Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/120

 80 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS From this era to the death of Queen Anne we find him fighting on the side of the- ministers and maintaining their cause in pamphlets, poems, and weekly papers. But notwithstanding his services to the ministry, he remained without preferment till the year 1 713, when he was made Dean of St. Patrick's. In point of power and revenue such a deanery might appear no inconsiderable promo- tion ; but to an ambitious mind whose perpetual aim was a settlement in Eng- land, a dignity in any other kingdom must appear only an honorable and profit- able banishment. There is great reason to imagine' that the temper of Swift might occasion his English friends to wish him happily and properly promoted at a distance. His spirit was ever untractable, the motions of his genius irregu- lar. He assumed more the airs of a patron than a friend. He affected rather to dictate than advise, and was elated with the appearance of enjoying ministerial confidence. Dr. Swift had little reason to rejoice in the land where his lot had fallen ; for upon his arrival in Ireland to take possession of his deanery, he found the vio- lence of party reigning in that kingdom to the highest degree. The common people were taught to look upon him as a Jacobite, and they proceeded so far in their detestation as to throw stones at him as he passed through the streets. The chapter of St. Patrick's, like the rest of the kingdom, received him with great re- luctance. They thwarted him in every particular he proposed. He was avoided as a pestilence, opposed as an invader, and marked out as an enemy to his coun- try. Such was his first reception as Dean of St. Patrick's, Fewer talents and less firmness must have yielded to such violent opposition. But so strange are the revolutions of this world that Dean Swift, who was then the detestation of the Irish rabble, lived to govern them with absolute sway. He made no longer stay in Ireland than was requisite to establish himself a dean, and in the beginning of the year 1714, returned to England. He found his great friends at the helm much disunited among themselves. He saw the queen declining in health and distressed in situation. The part which he had to act upon this occasion was not so difficult as it was disagreeable ; he exerted all his skill to reunite the ministers, Einding his endeavors fruitless, he retired to a friend's house in Berkshire, where he remained till the queen's death, an event which fixed the period of his views in England and made him return as fast as possible to his deanery in Ireland, oppressed with grief and discontent. His works from the year 1714 to the year 1720 are few in number and of small importance. " Poems to Stella " and " Trifles to Dr. Sheridan " fill up a great part of that period. But during this interval, Lord Orrery supposes, he employed his time in writing " Gulliver's Travels." His mind was likewise fully occupied by an affecting private incident. In 171 3 he had formed an intimacy with a young lady in London, to whom he became a kind of preceptor ; her real name was Vanhomrigh, and she was the daughter of a Dutch merchant who settled and died at Dublin. This lady was a great admirer of reading, and had a taste for poetry. This increased her regard for Swift till it grew to affection, and she made him an offer of marriage, which he refused, and upon this occasion he