Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/396

360 The doctor still persisted in his resolution of consulting his friends; and at a meeting of them for that purpose, chiefly composed of the fellows of the college, they were unanimously of opinion that he should by no means accept of the proposed offer. They represented to him that his school was in a most flourishing state, and likely to increase daily. That he could not hope to have any thing like the number of pupils in a country town, as in the capital; and his income, even with the addition of the endowment, would probably not be greater. That by residing in Dublin, he might make such powerful connexions, as would raise him to considerable church preferments, all expectation of which he must give up if he buried himself in an obscure corner of the kingdom. By these, and other arguments of the like nature, the doctor was easily persuaded to follow the bent of his inclination. For it must have been with great reluctance that he would have quitted the society of such a number of learned, ingenious, and agreeable men, as then formed the circle of his acquaintance.

The doctor had too much reason afterward to repent of his not having followed Swift's advice, as what he had foretold, in a few years came to pass. Those very men, whom he considered as his best friends, set up another school in opposition to his, which they supported with all their interest, of which the doctor speaks in the following manner in a letter to Swift: "As for my quondam friends, as you style them, quondam them all. It is the most decent way I can curse them; for they lulled me asleep, till they stole my school into the hands of a blockhead, and have driven me toward the latter " part