Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/46

10 they might have been to him at first. He might have proved the foremost logician, metaphysician, or mathematician of his time; he might have past his life, like some of the most eminent of his fellow students, in useless speculations; and instead of writing a Laputa, he might himself have been qualified for a professorship in the academy of that airy region.

Let us only suppose Swift to have been a distinguished scholar in the university, and we may reasonably suppose also, that, circumstanced as he was, his friends would have made him sit for a fellowship there, as the surest and best provision for any one so educated. Or else, encouraged by the hopeful expectations raised from the distinguished figure he made in the college, they would have pushed all their interest to have gotten him some small preferment in the church. In either of which cases, the Swift of the world might have been lost in a university monk, or a country vicar. On the other hand, the disgrace thrown on him in the college, deprived him of all hopes of preferment, and rendered his friends so cold to his interest, that he had no expectations of future support, but by changing the scene to another country; where only there was a field large enough for the exertion of those high talents, which yet in a great measure lay dormant in him.

And with respect to the third article, the want of friends; had it not been for that circumstance, he would not have been under a necessity of going to seek for new ones, in another country; and he might probably never have fallen into the hands of that particular friend, who was perhaps the only one living, capable