Without regarding private ends,
Spent all his credit for his friends:
And only chose the wise and good;
No flatterers; no allies in blood:
But succour'd virtue in distress,
And seldom fail'd of good success;
As numbers in their hearts must own,
Who, but for him, had been unknown[1].
"With princes kept a due decorum;
But never stood in awe before 'em.
He followed David's lesson just;
In princes never put thy trust:
And, would you make him truly sour,
Provoke him with a slave in power.
The Irish senate if you nam'd,
With what impatience he declaim'd!
Fair Liberty was all his cry;
For her he stood prepar'd to die;
For her he boldly stood alone;
For her he oft' exposed his own.
Two kingdoms[2], just as faction led,
Had set a price upon his head;
- ↑ Dr. Delany, in the close of his eighth letter, after having enumerated the friends with whom the dean lived in the greatest intimacy, very handsomely applies this passage to himself.
- ↑ In 1713, the queen was prevailed with, by an address from the house of lords in England, to publish a proclamation, promising three hundred pounds to discover the author of a pamphlet, called, "The Publick Spirit of the Whigs;" and in Ireland, in the year 1724, lord Carteret, at his first coming into the government, was prevailed on to issue a proclamation for promising the like reward of three hundred pounds to any person who would discover the author of a pamphlet called "The Drapier's Fourth Letter, &c." written against that destructive project of coining halfpence for Ireland; but in neither kingdom was the dean discovered.
