The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. — Volume 03: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church — Volume 1Swift, Jonathan
Religion
The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. — Volume 03: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church — Volume 1
Swift, Jonathan
Christianity; Church of England; Clergy; Religion
Eugenio set out from the same university, and about the same time with
Corusodes; he had the reputation of an arch lad at school, and was
unfortunately possessed with a talent for poetry; on which account he
received many chiding letters from his father, and grave advice from his
tutor. He did not neglect his college learning, but his chief study was
the authors of antiquity, with a perfect knowledge in the Greek and
Roman tongues. He could never procure himself to be chosen fellow: For
it was objected against him, that he had written verses, and
particularly some wherein he glanced at a certain reverend doctor famous
for dulness: That he been seen bowing to ladies, as he met them in the
streets; and it was proved, that once he had been found dancing in a
private family, with half a dozen of both sexes.
He was the younger son to a gentleman of good birth, but small estate;
and his father dying, he was driven to London to seek his fortune: He
got into orders, and became reader in a parish church at twenty pounds
a-year; was carried by an Oxford friend to Will's coffee-house,
frequented in those days by men of wit, where in some time he had the
bad luck to be distinguished. His scanty salary compelled him to run
deep in debt for a new gown and cassock, and now and then forced him to
write some paper of wit or humour, or preach a sermon for ten shillings,
to supply his necessities. He was a thousand times recommended by his
poetical friends to great persons, as a young man of excellent parts who
deserved encouragement, and received a thousand promises; but his
modesty, and a generous spirit, which disdained the slavery of continual
application and attendance, always disappointed him, making room for
vigilant dunces, who were sure to be never out of sight.
He had an excellent faculty in preaching, if he were not sometimes a
little too refined, and apt to trust too much to his own way of thinking
and reasoning.
When, upon the vacancy of a preferment, he was hardly drawn to attend
upon some promising lord, he received the usual answer, "That he came
too late, for it had been given to another the very day before." And he
had only this comfort left, that everybody said, "It was a thousand
pities something could not be done for poor Mr. Eugenio."
The remainder of his story will be dispatched in a few words: Wearied
with weak hopes, and weaker pursuits, he accepted a curacy in
Derbyshire, of thirty pounds a-year, and when he was five-and-forty, had
the great felicity to be preferred by a friend of his father's to a
vicarage worth annually sixty pounds, in the most desert parts of
Lincolnshire; where, his spirit quite sunk with those reflections that
solitude and disappointments bring, he married a farmer's widow, and is
still alive, utterly undistinguished and forgotten; only some of the
neighbours have accidentally heard, that he had been a notable man in
his youth.
***** ***** ***** *****
CONCERNING THAT
UNIVERSAL HATRED,
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