Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/383

Rh England, but always found some reason to delay. He tells Pope, in the decline of life, that he hopes once more to see him; “but if not,” says he, “we must part, as all human beings have parted.”

After the death of Stella, his benevolence was contracted, and his severity exasperated; he drove his acquaintance from his table, and wondered why he was deserted. But he continued his attention to the publick, and wrote from time to time such directions, admonitions, or censures, as the exigency of affairs, in his opinion, made proper; and nothing fell from his pen in vain.

In a short poem on the Presbyterians, whom he always regarded with detestation, he bestowed one strićture upon Bettesworth, a lawyer eminent for his insolence to the clergy, which, from very considerable reputation, brought him into immediate and universal contempt. Bettesworth, enraged at his disgrace and loss, went to Swift, and demanded whether he was the author of that poem “Mr. Bettesworth,” answered he, “I was in my youth acquainted with great “lawyers, who knowing my disposition to “satire, advised me, that if any scoundrel " or