to add implicit credit to Swift's next assertion, that so strong a predilection never operated as an impediment to Tisdal's courtship. Nor is it in nature to suppose that he should have been indifferent to the thoughts of one "whom he loved better than his life, a thousand million of times,"* passing into the possession of another. It is also remarkable, that when Tisdal is mentioned in the journal to Stella, it is always with a slight or sneer, and frequently with allusion to some disgusting imperfection. Yet no open breach took place between the rivals, if we may term them so, for they continued to maintain occasional intercourse down to the year 1740, when Tisdal witnesses the Dean's last will. The coarse epigram attached to the following fragment of one of Swift's letters, (never before published,) shows that their correspondence was not uniformly of the most friendly nature.

Dear Sir,-You desired me to finish some lines you wrote at Dunshaglin :

How can I finish what you have begun ?
Can fire to ripen fruit assist the sun?

Should Raphael draw a virgin's blooming face,
Exert his skill to give it every grace,

And leave the rest to some Dutch heavy drone;
Would you not rather see that face alone?
Or should Praxiteles the marble take,

A Venus' head and neck and shoulders make,

* This and similar expressions occur in the Journal.

And some rude hand attempt the rest from thence,
Wou'd you not think him void of common sense?
These hints I hope will move you to excuse
The first refusal of my humble muse.

The task I must decline, and think it just

Your piece continue as it is, a Bust.

[Four lines in the original are here erased, and the words here interlined, only could be made out.]

Being in a vein of writing epigrams, I send you the following piece upon Tisdal, which I intend to send to all his acquaintance; for he goes from house to house to shew his wit upon me, for which I think it reasonable he should have some, thing to stare him in the face.

UPON WILLIAM TISDAL, D. D.

When a Roman was dying, the next man of kin
Stood over him gaping to take his breath in.

Were Tisdal the same way to blow out his breath

Such a whiff to the living were much worse than death.

Any man with a nose would much rather die,

So would Jack, so would Dan, so would you, so would I,
Without a reproach to the Doctor, I think

Whenever he dies, he must die with a stink *.

(T.)

From the time that she finally rejected Tisdal's addresses, Stella appears to have considered her

* The original fragment is preserved in the Museum of the Dublin Society, Hawkins Street, Dublin. It may have been addressed to Mr Ludlow, whose family seat of Ardsallagh is not far from Dunshaglin.

destiny as united to that of Swift. She encouraged no other admirer, and never left Ireland, excepting for a visit of five or six months to England, in 1705.

But love or friendship, with its pleasures and embarrassments, were insufficient to occupy Swift's active mind and aspiring disposition. As the eleve of Sir William Temple, he had been carefully instructed in the principles of the English constitution; as a clergyman of the church of England, he was zealous for the maintenance of her rights and her power. These were the leading principles which governed him through life; nor will it be difficult to shew, that he uniformly acted up to them, unless in addressing those who confound principle with party, and deem that consistence can only be claimed by such as, with blindfold and indiscriminating attachment, follow the banners and leaders of a particular denomination of politicians. Swift, on the contrary, as he carried into the ranks of the Whigs, the opinions and scruples of a high-church clergyman, joined in like manner the standard of Harley with those sentiments of liberty, and that hatred of arbitrary power, which became the pupil of Sir William Temple. Such a distinction between opinions in church and state has not frequently existed, the high-churchmen being usually Tories, and the low-church divines universally Whigs. But in Swift's mind the distinction did exist, and how

ever it might embarrass his political conduct, nothing can be more certain than that he early drew the line, and constantly adhered to it. Even while residing with Sir William Temple, he judged the constancy of Archbishop Sancroft, who refused the oaths to William and Mary, worthy to be celebrated in an ode; while, at the same time, as far as can be safely argued from the Pindaric obscurity of the following stanzas, the poet gave his full approbation to the measure which placed those princes on the throne, so far as it was only a revolution of state *:

* The following severe lines on Dr Sherlock's original refusal to take the oaths, and subsequent compliance with the revolution government, have much of Swift's spirit, and occur in the collection from which so many of his unpublished poems have been retrieved:

From the Lanesborough Manuscript, Trinity College, Dublin, "Whimsical Medley," Vol. I. Appendix, pages 52, 238.

TO DR SHERLOCK ON HIS NOT TAKING THE OATHS.

Since at the tavern I can't meet you,

With paper embassy I greet you,

T'advise you not yourself t' expose
By a refusal of the oaths;

In spite of fellowship and pupils,

To weigh your conscience out in scruples.

If, as you Queen's-men must believe,

Two nays make one affirmative;

Why, in the name of the predicaments,
And all your analytic sense,

"Necessity, thou tyrant conscience of the great,

Say, why the church is still led blindfold by the state;
Why should the first be ruin'd and laid waste

To mend dilapidations in the last?

Will you deny poor affirmations

In their turns, too, to make negations?
This postulatum any pate

Will grant, that's not prejudicate.
Nay th' argument, I can assure you,
Appears to some a fortiori,

Hoc dato et concesso, thus I
In Baralipton blunderbuss ye.
He who to two things takes an oath,

Is by the last absolv'd from both;

For each oath being an affirmation,

Both, as 'twas own'd, make a negation.
Thus scientifically you see

The more you're bound, the more you're free.

As jugglers when they knit one more

Undo the knot they tied before.

I admire that your Smiglesian under-
Standing, should make so great a blunder,
As roundly to aver subjectio,

Wer'nt cousin-german to protectio:
Nay more, they're relatives, unless I
Mistake Tom Hobs's secundum esse.

I've hopes that you have slily taken
The oaths elsewhere, to save your bacon.
So spark, by country clap half undone,
Takes coach and steals a cure at London.

In the Anthologia Hibernica, for December 1794, Vol. IV. Mercier, Dublin, page 457, there occurs the following

EPIGRAM ON DR SHERLOCK.

"Regibus obsequium dum binis obligat unum,

Jurat utroque unum, prodit utroque fidem.

Quid mirum? Si sit semper jurare paratus ;

Cum per quos jurat tres habet ille Deos."