Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/402

366 on his shortly intended visit to that city, and so clear the way for some future favour.

But though, as Swift expresses it, the doctor had thus, by mere chance-medley, shot his own fortune dead with a single text, yet it was the means of his receiving a considerable addition to his fortune, of more intrinsick value than the largest benefice he might have reason to expect. As this proceeded from an act of uncommon generosity, it deserves well to be recorded. Archdeacon Russel, in whose pulpit the sermon was preached, considered himself as instrumental, however accidentally, to the ruin of the doctor's expectations. He was for some time uneasy in his mind on this account, and at last determined to make him a noble compensation. He had a great friendship for the doctor, whom he saw loaded with a numerous offspring, upon a precarious income, while he himself was possessed of a considerable property, and without any family. Urged on by those nice scruples in his mind before mentioned, he thought he could not make a better use of his fortune, than to apply the superfluity of it toward making the doctor easy in his circumstances, and thus enabling him to make a provision for his children. With this view he took a journey to Dublin, in order to make over to him, by an irrevocable deed of gift, the valuable manor of Drumlane in the county of Cavan, a bishop's lease, which at that time produced a clear profit rent of two hundred and fifty pounds per annum. An act of such liberality, and seldom to be parallelled in this degenerate and selfish age, deserves well to be rescued from oblivion; nor could the author