nted he can hardly
complain. It is easy to perceive, from every page, that though ambition
pressed Swift into a life of bustle, the wish for a life of ease was
always returning. He went to take possession of his deanery as soon as
he had obtained it; but he was not suffered to stay in Ireland more than
a fortnight before he was recalled to England, that he might reconcile
Lord Oxford and Lord Bolingbroke, who began to look on one another with
malevolence, which every day increased, and which Bolingbroke appeared
to retain in his last years.

Swift contrived an interview, from which they both departed
discontented; he procured a second, which only convinced him that the
feud was irreconcilable; he told them his opinion, that all was lost.
This denunciation was contradicted by Oxford; but Bolingbroke whispered
that he was right. Before this violent dissension had shattered the
Ministry, Swift had published, in the beginning of the year (1714), "The
Public Spirit of the Whigs," in answer to "The Crisis," a pamphlet for
which Steele was expelled from the House of Commons. Swift was now
so far alienated from Steele, as to think him no longer entitled to
decency, and therefore treats him sometimes with contempt, and sometimes
with abhorrence. In this pamphlet the Scotch were mentioned in terms so
provoking to that irritable nation, that resolving "not to be offended
with impunity," the Scotch lords in a body demanded an audience of the
queen, and solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which
three hundred pounds were offered for the discovery of the author. From
this storm he was, as he relates, "secured by a sleight;" of what kind,
or by whose prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his
reputation, that the Scottish nation "applied again that he would
be their friend." He was become so formidable to the Whigs, that
his familiarity with the Ministers was clamoured at in Parliament,
particularly by two men, afterwards of great note, Aislabie and Walpole.
But, by the disunion of his great friends, his importance and designs
were now at an end; and seeing his services at last useless, he retired
about June (1714) into Berkshire, where, in the house of a friend, he
wrote what was then suppressed, but has since appeared under the title
of "Free Thoughts on the present State of Affairs." While he was waiting
in this retirement for events which time or chance might bring to pass,
the death of the Queen broke