At the time of his introduction to HARLEY, SWIFT’S immediate business in London consisted in soliciting from the Government a remission of first-fruits to the clergy of Ireland. His nominal colleagues in that trust were the Bishops of Ossory and Killaloe, but the whole weight of the negotiations rested upon SWIFT’S shoulders. His treatment of it soon displayed his parts. The Minister saw that he was both able and willing to render efficient political service. To the intercourse so begun we owe a life-like portraiture of HARLEY, under all his aspects, and in every mood of mind. Nor is the depicter himself anywhere seen under stronger light than in those passages of his journal which narrate, from day to day, the rise and fall of the Government founded on the unstable alliance between HARLEY and ST. JOHN. Of their first interview SWIFT notes:—‘I was brought privately to Mr. HARLEY, who received me with the greatest respect and kindness imaginable.’ Of the second:—‘We were two hours alone.... He read a memorial I had drawn up, and put it into his pocket to show the Queen; told me the measures he would take, ... told me he must bring Mr. ST. JOHN and me acquainted; and spoke so many things of personal kindness and esteem for me, that I am inclined half to believe what some friends have told me, that he would do everything to bring me over.’ [Sidenote: _Journal to Stella_; in Works, 2nd Edit., vol. ii, pp. 33; 37; 80.] When the promised interview with Secretary ST. JOHN comes to be diarized in its turn:—‘He told me,’ says SWIFT, ‘among other things, that Mr. HARLEY complained he could keep nothing from me, I had the way so much of getting into him.’ I knew that was a refinement.... It is hard to see these great men using me like one who was their betters, and the puppies with you in Ireland hardly regarding me.’ Not many weeks had passed before SWIFT’S pen was at work in defence of the measures of the Government with an energy, a practical and versatile ability, of which, up to that date, there had been scarcely an example, brilliant as was the roll of contemporary writers who had taken sides in the political strife. SWIFT’S defects, as well as his merits, armed him for his task. Nor had he been long engaged upon it before he marked, very distinctly, the character both of the rewards to which he aspired, and of the personal independence which he was determined to maintain, in his own fashion.