reading this passage, and exclaiming, "What, alone! No, while I exist, my friend shall not go alone into Herefordshire."
This conduct was the more noble in Swift, as during the whole course of their intimacy, he never received one personal favour from the minister, though treated with the most unreserved kindness by the man. Nay, whether it were owing to his procrastinating temper, or, as Swift calls it in another place, his unmeasurable publick thrift, he had neglected to procure for him an order for a thousand pound on the treasury, to pay the debt contracted by him upon his introduction to the deanery, which was all the reward Swift ever asked for his services[1]. And there is reason to believe, from a passage in a letter of Dr. Arbuthnot to him, dated July 14, that Swift was distressed for money at that time, on account of that neglect. The passage is this, "Do not think I make you a bare compliment in what I am going to say, for I can assure you I am in earnest. I am in hopes to have two hundred pounds before I go out of town, and you may command all, or any part of it you please, as long as you have occasion for it." And in the same
- ↑ Nothing can show more the strong desire which lord Bolingbroke had to attach Swift to his interest upon his getting into power, than his taking care, during his short ministry of three days only, to have an order signed by the queen on the treasury, to pay that sum to Swift, though by her sudden death he reaped no advantage from it. It appears, that Swift had this order in his possession when he visited London in the year 1726; for he says, in a letter to Dr. Sheridan, "Tell the archdeacon that I never asked for my thousand pounds, which he hears I have got, though I mentioned it to the princess the last time I saw her; but I bid her tell Walpole, I scorned to ask him for it."
