Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/168

156 or marriage, all encouragement to young diligent students will be wholly lost.

"That a junior fellowship is of very small value, and to arrive at it requires good sense, as well as long and close study; to which young students are only encouraged by hopes of succeeding, in a reasonable time, to be one of the seven seniors; which hopes will be quite cut off, when those seniors are perpetuated by dispensations.

"That the fellows, at their admittance into their fellowships, take a solemn oath, never to accept of any church preferment above a certain value, and distance from Dublin, as long as they continue fellows: to which oath the accepting of a dispensation by Dr. Whetcombe is directly contrary, in both particulars of value and distance.

"That, at this time, there is a set of very hopeful young men, in long and close study, to stand for the first vacant fellowship, who will be altogether discouraged, and drop their endeavours in the pursuit of learning, by being disappointed in their hopes of Dr. Whetcombe's leaving the college, and opening a way for one of them to succeed in a fellowship."

These, my lord, are the sum of the reasons brought me by a very worthy person, a fellow of that college, and recommended by some of the most deserving in that body; and I have shortened them as much as I could.

I shall only trouble your grace with one or two of my own remarks upon this subject.

The university, and in some sense the whole kingdom, are full of acknowledgment for the honour your grace has done them, in trusting the care of one of Rh