Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/210

174 religion or morals, whereof, I have reason to believe, he began to be sensible. But he was fond of mixing pleasure and business, and of being esteemed excellent at both: upon which account he had a great respect for the characters of Alcibiades and Petronius, especially the latter, whom he would be gladly thought to resemble."

But an Alcibiades, or a Petronius, was not likely to be the bosom friend of a Swift, however he might admire his talents, or delight in his society, as a companion. In his political character indeed, Swift was very closely connected with him, as lord Bolingbroke adopted all his ideas, and strenuously supported the measures he proposed: and that they were not pursued. Swift lays the whole blame, in many places, on his friend Oxford, entirely acquitting lord Bolingbroke of being in the wrong, in any of the differences subsisting between them on that score. In his first letter to lord Bolingbroke, after the queen's death, dated August 7, 1714, he says, "I will swear for no man's sincerity, much less that of a minister of state: but thus much I have said, whereeverwherever [sic] it was proper, that your lordship's proposals were always the fairest in the world, and I " fully