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, in the following year, he paid his court,
but was received with something more than coldness. He withdrew to his
deanery in Dublin, and, in the words of Johnson, "commenced Irishman for
life, and was to contrive how he might be best accommodated in a country
where he considered himself as in a state of exile." After some
misunderstanding between himself and his Irish fellow-citizens, he
espoused their cause so warmly that he became the most popular man in
Ireland. In 1721 he could write to Pope, "I neither know the names nor the
number of the family which now reigneth, further than the prayer-book
informeth me." His letters, signed _M. B. Drapier_, on Irish manufactures,
and especially those in opposition to Wood's monopoly of copper coinage,
in 1724, wrought upon the people, producing such a spirit of resistance
that the project of a debased coinage failed; and so influential did Swift
become, that he was able to say to the Archbishop of Dublin, "Had I raised
my finger, the mob would have torn you to pieces.


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