Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 8.djvu/143

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ON THE DEATH OF DR. SWIFT.
133

Without regarding private ends,
Spent all his credit for his friends:
And only chose the wise and good;
No flatterers; no allies in blood:
But succour'd virtue in distress,
And seldom fail'd of good success;
As numbers in their hearts must own,
Who, but for him, had been unknown[1].
"With princes kept a due decorum;
But never stood in awe before 'em.
He followed David's lesson just;
In princes never put thy trust:
And, would you make him truly sour,
Provoke him with a slave in power.
The Irish senate if you nam'd,
With what impatience he declaim'd!
Fair Liberty was all his cry;
For her he stood prepar'd to die;
For her he boldly stood alone;
For her he oft' exposed his own.
Two kingdoms[2], just as faction led,
Had set a price upon his head;

  1. Dr. Delany, in the close of his eighth letter, after having enumerated the friends with whom the dean lived in the greatest intimacy, very handsomely applies this passage to himself.
  2. In 1713, the queen was prevailed with, by an address from the house of lords in England, to publish a proclamation, promising three hundred pounds to discover the author of a pamphlet, called, "The Publick Spirit of the Whigs;" and in Ireland, in the year 1724, lord Carteret, at his first coming into the government, was prevailed on to issue a proclamation for promising the like reward of three hundred pounds to any person who would discover the author of a pamphlet called "The Drapier's Fourth Letter, &c." written against that destructive project of coining halfpence for Ireland; but in neither kingdom was the dean discovered.
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