Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/69

Rh scoundrels." With these words he immediately quitted the room, and turned his back on the castle, determined to appear there no more. But lord Berkeley was too conscious of the ill treatment he had given him, and too fearful of the resentment of an exasperated genius, not to endeavour to pacify him. He therefore immediately presented him with the rectory of Agher, and the vicarages of Laracor and Rath-beggan, then vacant in the diocese of Meath. Though these livings united did not make up a third of the deanery in value, and though from the large promises which had been made him, he had reason to expect much greater preferment, yet, considering the specimens already given of the performance of those promises, Swift thought it most prudent to accept of those livings, dropping all future expectations from that quarter. Nor did he afterward estrange himself from lord Berkeley's family, but continued still in his office of chaplain; to which he seems to have been chiefly induced, from the great honour and respect which he had for his excellent lady: whose virtues he has celebrated in so masterly a manner, in the Introduction to the Project for the Advancement of Religion.

From this behaviour to lord Berkeley, we may judge how little Swift was qualified to rise at court, in the usual way of obtaining preferment; and we may estimate the greatness of his spirit, by the degree of resentment shown to the man, in consequence of ill treatment, upon whom all his hopes of preferment then rested.

It was at this time that Swift's true humorous vein in poetry began to display itself, in several little pieces, written for the private entertainment of lord Rh