in the culture of literature in Ireland. He always writes with a species of enthusiasm of the “Club”—the enjoyment he derived from it, asks what new members have joined, desires remembrance to the old—and rarely forgets to conclude with, “Esto perpetua!” “In this remote part of the kingdom, nothing would afford me a higher gratification than to be honoured with a few lines from you or any other of my good friends, to inform me what is doing in the literary world; of which I can seldom obtain intelligence sooner than it might reach to the East Indies. How is the Club attended? What names have been added to it? These questions I am tempted to trouble you with, though sensible that your time may be better employed. But my obligations will be the greater.”
Accident occasionally enabled the Bishop to return something in the way of anecdote. One of these relates to Swift. It is characteristic of that eccentric and scarcely intelligible man, whose conduct even when kind always differed from that of others in the mode of displaying it, I have not seen the story elsewhere, and therefore transfer it to a note for the amusement of the reader.[1]
- ↑ “I was exceedingly astonished at what you told me concerning the charge brought by Dr. Calder at this late day against Dean Swift, and thought with you it was most incredible and absurd. And yet, yesterday, chance procured me an unexpected opportunity of inquiring into it.
“At Dromore church appeared a genteel clergyman, a stranger. I invited him to dine with me. After dinner he said he possessed the prebend in the adjoining diocese of Connor, which was the first ecclesiastical preferment of Swift—the prebend and parish of Kilroot—which he was believed to have held with another small vicarage called Maghera Moran in the same diocese and near Kilroot. He told me that when Swift came to take possession of these two benefices given or procured him by Lord
