Swift's importunities with his friends, and of his somewhat arrogant and supercilious demeanour when he was high in court favour. The picture is evidently drawn from the life, though by no very friendly hand. Under the date of November, 1713, Kennet enters in his Diary:

Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house, and had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the ante-chamber to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as a Master of Requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a chaplain's place established in the garrison of Hull for a clergyman in that neighbourhood, who had been lately in jail, and published sermons to pay fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake with my Lord Treasurer that, according to his petition, he should obtain a salary of 2007. per annum as minister of the English church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with a red bag to the Queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to him from the Lord Treasurer. He talked to the son of Dr. Davenant, to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book and wrote down several things as memoranda for him to do. He turned to the fire and took out his gold watch, and telling him the time of day, complained it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. "How can I help it," said the Doctor, "if the courtiers give me a watch that wont go right?" Then he instructed a young nobleman that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope, a Papist, who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them all subscribe; for," says he, "the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him." Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the room beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him. Both went off just before prayers.

POPE'S FIRST LETTER TO SWIFT.

Pope's correspondence with Swift commenced at the close of 1713, and was continued without interruption for twentysix years. Pope was then twenty-five, Swift forty-six. One was barely struggling into the notice of the great; the other had by his talents, and his unscrupulous use of them in political warfare, placed himself in a position to dictate to the proudest peers, and almost solely to pull down one government, and set up another. Pope, however, evinced his sagacity and penetration in his first letter to Swift. He saw how completely his friend had sunk the divine in the wit, how keenly he relished a stroke of satire at the superior clergy and great politicians, and how accessible he was to that deferential style of flattery which seemed equally to elevate Swift's character, talents, and influence. In this letter Pope replies to Swift's proposal of giving him twenty guineas to change

his religion; after making propositions for the salvation of certain souls, Pope adds:

"There is but one more whose salvation I insist upon, and then I have done. But indeed it may prove of so much greater charge than all the rest, that I will only lay the case before you and the ministry, and leave to their prudence and generosity what sum they think fit to bestow upon it.

If

"The person I mean is Dr. Swift, a dignified clergyman, but one who by his own confession has composed more libels than sermons. it be true, what I have heard often affirmed by innocent people, that too much wit is dangerous to salvation, this unfortunate gentleman must certainly be damned to all eternity. But I hope his long experience in the world, and frequent conversation with great men, will cause him (as it has some others) to have less and less wit every day. Be it as it will, I should not think my own soul deserved to be saved, if I did not endeavour to save his; for I have all the obligations in nature to him. He has brought me into better company than I cared for, made me merrier when I was sick than I had a mind to be, and put me upon making poems, on purpose that he might alter them, &c.

"I once thought I could never have discharged my debt to his kindness; but have lately been informed, to my unspeakable comfort, that I have more than paid it all. For Mons. de Montagne has assured me 'that the person who receives a benefit obliges the giver:' for since the chief endeavour of one friend is to do good to the other, he who administers both the matter and the occasion, is the man who is liberal. At this rate it is impossible Dr. Swift should ever be out of my debt, as matters stand already. And for the future, he may expect daily more obligations from

"His most faithful, affectionate, humble servant,
"A. POPE."

SWIFT AT HIS CLUBS AND COFFEE-HOUSES.

Soon after Queen Anne's accession, Swift, in one of his frequent excursions to London, formed that invaluable acquaintance with Addison, which party-spirit afterwards cooled, though it could not extinguish; with Steele, with Arbuthnot, and with the other wits of the age, who used to assemble at Button's coffee-house.*

* Button's coffee-house, "over against Tom's, on the south side of Russell-street, Covent Garden," was established in 1712, and thither Addison transferred the company from Tom's. In July, 1713, a Lion's Head, “a proper emblem of knowledge and action, being all head and paws," was set up at Button's, in imitation of the celebrated Lion at Venice, to receive letters and papers for the Guardian. Here the wits of that time used to assemble; and among them, Addison, Pope, Steele, Swift, Arbuthnot, Count Viviani, Savage, Budgell, Philips, Davenant, and Colonel Brett; and here it was that Philips hung up a birchen rod, with which he threatened to chastise Pope for "a biting epigram." -Curiosities of London.

Pope, in Spence's Anecdotes, has left a little picture of the wits at Button's: "Addison usually studied all the morning, then met his party at Button's; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year," (probably 1713,) "but found it too much for me; it hurt my health, and so I quitted it."

Of the commencement of Swift's club intercourse, Sheridan has given this characteristic sketch:

The knot of wits used at this time to assemble at Button's coffee-house; and I had a singular account of Swift's first appearance there from Ambrose Philips, who was one of Mr. Addison's little senate. He said that they had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman come into the coffee house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any of those who frequented it; and whose custom it was to lay his hat down on a table, and walk backward and forward at a good pace for half an hour or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seeming in the least to attend to anything that was going forward there. He then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away without opening his lips. After having observed this singular behaviour for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses; and the name that he went by among them was that of "the mad parson." This made them more than usually attentive to his motions; and one evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be just come out of the country, and at last advanced toward him as intending to address him. They were all eager to hear what this dumb mad parson had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, "Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the world?" The country gentleman, after staring a little at the singularity of his manner, and the oddity of the question, answered, "Yes, sir, I thank God, I remember a great deal of good weather in my time." "That is more," said Swift, "than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot, or too cold; too wet or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all very well." Upon saying this, he took up his hat, and without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least notice of any one, walked out of the coffee-house; leaving all those who had been spectators of this odd scene staring after him, and still more confirmed in the opinion of his being mad.-Life of Swift.

Sir Walter Scott gives, upon the authority of Dr. Wall, of Worcester, who had it from Dr. Arbuthnot himself, the following anecdote-less coarse than the version generally told: Swift was seated by the fire at Button's; there was sand on the floor of the coffee-house; and, Arbuthnot, with a design to play upon this original figure, offered him a letter which he had been just addressing, saying, at the same time,

"There -sand that."-"I have got no sand," answered Swift," but I can help you to a little gravel." This he said so significantly, that Arbuthnot hastily snatched back his letter, to save it from the fate of the capital of Lilliput.

The St. James's, the Whig coffee-house, was near to if not upon the site of the present No. 87, St. James's-street: here Swift's letters were addressed, and those from Stella were inclosed under cover to Addison. Elliot, who kept the house, was on occasions, placed on a friendly footing with his distinguished guests. In Swift's Journal to Stella, Nov. 19, 1710, we find: "This evening I christened our coffee-man, Elliot's child; when the rogue had a most noble supper, and Steele and I sat amongst some scurvy company over a bowl of punch." At the St. James's foreign and domestic news was to be had.-(Tatler.) Here was preserved a letter of Stella's, in his Journal to whom Swift says: I met Mr. Harley, and he asked me how long I had learned the trick of writing to myself? He had seen your letter through the glass-case at the coffee-house, and would swear it was my hand." He also tells Stella that in removing from the St. James's to Button's, he had altered for the better.

The old Saturday Club was another of Swift's resorts. He tells Stella, in 1711, there were "Lord-Keeper, Lord Rivers, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Harley, and I.” Of the same Club he writes in 1713:

I dined with Lord Treasurer, and shall again to-morrow, which is his day, when all the ministers dine with him. He calls it whipping day. It is always on Saturday; and we do, indeed, usually rally him about his faults on that day. I was of the original club, when only poor Lord Rivers, Lord-Keeper, and Lord Bolingbroke came; but now Ormond, Anglesey, Lord Steward, Dartmouth, and other rabble intrude, and I scold at it; but now they pretend as good a title as I; and, indeed, many Saturdays I am not there. The company being too many, I don't love it.*

In the same year, Swift framed the rules of the Brothers' Club, which met every Thursday. "The end of our Club,"

*Swift appears to have thought little of Will's, and its frequenters. He used to say, "the worst conversation he ever remembered to have heard in his life was at Will's coffee-house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble; that is to say, five or six men who had writ plays or at least prologues, or had a share in a miscellany, came thither, and entertained one another with their trifling composures, in so important an air as if they had been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended on them."

says Swift, "is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward learning without interest or recommendation. We take in none but men of wit or men of interest; and if we go on as we began, no other club in this town will be worth talking of." The Journal about this time is very full of Brothers Arran and Dupplin, Masham and Ormond, Bathurst and Harcourt, Orrery and Jack Hill, and other Tory magnates of the Club, or society, as Swift preferred to call it. We find him entertaining his "brothers" at the Thatched House Tavern, at the cost of seven good guineas. Swift was an influential member: he writes, February, 1712:

"We are now, in all, nine lords and ten commoners. The Duke of Beaufort had the confidence to propose his brother-in-law, the Earl of Danby, to be a member; but I opposed it so warmly that it was waived. Danby is not above twenty, and we will have no more boys; and we want but two to make up our number. I stayed till eight, and then we all went away soberly. The Duke of Ormond's treat last week cost 201., though it was only four dishes, and four without a dessert; and I bespoke it, in order to be cheap. Yet I could not prevail to change the house. Lord-Treasurer is in a rage with us for being so extravagant ; and the wine was not reckoned, neither, for that is always brought in by him that is president."

*

"Our society does not meet now, as usual; for which I am blamed,” he writes in 1713; "but till Lord-Treasurer will agree to give us money and employments to bestow, I am averse to it, and he gives us nothing but promises. We now resolve to meet but once a fortnight, and have a committee every other week of six or seven to consult about doing some good. I proposed another message to Lord-Treasurer by three principal members, to give a hundred guineas to a certain person, and they are to urge it as well as they can."

In 1714, Swift was again in London, and formed, with Arbuthnot, Pope, and Gay, the Scriblerus Club, to which the world owes The Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of the Parish, written in ridicule of Burnet's History of his own Times, and perhaps the germs of Gulliver.

Swift was great at the October Club of country Members of Parliament, who were for immediately impeaching every leader of the Whig party, and for turning out, without a day's grace, every placeman who did not wear their colours, and shout their cries. The Dean was employed to talk over those of the Club who were amenable to reason; and there are allusions to such negotiations in more than one passage of the Journal to Stella, in 1711. The Club met at the Bell, afterwards the Crown, in King-street, Westminster: it as named from the fondness of the members for October ale.