Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/458

422 should return instantly; with which, however reluctantly, the poor girl was obliged to comply. When she came into Swift's presence, with a most mortified countenance, she begged to know his reverence's commands: "Nothing, child," said he, "only you forgot to shut the door after you." But not to carry the punishment too far, he then permitted her to pursue her journey.

There was nothing Swift disliked more than applications from witlings and poetasters to look over their pieces, and he generally had some whimsical contrivance to make them repent of this, which, being told, might also deter others from the like. Among these, there was a poor author of my acquaintance, who had written a very indifferent tragedy, and got himself introduced to the dean, in order to have his opinion of it. In about a fortnight after the delivery, he called at the deanery to know how he approved of it. Swift returned the play carefully folded up, telling him he had read it, and taken some pains with it; and he believed the author would not find above half the number of faults in it, that it had when it came into his hands. Poor Davy, after a thousand acknowledgments to the dean for the trouble he had taken, retired in company with the gentleman who had first introduced him, and was so impatient to see what corrections Swift had made, that he would not wait till he got home, but got under a gateway in the next street, and, to his utter astonishment and confusion, saw that the dean had taken the pains to blot out every second line throughout the whole play, so carefully, as to render them utterly illegible. Nor was