Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/553

Rh He loved virtue for its own sake, and was content it should be its own reward. The means to arrive at rank, fortune, and fame, the three great objects of pursuit in other men, though all thrown in his way, he utterly despised, satisfied with having deserved them. The same principle operated equally on the author, as on the man; as he never put his name to his works, nor had any solicitude about them, after they had once made their appearance in the world. The last act of his life showed how far he made this a rule of conduct, in his choice of the charity to which he bequeathed his fortune; leaving it for the support of idiots and lunatics, beings that could never know their benefactor.

Upon the whole, when we consider his character as a man, perfectly free from vice, with few frailties, and such exalted virtues; and as an author, possessed of such uncommon talents, such an original vein of humour, such an inexhaustible fund of wit, joined to so clear and solid an understanding; when we behold these two characters united in one and the same person; perhaps it will not be thought too bold an assertion, to say, that his parallel is not to be found either in the history of ancient or modern times.