2 8 never be reconciled to; 1 though it is easily observed that nations, which have most gallantry to the young, are ever the severest upon the old. I have not leisure to descant further upon your pleasing letter, nor anything to return you from so barren a scene as this, which I shall leave in four days toward my journey for Ireland. I had designed a letter to my cousin Willoughby; $ and the last favour he has done me requires a great deal of acknowledgment. But the thought of my sending so many before has made me believe it enough to trust you with delivering my best thanks to him. My mother desires her best love to him and to you, with both our services to my cousin his wife. I forgot to tell you I left Sir William Temple a month ago, just as I foretold it to you; and everything happened thereupon exactly as I guessed. He was extremely angry I left him; and yet would not oblige himself any farther than upon my good behaviour, nor would promise anything firmly to me at all, so that everybody judged I did best to leave him. I design to be ordained in September next, and make what endeavours I can for something in the Church. I wish it may ever lie in my cousin's way or yours to have interest to bring me in Chaplain of the Factory [at Lisbon]. If anything offers from Dublin, that may serve either to satisfy or divert you, I will not fail of contributing, and giving you constant intelligence from thence of whatever you shall desire.—I am your affectionate cousin and servant. 1 Whether she were Jew, Protestant, or Witch does not appear-or, whether the burning happened in an Auto-da-fé, such as that so admirably described in the Ingoldsby Legends: the "receipt for a Prince of the Asturias" prescribed by the Archbishop, which, however, as is well known, resulted in the production of two Infantas, in place of one Infante. 2 Swift cannot have studied very attentively either the History of the Holy Office or the Annals of Diabolism and Witchcraft. Otherwise, he would have found that young as well as old women have been very numerous victims. A very considerable merchant at Lisbon.-D. S. HIGH HEELS AND LOW HEELS. 77 TO THE REV. DR. TISDALL.1 London, Dec. 16, 1703. I put great violence on myself in abstaining all this while from treating you with politics. I wish you had been here for ten days, during the highest and warmest reign of party and faction that I ever knew or read of, upon the Bill against Occasional Conformity; which, two days ago, was upon the first reading rejected by the Lords. 2 It was so universal, that I observed the dogs in the streets much more contumelious and quarrelsome than usual; and, the very night before the Bill went up, a committee of Whig and Tory cats had a very warm and loud debate upon the roof of our house. 3 But why should we wonder at that, when the very ladies are split asunder into High-Church and Low, and, out of zeal for religion, have hardly time to say their prayers. . . For the rest, the whole body of the Clergy, with a great majority of the House of Commons, were violent for this Bill. As great a majority of the Lords, among whom all the Bishops but four, were against it: the Court and the Rabble (as extremes often agree) were trimmers. I would be glad to know men's thoughts. of it in Ireland. For myself, I am much at a loss, though I was 1 An Irish Church dignitary (and a friend of Swift), a suitor of Esther Johnson's. This letter was written when Swift was unwilling to have the appearance of discountenancing addresses, which we cannot suppose him desirous should succeed. In a subsequent letter to the same person we shall find him vindicating himself from a charge of dissimulation in this particular.-S. The Bill against Occasional Conformity, a favourite measure with the Tories, as tending to enforce the Test Act against even those dissenters who were willing, occasionally, to take the sacrament according to the ritual of the Church, was revived with great keenness in 1703, and carried in the Houso of Commons, but thrown out by the Lords. The debates on both sides were conducted with great spirit and ability.-S. Or, in the language of the Liiliputian ladies and churchmen, High-Heels and Low-Heels. I mightily urged by some great people to publish my opinion. cannot but think (if men's highest assurances are to be believed), that several, who were against this Bill, do love the Church and do hate and despise Presbytery. I put it close to my Lord Peterborough, just as the Bill was going up, who assured me, in the most solemn manner, that if he had the least suspicion the rejecting this Bill would hurt the Church, or do kindness to the Dissenters, he would lose his right hand rather than speak against it. The like profession I had from the Bishop of Salisbury,1 my Lord Somers, and some others: so that I know not what to think, and, therefore, shall think no more—and you will forgive my saying so much on a matter that all our heads have been so full of, to a degree that, while it was on the anvil, nothing else was the subject of conversation. I shall return in two months, in spite of my heart. I have here the best friends in nature-only want that little circumstance of favour and power. But nothing is so civil as a cast courtier. You may add, governed by her friends there Pray, let the ladies 2 know I had their letter, and will answer it soon, and that I obeyed Mrs. Johnson's commands, and waited on her mother and other friend. that they advise her clearly to be about the renewing her lease, and she may have her mortgage taken up here whenever she pleases, for the payment of her fine; and that we have a project for putting out her money in a certain lady's hands for annuities, if the Parliament goes on with them, and she likes it. I'll teach you a way to outwit Mrs. Johnson. It is a newfashioned way of being witty, and they call it a bite. You must ask a bantering question, or tell some damned lie in a 1 The celebrated Gilbert Burnet. He headed the small majority of bishops who voted against the bill.-S. 2 Miss Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, who were now in Ireland. In Swift's day unmarried as well as married women had the prefix Mrs.-Miss, at that time, bore an uncomplimentary meaning. DR. TISDALL'S INDISCRETION. 79 serious manner, and then she will answer or speak as if you were in earnest, and then cry you, "Madam, there's a bite." I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the constant amusement in Court, and everywhere else among the great people; and I let you know it, in order to have it obtain among you, and teach you a new refinement. TO THE REV. DR. TISDALL. London, Feb. 3, 1703-4. I am content you should judge the order of friendship you are in with me by my writing to you; and, accordingly, you will find yourself the first after the ladies;1 for I never write to any other, either friend or relation, till long after. I cannot imagine what paragraph you mean in my former, that was calculated for the Lord Primate, or how you could shew it him 2 without being afraid he might expect to see the rest. 3 But I will take better methods another time, and you shall never, while you live, receive a syllable from me fit to be shewn to a Lord Primate, unless it be yourself. Montaigne was angry to see his Essays lie in the parlour window, and therefore wrote a chapter that forced the ladies to keep it in their closets. After some such manner I shall henceforth use you in my letters, by making them fit to be seen by none but yourself. 1 Miss Johnson and Mrs. Dingley. Dr. Narcissus Marsh-S. 3 Tisdall probably alluded to the passage in Swift's letter, which mentioned the professions made by Lord Peterborough, the Bishop of Salisbury, Lord Somers, and others, of their zeal for the Church; and he might think the lightest part of the letter too jocular for the Primate's eye, the subject considered-S. I am extremely concerned to find myself unable to persuade you into a true opinion of your own littleness, nor make you treat me with more distance and respect; and the rather, because I find all your little pretensions are owing to the credit you pretend with two ladies who came from England. I allow, indeed, the chambers in William Street1 to be Little England by their influence; as an Ambassador's house, wherever it is, hath all the privileges of his master's dominions; and, therefore, if you wrote the letter in their room, or their company (for in this matter their room is as good as their company), I will indulge you a little. Then for the Irish legs you reproach me with, I defy you. I had one, indeed, when I left your island; but that which made it Irish is spent and evaporated, and I look upon myself now as upon a new foot. You seem to talk with great security of your establishment near the ladies; though, perhaps, if you knew what they say of you in their letters to me, you would change your opinion both of them and yourself. A bite-and now you talk of a bite, I am ashamed of the ladies being caught by you, when I had betrayed you, and given them warning. I had heard before of the choking, but never of the jest in Church. You may find from thence that women's prayers are things perfectly by rote, as they put on one stocking after another, and no more.-But if she be good at blunders, she is as ready at come-offs; and to pretend her senses were gone was a very good argument she had them about her. You seem to be mighty proud (as you have reason, if it be true) of the part you have in the ladies' good graces-especially of her you call the party. I am very much concerned to know it: but, since it is an evil I cannot remedy, I will tell you a story. A cast mistress went to her rival, and expostulated with her for robbing her of her lover. After a long quarrel, finding no good to be done-" Well," says 1 The street, in Dublin, in which the two ladies lived while in the Irish capital. |