Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/217

N° 2. There is only one thing wanting in the operation, that they would renew my age, and then I will heartily forgive them all the rest. In the mean time, whatever uneasiness I have suffered from the little malice of these men, and my retirement in the country, the pleasures I have received from the same occasion will fairly balance the account. On the one hand I have been highly delighted to see my name and character assumed by the scribblers of the age, in order to recommend themselves to it; and on the other, to observe the good taste of the town, in distinguishing and exploding them through every disguise, and sacrificing their trifles to the supposed manes of Isaac Bickerstaff, esquire. But the greatest merit of my journey into Staffordshire is, that it has opened to me a new fund of unreproved follies and errours, that have hitherto lain out of my view, and, by their situadon, escaped my censure: for, as I have lived generally in town, the images I had of the country were such only as my senses received very early, and my memory has since preserved with all the advantages they first appeared in.

Hence it was that I thought our parish church the noblest structure in England, and the esquire's place-house, as we called it, a most magnificent palace: I had the same opinion of the almshouse in the churchyard, and of a bridge over the brook that parts our parish from the next. It was the common vogue of our school, That the master was the best scholar in Europe, and the usher the second. Not happening to correct these notions by comparing them with what I saw when I came into the world; upon returning back, I began to resume my former imaginations, and expected all things should appear in