Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/124

116 the progress of their fortunes in the world; by which the force of worldly discretion, and the bad consequences from the want of that virtue, will strongly appear.

Corusodes, an Oxford student, and a farmer's son, was never absent from prayers or lecture, nor once out of his college after Tom had tolled. He spent every day ten hours in his closet, in reading his courses, dozing, clipping papers, or darning his stockings; which last he performed to admiration. He could be soberly drunk, at the expense of others, with college ale, and at those seasons was always most devout. He wore the same gown five years without dragling or tearing. He never once looked into a playbook or a poem. He read Virgil and Ramus in the same cadence, but with a very different taste. He never understood a jest, or had the least conception of wit.

For one saying he stands in renown to this day. Being with some other students over a pot of ale, one of the company said so many pleasant things, that the rest were much diverted, only Corusodes was silent and unmoved. When they parted, he called this merry companion aside, and said, "Sir, I perceive by your often speaking, and our friends laughing, that you spoke many jests; and you could not but observe my silence: but, sir, this is my humour; I never make a jest myself, nor ever laugh at another man's."

Corusodes thus endowed got into holy orders; having by the most extreme parsimony, saved thirty-four pounds out of a very beggarly fellowship, he went up to London, where his sister was waitingwoman to a lady, and so good a solicitor, that