who was now the detestion of the Irish rabble, lived to be afterwards the most absolute monarch over them, that ever governed men.  His first step was to reduce to reason and obedience his revd. brethren the the chapter of St. Patrick’s; in which he succeeded so perfectly, and so speedily, that, in a short time after his arrival, not one member in that body offered to contradict him, even in trifles:  on the contrary, they held him in the highest respect and veneration, so that he sat in the Chapter-House, like Jupiter in the Synod of the Gods.

In the beginning of the year 1714 Swift returned to England.  He found his great friends, who sat in the seat of power, much disunited among themselves.  He saw the Queen declining in her health, and distressed in her situation; while faction was exerting itself, and gathering new strength every day.  He exerted the utmost of his skill to unite the ministers, and to cement the apertures of the state:  but he found his pains fruitless, his arguments unavailing, and his endeavours, like the stone of Sisyphus, rolling back upon himself.  He retired to a friend’s house in Berkshire, where he remained ’till the Queen died.  So fatal an event terminated all his views in England, and made him return as fast as possible to his deanery in Ireland, oppressed with grief and discontent.  His hopes in England were now crushed for ever.  As Swift was well known to have been attached to the Queen’s last ministry, he met with several indignities from the populace, and, indeed, was equally abused by persons of all ranks and denominations.  Such a treatment soured his temper, confined his acquaintance, and added bitterness to his stile.

From the year 1714, ’till he appeared in the year 1720 a champion for Ireland, against Wood’s halfpence, his spirit of politics and patriotism was kept almost closely confined within his own breast.  Idleness and trifles engrossed too many of his leisure hours; fools and sycophants too much of his conversation.  His attendance upon the public service of the church was regular and uninterrupted; and indeed regularity was peculiar to all his actions, even in the meerest trifles.  His hours of walking and reading never varied.  His motions were guided by his watch, which was so constantly held in his hand, or placed before him on the table, that he seldom deviated many minutes in the revolution of his exercises and employments.  In the year 1720 he began to re-assume, in some degree, the character of a political writer.  A small pamphlet in defence of the Irish Manufactures was his first essay in Ireland in that kind of writing, and to that pamphlet he owed the turn of the popular tide in his favour.  It was entitled, A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture in Clothes and Furniture of Houses, &c. utterly rejecting and renouncing every thing wearable that comes from England.  This proposal immediately raised a very violent flame.  The Printer was prosecuted, and the prosecution had