Mrs. Pilkington has represented him as a tyrant in his family, and has discovered in him a violent propension to be absolute in every company where he was.  This disposition, no doubt, made him more feared than loved; but as he had the most unbounded vanity to gratify, he was pleased with the servility and awe with which inferiors approached him.  He may be resembled to an eastern monarch, who takes delight in surveying his slaves, trembling at his approach, and kneeling with reverence at his feet.

Had Swift been born to regal honours, he would doubtless have bent the necks of his people to the yoke:  As a subject, he was restless and turbulent; and though as lord Orrery says, he was above corruption, yet that virtue was certainly founded on his pride, which disdained every measure, and spurned every effort in which he himself was not the principal.

He was certainly charitable, though it had an unlucky mixture of ostentation in it.  One particular act of his charity (not mentioned, except by Mrs. Pilkington, in any account of him yet published) is well worthy of remembrance, praise, and imitation:—­He appropriated the sum of five-hundred pounds intirely to the use of poor tradesmen and handicraftsmen, whose honesty and industry, he thought merited assistance, and encouragement:  This he lent to them in small loans, as their exigencies required, without any interest; and they repaid him at so much per week, or month, as their different circumstances best enabled them.—­To the wealthy let us say—­

  “Abi tu et fac similiter.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Lord Orrery, page 6.

[2] The authors of the Monthly Review have justly remarked, that this
    observation of his lordship’s seems premature.

The same public rumour, say they, that made HER Sir William Temple’s daughter, made HIM also Sir William’s son:  Therefore he (Swift) could never with decency, have acknowledged Mrs. Johnson as his wife, while that rumour continued to retain any degree of credit; and if there had been really no foundation for it, surely it might have been no very hard task to obviate its force, by producing the necessary proofs and circumstances of his birth:  Yet, we do not find that ever this was done, either by the Dean or his relations.

[3] We are assured, there was one while a misunderstanding subsisting
    between Swift and Pope:  But that worthy gentleman, the late general
    Dormer (who had a great regard for both) reconciled them, e’er it
    came to an open rupture:—­Though the world might be deprived by the
    general’s mediation of great matter of entertainment, which the
    whetted wit of two such men might have afforded; yet his
    good-nature, and sincere friendship, deserves to be remember’d with
    honour.—­This gentleman Mr. Cibber senior was very intimate with,
    and once hinted to him, ’He