Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/123

Rh to have a better understanding than his neighbours, procured the place for him, who was the better scholar, and more gentlemanly person of the two, very much to the regret of all the parish: the other, being disappointed, came up to London, where he became the greatest pattern of this lower discretion, that I have known, and possessed it with as heavy intellectuals; which, together with the coldness of his temper, and gravity of his deportment, carried him safe through many difficulties, and he lived and died in a great station; while his competitor is too obscure for fame to tell us what became of him.

This species of discretion, which I so much celebrate, and do most heartily recommend, has one advantage not yet mentioned; it will carry a man safe through all the malice and variety of parties, so far, that whatever faction happens to be uppermost, his claim is usually allowed for a share of what is going. And the thing seems to me highly reasonable: for in all great changes, the prevailing side is usually so tempestuous, that it wants the ballast of those, whom the world calls moderate men, and I call men of discretion; whom people in power may, with little ceremony, load as heavy as they please, drive them through the hardest and deepest roads without danger of foundering, or breaking their backs, and will be sure to find them neither resty nor vicious.

I will here give the reader a short history of two clergymen in England, the characters of each, and Rh