Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/159

Rh laughing at me. And you may do it securely; for, by the most inhuman dealings, you have wholly put it out of my power, as a christian, to do you the least ill office."

After having read the several passages relative to Steele, before quoted in the Journal, no one can doubt but that Swift has here fairly stated the case, and that he might even have put it in a stronger light. It is hard to say whether Steele's weakness of head, or badness of heart, were most conspicuous in this transaction. Causelessly to attack and insult a man, to whom he lay under such obligations, argued great baseness; and his defence of himself, by denying an obligation so notoriously conferred, still more so. And to provoke a man to prove the reality of his charge, that it was he alone who had hitherto kept him in his employment, by getting him immediately discharged from it, which Swift could have done by speaking a word, was surely weak. But in that point he was secure, he knew his man too well: he knew Swift was incapable of a mean revenge. He might, as Swift nobly says to him, "do it securely;" "for (as he adds) by the most inhuman dealings, you have wholly put it out of my power, as a christian, to do you the least ill office." Yet, though Swift was above a revenge of this sort, he thought himself called upon to answer his challenge, as a writer, and chastise his insolence in his own way. Which he afterward did so effectually, in his famous pamphlet, called The Public Spirit of the Whigs, and in several subsequent pieces, that, from being an author of some eminence, Steele became for some time an object of ridicule and contempt. How weak, or how vain must