Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/25

Rh made the chief figure in life, was a season wherein faction raged with the greatest violence; that he was looked upon as the principal champion of the tory cause, and therefore was the common butt at which all the writers on the whig side levelled their shafts; there will be no occasion to wonder, that out of the many calumnies poured out against him, some of them should stick. These were indeed so numerous, that we are told by himself, that in the space of not many years, upward of a thousand pamphlets and papers were written professedly against him; to which he never deigned to give an answer, nor endeavoured to wipe off any aspersion thrown on him. Thus by the former part of his character, just laid open, he afforded his enemies sufficient groundwork on which to raise what superstructure of calumny they pleased, and as no defence was made, it was daily suffered to increase. For he had very unwisely laid it down as a maxim, "To act uprightly, and pay no regard to the opinion of the world ."

Thus, while he was admired, esteemed, beloved, beyond any man of his time, by his particular friends, not only on account of his superiour talents, but his preeminence in every kind of virtue; he was envied, feared, and hated by his enemies, who consisted of a whole virulent faction to a man. And when we take in the general appetite for scandal, and the spirit of envy in the bulk of mankind, which delights in the humiliation of an exalted character,