a pause, for any
other speaker. Of time, on all occasions, he was an exact computer, and
knew the minutes required to every common operation.

It may be justly supposed that there was in his conversation, what
appears so frequently in his letters, an affectation of familiarity with
the great, an ambition of momentary equality sought and enjoyed by the
neglect of those ceremonies which custom has established as the barriers
between one order of society and another. This transgression of
regularity was, by himself and his admirers, termed greatness of soul.
But a great mind disdains to hold any thing by courtesy, and, therefore,
never usurps what a lawful claimant may take away. He that encroaches on
another's dignity, puts himself in his power; he is either repelled with
helpless indignity, or endured by clemency and condescension.

Of Swift's general habits of thinking, if his letters can be supposed to
afford any evidence, he was not a man to be either loved or envied. He
seems to have wasted life in discontent, by the rage of neglected pride,
and the languishment of unsatisfied desire. He is querulous and
fastidious, arrogant and malignant; he scarcely speaks of himself but
with indignant lamentations, or of others but with insolent superiority
when he is gay, and with angry contempt when he is gloomy. From the
letters that pass between him and Pope it might be inferred that they,
with Arbuthnot and Gay, had engrossed all the understanding and virtue
of mankind; that their merits filled the world; or that there was no
hope of more. They show the age involved in darkness, and shade the
picture with sullen emulation.

When the queen's death drove him into Ireland, he might be allowed to
regret, for a time, the interception of his views, the extinction of his
hopes, and his ejection from gay scenes, important employment, and
splendid friendships; but when time had enabled reason to prevail over
vexation, the complaints which at first were natural, became ridiculous,
because they were useless. But querulousness was now grown habitual, and
he cried out when he probably had ceased to feel. His reiterated
wailings persuaded Bolingbroke that he was really willing to quit his
deanery for an English parish; and Bolingbroke procured an exchange,
which was rejected; and Swift still retained the pleasure of
complaining.

The greatest difficulty that occurs, in analyzing his character, is to
discover by what depravity of intell