Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/299

Rh fore hating him more than any man in the world, endeavoured to retaliate on him by every species of obloquy.

During this period, his faculties do not seem to have been at all impaired by the near approaches of old age, and his poetical fountain, though not so exuberant as formerly, still flowed in as clear and pure a stream. One of his last pieces, "Verses on his own Death," is perhaps one of the most excellent of his compositions in that way. Nor are two of his other productions, written about the same time, intitled, "An Epistle to a Lady;" and "A Rhapsody on Poetry," inferiour to any of his former pieces. The two last were written chiefly with a view to gratify his resentment to the court, on account of some unworthy treatment he met with from that quarter. We have already seen, by what extraordinary advances on her part, he was allured to pay his attendance on the princess, during his two last visits to England; and the seemingly well founded expectations of his friends, that some marks of royal favour would be shown him, both from the uncommonly good reception he had always met with, and the many assurances given to that effect. But from the time that the princess mounted the throne, all this was forgot. Nor was this productive of any disappointment to Swift, who had been too conversant with courts, not to look upon the most favourable appearances there, with distrust. Accordingly on his last return to Ireland, finding himself so utterly neglected by the queen, as not even to receive some medals which she had promised him, he gave up all hopes of that kind, and remained in a state of perfect indifference with gard