King that he was ‘caressed by both parties.’ The whigs took him to be ‘a sort of bough for drowning men to lay hold of.’ Godolphin, however, was ‘morose.’ Somers made explanations to which Swift listened coldly. Somers, he says (24 Jan. 1710–11), is a ‘false, deceitful rascal.’ Halifax asked him to dinner. He saw something of Addison, and contributed to Steele's ‘Tatler.’ Meanwhile the elections were going for the tories, and on 4 Oct. Swift saw Harley, to whom he had got himself represented as ‘one extremely ill-used by the last ministry.’ Harley welcomed him with effusion. Within a week he was treating Swift as an intimate friend, and promising to get the first-fruits business settled at once. Swift's exultation was mingled with triumph over those ‘ungrateful dogs’ the whigs. On 4 Nov. he writes to King to announce authoritatively that the first-fruits will be granted. The Irish bishops had meanwhile bethought themselves that Swift's whiggish connections might disqualify him as an intercessor, and proposed to take the matter out of his hands. Swift was angry, though no doubt amused by this unconscious testimony to