“The last advice I give you relates to your behaviour when you are going to be hanged; which, either for robbing your master, for housebreaking, or going upon the highway, or in a drunken quarrel by killing the first man you meet, may very probably be your lot, and is owing to one of these three qualities: either a love of good fellowship, a generosity of mind, or too much vivacity of spirits. Your good behaviour on this article will concern your whole community; deny the fact with all solemnity of imprecations: a hundred of your brethren, if they can be admitted, will attend about the bar, and be ready upon demand to give you a character before the Court; let nothing prevail on you to confess, but the promise of a pardon for discovering your comrades: but I suppose all this to be in vain; for if you escape now, your fate will be the same another day. Get a speech to be written by the best author of Newgate: some of your kind wenches will provide you with a holland shirt and white cap, crowned with a crimson or black ribbon: take leave cheerfully of all your friends in Newgate: mount the cart with courage; fall on your knees; lift up your eyes; hold a book in your hands, although you cannot read a word; deny the fact at the gallows; kiss and forgive the hangman; and so farewell; you shall be buried in pomp at the charge of the fraternity: the surgeon shall not touch a limb of you; and your fame shall continue until a successor of equal renown succeeds in your place....”
“He continued in Sir William Temple's house till the death of that great man.”—Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, by the Dean.
“It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to himself.”—Preface to Temple's Works.
On all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. But the reader will better understand how acutely he remembered the indignities he suffered in his household, from the subjoined extracts from the Journal to Stella:—
“I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d—— ailed him on Sunday: I made him a very proper speech; told him I observed he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be glad to see he was in better; and one thing I warned him of—never to appear cold to me, for I would not be treated like a schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my life already” [meaning Sir William Temple] &c. &c.—Journal to Stella.
“I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment.”—Ibid.
“The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of State.”—Ibid.
“Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence a piece to begin with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple.”—Ibid.
“I thought I saw Jack Temple [nephew to Sir William] and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach; but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly shaken off that family.”—S. to S. Sept., 1710.
“Swift must be allowed,” says Dr. Johnson, “for a time, to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation.”