Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/400

364 time to rise to some high dignities in the church. But all this fair prospect soon vanished, by a concurrence of some very extraordinary accidents. When he went down to be inducted into his living, he was requested by archdeacon Russel of Cork, to supply his place in the pulpit on the following Sunday. The doctor, who was a very absent man, had forgot his engagement, and was sitting quietly at his lodging en déshabillé, when a message from the parish clerk, who saw no preacher arrive after the service had begun, roused him from his reverie. Redressed himself with all speed, and of two sermons that he had brought with him, took the first that came to his hand, without looking into it. It happened that the first of August in that year fell on that very Sunday; and the first of August being the day on which queen Anne died, was, in that time of party, a day of great celebrity, and much adverted to by the whigs. But this circumstance had not at all occurred to the doctor, who looked on it only as a common Sunday, without considering the day of the month. The text of this led sermon happened to be, "Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof." Such a text on such a day, excited a general murmur through the whole congregation, to the great surprise of the preacher, who was the only person ignorant of the cause; of which he was not informed till after he had descended from the pulpit, when the affair was past remedy. There happened to be present in the church a furious whig, and one of the most violent party-men of the times. He immediately took post for Dublin, where, by his representation of this matter, as Swift has observed in giving an account of this transaction, "Such a " mour