Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/533

 and if the doctor had ever looked into his correspondence, he would have found that he acknowledged it in several of his letters. "He was contented to be called an Irishman by the Irish, but would occasionally call himself an Englishman." In the same place, where he found that he would occasionally call himself an Englishman, he might have seen the reason of his doing so; which was, that "though dropped in Ireland," as he himself expresses it, in a letter to lord Oxford, he was descended from English progenitors on both sides. But the doctor seems to have thrown this matter into a state of doubt, merely to introduce the last sentence, in order to insinuate the contemptible idea he had of Swift, where he says, — "The question may, without much regret, be left in the obscurity in which he delighted to involve it." Which in plain English would run thus — It is of very little moment where the fellow was born. As he has been very exact in stating the places of their birth in all the other Lives of his Poets, even those of the lower class, his marked indifference here is the more striking. But it will be said — Is there any man upon earth that can have a contemptible idea of Swift? Yes — such is the high notion which the doctor entertains of his own superiority, that he always treated his name with contempt. His common expression in talking of him, was, that Swift was a very shallow fellow.

Upon that passage in Swift's Life, where it is related that in the early part of it, he generally travelled on foot, and lay at waggoner's inns, he has the following comment. "This practice lord Orrery imputes to his innate love of grossness and vulgarity: