Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/201

Rh reading this passage, and exclaiming, "What, alone! No, while I exist, my friend shall not go alone into Herefordshire."

This conduct was the more noble in Swift, as during the whole course of their intimacy, he never received one personal favour from the minister, though treated with the most unreserved kindness by the man. Nay, whether it were owing to his procrastinating temper, or, as Swift calls it in another place, his unmeasurable publick thrift, he had neglected to procure for him an order for a thousand pound on the treasury, to pay the debt contracted by him upon his introduction to the deanery, which was all the reward Swift ever asked for his services. And there is reason to believe, from a passage in a letter of Dr. Arbuthnot to him, dated July 1417 [sic], that Swift was distressed for money at that time, on account of that neglect. The passage is this, "Do not think I make you a bare compliment in what I am going to say, for I can assure you I am in earnest. I am in hopes to have two hundred pounds before I go out of town, and you may command all, or any part of it you please, as long as you have occasion for it." And in the same Rh