chattering romancing Dr. Berkeley, and his rhodomontading wife, were not
suited to him, and as little her son Monke Berkeley, of whom she gave such
an absurd and mendacious memoir, and who had none of his celebrated
grandfather Bishop Berkeley's genius. Farmer had some cleverness, but no
leading talent. He collected an immense quantity of rare and forgotten old
English books--especially poetry and the drama--at a trifling price. Todd,
the learned editor of Milton, Spencer, &c., was then a member of that
cathedral; but as his literary superiority was not pleasant to those above
him in that establishment, he was got rid of by promotion, elsewhere, out
of their patronage. He wrote the lives of the Deans of that Church, which
does not rise to more than local interest. It is a dull book.

It has been my fate to be Acquainted with Irish Secretaries. I saw much of
little Charles Abbot--afterwards Speaker--and at last Lord Colchester.
He was a pompous dwarf; yet of an analytical head. Nothing could be more
amusing than to see him strut up the House of Commons to take the chair;
nor was the amusement less to listen to him, when he delivered his edicts,
or the thanks of the House from the chair. His sonorous voice issuing from
a diminutive person, and the epigrammatic points of empty sentences,
formed with great artifice, were in very bad taste--though much admired by
a House which consisted of so few men of a classical education. His rise
was extraordinary, because his talents little exceeded mediocrity. But he
was a courtier, and an intriguant. He was the son of a schoolmaster at
Colchester.

Swift, though of English extraction, was born in Ireland. From some
memoranda of my grandfather's, I learn, that he did not speak of his
residence with Sir William Temple at Moore Park, in Surrey, without spleen.
He seemed to retain a sort of unwilling awe of Sir William; but not to
have loved him. Sir William was a ceremonious courtier: Swift's early