way, before Swift. Having acquainted his noble host with the other's design, he begged of him to disappoint it. It was resolved that Swift should be kept out of the house. Swift had never had the small-pox, and was, as all his friends knew, very much afraid of catching that distemper. A servant was despatched to meet him as he was approaching the gate, and to tell him that the small-pox was raging in the house, that it would be unsafe for him to enter the doors, but that there was a field-bed in the summer house in the garden, at his service. Thither the Dean was under the necessity of betaking himself. He was forced to be content with a cold supper, whilst his friends, whom he had tried to outstrip, were feasting in the house. At last after they thought they had sufficiently punished his too eager desire for his own accommodation, they requested his lordship to admit him into the company. The Dean was obliged to promise he would not afterwards, when with his friends, attempt to secure the best bed to himself. Swift was often the butt of their waggery, which he bore with great good humor, knowing well, that though they laughed at his singularities, they esteemed his virtues, admired his wit, and venerated his wisdom.
Many were the frolics of the Scriblerus Club. They often evinced the truth of an observation made by the poet, "dulce est desipere in loco."
The time for wits to play the fool, is when they are met together, to relax from the severity of mental exertion. Their follies have a degree of extravagance much beyond the phlegmatic merriment of sober dulness, and can be relished by those only, who having wit themselves, can trace the extravagance to the real source.
This society carefully abstained from their frolics before the stupid and ignorant, knowing that on no occasion ought a wise man to guard his words and actions more than when in the company of fools.
How long the Scriblerus Club lasted is not exactly ascertained, or whether it existed during the intimacy between Swift and Addison, previous to the Doctor's connection with the Tory ministry.
THE UPSTART.
There was one character which, through life, always kindled Swift's indignation, the haughty, presuming, tyrannizing upstart! A person of this description chanced to reside in the parish of Laracor. Swift omitted no opportunity of humbling his pride; but, as he was as ignorant as insolent, he was obliged to accommodate the coarseness of the lash to the callosity of the back. The following lines have been found written by Swift upon this man:—
The rascal! that's too mild a name;
Does he forget from whence he came;
Has he forgot from whence he sprung;
A mushroom in a bed of dung;
A maggot in a cake of fat,
The offspring of a beggar's brat.
As eels delight to creep in mud,
To eels we may compare his blood;
His blood in mud delights to run;
Witness his lazy, lousy son!
Puff'd up with pride and insolence,
Without a grain of common sense,
See with what consequence he stalks,
With what pomposity he talks;
See how the gaping crowd admire
The stupid blockhead and the liar.
How long shall vice triumphant reign?
How long shall mortals bend to gain?
How long shall virtue hide her face,
And leave her votaries in disgrace?
——Let indignation fire my strains,
Another villain yet remains—
Let purse-proud C——n next approach,
With what an air he mounts his coach!
A cart would best become the knave,
A dirty parasite and slave;
His heart in poison deeply dipt,
His tongue with oily accents tipt,
A smile still ready at command,
The pliant bow, the forehead bland——
MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK.
This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest; it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. It is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make her things clean, and be nasty itself. At length, worn out to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors, or condemned to the last use, of kindling a fire. When I beheld this, I sighed and said within myself, Surely, mortal man is a broomstick! Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk: he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew upon his head; but now, should this, our broomstick, pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!
But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, groveling on the earth! and yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, * * sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away: his last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving; till worn to the stumps like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by.
COSSING A DOG.
In a humorous paper written in 1732, entitled, "An Examination of certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enormities in the city of Dublin," Swift mentions this diversion, which he ludicrously enough applies to the violent persecutions of the political parties of the day. The ceremony was this: A strange dog happens to pass through a flesh market; whereupon an expert butcher immediately cries in a loud voice and proper tone, coss, coss, several times. The same word is repeated by the people. The dog, who perfectly understands the terms of art, and consequently the danger he is in, immediately flies. The people, and even his own brother animals, pursue: the pursuit and cry attend him perhaps half a mile; he is well worried in his flight; and sometimes hardly escapes. "This," adds Swift, "our ill-wishers of the Jacobite kind are pleased to call a persecution; and affirm, that it always falls upon dogs of the Tory principles."
TRADE OF IRELAND.
