Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/121

Rh them in great exigencies and distresses of state (wanting a reasonable infusion of this aldermanly discretion) to attempt the service of their prince and country, out of the common forms.

This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes, that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world, the dunces are all in confederacy against him. And if this be his fate when he employs his talents wholly in his closet, without interfering with any man's ambition or avarice; what must he expect, when he ventures out to seek for preferment in a court, but universal opposition, when he is mounting the ladder, and every hand ready to turn him off, when he is at the top? and in this point, fortune generally acts directly contrary to nature; for, in nature we find, that bodies full of life and spirits mount easily, and are hard to fall, whereas heavy bodies are hard to rise, and come down with greater velocity, in proportion to their weight; but we find fortune every day acting just the reverse of this.

This talent of discretion, as I have described it in its several adjuncts, and circumstances, is no where so serviceable as to the clergy, to whose preferment nothing is so fatal as the character of wit, politeness in reading or manners, or that kind of behaviour, which we contract by having too much conversation with persons of high station and eminency; these qualifications being reckoned by the vulgar of all ranks, to be marks of levity, which is the last crime the world will pardon in a clergyman:. V.