of
regularity was by himself and his admirers termed greatness of soul. But
a great mind disdains to hold anything 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 passed 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 analysing his character, is to
discover by what depravity of intellect he took delight in revolving
ideas, from which almost every other mind shrinks with disgust. The
ideas of pleasure, even when criminal, may solicit the imagination; but
what has disease, deformity, and filth, upon which the thoughts can be
allured to dwell? Delany is willing to think that Swift's mind was not
much tainted with this gross corruption before his long visit to
Pope. He does not consider how he degrades his hero, by making him at
fifty-nine the pupil of turpitude, and liable