In the year 1699, sir William Temple died, leaving Swift a legacy, and the care, trust, and advantage, of publishing his posthumous writings. As he had also obtained a promise from king William, that he would give Swift a prebend either of Canterbury or Westminster, he thought he had made a sufficient return for all his merits toward him, and that he left him in the high road to preferment[1].
Before we accompany Swift into the world, let us review the manner of his passing his life, from the time that we stopped to survey him on his way to Leicester, when, forlorn and hopeless as his condition was, the unseen hand of Providence was guiding him to the means of all his future greatness, in placing him under the hospitable roof of sir William Temple. However bounteous nature had been, in bestowing on Swift extraordinary talents, yet were they of such a kind, as required much time and application to bring them to perfection, and fit them to answer their destined ends. He had missed the usual season of cultivating those talents, but at the same time he had escaped the danger of their being perverted and misapplied. His mind had not been straitlaced into that fashionable shape which seemed most beautiful to the eyes of pedantry, but was suffered to reach its full growth according to the course of nature. Thus did it attain an unusual size, vigour, and ease. He did not enter seriously
- ↑ Such was the love and attention which Swift showed to this great man, that in his last illness he kept a daily register of the variations which appeared in his constitution, from July 1, 1698, to the 27th of January following, when he concludes with this note, "he died at one o'clock in the morning, and with him all that was great and good among men."
