Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/246

210 to." In another to the same, he gives this account of himself: "I would describe to you my way of living, if any method could be called so in this country. I choose my companions among those of least consequence, and most compliance: I read the most trifling books I can find, and when I write, it is upon the most trifling subjects: but riding, walking, and sleeping, take up eighteen of the twenty-four hours. I procrastinate more than I did twenty years ago, and have several things to finish, which I put off to twenty years hence." In this manner did he pass seven years of his life from his arrival in Ireland, little known there as an author, except on account of his political writings, which, in that change of times rendered him an object of general detestation. There had been then no collection made of his works, and his detractors in England had robbed him of the merit of his principal work, The Tale of a Tub, by denying him to be the author. Many calumnies were industriously propagated against him, taken from the writings of the hirelings on the whig side, whereof the number was so great, that Swift in one place says, that there were upward of a thousand papers and pamphlets published against him in the space of a few years. But wrapped in the consciousness of his integrity, he had the fortitude to treat all this with silent contempt. To counterbalance the ill treatment he met with from the publick, he, by degrees, contracted an intimacy with a select few, who had taste to relish the author, and virtue to admire the man. He had also the

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