THE

BLUNDERS, DEFICIENCIES, DISTRESSES,

AND MISFORTUNES OF QUILCA.

PROPOSED TO CONTAIN ONE AND TWENTY VOLUMES IN QUARTO

Begun April 20, 1724.  To be continued Weekly, if due Encouragement be given.

     NOTE.

Swift’s friends in Ireland were not many.  He had no high opinion of the people with whom he was compelled to live.  But among those who displeased him least, to use the phrase he employed in writing to Pope, was a kindly and warm-hearted scholar named Sheridan.  Sheridan must have taken Swift’s fancy, since they spent much time together and wrote each other verses and nonsense rhymes.  He had failed in his attempt to keep up a school in Dublin, and refused the headmastership of the school of Armagh which Lord Primate Lindsay had offered him, through Swift’s efforts.  Swift however obtained for him, from Carteret, one of the chaplaincies of the Lord-Lieutenant and a small living near Cork.  Unfortunately Sheridan was struck off from the list of chaplains on the information of one Richard Tighe who reported that Sheridan, on the anniversary of the accession of the House of Hanover, had preached from the text “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”  Poor Sheridan had been totally unconscious of committing any indiscretion, but he could not deny the fact.

It was at Quilca, a small county village, near Kells, that Sheridan was accustomed to spend his vacations with his family at a small house he owned there.  Swift used often to use this house, at Sheridan’s desire, and spent many days there in quiet enjoyment with Mrs. Dingley and Esther Johnson.  The place and his life there he has attempted to describe in the following piece; but the description may also stand, as Scott observes, as “no bad supplement to Swift’s account of Ireland.”

* * * * *

     The text here given is based on that printed in the eighth volume
     of the Edinburgh edition of 1761.

     [T.  S.]

THE

BLUNDERS, DEFICIENCIES, DISTRESSES,

AND MISFORTUNES OF QUILCA.[45]

But one lock and a half in the whole house.

The key of the garden door lost.

The empty bottles all uncleanable.

The vessels for drink few and leaky.

The new house all going to ruin before it is finished.

One hinge of the street door broke off, and the people forced to go out and come in at the back-door.

The door of the Dean’s bed-chamber full of large chinks.

The beaufet letting in so much wind that it almost blows out the candles.

The Dean’s bed threatening every night to fall under him.

The little table loose and broken in the joints.