"They will bear to be considered as the sun, in which the brightness will hide the blemishes; and whenever petulant ignorance, pride, malice, malignity, or envy, interposes to cloud or sully his fame, I take upon me to pronounce, that the eclipse will not last long. "To conclude--No man ever deserved better of any country, than Swift did of his; a steady, persevering, inflexible friend; a wise, a watchful, and a faithful counsellor, under many severe trials and bitter persecutions, to the manifest hazard both of his liberty and fortune. "He lived a blessing, he died a benefactor, and his name will ever live an honour to Ireland." * * * * * In the poetical works of Dr. Swift, there is not much upon which the critick can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style, they consist of "proper words in proper places." To divide this collection into classes, and show how some pieces are gross, and some are trifling, would be to tell the reader what he knows already, and to find faults of which the author could not be ignorant, who certainly wrote often not to his judgment, but his humour. It was said, in a preface to one of the Irish editions, that Swift had never been known to take a single thought from any writer, ancient or modern. This is not literally true; but, perhaps, no writer can easily be found that has borrowed so little, or that, in all his excellencies and all his defects, has so well maintained his claim to be considered as original. ----- [Footnote 92: Mr. Sheridan, in his Life of Swift, observes, that this account was really written by the dean, and now exists in his own handwriting in the library of Dublin college. R.] [Footnote 93: Spence's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 273.] [Footnote 94: The words _speciali gratia_, or _per specialem gratium_, were used in the record of his degree in the college of Dublin; but were never entered in any _testimonium_, which merely states the fact of a degree having been taken, and, therefore, the account that they were omitted as a favour to Swift is incorrect.] [Footnote 95: The affecting and amiable circumstances attending this resignation are not mentioned by Johnson, but may be seen in Sheridan's Life of Swift, p. 21, 22.] [Footnote 96: The publisher of this collection was John Dunton. R.]