Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/501

Rh yet on all important occasions, he showed that he had no common share of that virtue, so necessary to the right direction of all the others. In the practice of these higher virtues, did he constantly live, even with a stoical severity; and none of the great characters of antiquity, were, on that account, more entitled to our esteem and admiration.

But to conciliate the good will and love of mankind, qualities of a gentler sort are necessary, the virtues of humanity; such as friendship, liberality, charity, good nature, &c. all which he was known to possess in a high degree by his intimate friends, though an opposite character of him prevailed in the world. I have already accounted for this in the preface, from a peculiar cast of his mind, which made him not only conceal these qualities from the publick eye, but often disguise them under the appearance of their contraries. I shall now show how this peculiarity first grew upon him. We have already seen during what a length of years his proud spirit groaned under a state of dependance on his relations for a scanty and precarious support. Upon inquiring into the history of his progenitors, he found that his grandfather had been reduced from a state of affluence, to extreme poverty, by the most cruel persecution of the fanaticks in the time of Cromwell. To this he imputed all his own sufferings, as well as those of his family; which fixed such a rooted hatred in him to them and their principles, as he took every opportunity of manifesting by his writings, whenever occasion offered, during the whole course of his life. This it was which gave him such a detestation of hypocrisy, a vice generally laid to their charge, as to make him run into the opposite extreme. In which Rh