Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/208

172 different proportions. The large heart of Swift had an inexhaustible fund of benevolence, to be apportioned out to the several claimants, according to their several degrees of merit. Among those who vied with lord Oxford for the possession of his friendship, no one seems to have been more assiduous than the second man in the state, though perhaps, in point of abilities, the first in Europe, lord Bolingbroke. But though Swift held his talents in the highest admiration, and made suitable returns for all his personal kindness and attention to him, yet he never seems to have had that cordial regard for him that he showed for lord Oxford. The excellence of whose moral character, established that confidence in him, which is so necessary to a firm friendship; while a notorious deficiency in the other, with regard to some points, created a doubt of his principles with respect to all. And symptoms of this doubt have broken out from Swift on more than one occasion, with regard to his sincerity, though there are good reasons to believe his suspicions were unjust, as his attachment to him continued equally strong to the very last, and his friendship for him glows with uncommon ardour throughout his whole epistolary correspondence, in the decline, of life, when there could have been no use for dissimulation. The zeal which he showed for Swift's service, may be estimated by the following note which he sent him, at the time that the affair of his promotion was depending. "Though I have not seen youDelete word [sic], I did not fail to write to lord treasurer. Non tua res agitur, dear Jonathan; it is the treasurer's cause; it is my cause; 'tis every man's " cause