A COURTIER'S RETORT.
While the prosecution for the Draper's fourth letter was depending, Swift one day waited at the Castle for an audience of Lord Carteret, the Lord Lieutenant, till his patience was exhausted; upon which he wrote the following couplet on a window, and went away:—
"My very good Lord, 'tis a very hard task,
For a man to wait here who has nothing to ask."
The Earl, upon this being shown to him, immediately wrote the following answer underneath:—
"My very good Dean, there are few who come here,
But have something to ask, or something to fear."
LYING.
Swift could not bear to have any lies told him, which his natural shrewdness and knowledge of the world generally enabled him to detect; and when the party attempted to palliate them, his usual reply was—"Come, come, don't attempt to darn your cobwebs."
DR. SACHEVERELL.
Some time after the expiration of Dr. Sacheverell's punishment, having been silenced three years from preaching, and his sermon ordered to be burned, the ministry treated him with great indifference, and he applied in vain for the vacant rectory of St. Andrew's, Holborn. Having, however, a slender acquaintance with Swift, he wrote to him for his interest with government in his behalf, stating how much he had suffered in the cause of the ministry. Swift immediately carried his letter to Lord Bolingbroke, then Secretary of State, who railed much at Sacheverell, calling him a busy intermeddling fellow; a prig and an incendiary, who had set the kingdom in a flame which could not be extinguished, and therefore deserved censure instead of reward. Although Swift had not a much better opinion of the Doctor than Lord Bolingbroke, he replied, "True, my Lord; but let me tell you a story. In a sea fight in the reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and bid him live there at discretion, for as he had saved his life, he was bound in gratitude to save his." This recital threw my Lord Bolingbroke into a violent fit of laughing, who, when it was over, said, "The louse shall have the living for your story." And soon after Sacheverell was presented to it.