Sometimes, indeed, when better company was not to be had, he was honoured by being invited to play at cards with his patron; and on such occasions Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a little silver to begin with.

[406] The humble student would not have dared to raise his eyes to a lady of family; but, when he had become a clergyman, he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of that generation, to make love to a pretty waitingmaid who was the chief ornament of the servants' hall, and whose name is inseparably associated with his in a sad and mysterious history.
Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when he found himself on his way to Court.

His spirit had been bowed down, and might seem to have been broken, by calamities and humiliations.

The language which he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far as we can judge from the specimens which still remain, was that of a lacquey, or rather of a beggar.

[407] A sharp word or a cold look of the master sufficed to make the servant miserable during several days.