[Footnote 2: This word is "regulations" in "The Intelligencer." [T.S.]
There is a known story of a clergyman, who was recommended for a preferment by some great men at court, to an archbishop.[3] His grace said, "he had heard that the clergyman used to play at whist and swobbers;[4] that as to playing now and then a sober game at whist for pastime, it might be pardoned, but he could not digest those wicked swobbers;" and it was with some pains that my Lord Somers could undeceive him. I ask, by what talents we may suppose that great prelate ascended so high, or what sort of qualifications he would expect in those whom he took into his patronage, or would probably recommend to court for the government of distant churches?
[Footnote 3: Archbishop Tenison, who, by all contemporary accounts, was a very dull man. There was a bitter sarcasm upon him usually ascribed to Swift, "That he was as hot and heavy as a tailor's goose." [S.]
In "The Intelligencer" the word "archbishop" is replaced by the letters
A.B.C.T. [T.S.]
[Footnote 4: "Swobbers" were four privileged cards used, at one time, for betting purposes, in the game of whist. [T.S.]
Two clergymen, in my memory, stood candidates for a small free school in Yorkshire, where a gentleman of quality and interest in the country, who happened to have a better understanding than his neighbours, procured the place for him who was the better scholar, and more gentlemanly person, of the two, very much to the regret of all the parish: The other, being disappointed, came up to London, where he became the greatest pattern of this lower discretion that I have known, and possessed it with as heavy intellectuals; which, together with the coldness of his temper, and gravity of his deportment, carried him safe through many difficulties, and he lived and died in a great station; while his competitor is too obscure for fame to tell us what became of him.
This species of discretion, which I so much celebrate, and do most heartily recommend, hath one advantage not yet mentioned, that it will carry a man safe through all the malice and variety of parties, so far, that whatever faction happens to be uppermost, his claim is usually allowed for a share of what is going. And the thing seems to me highly reasonable: For in all great changes, the prevailing side is usually so tempestuous, that it wants the ballast of those whom the world calls moderate men, and I call men of discretion; whom people in power may, with little ceremony, load as heavy as they please, drive them through the hardest and deepest roads without danger of foundering, or breaking their backs, and will be sure to find them neither rusty nor vicious.
I[5] will here give the reader a short history of two clergymen in England, the characters of each, and the progress of their fortunes in the world; by which the force of worldly discretion, and the bad consequences from the want of that virtue, will strongly appear.
[Footnote 5: In "The Intelligencer," No. v., this paragraph reads as follows: "In some following Paper I will give the reader a short history of two Clergymen in England, the characters of each, and the progress of their fortunes in the world. By which the force of worldly discretion, and the bad consequences from the want of that virtue, will strongly appear." In No. vii. the subject is continued as in the next paragraph. [T.S.]
Corusodes, an Oxford student, and a farmer's son, was never absent from prayers or lecture, nor once out of his college, after Tom had tolled. He spent every day ten hours in his closet, in reading his courses, dozing, clipping papers, or darning his stockings; which last he performed to admiration. He could be soberly drunk at the expense of others, with college ale, and at those seasons was always most devout. He wore the same gown five years without draggling or tearing. He never once looked into a playbook or a poem. He read Virgil and Ramus in the same cadence, but with a very different taste. He never understood a jest, or had the least conception of wit.