the same man, says, "Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake, with my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a salary of 2001. per annum as member of the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in to the Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling the time of day, complained that it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. 'How can I help it,' says the doctor, 'if the courtiers give me a watch that won't go right?' Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English, for which he would have them all subscribe; 'For,' says he, 'he shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.'[1] Lord Treasurer, after
- ↑ "Swift must be allowed," says Dr. Johnson, "for a time, to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation."
A conversation on the Dean's pamphlets excited one of the Doctor's liveliest sallies. "One, in particular, praised his 'Conduct of the Allies.'—Johnson: 'Sir, his 'Conduct of the Allies' is a performance of very little ability. . . . . . . Why, sir, Tom Davies might have written the 'Conduct of the Allies!'"—Boswell's Life of Johnson.
