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ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.
(next to the health and prosperity of your Honour and family) is that Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgments at your feet. I beg my most humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your Honour's lady and sister."—Can prostration fall deeper? could a slave bow lower?[1]
Twenty years afterwards Bishop Kennet, describing
- ↑ "He continued in Sir William Temple's house till the death of that great man,"—Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, by the Dean.
"It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to himself."—Preface to Temple's Works.
On all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. But the reader will better understand how acutely he remembered the indignities he suffered in his household, from the subjoined extracts from the Journal to Stella:—
"I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d ailed him on Sunday; I made him a very proper speech; told him I observed he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be glad to see he was in better; and one thing I warned him of—never to appear cold to me, for I would not be treated like a schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my life already" (meaning Sir William Temple), &c. &c.—Journal to Stella.
"I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple because he might have been sccretary of state at fifty; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment."—Ibid.
"The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of State,"—Ibid.
"Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple."—Ibid.
"I thought I saw Jack Temple [nephew to Sir William,] and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach; but I took no notice of them, I am glad I have wholly shaken off that family."—S. to S., Sept. 1710.
