THE HISTORY

OF

THE SECOND SOLOMON.* 1729.

AMONG all the painful circumstances attendant upon the dissolution of a long and affectionate intercourse between friends of ancient standing, there is none more bitter than when, before a final rupture has taken place, one party avails himself of all the freedom and familiarity of their former relation, to express himself concerning his friend's foibles, with more bitterness than he could pretend to treat those of an enemy. In these moments, every trivial circumstance of untimely raillery, and effusion of temporary resentment, is eagerly mustered and arraigned as an article of indictment against the offender; and former disputes, which, when they happened, were only considered as matter of jest, are then arrayed as grounds of accusation. The following character of Dr. Sheridan, in which his foibles are treated so unmercifully, and where some slight instances of disrespect, occurring in the course of familiar and jocular intercourse, are preferred as charges of ingratitude, argues that state of mind in the author, which could not long consist with intimacy. There is, besides, an assumption of superiority through the whole, which seems to place the "Person distinguished for poetical and other writings," and occupying "an eminent station," in contrast, very degrading to his more humble, and, one would almost suppose, his dependent friend. This is one of the pieces in which Swift has indulged his irritable temperament, at the expense of his head and heart.

* Dr. Sheridan.-D. S.

E became acquainted with a person distinguished for poetical and other writings, and in an eminent station, who treated him with great kindness on all occasions, and he became familiar in this person's house.* In three months' time, Solomon, without the least provocation, writ a long poem, describing that person's muse to be dead, and making a funeral solemnity with asses, owls, &c., and gave the copy among all his acquaintance.t

Solomon became acquainted with a most deserving lady, an intimate friend of the above person,‡ who entertained him also as she would a brother; and, upon giving him a little good advice in the most decent manner, with relation to his wife, he told her, "She was like other women, as bad as she was; and that they were all alike."

Although his wife be, in every regard, (except gallantry, which no creature would attempt,) the most disagreeable beast in Europe, he lets his wife (whom he pretends to hate as she deserves) govern, insult, and ruin him, as she pleaseth. Her character is this: Her person is detestably disagreeable; a most filthy slut; lazy, and slothful, and luxurious, ill-natured, envious, suspicious; a scold, expensive on herself, covetous to others: She takes thieves

* Dean Swift.-D. S.

"This does not seem to occur, even in the Whimsical Miscellany, the grand repository of the jeux d'esprit that passed between Swift and Sheridan. However seriously the Dean seems here to regard it, the verses were probably at the time considered as mere food for laughter.

Stella.-D. S.

The Doctor's best defence may be, that it was hardly possible to give advice in a decent, at least delicate manner, upon such a subject.

and whores, for cheapness, to be her servants, and turns them off every week; positive, insolent, and ignorant, prating, overweening fool; a lover of the dirtiest, meanest company: an abominable tattler, affecting to be jealous of her husband, with ladies of the best rank and merit, and merely out of affectation, for perfect vanity.

Solomon has no ill design upon any person but himself, and he is the greatest deceiver of himself on all occasions.

His thoughts are sudden, and the most unreasonable always comes uppermost; and he constantly resolves and acts upon his first thoughts, and then asks advice, but never once before.

The person above mentioned, whom he lampooned in three months after their acquaintance, procured him a good preferment from the Lord-lieutenant : * upon going down to take possession, Solomon preached, at Corke, a sermon on King George's birthday, on this text, "Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof." Solomon having been famous for a High Tory, and suspected as a Jacobite, it was a most difficult thing to get anything for him: but that person, being an old friend of Lord Carteret, prevailed against all Solomon's enemies, and got him made likewise one of his excellency's chaplains. But, upon this sermon, he was struck out of the list, and forbid the castle, until that same person brought him again to the lieutenant, and made them friends.

A fancy sprung in Solomon's head, that a house near Dublin would be commodious for him and his boarders, to lodge in on Saturdays and Sundays; immediately, without consulting with any creature, he takes a lease of a rotten house at Rathfarnham, the worst air in Ireland, for nine hundred and ninety

*Lord Carteret.-D. S.

nine years, at twelve pounds a-year; the land, which was only a strip of ground, not being worth twenty shillings a-year. When the same person whom he lampooned heard the thing, he begged Solomon to get a clause to surrender, and at last prevailed to have it done after twenty-one years; because it was a madness to pay eleven pounds a-year, for a thousand years, for a house that could not last twenty. But Solomon made an agreement with his landlady, that he should be at liberty to surrender his lease. in seven years; and if he did not do it at that time, should be obliged to keep it for nine hundred and ninety-nine years. In the meantime, he expends about one hundred pounds on the house and gardenwall; and in less than three years, contracts such a hatred to the house, that he lets it run to ruin so that, when the seven years were expired, he must either take it for the remainder of the nine hundred and ninety-nine years, or be sued for waste, and lose all the money he laid out and now he pays twelve pounds a-year for a place he never sees.

Solomon has an estate of about thirty-five pounds per annum, in the county of Cavan; upon which, instead of ever receiving one penny rent, he hath expended above thirty pounds per annum in buildings and plantations, which are all gone to ruin.

Solomon is under-tenant to a bishop's lease; *

* It would be unjust to suppress the manner in which Sheridan became possessed of this valuable property. It had its rise in his memorable text on King George's birthday.

"But though, as Swift expresses it, the Doctor had thus, by mere chance-medley, shot his own fortune dead with a single text, yet it was the mean of his receiving a considerable addition to his fortune, of more intrinsic value than the largest benefice he might have reason to expect. As this proceeded from an act of uncommon generosity, it deserves well to be recorded. Archdeacon Russel, in whose pulpit the sermon was preached, considered himself as instrumental, however accidentally, to the ruin

he is bound by articles to his lordship to renew and pay a fine, whenever the bishop renews with his landlord, and to raise his rent as the landlord shall raise it to the bishop. Seven years expire: Solomon's landlord demands a fine, which he readily pays; then asks for a lease: the landlord says, "He may have have it at any time." He never gets it. Another seven years elapse: Solomon's landlord demands another fine, and an additional rent: Solomon pays both, asks to have his lease renewed: the steward answers, "He will speak to his master." Seventeen years have elapsed; the landlord sends Solomon word, "That his lease is forfeited, because he hath not renewed and paid his fines according to articles ;" and now they are at law, upon this admirable case.

It is Solomon's great happiness, that, when he acts in the common concerns of life against common sense and reason, he values himself thereupon, as if it were the mark of great genius, above little regards or arts, and that his thoughts are too exalted to

of the Doctor's expectations. He was for some time uneasy in his mind on this account, and at last determined to make him a noble compensation. He had a great friendship for the Doctor, whom he saw loaded with a numerous offspring, upon a precarious income, while he himself was possessed of a considerable property, and without any family. Urged on by those nice scruples in his mind before mentioned, he thought he could not make a better use of his fortune, than to apply the superfluity of it towards making the Doctor easy in his circumstances, and thus enabling him to make a provision for his children. With this view, he took a journey to Dublin, in order to make over to him, by an irrevocable deed of gift, the valuable manor of Drumlane, in the county of Cavan, a bishop's lease, which at that time produced a clear profit rent of two hundred and fifty pounds per annum. An act of such liberality, and seldom to be paralleled in this degenerate and selfish age, deserves well to be rescued from oblivion; nor could the author of these memoirs, without ingratitude, pass it over."-Sheridan's Life of Swift.