two years. Having made up his mind to go into the church, he had received from Sir William Temple a promise of his influence in obtaining preferment:-I am not to take orders,' he says, in a letter of 29th November, 1692, until the King gives me a prebend; and Sir William Temple, though he promises me the certainty of it, yet is less forward than I could wish, because, I suppose he believes I shall leave him, and upon some accounts he thinks me a little necessary to him.' Such is Swift's representation; in the absence of Temple's we must recollect that Swift had no claim upon him but that of service, and that however valuable the services of the secretary might have been, it was unreasonable to expect that they should be continued a little longer, before they were rewarded by a provision for life. But we do not know that Sir William Temple had already had it in his power to procure this prebend, or had neglected any opportunity of obtaining it. When Swift himself became a courtier, and liable to the solicitations of all his Irish cousins, he must have learned that the most powerful influence cannot at all times command even the smallest preferment. Nearly two years afterwards, in which period, no doubt, Sir William had perceived his talents and usefulness, and had accordingly put him forward even in his intercourse with the King, Swift left Moor Park, and thus announced his departure:I forgot to tell you I left Sir William Temple a month ago, just as I foretold it to you, and everything happened thereupon exactly as I guessed. He was extremely angry I left him, and yet would not oblige himself any farther than upon my good behaviour, nor would promise any thing firmly to me at all, so that every body judged I did best to leave him.' Swift might certainly forget to tell his cousin of his leaving Moor Park; but when his memory returned he ought to have told the story fully and fairly. He was told it elsewhere: Although his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of entering into the church merely for support; and Sir William Temple, who was then Master of the Rolls in Ireland, offered him an employ about £120 a year in that office, whereupon Mr. Swift told him, that having now an opportunity of living without being driven into the church for a maintenance, he was resolved to go to Ireland to take holy orders; he was recommended to the Lord Capel, then Lord Deputy, who gave him a prebend in the

North worth about £100 a year. Surely, considering that Swift had come to Sir William Temple a very few years before for £20 a year and his board, this offer, with the alternative of remaining longer in his service, and then obtaining preferment in the church, was not illiberal. Whether Temple was angry as Swift avers, or cold as Sheridan assumes, we know not; but he gave Swift no substantial ground of complaint, still less if, as is probable, he gave him the recommendation to Lord Capel which procured him the prebend in the North. Some months after his departure, being about to take orders, Swift applied to Sir William for the necessary testimonial. I entreat your honour will please to send me some certificate of my behaviour during almost three years in your family, wherein I shall stand in need of all your goodness to excuse my many weaknesses and oversights, much more to say any thing to my advantage. The particulars expected of me are what relate to morals and learning, and the reasons for quitting your honour's family; that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill actions. They are all left entirely to your honour's mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself any farther, than for infirmities.' Sir William Temple, who probably thought himself the injured party, received this as a sufficient atonement, and gave a testimonial so prompt and satisfactory that Swift obtained orders within twelve days of his application. Surely nothing in Swift's character makes it improbable that his patron had something to forgive whether of unbecoming behaviour or unreasonable expression of disappointment. It is to the credit of both parties that the breach was not irreparable. Swift took possession of the prebend of Kilroot; found it intolerably dull, and after an absence of about a year, readily accepted an invitation to return to Moor Park, where he remained during the life of the proprietor. From this time there was no acknowledged disagreement between these two eminent persons; and Swift, whose salary and situation in the family had probably been improved, does not appear to have complained that he was not preferred in the church, or indeed to have wished to alter his condition."

"Early in the year 1694-5, being then in the 67th year of his age, Sir William Temple lost his wife, with whom he had lived in great harmony for forty years. We knew enough of Dorothy Osborne in her early intercourse with her future

husband, to lament deeply the want of a more intimate acquaintance with her as Lady Temple. Enough appears in the mention occasionally made of her by Temple, and his correspondents to show that she enjoyed his full confidence. It is one of the advantages which a politician possesses who is honest and firm in his principles, and has no intrigue in his disposition, that he can freely communicate with an intelligent wife, upon matters which are necessarily of the greatest importance to himself, and that he can tell her of his own deeds and thoughts upon public affairs without corrupting her mind or conveying to it misgivings as to his own rectitude. An upright man with a sensible and good wife, has a second conscience, less easy than the other to be cajoled or disregarded. The following notice of Lady Temple is in the additions to Lady Gifford's manuscript: She was a very extraordinary woman, as well as a good wife, of whom nothing more need be said to her advantage, than that she was not only much esteemed by his friends and acquaintances, some of whom were persons of the greatest figure, but valued and distinguished by such good judges of true merit as King William and Queen Mary, with whom she had the bonour to keep a constant correspondence, being justly admired for her fine style and delicate turn of wit and good sense in writing letters; and whom (the Queen) she outlived about a month, the deep affliction for her Majesty's deplorable death having hastened her own.

We do not hear of any intercourse between Temple and the other literary men of his age. Probably his employ ments and residence abroad had connected him almost exclusively with politicians, until so late a period of his life, that now that he had forsworn politics, and devoted himself to his library and his garden-he had no opportunity of diverting the course of his acquaintance. John Evelyn was only a few years older than Temple, and had in common with him a love of books and plants, neutrality in the revolution, and retirement in Surrey; but there was no intimacy, apparently no acquaintance, between these eminent

men.

Had Evelyn, indeed, been at Temple's side when he wrote upon ancient and modern learning, the Fellow of the Royal Society might have taught him to pay greater respect to the discoveries of Newton and Harvey.

"An anecdote without date, and without reference to authority, is related

by Dr. Arbuthnot of the intercourse between Sir William Temple and the Irish president of the Royal Society:--Sir William Temple and the famous Lord Brouncker, being neighbours in the country, had frequently very sharp contentions: like other great men one would not bear an equal, and the other would not admit a superior. My Lord was a great admirer of curiosities, and had a very good collection, which Sir William used to undervalue, on all occasions disparaging every thing of his neighbour's, and giving something of his own the preference.' This by no means pleased his lordship, who took all opportunities of being revenged. One day, as they were discoursing together of their several rarities, my lord very seriously and gravely replied to him, Sir William, so no more of the matter; you must at length yield to me, having lately got something which it is impossible for you to obtain; for my Welsh steward has sent me a flock of geese; and these are what you can never have, since all your geese

are swans.'

"Lord Dartmouth, whose annotations, upon Burnet's History of his Own Times, have lately brought him before the public, appears to have been in his youth familiarly acquainted with Sir William Temple; the only anecdote which he gives us, evinces the freedom with which the old diplomatist conversed with young men, (for Dartmouth was at the time only 26 years old,) as well as his appreciation of republican writers. When Sidney's large book upon government,' says Lord Dartmouth, came out in the reign of King William, Sir William Temple asked me if I had seen it: I told him I had read it all over; he could not help admiring at my patience, but desired to know what I had thought of it: I said it seemed to me wrote with a design to destroy all government. Sir William Temple answered, that it was for want of knowing the author; for there was one passage in it which explained the whole, which was this: If there be any such thing as divine right, it must be where one man is better qualified to govern another than he is to govern himself; such a person seems by God and nature designed to govern the other for his benefit and happiness. Now, I that knew him very well can assure you that he looked upon himself to be that very man so qualified to govern the rest of mankind.'

Temple's personal intercourse with

a

To the memoirs of her brother which Lady Gifford wrote was affixed " character" describing him as he was in 1690, about the 63d year of his age. Some of the most interesting parts of this sketch are now for the first time published. After describing his person and his lively wit and humour in conversation, she adds:

"He never seemed busy in his greatest employments, and was such a lover of liberty, that I remember when he was young, and his fortunes low, to have heard him say he would not be obliged, for five hundred a year, to step over a gutter that was in the street before his door. He hated the servitude of courts; said he could never serve for wages, nor be busy (as one is so often there) to no purpose, and never was willing to enter upon any employment but that of a public minister. He was a great lover of music, seldom without it in his family; fond of pictures and statues, as far as his fortune would reach; sensible extremely to good air and good smells, which gave him so great an aversion to the town that he once passed five years at Sheen without seeing it. The entertainments of his life were the conversation of his friends, and scenes he had made pleasant about him in his garden and house; riding and walking were the exercises he was most pleased with after he had given over tennis; and when he was disabled from these two by the gout, passed much of his time in airing in his coach, that was not spent in his closet.

"He had been a passionate lover, was a kind husband, and a kind and indulgent father, a good master, and the best friend in world and the most constant; and knowing himself to be

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so, was impatient of the least suspicion or jealousy from those he loved; often reflected his own happiness in a wife that was pleased to see him so, and in return was easy to consent to anything she liked. He was ever tied to the memory of those he had once loved and esteemed; wounded to the heart by grief upon the many losses of his children and friends, till recovered by reason and philosophy, and that perfect resignation to Almighty God which he thought so absad occasions of his saying His holy solutely a part of our duty upon these name be praised! His will be done!' he was not without strong aversions, so "With this warmth in his kindness, as to be uneasy at the first sight of some he disliked, and impatient of their conexpostulations, which made him hate the versation; apt to warm in disputes and one and avoid the other, which he used to say might sometimes do well between lovers, but never between friends. He turned his conversation to what was more easy and pleasant, especially at table, where he said ill humour ought never to come, and that those who could not leave it behind for the time, ought to stay away with it.

"He never ate abroad when he could avoid it, and at home of as little as he thought fit for his company, always of the plainest meats, but the best chosen, and commonly dining himself of the first dish, or whatever stood next him; and said he was made for a farmer and not a courtier, and understood being a shepherd and a gardener better than an ambassador. If he was ever inclined to excess, it was in fruits, which by his care and application he was always furnished with the best of from his own garden. He loved the taste of good wines, and those best that were least kind to him, and drank them constantly, though never above three or four glasses: thought life not worth the care many were at to preserve it, and that 'twas not what we ate or drank, but excess in either that was dangerous."

"He naturally loved play, and very deep too, without any application, and by reckoning his losses several years found himself every one of them so considerable a loser he resolved to give it quite up.

He lived healthful till forty-two, then began to be troubled with rheums upon his teeth and eyes, which he attributed to the air of Holland; and which ended when he was forty-seven in the

gout, upon which he grew very melancholy, being then ambassador at the Hague.

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His fortune was never great, but very different at the different parts of his life; he began the world and had several children with but £500 a year, yet had always money by him; after his father's death it encreased to £1400, which was the most he ever had coming in besides the Master of the Rolls' place of Ireland, which King Charles the Second gave him the reversion of after his father, who kept it during his life. And the presents made him in his several embassies were laid out in the purchase and building his three houses, of which that in London was wholly for his wife; and in what he laid out considered nothing of show, no more than in anything else but what he thought fittest for his family, and most convenient to that and himself. Nothing was ever spared, so that those who knew him little thought him rich; to whom he used to answer pleasantly, that he wanted nothing but an estate; and was really so, in having all he cared for, nobody being less expensive upon themselves, wore always the plainest stuffs, and for many years the same colour. But nobody was ever generous to his friends, or more charitable to the poor, in giving often to those who wanted it, except common beggars, who he chose rather to relieve by giving to the parish than be troubled with crowds of at his doors, though with such he was often moved too. I have known him to give three hundred pounds at a time, often one hundred. He always rewarded his servants when they did well, and parted with them when they did not; conversed with the meanest of them; was all the life of his family, that looked as if they had no life when he was out of it, which no man I believe was ever so seldom, from the youngest I ever remember him."

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“He died at Moor Park in the beginning of 1699, as we are informed by this entry in a journal which Swift is said to have kept of his last illness. ⚫ January 27th, 1699 (N. S.) He died at one o'clock this morning, and with him all that was good and amiable among men.' Further particulars of his death we have none, except that a sermon was preached at Farnham on the occasion of his death, by a clergyman of the name of Savage.

Great

"Even Sir William Temple, who appears to have been one of the most honest as well as most enlightened statesmen of his time, could not believe his treachery to be quite so deep as it was in fact, and seems occasionally to have hoped that he was in earnest in his professed intentions of following the wise and just system that was recommended to him. instances of credulity and blindness in wise men are often liable to the suspicion of being pretended, for the purpose of justifying the continuing in situations of power and employment longer than strict honour would allow. But to Temple's sincerity his subsequent conduct gives abundant testimony. When he had reason to think that he could no longer be useful to his country, he withdrew wholly from public business, and resolutely adhered to the preference of philosophical retirement, which, in his circumstances, was just in spite of every temptation which occurred to bring him back to the more active scene. The remainder of his life he seems to have employed in the most noble contemplations and most elegant amusements; every enjoyment heightened, no doubt, by reflecting on the honorable part he had acted in public affairs, and without any regret on his own account (whatever he might feel for his country) at having been driven from them."

Again :

character is a refutation of the vulgar "Sir William Temple, whose life and notion, that philosophy and practical good sense in business are incompatible attainments."

Nor can we dispense with the evidence of Sir James Mackintosh :

"Sir William Temple was a most admirable person. He seems to be the model of a negotiator, uniting politeness and address to honesty. His merit, as a domestic politician, is also very great: in

infectedwith foreign idioms, is agreeable and interesting. That mixture of vanity which appears in his works is rather a recommendation to them. By means of it we enter into acquaintance with the character of the author, full of honor, and humanity, and fancy that we are engaged, not in the perusal of a book but in conversation with a companion. He adds, that of all the considerable writers of the age of Charles the Second, he was almost the only one who kept himself altogether unpolluted by that inundation of vice and licentiousness which overwhelmed the nation.

IT was when the exultation of the people knew no bounds, at the recovery of what they deemed their constitutional rights, that Mr. Flood first suggested any doubts respecting the completeness of the measures proposed for the entire security of the national independence. They were, therefore, in no temper to listen to him with the patient attention that would be necessary to enable them to do justice to his argument; and he stood, we believe, almost alone when he first suggested any grave doubts respecting the reasonableness of that tumultuary gratitude with which the repeal of the 6th of George the First was regarded. He was looked upon as a querulous and disaffected man, who felt envious of the rich harvest of popularity which Grattan was at that time reaping for his patriotic labours. His long secession from the ranks of opposition caused him to be regarded with suspicion and resentment by many who had formerly been amongst the warmest of his friends; and his

sudden defection from the ranks of government, and decided readoption of a popular line of action, excited, in the highest degree, the ire of the partizans of administration; and the extraordinary measure was had recourse to of striking his name off the list of the privy council, after he had voluntarily surrendered his place. At the present crisis, the ministerial and the opposition parties were united; and each expressed and exhibited towards him a portion of that rancour and bitterness which it was but natural that they should feel; the one, because they conceived his bearing to be seditious and revolutionary; the other, because they conceived him to be ac tuated by an unworthy jealousy of Mr. Grattan, and an equally unworthy ingratitude for British generosity, as well as distrust of British honor.

The Irish are a mercurial and imaginative people; and it is not surprising that the hallucinations of Grattan's splendid eloquence should, at such a season, have exerted a magical influ