as a common enemy: but, when this language comes from a churchman, who
enjoys large benefices and dignities from that very Church he openly
despises, it is an object of horror for which I want a name, and can
only be excused by madness, which I think the Dean was strongly touched
with. His character seems to me a parallel with that of Caligula; and
had he had the same power would have made the same use of it. That
emperor erected a temple to himself, where he was his own high priest,
preferred his horse to the highest honours in the state, professed
enmity to [the] human race, and at last lost his life by a nasty jest on
one of his inferiors, which I dare swear Swift would have made in his
place. There can be no worse picture made of the Doctor's morals than he
has given us himself in the letters printed by Pope. We see him vain,
trifling, ungrateful to the memory of his patron, the Earl of Oxford,
making a servile court where he had any interested views, and meanly
abusive when they were disappointed, and, as he says (in his own
phrase), flying in the face of mankind, in company with his adorer Pope.
It is pleasant to consider, that, had it not been for the good nature
of these very mortals they contemn, these two superior beings were
entitled, by their birth and hereditary fortune, to be only a couple of
link-boys. I am of opinion their friendship would have continued, though
they had remained in the same kingdom: it had a very strong
foundation--the love of flattery on the one side, and the love of money
on the other. Pope courted with the utmost assiduity all the old men
from whom he could hope a legacy, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord
Peterborough, Sir G. Kneller, Lord Bolingbroke, Mr. Wycherley, Mr.
Congreve, Lord Harcourt, &c., and I do not doubt projected to sweep the
Dean's whole inheritance, if he could have persuaded him to throw up his
deanery, and come to die in his house; and his general preaching against
money was meant to induce people to throw it away, that he might pick it
up. There cannot be a stronger proof of his being capable of any action