among these was Swift. Swift was evidently well acquainted with Eachard's work. In the apology prefixed to the fourth edition of the _Tale of a Tub_ in 1710, he speaks of Eachard with great respect. Contemptuously explaining that he has no intention of answering the attacks which had been made on the _Tale_, he observes: 'When Dr. Eachard wrote his book about the _Contempt of the Clergy_, numbers of these answerers immediately started up, whose memory, if he had not kept alive by his replies, it would now be utterly unknown that he were ever answered at all.' No one who is familiar with Swift's tracts on Church reform can doubt that he had read Eachard's work with minute attention, and was greatly influenced by it. In his _Project for the Advancement of Religion_, he largely attributed the scandalous immorality everywhere prevalent to the insufficiency of religious instruction, and to the low character of the clergy, the result mainly of their ignorance and poverty. His _Letter to a Young Clergyman_ is little more than a didactic adaptation of that portion of Eachard's work which deals with the character and education of the clergy. The _Essay on the Fates of Clergymen_ is another study from the _Contempt_, while the fragment of the tract which he had begun, _Concerning that Universal Hatred which prevails against the Clergy_, brings us still more closely to Eachard. The likeness between them cannot be traced further; they were both, it is true, humorists, but there is little in common between the austere and bitter, yet, at the same time, delicious flavour of the one, and the trenchant and graphic, but coarse and rollicking, humour of the other. The essays reprinted from the _Tatler_ give humorous expression to a grievance which not only wounded the pride of the clergy, but touched them on an equally sensitive part--the stomach. It was not usual for the chaplain in great houses to remain at table for the second course. When the sweets were brought in, he was expected to retire. As Macaulay puts it: 'He might fill himself with the corned beef and carrots; but as soon as the tarts and cheese-cakes made their appearance, he quitted his seat and stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part of which he had been excluded.' Gay refers to this churlish custom in the second book of _Trivia_:-- 'Cheese that the table's closing rites denies. And bids me with th' unwilling chaplain rise.' Possibly the custom originally arose, not from any wish to mark the social inferiority of the chaplain, but because his presence was a check on conversation. It must be owned, however, that this would have been more intelligible had he retired, not with the corned beef and carrots, but with the ladies. The passage quoted by Steele from Oldham is from his _Satire, addressed to a Friend that is about to Leave the University and come Abroad in the World_, not the only poem in which Oldham has thrown light on the degraded profession of the clergy. See the end of his _Satire, spoken in the person of Spenser_. The last piece in this Miscellany has no connection with what precedes it, but it has an interest of its own. Among the many services of one of