But with a sigh I wish it mine;
When he can in one couplet fix
More sense than I can do in six,
It gives me such a jealous fit,
I cry, 'Plague take him and his wit.'
I grieve to be outdone by Gay
In my own humorous biting way;
Arbuthnot is no more my friend
Who dares to irony pretend,
Which I was born to introduce;
Refined it first, and showed its use."

And so on down to the lines:

"If with such talents Heaven has blest 'em,
Have I not reason to detest 'em?"

To damn with faint praise is the readiest defence of envious failure;
but to praise with jealous damnation reveals a delicate generosity that
few would look for in the hater of his kind. Nor let us forget that
Swift was himself the inventor of the phrase "Sweetness and light."

These elements of charm and generosity have been too much overlooked,
and they could not redeem the writer's savagery in popular opinion,
being overshadowed by that cruel indignation which ate his flesh and
exhausted his spirit. Yet it was, perhaps, just from such elements of
intuitive sympathy and affectionate goodwill that the indignation
sprang. Like most over-sensitive natures, he found that every new
relation in life, even every new friendship that he formed, only opened
a gate to new unhappiness. The sorrows of others were more to him than