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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41532 ***
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/swiftletters00stepuoft
+
+
+
+
+
+English Men of Letters
+
+Edited by John Morley
+
+SWIFT
+
+by
+
+LESLIE STEPHEN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London:
+Macmillan and Co.
+1882.
+
+The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The chief materials for a life of Swift are to be found in his writings
+and correspondence. The best edition is the second of the two edited by
+Scott (1814 and 1824).
+
+In 1751 Lord Orrery published _Remarks upon the Life and Writings of Dr.
+Jonathan Swift_. Orrery, born 1707, had known Swift from about 1732. His
+remarks give the views of a person of quality of more ambition than
+capacity, and more anxious to exhibit his own taste than to give full or
+accurate information.
+
+In 1754, Dr. Delany published _Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks_,
+intended to vindicate Swift against some of Orrery's severe judgments.
+Delany, born about 1685, became intimate with Swift soon after the dean's
+final settlement in Ireland. He was then one of the authorities of Trinity
+College, Dublin. He is the best contemporary authority, so far as he goes.
+
+In 1756 Deane Swift, grandson of Swift's uncle Godwin, and son-in-law to
+Swift's cousin and faithful guardian, Mrs. Whiteway, published an _Essay
+upon the Life, Writings, and Character of Dr. Jonathan Swift_, in which he
+attacks both his predecessors. Deane Swift, born about 1708, had seen
+little or nothing of his cousin till the year 1738, when the dean's
+faculties were decaying. His book is foolish and discursive. Deane Swift's
+son, Theophilus, communicated a good deal of doubtful matter to Scott, on
+the authority of family tradition.
+
+In 1765 Hawkesworth, who had no personal knowledge, prefixed a life of
+Swift to an edition of the works which adds nothing to our information. In
+1781 Johnson, when publishing a very perfunctory life of Swift as one of
+the poets, excused its shortcomings on the ground of having already
+communicated his thoughts to Hawkesworth. The life is not only meagre but
+injured by one of Johnson's strong prejudices.
+
+In 1785 Thomas Sheridan produced a pompous and dull life of Swift. He was
+the son of Swift's most intimate companion during the whole period
+subsequent to the final settlement in Ireland. The elder Sheridan,
+however, died in 1738; and the younger, born in 1721, was still a boy when
+Swift was becoming imbecile.
+
+Contemporary writers, except Delany, have thus little authority; and a
+number of more or less palpably fictitious anecdotes accumulated round
+their hero. Scott's life, originally published in 1814, is defective in
+point of accuracy. Scott did not investigate the evidence minutely, and
+liked a good story too well to be very particular about its authenticity.
+The book, however, shows his strong sense and genial appreciation of
+character; and remains, till this day, by far the best account of Swift's
+career.
+
+A life which supplies Scott's defects in great measure was given by
+William Monck Mason, in 1819, in his _History and Antiquities of the
+Church of St. Patrick_. Monck Mason was an indiscriminate admirer, and has
+a provoking method of expanding undigested information into monstrous
+notes, after the precedent of Bayle. But he examined facts with the utmost
+care, and every biographer must respect his authority.
+
+In 1875 Mr. Forster published the first instalment of a _Life of Swift_.
+This book, which contains the results of patient and thorough inquiry, was
+unfortunately interrupted by Mr. Forster's death, and ends at the
+beginning of 1711. A complete _Life_ by Mr. Henry Craik is announced as
+about to appear.
+
+Besides these books, I ought to mention an _Essay upon the Earlier Part of
+the Life of Swift_, by the Rev. John Barrett, B.D. and Vice-Provost of
+Trin. Coll. Dublin (London, 1808); and _The Closing Years of Dean Swift's
+Life_, by W. R. Wilde, M.R.I.A., F.R.C.S. (Dublin, 1849). This last is a
+very interesting study of the medical aspects of Swift's life. An essay by
+Dr. Bucknill, in _Brain_ for Jan. 1882, is a remarkable contribution to
+the same subject.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                  PAGE
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+    EARLY YEARS                      1
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+    MOOR PARK AND KILROOT           12
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+    EARLY WRITINGS                  32
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+    LARACOR AND LONDON              51
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+    THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION       77
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+    STELLA AND VANESSA             118
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+    WOOD'S HALFPENCE               147
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+    GULLIVER'S TRAVELS             168
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+    DECLINE                        186
+
+
+
+
+SWIFT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EARLY YEARS.
+
+
+Jonathan Swift, the famous Dean of St. Patrick's, was the descendant of an
+old Yorkshire family. One branch had migrated southwards, and in the time
+of Charles I., Thomas Swift, Jonathan's grandfather, was Vicar of
+Goodrich, near Ross, in Herefordshire, a fact commemorated by the sweetest
+singer of Queen Ann's reign in the remarkable lines--
+
+  Jonathan Swift
+  Had the gift
+  By fatherige, motherige,
+  And by brotherige,
+  To come from Gotheridge.
+
+Thomas Swift married Elizabeth Dryden, niece of Sir Erasmus, the
+grandfather of the poet Dryden. By her he became the father of ten sons
+and four daughters. In the great rebellion he distinguished himself by a
+loyalty which was the cause of obvious complacency to his descendant. On
+one occasion he came to the governor of a town held for the king, and
+being asked what he could do for his Majesty, laid down his coat as an
+offering. The governor remarked that his coat was worth little. "Then,"
+said Swift, "take my waistcoat." The waistcoat was lined with three
+hundred broad pieces--a handsome offering from a poor and plundered
+clergyman. On another occasion he armed a ford, through which rebel
+cavalry were to pass, by certain pieces of iron with four spikes, so
+contrived that one spike must always be uppermost (_caltrops_, in short).
+Two hundred of the enemy were destroyed by this stratagem. The success of
+the rebels naturally led to the ruin of this cavalier clergyman; and the
+record of his calamities forms a conspicuous article in Walker's
+_Sufferings of the Clergy_. He died in 1658, before the advent of the
+better times in which he might have been rewarded for his loyal services.
+His numerous family had to struggle for a living. The eldest son, Godwin
+Swift, was a barrister of Gray's Inn at the time of the Restoration: he
+was married four times, and three times to women of fortune; his first
+wife had been related to the Ormond family; and this connexion induced him
+to seek his fortune in Ireland--a kingdom which at that time suffered,
+amongst other less endurable grievances, from a deficient supply of
+lawyers.[1] Godwin Swift was made Attorney-General in the palatinate of
+Tipperary by the Duke of Ormond. He prospered in his profession, in the
+subtle parts of which, says his nephew, he was "perhaps a little too
+dexterous;" and he engaged in various speculations, having at one time
+what was then the very large income of 3000_l._ a year. Four brothers
+accompanied this successful Godwin, and shared to some extent in his
+prosperity. In January, 1666, one of these, Jonathan, married to Abigail
+Erick, of Leicester, was appointed to the stewardship of the King's Inns,
+Dublin, partly in consideration of the loyalty and suffering of his
+family. Some fifteen months later, in April, 1667, he died, leaving his
+widow with an infant daughter, and seven months after her husband's death,
+November 30, 1667, she gave birth to Jonathan, the younger, at 7, Hoey's
+Court, Dublin.
+
+The Dean "hath often been heard to say" (I quote his fragment of
+autobiography) "that he felt the consequences of that (his parents')
+marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during
+the greater part of his life." This quaint assumption that a man's
+parentage is a kind of removable accident to which may be attributed a
+limited part of his subsequent career, betrays a characteristic sentiment.
+Swift cherished a vague resentment against the fates which had mixed
+bitter ingredients in his lot. He felt the place as well as the
+circumstances of his birth to be a grievance. It gave a plausibility to
+the offensive imputation that he was of Irish blood. "I happened," he
+said, with a bitterness born of later sufferings, "by a perfect accident
+to be born here, and thus I am a Teague, or an Irishman, or what people
+please." Elsewhere he claims England as properly his own country;
+"although I happened to be dropped here, and was a year old before I left
+it (Ireland), and to my sorrow did not die before I came back to it." His
+infancy brought fresh grievances. He was, it seems, a precocious and
+delicate child, and his nurse became so much attached to him, that having
+to return to her native Whitehaven, she kidnapped the year-old infant out
+of pure affection. When his mother knew her loss, she was afraid to hazard
+a return voyage until the child was stronger; and he thus remained nearly
+three years at Whitehaven, where the nurse took such care of his
+education, that he could read any chapter in the Bible before he was three
+years old. His return must have been speedily followed by his mother's
+departure for her native Leicester. Her sole dependence, it seems, was an
+annuity of 20_l._ a year, which had been bought for her by her husband
+upon their marriage. Some of the Swift family seem also to have helped
+her; but for reasons not now discoverable, she found Leicester preferable
+to Dublin, even at the price of parting from the little Jonathan. Godwin
+took him off her hands and sent him to Kilkenny School at the age of six,
+and from that early period the child had to grow up as virtually an
+orphan. His mother through several years to come can have been little more
+than a name to him. Kilkenny School, called the "Eton of Ireland," enjoyed
+a high reputation. Two of Swift's most famous contemporaries were educated
+there. Congreve, two years his junior, was one of his schoolfellows, and a
+warm friendship remained when both had become famous. Fourteen years after
+Swift had left the school it was entered by George Berkeley, destined to
+win a fame of the purest and highest kind, and to come into a strange
+relationship to Swift. It would be vain to ask what credit may be claimed
+by Kilkenny School for thus "producing" (it is the word used on such
+occasions) the greatest satirist, the most brilliant writer of comedies,
+and the subtlest metaphysician in the English language. Our knowledge of
+Swift's experiences at this period is almost confined to a single
+anecdote. "I remember," he says incidentally in a letter to Lord
+Bolingbroke, "when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of
+my line, which I drew up almost on the ground; but it dropped in, and the
+disappointment vexes me to this very day, and I believe it was the type of
+all my future disappointments."[2]
+
+Swift, indeed, was still in the schoolboy stage, according to modern
+ideas, when he was entered at Trinity College, Dublin, on the same day,
+April 24, 1682, with a cousin, Thomas Swift. Swift clearly found Dublin
+uncongenial; though there is still a wide margin for uncertainty as to
+precise facts. His own account gives a short summary of his academic
+history:--
+
+"By the ill-treatment of his nearest relations" (he says) "he was so
+discouraged and sunk in his spirits that he too much neglected his
+academic studies, for some parts of which he had no great relish by
+nature, and turned himself to reading history and poetry, so that when the
+time came for taking his degree of Bachelor of Arts, although he had lived
+with great regularity and due observance of the statutes, he was stopped
+of his degree for dulness and insufficiency; and at last hardly admitted
+in a manner little to his credit, which is called in that college
+_speciali gratia_." In a report of one of the college examinations,
+discovered by Mr. Forster, he receives a _bene_ for his Greek and Latin, a
+_male_ for his "philosophy," and a _negligenter_ for his theology. The
+"philosophy" was still based upon the old scholasticism, and proficiency
+was tested by skill in the arts of syllogistic argumentation. Sheridan,
+son of Swift's intimate friend, was a student at Dublin shortly before the
+Dean's loss of intellectual power; the old gentleman would naturally talk
+to the lad about his university recollections; and, according to his
+hearer, remembered with singular accuracy the questions upon which he had
+disputed, and repeated the arguments which had been used, "in syllogistic
+form." Swift at the same time declared, if the report be accurate, that he
+never had the patience to read the pages of Smiglecius, Burgersdicius, and
+the other old-fashioned logical treatises. When told that they taught the
+art of reasoning, he declared that he could reason very well without it.
+He acted upon this principle in his exercises, and left the Proctor to
+reduce his argument to the proper form. In this there is probably a
+substratum of truth. Swift can hardly be credited, as Berkeley might have
+been, with a precocious perception of the weakness of the accepted system.
+When young gentlemen are plucked for their degree, it is not generally
+because they are in advance of their age. But the aversion to metaphysics
+was characteristic of Swift through life. Like many other people who have
+no turn for such speculations, he felt for them a contempt which may
+perhaps be not the less justified because it does not arise from
+familiarity. The bent of his mind was already sufficiently marked to make
+him revolt against the kind of mental food which was most in favour at
+Dublin; though he seems to have obtained a fair knowledge of the classics.
+
+Swift cherished through life a resentment against most of his relations.
+His uncle Godwin had undertaken his education, and had sent him, as we
+see, to the best places of education in Ireland. If the supplies became
+scanty, it must be admitted that poor Godwin had a sufficient excuse. Each
+of his four wives had brought him a family--the last leaving him seven
+sons; his fortunes had been dissipated, chiefly, it seems, by means of a
+speculation in iron-works; and the poor man himself seems to have been
+failing, for he "fell into a lethargy" in 1688, surviving some five years,
+like his famous nephew, in a state of imbecility. Decay of mind and
+fortune coinciding with the demands of a rising family might certainly be
+some apology for the neglect of one amongst many nephews. Swift did not
+consider it sufficient. "Was it not your uncle Godwin," he was asked "who
+educated you?" "Yes," said Swift, after a pause; "he gave me the education
+of a dog." "Then," answered the intrepid inquirer, "you have not the
+gratitude of a dog." And perhaps that is our natural impression. Yet we do
+not know enough of the facts to judge with confidence. Swift, whatever his
+faults, was always a warm and faithful friend; and perhaps it is the most
+probable conjecture that Godwin Swift bestowed his charity coldly and in
+such a way as to hurt the pride of the recipient. In any case, it appears
+that Swift showed his resentment in a manner more natural than reasonable.
+The child is tempted to revenge himself by knocking his head against the
+rock which has broken his shins; and with equal wisdom the youth who
+fancies that the world is not his friend, tries to get satisfaction by
+defying its laws. Till the time of his degree (February, 1686), Swift had
+been at least regular in his conduct, and if the neglect of his relations
+had discouraged his industry, it had not provoked him to rebellion. During
+the three years which followed he became more reckless. He was still a
+mere lad, just eighteen at the time of his degree, when he fell into more
+or less irregular courses. In rather less than two years he was under
+censure for seventy weeks. The offences consisted chiefly in neglect to
+attend chapel and in "town-haunting" or absence from the nightly
+roll-call. Such offences perhaps appear to be more flagrant than they
+really are in the eyes of college authorities. Twice he got into more
+serious scrapes. He was censured (March 16, 1687) along with his cousin,
+Thomas Swift, and several others for "notorious neglect of duties and
+frequenting 'the town.'" And on his twenty-first birthday (Nov. 30, 1688)
+he[3] was punished, along with several others, for exciting domestic
+dissensions, despising the warnings of the junior dean, and insulting that
+official by contemptuous words. The offenders were suspended from their
+degrees, and inasmuch as Swift and another were the worst offenders
+(_adhuc intolerabilius se gesserant_), they were sentenced to ask pardon
+of the dean upon their knees publicly in the hall. Twenty years later[4]
+Swift revenged himself upon Owen Lloyd, the junior dean, by accusing him
+of infamous servility. For the present Swift was probably reckoned amongst
+the black sheep of the academic flock.[5]
+
+This censure came at the end of Swift's university career. The three last
+years had doubtless been years of discouragement and recklessness. That
+they were also years of vice in the usual sense of the word is not proved;
+nor, from all that we know of Swift's later history, does it seem to be
+probable. There is no trace of anything like licentious behaviour in his
+whole career. It is easier to believe with Scott that Swift's conduct at
+this period might be fairly described in the words of Johnson when
+speaking of his own university experience: "Ah, sir, I was mad and
+violent. It was bitterness that they mistook for frolic. I was miserably
+poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I
+disregarded all power and all authority." Swift learnt another and a more
+profitable lesson in these years. It is indicated in an anecdote which
+rests upon tolerable authority. One day, as he was gazing in melancholy
+mood from his window, his pockets at their lowest ebb, he saw a sailor
+staring about in the college courts. How happy should I be, he thought, if
+that man was inquiring for me with a present from my cousin Willoughby!
+The dream came true. The sailor came to his rooms and produced a leather
+bag, sent by his cousin from Lisbon, with more money than poor Jonathan
+had ever possessed in his life. The sailor refused to take a part of it
+for his trouble, and Jonathan hastily crammed the money into his pocket,
+lest the man should repent of his generosity. From that time forward, he
+added, he became a better economist.
+
+The Willoughby Swift here mentioned was the eldest son of Godwin, and now
+settled in the English factory at Lisbon. Swift speaks warmly of his
+"goodness and generosity" in a letter written to another cousin in 1694.
+Some help, too, was given by his uncle William, who was settled at Dublin,
+and whom he calls the "best of his relations." In one way or another he
+was able to keep his head above water; and he was receiving an impression
+which grew with his growth. The misery of dependence was burnt into his
+soul. To secure independence became his most cherished wish; and the first
+condition of independence was a rigid practice of economy. We shall see
+hereafter how deeply this principle became rooted in his mind; here I need
+only notice that it is the lesson which poverty teaches to none but men of
+strong character.
+
+A catastrophe meanwhile was approaching, which involved the fortunes of
+Swift along with those of nations. James II. had been on the throne for a
+year when Swift took his degree. At the time when Swift was ordered to
+kneel to the junior dean, William was in England, and James preparing to
+fly from Whitehall. The revolution of 1688 meant a breaking up of the very
+foundations of political and social order in Ireland. At the end of 1688 a
+stream of fugitives was pouring into England, whilst the English in
+Ireland were gathering into strong places, abandoning their property to
+the bands of insurgent peasants.
+
+Swift fled with his fellows. Any prospects which he may have had in
+Ireland were ruined with the ruin of his race. The loyalty of his
+grandfather to a king who protected the national church was no precedent
+for loyalty to a king who was its deadliest enemy. Swift, a Churchman to
+the backbone, never shared the leaning of many Anglicans to the exiled
+Stuarts; and his early experience was a pretty strong dissuasive from
+Jacobitism. He took refuge with his mother at Leicester. Of that mother we
+hear less than we could wish; for all that we hear suggests a brisk,
+wholesome, motherly body. She lived cheerfully and frugally on her
+pittance; rose early, worked with her needle, read her book, and deemed
+herself to be "rich and happy"--on twenty pounds a year. A touch of her
+son's humour appears in the only anecdote about her. She came, it seems,
+to visit her son in Ireland shortly after he had taken possession of
+Laracor, and amused herself by persuading the woman with whom she lodged
+that Jonathan was not her son but her lover. Her son, though separated
+from her through the years in which filial affection is generally
+nourished, loved her with the whole strength of his nature; he wrote to
+her frequently, took pains to pay her visits "rarely less than once a
+year;" and was deeply affected by her death in 1710. "I have now lost," he
+wrote in his pocket-book, "the last barrier between me and death. God
+grant I may be as well prepared for it as I confidently believe her to
+have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice, and
+charity, she is there."
+
+The good lady had, it would seem, some little anxieties of the common kind
+about her son. She thought him in danger of falling in love with a certain
+Betty Jones, who, however, escaped the perils of being wife to a man of
+genius, and married an innkeeper. Some forty years later, Betty Jones, now
+Perkins, appealed to Swift to help her in some family difficulties, and
+Swift was ready to "sacrifice five pounds" for old acquaintance' sake.
+Other vague reports of Swift's attentions to women seem to have been
+flying about in Leicester. Swift, in noticing them, tells his
+correspondent that he values "his own entertainment beyond the obloquy of
+a parcel of wretched fools," which he "solemnly pronounces" to be a fit
+description of the inhabitants of Leicester. He had, he admits, amused
+himself with flirtation; but he has learnt enough, "without going half a
+mile beyond the University," to refrain from thoughts of matrimony. A
+"cold temper" and the absence of any settled outlook are sufficient
+dissuasives. Another phrase in the same letter is characteristic. "A
+person of great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to
+look into my mind) used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spirit
+that would do mischief if I did not give it employment." He allowed
+himself these little liberties, he seems to infer, by way of distraction
+for his restless nature. But some more serious work was necessary, if he
+was to win the independence so earnestly desired, and to cease to be a
+burden upon his mother. Where was he to look for help?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MOOR PARK AND KILROOT.
+
+
+How was this "conjured spirit" to find occupation? The proverbial
+occupation of such beings is to cultivate despair by weaving ropes of
+sand. Swift felt himself strong; but he had no task worthy of his
+strength: nor did he yet know precisely where it lay: he even fancied that
+it might be in the direction of Pindaric Odes. Hitherto his energy had
+expended itself in the questionable shape of revolt against constituted
+authority. But the revolt, whatever its precise nature, had issued in the
+rooted determination to achieve a genuine independence. The political
+storm which had for the time crushed the whole social order of Ireland
+into mere chaotic anarchy, had left him an uprooted waif and stray--a
+loose fragment without any points of attachment, except the little
+household in Leicester. His mother might give him temporary shelter, but
+no permanent home. If, as is probable, he already looked forward to a
+clerical career, the Church to which he belonged was, for the time,
+hopelessly ruined, and in danger of being a persecuted sect.
+
+In this crisis a refuge was offered to him. Sir William Temple was
+connected, in more ways than one, with the Swifts. He was the son of Sir
+John Temple, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, who had been a friend of
+Godwin Swift. Temple himself had lived in Ireland, in early days, and had
+known the Swift family. His wife was in some way related to Swift's
+mother; and he was now in a position to help the young man. Temple is a
+remarkable figure amongst the statesmen of that generation. There is
+something more modern about him than belongs to his century. A man of
+cultivated taste and cosmopolitan training, he had the contempt of
+enlightened persons for the fanaticisms of his times. He was not the man
+to suffer persecution, with Baxter, for a creed, or even to lose his head,
+with Russell, for a party. Yet if he had not the faith which animates
+enthusiasts, he sincerely held political theories--a fact sufficient to
+raise him above the thorough-going cynics of the court of the restoration.
+His sense of honour, or the want of robustness in mind and temperament,
+kept him aloof from the desperate game in which the politicians of the day
+staked their lives, and threw away their consciences as an incumbrance.
+Good fortune threw him into the comparatively safe line of diplomacy, for
+which his natural abilities fitted him. Good fortune, aided by
+discernment, enabled him to identify himself with the most respectable
+achievements of our foreign policy. He had become famous as the chief
+author of the Triple Alliance, and the promoter of the marriage of William
+and Mary. He had ventured far enough into the more troublous element of
+domestic politics to invent a highly applauded constitutional device for
+smoothing the relations between the crown and Parliament. Like other such
+devices it went to pieces at the first contact with realities. Temple
+retired to cultivate his garden and write elegant memoirs and essays, and
+refused all entreaties to join again in the rough struggles of the day.
+Associates, made of sterner stuff, probably despised him; but from their
+own, that is, the selfish point of view, he was perhaps entitled to laugh
+last. He escaped at least with unblemished honour, and enjoyed the
+cultivated retirement which statesmen so often profess to desire, and so
+seldom achieve. In private, he had many estimable qualities. He was frank
+and sensitive; he had won diplomatic triumphs by disregarding the pedantry
+of official rules; and he had an equal, though not an equally intelligent,
+contempt for the pedantry of the schools. His style, though often
+slipshod, often anticipates the pure and simple English of the Addison
+period, and delighted Charles Lamb by its delicate flavour of aristocratic
+assumption. He had the vanity of a "person of quality,"--a lofty,
+dignified air which became his flowing periwig, and showed itself in his
+distinguished features. But in youth, a strong vein of romance displayed
+itself in his courtship of Lady Temple, and he seems to have been
+correspondingly worshipped by her, and his sister, Lady Giffard.
+
+The personal friendship of William could not induce Temple to return to
+public life. His only son took office, but soon afterwards killed himself
+from a morbid sense of responsibility. Temple retired finally to Moor
+Park, near Farnham, in Surrey; and about the same time received Swift into
+his family. Long afterwards, John Temple, Sir William's nephew, who had
+quarrelled with Swift, gave an obviously spiteful account of the terms of
+this engagement. Swift, he said, was hired by Sir William to read to him
+and be his amanuensis, at the rate of 20_l._ a year and his board; but
+"Sir William never favoured him with his conversation, nor allowed him to
+sit down at table with him." The authority is bad, and we must be guided
+by rather precarious inferences in picturing this important period of
+Swift's career. The raw Irish student was probably awkward, and may have
+been disagreeable in some matters. Forty years later, we find from his
+correspondence with Gay and the Duchess of Queensberry, that his views as
+to the distribution of functions between knives and forks were lamentably
+unsettled; and it is probable that he may in his youth have been still
+more heretical as to social conventions. There were more serious
+difficulties. The difference which separated Swift from Temple is not
+easily measurable. How can we exaggerate the distance at which a lad,
+fresh from college and a remote provincial society, would look up to the
+distinguished diplomatist of sixty, who had been intimate with the two
+last kings, and was still the confidential friend of the reigning king,
+who had been an actor in the greatest scenes, not only of English, but of
+European history, who had been treated with respect by the ministers of
+Louis XIV., and in whose honour bells had been rung, and banquets set
+forth as he passed through the great continental cities? Temple might have
+spoken to him, without shocking proprieties, in terms which, if I may
+quote the proverbial phrase, would be offensive "from God Almighty to a
+blackbeetle."
+
+  Shall I believe a spirit so divine
+  Was cast in the same mould with mine?
+
+is Swift's phrase about Temple, in one of his first crude poems. We must
+not infer that circumstances which would now be offensive to an educated
+man--the seat at the second table, the predestined congeniality to the
+ladies'-maid of doubtful reputation--would have been equally offensive
+then. So long as dependence upon patrons was a regular incident of the
+career of a poor scholar, the corresponding regulations would be taken as
+a matter of course. Swift was not necessarily more degraded by being a
+dependent of Temple's than Locke by a similar position in Shaftesbury's
+family. But it is true that such a position must always be trying, as many
+a governess has felt in more modern days. The position of the educated
+dependent must always have had its specific annoyances. At this period,
+when the relation of patron and client was being rapidly modified or
+destroyed, the compact would be more than usually trying to the power of
+forbearance and mutual kindliness of the parties concerned. The relation
+between Sir Roger de Coverley and the old college friend who became his
+chaplain meant good feeling on both sides. When poor parson Supple became
+chaplain to Squire Western, and was liable to be sent back from London to
+Basingstoke in search of a forgotten tobacco-box, Supple must have parted
+with all self-respect. Swift has incidentally given his own view of the
+case in his _Essay on the Fates of Clergymen_. It is an application of one
+of his favourite doctrines--the advantage possessed by mediocrity over
+genius in a world so largely composed of fools. Eugenio, who represents
+Jonathan Swift, fails in life because as a wit and a poet he has not the
+art of winning patronage. Corusodes, in whom we have a partial likeness to
+Tom Swift, Jonathan's college contemporary, and afterwards the chaplain of
+Temple, succeeds by servile respectability. _He_ never neglected chapel,
+or lectures: _he_ never looked into a poem: never made a jest himself, or
+laughed at the jests of others: but he managed to insinuate himself into
+the favour of the noble family where his sister was a waiting-woman; shook
+hands with the butler, taught the page his catechism; was sometimes
+admitted to dine at the steward's table; was admitted to read prayers, at
+ten shillings a month: and, by winking at his patron's attentions to his
+sister, gradually crept into better appointments, married a citizen's
+widow, and is now fast mounting towards the top of the ladder
+ecclesiastical.
+
+Temple was not the man to demand or reward services so base as those
+attributed to Corusodes. Nor does it seem that he would be wanting in the
+self-respect which prescribes due courtesy to inferiors, though it admits
+of a strict regard for the ceremonial outworks of social dignity. He would
+probably neither permit others to take liberties nor take them himself. If
+Swift's self-esteem suffered, it would not be that he objected to offering
+up the conventional incense, but that he might possibly think that, after
+all, the idol was made of rather inferior clay. Temple, whatever his solid
+merits, was one of the showiest statesmen of the time; but there was no
+man living with a keener eye for realities and a more piercing insight
+into shams of all kinds than his raw secretary from Ireland. In later life
+Swift frequently expressed his scorn for the mysteries and the
+"refinements" (to use his favourite phrase) by which the great men of the
+world conceal the low passions and small wisdom actually exerted in
+affairs of State. At times he felt that Temple was not merely claiming the
+outward show of respect, but setting too high a value upon his real
+merits. So when Swift was at the full flood of fortune, when prime
+ministers and secretaries of state were calling him Jonathan, or listening
+submissively to his lectures on "whipping-day," he reverts to his early
+experience. "I often think," he says, when speaking of his own familiarity
+with St. John, "what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being
+secretary of state." And this is a less respectful version of a sentiment
+expressed a year before, "I am thinking what a veneration we had for Sir
+W. Temple because he might have been secretary of state at fifty, and here
+is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment." In the interval there
+is another characteristic outburst. "I asked Mr. Secretary (St. John) what
+the devil ailed him on Sunday," and warned him "that I would never be
+treated like a schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my life
+already (meaning Sir W. Temple); that I expected every great minister who
+honoured me with his acquaintance, if he heard and saw anything to my
+disadvantage, would let me know in plain words, and not put me in pain to
+guess by the change or coldness of his countenance and behaviour." The day
+after this effusion, he maintains that he was right in what he said.
+"Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir W. Temple would look
+cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used to suspect a
+hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirits since then; faith, he
+spoiled a fine gentleman." And yet, if Swift sometimes thought Temple's
+authority oppressive, he was ready to admit his substantial merits.
+Temple, he says, in his rough marginalia to Burnet's _History_, "was a man
+of sense and virtue;" and the impromptu utterance probably reflects his
+real feeling.
+
+The year after his first arrival at Temple's, Swift went back to Ireland
+by advice of physicians, who "weakly imagined that his native air might be
+of some use to recover his health." It was at this period, we may note in
+passing, that Swift began to suffer from a disease which tormented him
+through life. Temple sent with him a letter of introduction to Sir Robert
+Southwell, Secretary of State in Ireland, which gives an interesting
+account of their previous relations. Swift, said Temple, had lived in his
+house, read for him, written for him, and kept his small accounts. He knew
+Latin and Greek, and a little French; wrote a good hand, and was honest
+and diligent. His whole family had long been known to Temple, who would be
+glad if Southwell would give him a clerkship, or get him a fellowship in
+Trinity College. The statement of Swift's qualifications has now a rather
+comic sound. An applicant for a desk in a merchant's office once commended
+himself, it is said, by the statement that his style of writing combined
+scathing sarcasm with the wildest flights of humour. Swift might have had
+a better claim to a place for which such qualities were a recommendation;
+but there is no reason beyond the supposed agreement of fools to regard
+genius as a disadvantage in practical life, to suppose that Swift was
+deficient in humbler attainments. Before long, however, he was back at
+Moor Park; and a period followed in which his discontent with the position
+probably reached its height. Temple, indeed, must have discovered that his
+young dependent was really a man of capacity. He recommended him to
+William. In 1692 Swift went to Oxford, to be admitted _ad eundem_, and
+received the M.A. degree; and Swift, writing to thank his uncle for
+obtaining the necessary testimonials from Dublin, adds that he has been
+most civilly received at Oxford, on the strength, presumably, of Temple's
+recommendation, and that he is not to take orders till the king gives him
+a prebend. He suspects Temple, however, of being rather backward in the
+matter, "because (I suppose) he believes I shall leave him, and (upon some
+accounts) he thinks me a little necessary to him." William, it is said,
+was so far gracious as to offer to make Swift a captain of horse, and
+instruct him in the Dutch mode of cutting asparagus. By this last phrase
+hangs an anecdote of later days. Faulkner, the Dublin printer, was dining
+with Swift, and on asking for a second supply of asparagus, was told by
+the Dean to finish what he had on his plate. "What, sir, eat my stalks!"
+"Ay, sir; King William always ate his stalks." "And were you," asked
+Faulkner's hearer when he related the story, "were you blockhead enough to
+obey him?" "Yes," replied Faulkner, "and if you had dined with Dean Swift
+_tête-à-tête_ you would have been obliged to eat your stalks too!" For the
+present Swift was the recipient not the imposer of stalks; and was to
+receive the first shock, as he tells us, that helped to cure him of his
+vanity. The question of the Triennial Bill was agitating political
+personages in the early months of 1693. William and his favourite
+minister, the Earl of Portland, found their Dutch experience insufficient
+to guide them in the mysteries of English constitutionalism. Portland came
+down to consult Temple at Moor Park; and Swift was sent back to explain to
+the great men that Charles I. had been ruined not by consenting to short
+Parliaments, but by abandoning the right to dissolve Parliament. Swift
+says that he was "well versed in English history, though he was under
+twenty-one years old." (He was really twenty-five, but memory naturally
+exaggerated his youthfulness). His arguments, however backed by history,
+failed to carry conviction, and Swift had to unlearn some of the youthful
+confidence which assumes that reason is the governing force in this world,
+and that reason means our own opinions. That so young a man should have
+been employed on such an errand, shows that Temple must have had a good
+opinion of his capacities; but his want of success, however natural, was
+felt as a grave discouragement.
+
+That his discontent was growing is clear from other indications. Swift's
+early poems, whatever their defects, have one merit common to all his
+writings--the merit of a thorough, sometimes an appalling, sincerity. Two
+poems which begin to display his real vigour are dated at the end of 1693.
+One is an epistle to his schoolfellow, Congreve, expatiating, as some
+consolation for the cold reception of the _Double Dealer_, upon the
+contemptible nature of town critics. Swift describes, as a type of the
+whole race, a Farnham lad who had left school a year before, and had just
+returned a "finished spark" from London.
+
+  Stock'd with the latest gibberish of the town,
+
+This wretched little fop came in an evil hour to provoke Swift's hate,--
+
+  My hate, whose lash just heaven has long decreed
+  Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed.
+
+And he already applies it with vigour enough to show that with some of the
+satirist's power he has also the indispensable condition of a considerable
+accumulation of indignant wrath against the self-appointed arbiters of
+taste. The other poem is more remarkable in its personal revelation. It
+begins as a congratulation to Temple on his recovery from an illness. It
+passes into a description of his own fate, marked by singular bitterness.
+He addresses his muse as--
+
+  Malignant Goddess! bane to my repose,
+  Thou universal cause of all my woes.
+
+She is, it seems, a mere delusive meteor, with no real being of her own.
+But, if real, why does she persecute him?
+
+  Wert thou right woman, thou should'st scorn to look
+  On an abandon'd wretch by hopes forsook:
+  Forsook by hopes, ill fortune's last relief,
+  Assign'd for life to unremitting grief;
+  For let heaven's wrath enlarge these weary days
+  If hope e'er dawns the smallest of its rays.
+
+And he goes on to declare after some vigorous lines,
+
+  To thee I owe that fatal bent of mind,
+  Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined:
+  To thee what oft I vainly strive to hide,
+  That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride;
+  From thee whatever virtue takes its rise,
+  Grows a misfortune, or becomes a vice.
+
+The sudden gush as of bitter waters into the dulcet, insipid current of
+conventional congratulation, gives additional point to the sentiment.
+Swift expands the last couplet into a sentiment which remained with him
+through life. It is a blending of pride and remorse; a regretful admission
+of the loftiness of spirit which has caused his misfortunes; and we are
+puzzled to say whether the pride or the remorse be the most genuine. For
+Swift always unites pride and remorse in his consciousness of his own
+virtues.
+
+The "restlessness" avowed in these verses took the practical form of a
+rupture with Temple. In his autobiographical fragment he says that he had
+a scruple of entering into the church merely for support, and Sir William,
+then being Master of the Rolls in Ireland,[6] offered him an employ of
+about 120_l._ a year in that office; whereupon Mr. Swift told him that
+since he had now an opportunity of living without being driven into the
+church for a maintenance, he was resolved to go to Ireland and take holy
+orders. If the scruple seems rather finely spun for Swift, the sense of
+the dignity of his profession is thoroughly characteristic. Nothing,
+however, is more deceptive than our memory of the motives which directed
+distant actions. In his contemporary letters there is no hint of any
+scruple against preferment in the church, but a decided objection to
+insufficient preferment. It is possible that Swift was confusing dates,
+and that the scruple was quieted when he failed to take advantage of
+Temple's interest with Southwell. Having declined, he felt that he had
+made a free choice of a clerical career. In 1692, as we have seen, he
+expected a prebend from Temple's influence with William. But his doubts of
+Temple's desire or power to serve him were confirmed. In June, 1694, he
+tells a cousin at Lisbon, "I have left Sir W. Temple a month ago, just as
+I foretold it you; and everything happened exactly as I guessed. He was
+extremely angry I left him; and yet would not oblige himself any further
+than upon my good behaviour, nor would promise anything firmly to me at
+all; so that everybody judged I did best to leave him." He is starting in
+four days for Dublin, and intends to be ordained in September. The next
+letter preserved completes the story, and implies a painful change in this
+cavalier tone of injured pride. Upon going to Dublin, Swift had found that
+some recommendation from Temple would be required by the authorities. He
+tried to evade the requirement, but was forced at last to write a letter
+to Temple, which nothing but necessity could have extorted. After
+explaining the case, he adds, "the particulars expected of me are what
+relates to morals and learning, and the reasons of quitting your honour's
+family, that is whether the last was occasioned by any ill actions. They
+are all left entirely to your honour's mercy, though in the past I think I
+cannot reproach myself any farther than for _infirmities_. This," he adds,
+"is all I dare beg at present from your honour, under circumstances of
+life not worth your regard;" and all that is left him to wish ("next to
+the health and prosperity of your honour's family") is that Heaven will
+show him some day the opportunity of making his acknowledgments at "your
+honour's" feet. This seems to be the only occasion on which we find Swift
+confessing to any fault except that of being too virtuous.
+
+The apparent doubt of Temple's magnanimity implied in the letter was
+happily not verified. The testimonial seems to have been sent at once.
+Swift, in any case, was ordained deacon on the 28th of October, 1694, and
+priest on the 15th of January, 1695. Probably Swift felt that Temple had
+behaved with magnanimity, and in any case it was not very long before he
+returned to Moor Park. He had received from Lord Capel, then lord deputy,
+the small prebend of Kilroot, worth about 100_l._ a year. Little is known
+of his life as a remote country clergyman, except that he very soon became
+tired of it.[7] Swift soon resigned his prebend (in March, 1698) and
+managed to obtain the succession for a friend in the neighbourhood. But
+before this (in May, 1696) he had returned to Moor Park. He had grown
+weary of a life in a remote district, and Temple had raised his offers. He
+was glad to be once more on the edge at least of the great world in which
+alone could be found employment worthy of his talents. One other
+incident, indeed, of which a fuller account would be interesting, is
+connected with this departure. On the eve of his departure, he wrote a
+passionate letter to "Varina," in plain English Miss Waring, sister of an
+old college chum. He "solemnly offers to forego all" (all his English
+prospects, that is) "for her sake." He does not want her fortune; she
+shall live where she pleases; till he has "pushed his advancement" and is
+in a position to marry her. The letter is full of true lovers'
+protestations; reproaches for her coldness; hints at possible causes of
+jealousies; declarations of the worthlessness of ambition as compared with
+love; and denunciations of her respect for the little disguises and
+affected contradictions of her sex, infinitely beneath persons of her
+pride and his own; paltry maxims calculated only for the "rabble of
+humanity." "By heaven, Varina," he exclaims, "you are more experienced,
+and have less virgin innocence than I." The answer must have been
+unsatisfactory; though from expressions in a letter to his successor to
+the prebend, we see that the affair was still going on in 1699. It will
+come to light once more.
+
+Swift was thus at Moor Park in the summer of 1696. He remained till
+Temple's death in January, 1699. We hear no more of any friction between
+Swift and his patron; and it seems that the last years of their connexion
+passed in harmony. Temple was growing old; his wife, after forty years of
+a happy marriage, had died during Swift's absence in the beginning of
+1695; and Temple, though he seems to have been vigorous, and in spite of
+gout a brisk walker, was approaching the grave. He occupied himself in
+preparing, with Swift's help, memoirs and letters, which were left to
+Swift for posthumous publication. Swift's various irritations at Moor
+Park have naturally left a stronger impression upon his history than the
+quieter hours in which worry and anxiety might be forgotten in the placid
+occupations of a country life. That Swift enjoyed many such hours is
+tolerably clear. Moor Park is described by a Swiss traveller who visited
+it about 1691,[8] as the "model of an agreeable retreat." Temple's
+household was free from the coarse convivialities of the boozing
+fox-hunting squires; whilst the recollection of its modest neatness made
+the "magnificent palace" of Petworth seem pompous and overpowering. Swift
+himself remembered the Moor Park gardens, the special pride of Temple's
+retirement, with affection, and tried to imitate them on a small scale in
+his own garden at Laracor. Moor Park is on the edge of the great heaths
+which stretch southward to Hindhead, and northwards to Aldershot and
+Chobham Ridges. Though we can scarcely credit him with a modern taste in
+scenery, he at least anticipated the modern faith in athletic exercises.
+According to Deane Swift, he used to run up a hill near Temple's and back
+again to his study every two hours, doing the distance of half a mile in
+six minutes. In later life he preached the duty of walking with admirable
+perseverance to his friends. He joined other exercises occasionally. "My
+Lord," he says to Archbishop King in 1721, "I row after health like a
+waterman, and ride after it like a postboy, and with some little success."
+But he had the characteristic passion of the good and wise for walking. He
+mentions incidentally a walk from Farnham to London, thirty-eight miles;
+and has some association with the Golden Farmer[9]--a point on the road
+from which there is still one of the loveliest views in the southern
+counties, across undulating breadths of heath and meadow, woodland and
+down, to Windsor Forest, St. George's Hill, and the chalk range from
+Guildford to Epsom. Perhaps he might have been a mountaineer in more
+civilized times; his poem on the Carberry rocks seems to indicate a lover
+of such scenery; and he ventured so near the edge of the cliff upon his
+stomach, that his servants had to drag him back by his heels. We find him
+proposing to walk to Chester at the rate, I regret to say, of only ten
+miles a day. In such rambles, we are told, he used to put up at wayside
+inns, where "lodgings for a penny" were advertised; bribing the maid with
+a tester to give him clean sheets and a bed to himself. The love of the
+rough humour of waggoners and hostlers is supposed to have been his
+inducement to this practice; and the refined Orrery associates his
+coarseness with this lamentable practice; but amidst the roar of railways
+we may think more tolerantly of the humours of the road in the good old
+days, when each village had its humours and traditions and quaint legends,
+and when homely maxims of unlettered wisdom were to be picked up at rustic
+firesides.
+
+Recreations of this kind were a relief to serious study. In Temple's
+library Swift found abundant occupation. "I am often," he says, in the
+first period of his residence, "two or three months without seeing anybody
+besides the family." In a later fragment, we find him living alone "in
+great state," the cook coming for his orders for dinner, and the
+revolutions in the kingdom of the rooks amusing his leisure. The results
+of his studies will be considered directly. A list of books read in 1697
+gives some hint of their general nature. They are chiefly classical and
+historical. He read Virgil, Homer, Horace, Lucretius, Cicero's
+_Epistles_, Petronius Arbiter, Ælian, Lucius Florus, Herbert's _Henry
+VIII._, Sleidan's _Commentaries, Council of Trent_, Camden's _Elizabeth_,
+Burnet's _History of the Reformation_, Voiture, Blackmore's _Prince
+Arthur_, Sir J. Davis's poem of _The Soul_, and two or three travels,
+besides Cyprian and Irenæus. We may note the absence of any theological
+reading, except in the form of ecclesiastical history; nor does Swift
+study philosophy, of which he seems to have had a sufficient dose in
+Dublin. History seems always to have been his favourite study, and it
+would naturally have a large part in Temple's library.
+
+One matter of no small importance to Swift remains to be mentioned.
+Temple's family included other dependents besides Swift. The "little
+parson cousin," Tom Swift, whom his great relation always mentions with
+contempt, became chaplain to Temple. Jonathan's sister was for some time
+at Moor Park. But the inmates of the family most interesting to us were a
+Rebecca Dingley--who was in some way related to the family--and Esther
+Johnson. Esther Johnson was the daughter of a merchant of respectable
+family who died young. Her mother was known to Lady Giffard, Temple's
+attached sister; and after her widowhood, went with her two daughters to
+live with the Temples. Mrs. Johnson lived as servant or companion to Lady
+Giffard for many years after Temple's death; and little Esther, a
+remarkably bright and pretty child, was brought up in the family, and
+received under Temple's will a sufficient legacy for her support. It
+was of course guessed by a charitable world that she was a natural
+child of Sir William's; but there seems to be no real ground for the
+hypothesis.[10] She was born, as Swift tells us, on March 13th, 1681; and
+was therefore a little over eight when Swift first came to Temple, and
+fifteen when he returned from Kilroot.[11] About this age, he tells us,
+she got over an infantile delicacy, "grew into perfect health, and was
+looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young
+women in London. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of
+her face in perfection." Her conduct and character were equally
+remarkable, if we may trust the tutor who taught her to write, guided her
+education, and came to regard her with an affection which was at once the
+happiness and the misery of his life.
+
+Temple died January 26, 1699; and "with him," said Swift at the time, "all
+that was good and amiable among men." The feeling was doubtless sincere,
+though Swift, when moved very deeply, used less conventional phrases. He
+was thrown once more upon the world. The expectations of some settlement
+in life had not been realized. Temple had left him 100_l._, the advantage
+of publishing his posthumous works, which might ultimately bring in
+200_l._ more, and a promise of preferment from the king. Swift had lived
+long enough upon the "chameleon's food." His energies were still running
+to waste; and he suffered the misery of a weakness due, not to want of
+power but want of opportunity. His sister writes to a cousin that her
+brother had lost his best friend, who had induced him to give up his Irish
+preferment by promising preferment in England, and had died before the
+promise had been fulfilled. Swift was accused of ingratitude by Lord
+Palmerston, Temple's nephew, some thirty-five years later. In reply, he
+acknowledged an obligation to Temple for the recommendation to William and
+the legacy of his papers; but he adds, "I hope you will not charge my
+living in his family as an obligation; for I was educated to little
+purpose if I retired to his house for any other motives than the benefit
+of his conversation and advice, and the opportunity of pursuing my
+studies. For, being born to no fortune, I was at his death as far to seek
+as ever; and perhaps you will allow that I was of some use to him." Swift
+seems here to assume that his motives for living with Temple are
+necessarily to be estimated by the results which he obtained. But if he
+expected more than he got, he does not suggest any want of goodwill.
+Temple had done his best; William's neglect and Temple's death had made
+goodwill fruitless. The two might cry quits; and Swift set to work, not
+exactly with a sense of injury, but probably with a strong feeling that a
+large portion of his life had been wasted. To Swift, indeed, misfortune
+and injury seem equally to have meant resentment, whether against the
+fates or some personal object.
+
+One curious document must be noted before considering the writings which
+most fully reveal the state of Swift's mind. In the year 1699 he wrote
+down some resolutions, headed "when I come to be old." They are for the
+most part pithy and sensible, if it can ever be sensible to make
+resolutions for behaviour in a distant future. Swift resolves not to marry
+a young woman, not to keep young company unless they desire it, not to
+repeat stories, not to listen to knavish, tattling servants, not to be too
+free of advice, not to brag of former beauty and favour with ladies, to
+desire some good friends to inform him when he breaks these resolutions
+and to reform accordingly; and finally, not to set up for observing all
+these rules for fear he should observe none. These resolutions are not
+very original in substance (few resolutions are), though they suggest some
+keen observation of his elders; but one is more remarkable. "Not to be
+fond of children, _or let them come near me hardly_." The words in italics
+are blotted out by a later possessor of the paper, shocked doubtless at
+the harshness of the sentiment. "We do not fortify ourselves with
+resolutions against what we dislike," says a friendly commentator, "but
+against what we feel in our weakness we have reason to believe we are
+really too much inclined to." Yet it is strange that a man should regard
+the purest and kindliest of feelings as a weakness to which he is too much
+inclined. No man had stronger affections than Swift; no man suffered more
+agony when they were wounded; but in his agony he would commit what to
+most men would seem the treason of cursing the affections instead of
+simply lamenting the injury, or holding the affection itself to be its own
+sufficient reward. The intense personality of the man reveals itself
+alternately at selfishness and as "altruism." He grappled to his heart
+those whom he really loved "as with hoops of steel;" so firmly that they
+became a part of himself; and that he considered himself at liberty to
+regard his love of friends as he might regard a love of wine, as something
+to be regretted when it was too strong for his own happiness. The
+attraction was intense; but implied the absorption of the weaker nature
+into his own. His friendships were rather annexations than alliances. The
+strongest instance of this characteristic was in his relations to the
+charming girl, who must have been in his mind when he wrote this strange,
+and unconsciously prophetic, resolution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EARLY WRITINGS.
+
+
+Swift came to Temple's house as a raw student. He left it as the author of
+one of the most remarkable satires ever written. His first efforts had
+been unpromising enough. Certain _Pindaric Odes_, in which the youthful
+aspirant imitated the still popular model of Cowley, are even comically
+prosaic. The last of them, dated 1691, is addressed to a queer Athenian
+Society, promoted by a John Dunton, a speculative bookseller, whose _Life
+and Errors_ is still worth a glance from the curious. The Athenian Society
+was the name of John Dunton himself, and two or three collaborators who
+professed in the _Athenian Mercury_ to answer queries ranging over the
+whole field of human knowledge. Temple was one of their patrons, and Swift
+sent them a panegyrical ode, the merits of which are sufficiently summed
+up by Dryden's pithy criticism--"Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet."
+Swift disliked and abused Dryden ever afterwards, though he may have had
+better reasons for his enmity than the child's dislike to bitter medicine.
+Later poems, the _Epistle to Congreve_ and that to Temple already quoted,
+show symptoms of growing power and a clearer self-recognition. In Swift's
+last residence with Temple, he proved unmistakably that he had learnt the
+secret often so slowly revealed to great writers, the secret of his real
+strength. The _Tale of a Tub_ was written about 1696; part of it appears
+to have been seen at Kilroot by his friend, Waring, Varina's brother; the
+_Battle of the Books_ was written in 1697. It is a curious proof of
+Swift's indifference to a literary reputation that both works remained in
+manuscript till 1704. The "little parson cousin" Tom Swift, ventured some
+kind of claim to a share in the authorship of the _Tale of a Tub_. Swift
+treated this claim with the utmost contempt, but never explicitly claimed
+for himself the authorship of what some readers hold to be his most
+powerful work.
+
+The _Battle of the Books_, to which we may first attend, sprang out of the
+famous controversy as to the relative merits of the ancients and moderns,
+which began in France with Perrault and Fontenelle; which had been set
+going in England by Sir W. Temple's essay upon ancient and modern learning
+(1692), and which incidentally led to the warfare between Bentley and
+Wotton on one side, and Boyle and his Oxford allies on the other. A full
+account of this celebrated discussion may be found in Professor Jebb's
+_Bentley_; and, as Swift only took the part of a light skirmisher, nothing
+more need be said of it in this place. One point alone is worth notice.
+The eagerness of the discussion is characteristic of a time at which the
+modern spirit was victoriously revolting against the ancient canons of
+taste and philosophy. At first sight, we might therefore expect the
+defenders of antiquity to be on the side of authority. In fact, however,
+the argument, as Swift takes it from Temple, is reversed. Temple's theory,
+so far as he had any consistent theory, is indicated in the statement that
+the moderns gathered "all their learning from books in the universities."
+Learning, he suggests, may weaken invention; and people who trust to the
+charity of others will always be poor. Swift accepts and enforces this
+doctrine. The _Battle of the Books_ is an expression of that contempt for
+pedants which he had learnt in Dublin, and which is expressed in the ode
+to the Athenian Society. Philosophy, he tells us in that precious
+production, "seems to have borrowed some ungrateful taste of doubts,
+impertinence, and niceties from every age through which it passed" (this,
+I may observe, is verse), and is now a "medley of all ages," "her face
+patched over with modern pedantry." The moral finds a more poetical
+embodiment in the famous apologue of the Bee and the Spider in the _Battle
+of the Books_. The bee had got itself entangled in the spider's web in the
+library, whilst the books were beginning to wrangle. The two have a sharp
+dispute, which is summed up by Æsop as arbitrator. The spider represents
+the moderns who spin their scholastic pedantry out of their own insides;
+whilst the bee, like the ancients, goes direct to nature. The moderns
+produce nothing but "wrangling and satire, much of a nature with the
+spider's poison, which however they pretend to spit wholly out of
+themselves is improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and
+vermin of the age." We, the ancients, "profess to nothing of our own,
+beyond our wings and our voice: that is to say, our flights and our
+language. For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labour
+and research, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference
+is that, instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our
+hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of
+things, which are Sweetness and Light."
+
+The Homeric battle which follows is described with infinite spirit. Pallas
+is the patron of the ancients whilst Momus undertakes the cause of the
+moderns, and appeals for help to the malignant deity Criticism, who is
+found in her den at the top of a snowy mountain, extended upon the spoils
+of numberless half-devoured volumes. By her, as she exclaims in the
+regulation soliloquy, children become wiser than their parents, beaux
+become politicians, and schoolboys judges of philosophy. She flies to her
+darling Wotton, gathering up her person into an octavo compass; her body
+grows white and arid and splits in pieces with dryness; a concoction of
+gall and soot is strewn in the shape of letters upon her person; and so
+she joins the moderns, "undistinguishable in shape and dress from the
+divine Bentley, Wotton's dearest friend." It is needless to follow the
+fortunes of the fight which follows; it is enough to observe that Virgil
+is encountered by his translator Dryden in a helmet "nine times too large
+for the head, which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even like the
+lady in the lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state, or like a
+shrivelled beau within the penthouse of a modern periwig, and the voice
+was suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote;" and that the book is
+concluded by an episode, in which Bentley and Wotton try a diversion and
+steal the armour of Phalaris and Æsop, but are met by Boyle, clad in a
+suit of armour given him by all the gods, who transfixes them on his spear
+like a brace of woodcocks on an iron skewer.
+
+The raillery, if taken in its critical aspect, recoils upon the author.
+Dryden hardly deserves the scorn of Virgil; and Bentley, as we know, made
+short work of Phalaris and Boyle. But Swift probably knew and cared little
+for the merits of the controversy. He expresses his contempt with
+characteristic vigour and coarseness; and our pleasure in his display of
+exuberant satirical power is not injured by his obvious misconception of
+the merits of the case. The unflagging spirit of the writing, the
+fertility and ingenuity of the illustrations, do as much as can be done to
+give lasting vitality to what is radically (to my taste at least) a rather
+dreary form of wit. The _Battle of the Books_ is the best of the
+travesties. Nor in the brilliant assault upon great names do we at present
+see anything more than the buoyant consciousness of power, common in the
+unsparing judgments of youth, nor edged as yet by any real bitterness.
+Swift has found out that the world is full of humbugs; and goes forth
+hewing and hacking with super-abundant energy, not yet aware that he too
+may conceivably be a fallible being, and still less that the humbugs may
+some day prove too strong for him.
+
+The same qualities are more conspicuous in the far greater satire the
+_Tale of a Tub_. It is so striking a performance that Johnson, who
+cherished one of his stubborn prejudices against Swift, doubted whether
+Swift could have written it. "There is in it," he said, "such a vigour of
+mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so much of nature, and art, and life." The
+doubt is clearly without the least foundation, and the estimate upon which
+it is based is generally disputed. The _Tale of a Tub_ has certainly not
+achieved a reputation equal to that of _Gulliver's Travels_, to the merits
+of which Johnson was curiously blind. Yet I think that there is this much
+to be said in favour of Johnson's theory, namely, that Swift's style
+reaches its highest point in the earlier work. There is less flagging; a
+greater fulness and pressure of energetic thought; a power of hitting the
+nail on the head at the first blow, which has declined in the work of his
+maturer years, when life was weary and thought intermittent. Swift seems
+to have felt this himself. In the twilight of his intellect, he was seen
+turning over the pages and murmuring to himself, "Good God, what a genius
+I had when I wrote that book!" In an apology (dated 1709) he makes a
+statement which may help to explain this fact. "The author," he says, "was
+then (1696) young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in
+his head. By the assistance of some thinking and much conversation, he had
+endeavoured to strip himself of as many prejudices as he could." He
+resolved, as he adds, "to proceed in a manner entirely new;" and he
+afterwards claims in the most positive terms that through the whole book
+(including both the tale and the battle of the books) he has not borrowed
+one "single hint from any writer in the world."[12] No writer has ever
+been more thoroughly original than Swift, for his writings are simply
+himself.
+
+The _Tale of a Tub_ is another challenge thrown down to pretentious
+pedantry. The vigorous, self-confident intellect has found out the
+emptiness and absurdity of a number of the solemn formulæ which pass
+current in the world, and tears them to pieces with audacious and
+rejoicing energy. He makes a mock of the paper chains with which solemn
+professors tried to fetter his activity, and scatters the fragments to the
+four winds of heaven. In one of the first sections he announces the
+philosophy afterwards expounded by Herr Teufelsdröckh, according to which
+"man himself is but a micro-coat;" if one of the suits of clothes called
+animals "be trimmed up with a gold chain, and a red gown, and a white rod,
+and a pert look, it is called a Lord Mayor; if certain ermines and furs be
+placed in a certain position, we style them a judge; and so an apt
+conjunction of lawn and black satin we entitle a bishop." Though Swift
+does not himself develop this philosophical doctrine, its later form
+reflects light upon the earlier theory. For, in truth, Swift's teaching
+comes to this, that the solemn plausibilities of the world are but so many
+"shams"--elaborate masks used to disguise the passions, for the most part
+base and earthly, by which mankind is really impelled. The "digressions"
+which he introduces with the privilege of a humorist, bear chiefly upon
+the literary sham. He falls foul of the whole population of Grub Street at
+starting, and (as I may note in passing) incidentally gives a curious hint
+of his authorship. He describes himself as a worn-out pamphleteer who has
+worn his quill to the pith in the service of the State. "Fourscore and
+eleven pamphlets have I writ under the reigns and for the service of
+six-and-thirty patrons." Porson first noticed that the same numbers are
+repeated in _Gulliver's Travels_; Gulliver is fastened with "fourscore and
+eleven chains" locked to his left leg "with six-and-thirty padlocks."
+Swift makes the usual onslaught of a young author upon the critics, with
+more than the usual vigour, and carries on the war against Bentley and his
+ally by parodying Wotton's remarks upon the ancients. He has discovered
+many omissions in Homer; "who seems to have read but very superficially
+either Sendivogus, Behmen, or _Anthroposophia Magia_."[13] Homer, too,
+never mentions a saveall; and has a still worse fault--his "gross
+ignorance in the common laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as
+discipline of the Church of England"--defects, indeed, for which he has
+been justly censured by Wotton. Perhaps the most vigorous and certainly
+the most striking of these digressions, is that upon "the original use and
+improvement of madness in a commonwealth." Just in passing, as it were,
+Swift gives the pith of a whole system of misanthropy, though he as yet
+seems to be rather indulging a play of fancy, than expressing a settled
+conviction. Happiness, he says, is a "perpetual possession of being well
+deceived." The wisdom which keeps on the surface is better than that which
+persists in officiously prying into the underlying reality. "Last week I
+saw a woman flayed," he observes, "and you will hardly believe how much it
+altered her person for the worse." It is best to be content with patching
+up the outside, and so assuring the "serene, peaceful state"--the
+sublimest point of felicity--"of being a fool amongst knaves." He goes on
+to tell us how useful madmen may be made: how Curtius may be regarded
+equally as a madman and a hero for his leap into the gulf; how the raging,
+blaspheming, noisy inmate of Bedlam is fit to have a regiment of dragoons;
+and the bustling, sputtering, bawling madman should be sent to Westminster
+Hall; and the solemn madman, dreaming dreams and seeing best in the dark,
+to preside over a congregation of dissenters; and how elsewhere you may
+find the raw material of the merchant, the courtier, or the monarch. We
+are all madmen, and happy so far as mad: delusion and peace of mind go
+together; and the more truth we know, the more shall we recognize that
+realities are hideous. Swift only plays with his paradoxes. He laughs
+without troubling himself to decide whether his irony tells against the
+theories which he ostensibly espouses, or those which he ostensibly
+attacks. But he has only to adopt in seriousness the fancy with which he
+is dallying, in order to graduate as a finished pessimist. These, however,
+are interruptions to the main thread of the book, which is a daring
+assault upon that serious kind of pedantry which utters itself in
+theological systems. The three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack,
+represent, as we all know, the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and the
+Puritanical varieties of Christianity. They start with a new coat provided
+for each by their father, and a will to explain the right mode of wearing
+it; and after some years of faithful observance, they fall in love with
+the three ladies of wealth, ambition, and pride, get into terribly bad
+ways and make wild work of the coats and the will. They excuse themselves
+for wearing shoulder-knots by picking the separate letters S, H, and so
+forth, out of separate words in the will, and as K is wanting, discover it
+to be synonymous with C. They reconcile themselves to gold lace by
+remembering that when they were boys they heard a fellow say that he had
+heard their father's man say that he would advise his sons to get gold
+lace when they had money enough to buy it. Then, as the will becomes
+troublesome in spite of exegetical ingenuity, the eldest brother finds a
+convenient codicil which can be tacked to it, and will sanction a new
+fashion of flame-coloured satin. The will expressly forbids silver fringe
+on the coats; but they discover that the word meaning silver fringe may
+also signify a broomstick. And by such devices they go on merrily for a
+time, till Peter sets up to be the sole heir and insists upon the
+obedience of his brethren. His performances in this position are trying to
+their temper. "Whenever it happened that any rogue of Newgate was
+condemned to be hanged, Peter would offer him a pardon for a certain sum
+of money; which when the poor caitiff had made all shifts to scrape up and
+send, his lordship would return a piece of paper in this form.
+
+"'To all mayors, sheriffs, jailors, constables, bailiffs, hangmen, &c.
+Whereas we are informed that A. B. remains in the hands of you or some of
+you, under the sentence of death: We will and command you, upon sight
+hereof to let the said prisoner depart to his own habitation whether he
+stands condemned for murder, &c., &c., for which this shall be your
+sufficient warrant; and if you fail hereof, God damn you and yours to all
+eternity; and so we bid you heartily farewell. Your most humble man's man,
+Emperor Peter.'
+
+"The wretches, trusting to this, lost their lives and their money too."
+Peter, however, became outrageously proud. He has been seen to take "three
+old high-crowned hats and clap them all on his head three-storey high,
+with a huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and an angling-rod in his hand.
+In which guise, whoever went to take him by the hand in the way of
+salutation, Peter, with much grace, like a well-educated spaniel, would
+present them with his foot; and if they refused his civility, then he
+would raise it as high as their chops, and give him a damned kick on the
+mouth, which has ever since been called a salute."
+
+Peter receives his brothers at dinner, and has nothing served up but a
+brown loaf. Come, he says, "fall on and spare not; here is excellent good
+mutton," and he helps them each to a shoe. The brothers remonstrate, and
+try to point out that they see only bread. They argue for some time, but
+have to give in to a conclusive argument. "'Look ye, gentlemen,' cries
+Peter in a rage, 'to convince you what a couple of blind, positive,
+ignorant, wilful puppies you are, I will use but this simple argument. By
+G-- it is true, good, natural mutton as any in Leadenhall Market; and
+G-- confound you both eternally, if you offer to believe otherwise.' Such a
+thundering proof as this left no further room for objection; the two
+unbelievers began to gather and pocket up their mistake as hastily as they
+could," and have to admit besides that another large dry crust is true
+juice of the grape.
+
+The brothers Jack and Martin afterwards fall out: and Jack is treated to a
+storm of ridicule much in the same vein as that directed against Peter;
+and, if less pointed, certainly not less expressive of contempt. I need
+not further follow the details of what Johnson calls this "wild book,"
+which is in every page brimful of intense satirical power. I must however
+say a few words upon a matter which is of great importance in forming a
+clear judgment of Swift's character. The _Tale of a Tub_ was universally
+attributed to Swift, and led to many doubts of his orthodoxy and even of
+his Christianity. Sharpe, Archbishop of York, injured Swift's chances of
+preferment by insinuating such doubts to Queen Anne. Swift bitterly
+resented the imputation. He prefixed an apology to a later edition, in
+which he admitted that he had said some rash things; but declared that he
+would forfeit his life if any one opinion contrary to morality or religion
+could be fairly deduced from the book. He pointed out that he had
+attacked no Anglican doctrine. His ridicule spares Martin, and is pointed
+at Peter and Jack. Like every satirist who ever wrote, he does not attack
+the use but the abuse; and as the Church of England represents for him the
+purest embodiment of the truth, an attack upon the abuses of religion
+meant an attack upon other churches only in so far as they diverged from
+this model. Critics have accepted this apology, and treated poor Queen
+Anne and her advisers as representing simply the prudery of the tea-table.
+The question, to my thinking, does not admit of quite so simple an answer.
+
+If, in fact, we ask what is the true object of Swift's audacious satire,
+the answer will depend partly upon our own estimate of the truth. Clearly
+it ridicules "abuses;" but one man's use is another's abuse: and a dogma
+may appear to us venerable or absurd according to our own creed. One test,
+however, may be suggested, which may guide our decision. Imagine the _Tale
+of a Tub_ to be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a
+_Rabelais perfectionné_. Can any one doubt that the believer would be
+scandalized and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial
+element? Would not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons even
+though directed against his enemies? Scott urges that the satire was
+useful to the high church party because, as he says, it is important for
+any institution in Britain (or anywhere else, we may add) to have the
+laughers on its side. But Scott was too sagacious not to indicate the
+obvious reply. The condition of having the laughers on your side is to be
+on the side of the laughers. Advocates of any serious cause feel that
+there is a danger in accepting such an alliance. The laughers who join you
+in ridiculing your enemy, are by no means pledged to refrain from
+laughing in turn at the laugher. When Swift had ridiculed all the Catholic
+and all the Puritan dogmas in the most unsparing fashion, could he be sure
+that the Thirty-nine Articles would escape scot free? The Catholic theory
+of a church possessing divine authority, the Puritan theory of a divine
+voice addressing the individual soul, suggested to him, in their concrete
+embodiments at least, nothing but a horselaugh. Could any one be sure that
+the Anglican embodiment of the same theories might not be turned to equal
+account by the scoffer? Was the true bearing of Swift's satire in fact
+limited to the deviations from sound Church of England doctrine, or might
+it not be directed against the very vital principle of the doctrine
+itself?
+
+Swift's blindness to such criticisms was thoroughly characteristic. He
+professes, as we have seen, that he had need to clear his mind of _real_
+prejudices. He admits that the process might be pushed too far; that is,
+that in abandoning a prejudice you may be losing a principle. In fact, the
+prejudices from which Swift had sought to free himself--and no doubt with
+great success--were the prejudices of other people. For them he felt
+unlimited contempt. But the prejudice which had grown up in his mind,
+strengthened with his strength, and become intertwined with all his
+personal affections and antipathies, was no longer a prejudice in his
+eyes, but a sacred principle. The intensity of his contempt for the
+follies of others shut his eyes effectually to any similarity between
+their tenets and his own. His principles, true or false, were prejudices
+in the highest degree, if by a prejudice we mean an opinion cherished
+because it has somehow or other become ours, though the "somehow" may
+exclude all reference to reason. Swift never troubled himself to assign
+any philosophical basis for his doctrines; having, indeed, a hearty
+contempt for philosophizing in general. He clung to the doctrines of his
+church, not because he could give abstract reasons for his belief, but
+simply because the church happened to be his. It is equally true of all
+his creeds, political or theological, that he loved them as he loved his
+friends, simply because they had become a part of himself, and were
+therefore identified with all his hopes, ambitions, and aspirations public
+or private. We shall see hereafter how fiercely he attacked the
+dissenters, and how scornfully he repudiated all arguments founded upon
+the desirability of union amongst Protestants. To a calm outside observer
+differences might appear to be superficial; but to him, no difference
+could be other than radical and profound which in fact divided him from an
+antagonist. In attacking the Presbyterians, cried more temperate people,
+you are attacking your brothers and your own opinions. No, replied Swift,
+I am attacking the corruption of my principles; hideous caricatures of
+myself; caricatures the more hateful in proportion to their apparent
+likeness. And therefore, whether in political or theological warfare, he
+was sublimely unconscious of the possible reaction of his arguments.
+
+Swift took a characteristic mode of showing that if upon some points he
+accidentally agreed with the unbeliever, it was not from any covert
+sympathy. Two of his most vigorous pieces of satire in later days are
+directed against the deists. In 1708 he published an _Argument to prove
+that the abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now stand,
+be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps not produce those many
+good effects proposed thereby_. And in 1713, in the midst of his most
+eager political warfare, he published _Mr. Collins's Discourse of
+Freethinking, put into plain English, by way of abstract, for use of the
+poor_. No one who reads these pamphlets can deny that the keenest satire
+may be directed against infidels as well as against Christians. The last
+is an admirable parody, in which poor Collins's arguments are turned
+against himself with ingenious and provoking irony. The first is perhaps
+Swift's cleverest application of the same method. A nominal religion, he
+urges gravely, is of some use, for if men cannot be allowed a God to
+revile or renounce, they will speak evil of dignities, and may even come
+to "reflect upon the ministry." If Christianity were once abolished, the
+wits would be deprived of their favourite topic. "Who would ever have
+suspected Asgil for a wit or Toland for a philosopher if the inexhaustible
+stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with
+materials?" The abolition of Christianity moreover may possibly bring the
+Church into danger, for atheists, deists, and Socinians have little zeal
+for the present ecclesiastical establishment; and if they once get rid of
+Christianity, they may aim at setting up Presbyterianism. Moreover, as
+long as we keep to any religion, we do not strike at the root of the evil.
+The freethinkers consider that all the parts hold together, and that if
+you pull out one nail the whole fabric will fall. Which, he says, was
+happily expressed by one who heard that a text brought in proof of the
+Trinity, was differently read in some ancient manuscript; whereupon he
+suddenly leaped through a long _sorites_ to the logical conclusion: "Why,
+if it be as you say, I may safely ... drink on and defy the parson."
+
+A serious meaning underlies Swift's sarcasms. Collins had argued in
+defence of the greatest possible freedom of discussion; and tacitly
+assumed that such discussion would lead to disbelief of Christianity.
+Opponents of the liberal school had answered by claiming his first
+principle as their own. They argued that religion was based upon reason,
+and would be strengthened instead of weakened by free inquiry. Swift
+virtually takes a different position. He objects to freethinking because
+ordinary minds are totally unfit for such inquiries. "The bulk of
+mankind," as he puts it, is as "well qualified for flying as thinking;"
+and therefore free-thought would lead to anarchy, atheism, and immorality,
+as liberty to fly would lead to a breaking of necks.
+
+Collins rails at priests as tyrants upheld by imposture. Swift virtually
+replies that they are the sole guides to truth and guardians of morality,
+and that theology should be left to them, as medicine to physicians and
+law to lawyers. The argument against the abolition of Christianity takes
+the same ground. Religion, however little regard is paid to it in
+practice, is in fact the one great security for a decent degree of social
+order; and the rash fools who venture to reject what they do not
+understand, are public enemies as well as ignorant sciolists.
+
+The same view is taken in Swift's sermons. He said of himself that he
+could only preach political pamphlets. Several of the twelve sermons
+preserved are in fact directly aimed at some of the political and social
+grievances which he was habitually denouncing. If not exactly "pamphlets,"
+they are sermons in aid of pamphlets. Others are vigorous and sincere
+moral discourses. One alone deals with a purely theological topic: the
+doctrine of the Trinity. His view is simply that "men of wicked lives
+would be very glad if there were no truth in Christianity at all." They
+therefore cavil at the mysteries to find some excuse for giving up the
+whole. He replies in effect that there most be mystery though not
+contradiction, everywhere, and that if we do not accept humbly what is
+taught in the Scriptures, we must give up Christianity, and consequently,
+as he holds, all moral obligation, at once. The cavil is merely the
+pretext of an evil conscience. Swift's religion thus partook of the
+directly practical nature of his whole character. He was absolutely
+indifferent to speculative philosophy. He was even more indifferent to the
+mystical or imaginative aspects of religion. He loved downright concrete
+realities, and was not the man to lose himself in an _Oh, altitudo!_ or in
+any train of thought or emotion not directly bearing upon the actual
+business of the world. Though no man had more pride in his order or love
+of its privileges, Swift never emphasized his professional character. He
+wished to be accepted as a man of the world and of business. He despised
+the unpractical and visionary type, and the kind of religious utterance
+congenial to men of that type was abhorrent to him. He shrank invariably
+too from any display of his emotion, and would have felt the heartiest
+contempt for the sentimentalism of his day. At once the proudest and most
+sensitive of men, it was his imperative instinct to hide his emotions as
+much as possible. In cases of great excitement, he retired into some
+secluded corner, where, if he was forced to feel, he could be sure of
+hiding his feelings. He always masks his strongest passions under some
+ironical veil, and thus practised what his friends regarded as an inverted
+hypocrisy. Delany tells us that he stayed for six months in Swift's house,
+before discovering that the dean always read prayers to his servants at a
+fixed hour in private. A deep feeling of solemnity showed itself in his
+manner of performing public religious exercises, but Delany, a man of a
+very different temperament, blames his friend for carrying his reserve in
+all such matters to extremes. In certain respects Swift was ostentatious
+enough; but this intense dislike to wearing his heart upon his sleeve, to
+laying bare the secrets of his affections before unsympathetic eyes, is
+one of his most indelible characteristics. Swift could never have felt the
+slightest sympathy for the kind of preacher who courts applause by a
+public exhibition of intimate joys and sorrows; and was less afraid of
+suppressing some genuine emotion than of showing any in the slightest
+degree unreal.
+
+Although Swift took in the main what may be called the political view of
+religion, he did not by any means accept that view in its cynical form. He
+did not, that is, hold, in Gibbon's famous phrase, that all religions were
+equally false and equally useful. His religious instincts were as strong
+and genuine as they were markedly undemonstrative. He came to take (I am
+anticipating a little) a gloomy view of the world and of human nature. He
+had the most settled conviction not only of the misery of human life but
+of the feebleness of the good elements in the world. The bad and the
+stupid are the best fitted for life, as we find it. Virtue is generally a
+misfortune; the more we sympathize, the more cause we have for
+wretchedness; our affections give us the purest kind of happiness, and yet
+our affections expose us to sufferings which more than outweigh the
+enjoyments. There is no such thing, he said in his decline, as "a fine old
+gentleman;" if so and so had had either a mind or a body worth a farthing,
+"they would have worn him out long ago." That became a typical sentiment
+with Swift. His doctrine was, briefly, that: virtue was the one thing
+which deserved love and admiration; and yet that virtue in this hideous
+chaos of a world, involved misery and decay. What would be the logical
+result of such a creed, I do not presume to say. Certainly, we should
+guess, something more pessimistic or Manichæan than suits the ordinary
+interpretation of Christian doctrine. But for Swift this state of mind
+carried with it the necessity of clinging to some religious creed: not
+because the creed held out promises of a better hereafter, for Swift was
+too much absorbed in the present to dwell much upon such beliefs; but
+rather because it provided him with some sort of fixed convictions in this
+strange and disastrous muddle. If it did not give a solution in terms
+intelligible to the human intellect, it encouraged the belief that some
+solution existed. It justified him to himself for continuing to respect
+morality, and for going on living, when all the game of life seemed to be
+decidedly going in favour of the devil, and suicide to be the most
+reasonable course. At least, it enabled him to associate himself with the
+causes and principles which he recognized as the most ennobling element in
+the world's "mad farce;" and to utter himself in formulæ consecrated by
+the use of such wise and good beings as had hitherto shown themselves
+amongst a wretched race. Placed in another situation, Swift no doubt might
+have put his creed--to speak after the Clothes Philosophy--into a
+different dress. The substance could not have been altered, unless his
+whole character as well as his particular opinions had been profoundly
+modified.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+LARACOR AND LONDON.
+
+
+Swift at the age of thirty-one had gained a small amount of cash, and a
+promise from William. He applied to the king, but the great man in whom he
+trusted failed to deliver his petition; and, after some delay, he accepted
+an invitation to become chaplain and secretary to the Earl of Berkeley,
+just made one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. He acted as secretary on
+the journey to Ireland: but upon reaching Dublin, Lord Berkeley gave the
+post to another man, who had persuaded him that it was unfit for a
+clergyman. Swift next claimed the deanery of Derry, which soon became
+vacant. The secretary had been bribed by 1000_l._ from another candidate,
+upon whom the deanery was bestowed: but Swift was told that he might still
+have the preference for an equal bribe. Unable or unwilling to comply, he
+took leave of Berkeley and the secretary, with the pithy remark, "God
+confound you both for a couple of scoundrels." He was partly pacified,
+however (February 1700), by the gift of Laracor, a village near Trim, some
+twenty miles from Dublin. Two other small livings, and a prebend in the
+cathedral of St. Patrick, made up a revenue of about 230_l._ a year.[14]
+The income enabled him to live; but, in spite of the rigid economy which
+he always practised, did not enable him to save. Marriage under such
+circumstances would have meant the abandonment of an ambitious career. A
+wife and family would have anchored him to his country parsonage.
+
+This may help to explain an unpleasant episode which followed. Poor Varina
+had resisted Swift's entreaties, on the ground of her own ill-health and
+Swift's want of fortune. She now, it seems, thought that the economical
+difficulty was removed by Swift's preferment, and wished the marriage to
+take place. Swift replied in a letter, which contains all our information:
+and to which I can apply no other epithet than brutal. Some men might feel
+bound to fulfil a marriage engagement, even when love had grown cold;
+others might think it better to break it off in the interests of both
+parties. Swift's plan was to offer to fulfil it on conditions so insulting
+that no one with a grain of self-respect could accept. In his letter he
+expresses resentment for Miss Waring's previous treatment of him; he
+reproaches her bitterly with the company in which she lives--including, as
+it seems, her mother; no young woman in the world with her income should
+"dwindle away her health in such a sink and among such family
+conversation." He explains that he is still poor; he doubts the
+improvement of her own health; and he then says that if she will submit to
+be educated so as to be capable of entertaining him: to accept all his
+likes and dislikes: to soothe his ill-humour, and live cheerfully wherever
+he pleases: he will take her without inquiring into her looks or her
+income. "Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the other, is all I
+look for." Swift could be the most persistent and ardent of friends. But,
+when any one tried to enforce claims no longer congenial to his feelings,
+the appeal to the galling obligation stung him into ferocity, and brought
+out the most brutal side of his imperious nature.
+
+It was in the course of the next year that Swift took a step which has
+sometimes been associated with this. The death of Temple had left Esther
+Johnson homeless. The small fortune left to her by Temple consisted of an
+Irish farm. Swift suggested to her that she and her friend Mrs. Dingley
+would get better interest for their money, and live more cheaply, in
+Ireland than in England. This change of abode naturally made people talk.
+The little parson cousin asked (in 1706) whether Jonathan had been able to
+resist the charms of the two ladies who had marched from Moor Park to
+Dublin "with full resolution to engage him." Swift was now (1701) in his
+thirty-fourth year, and Stella a singularly beautiful and attractive girl
+of twenty. The anomalous connexion was close, and yet most carefully
+guarded against scandal. In Swift's absence, the ladies occupied his
+apartments at Dublin. When he and they were in the same place they took
+separate lodgings. Twice, it seems, they accompanied him on visits to
+England. But Swift never saw Esther Johnson except in presence of a third
+person; and he incidentally declares in 1726--near the end of her
+life--that he had not seen her in a morning "these dozen years, except
+once or twice in a journey." The relations thus regulated remained
+unaltered for several years to come. Swift's duties at Laracor were not
+excessive. He reckons his congregation at fifteen persons, "most of them
+gentle and all simple." He gave notice, says Orrery, that he would read
+prayers every Wednesday and Friday. The congregation on the first
+Wednesday consisted of himself and his clerk, and Swift began the service,
+"Dearly beloved Roger, the scripture moveth you and me," and so forth.
+This being attributed to Swift, is supposed to be an exquisite piece of
+facetiousness; but we may hope that, as Scott gives us reason to think, it
+was really one of the drifting jests that stuck for a time to the skirts
+of the famous humorist. What is certain is, that Swift did his best, with
+narrow means, to improve the living--rebuilt the house, laid out the
+garden, increased the glebe from one acre to twenty, and endowed the
+living with tithes bought by himself. He left the tithes on the remarkable
+condition (suggested probably by his fears of Presbyterian ascendancy)
+that, if another form of Christian religion should become the established
+faith in this kingdom, they should go to the poor--excluding Jews,
+Atheists, and infidels. Swift became attached to Laracor, and the gardens
+which he planted in humble imitation of Moor Park; he made friends of some
+of the neighbours; though he detested Trim, where "the people were as
+great rascals as the gentlemen;" but Laracor was rather an occasional
+retreat than a centre of his interests. During the following years Swift
+was often at the castle at Dublin, and passed considerable periods in
+London, leaving a curate in charge of the minute congregation at Laracor.
+
+He kept upon friendly terms with successive Viceroys. He had, as we have
+seen, extorted a partial concession of his claims from Lord Berkeley. For
+Lord Berkeley, if we may argue from a very gross lampoon, he can have felt
+nothing but contempt. But he had a high respect for Lady Berkeley; and one
+of the daughters, afterwards Lady Betty Germaine, a very sensible and
+kindly woman, retained his friendship through life, and in letters written
+long afterwards refers with evident fondness to the old days of
+familiarity. He was intimate, again, with the family of the Duke of
+Ormond, who became Lord Lieutenant in 1703, and, again, was the close
+friend of one of the daughters. He was deeply grieved by her death a few
+years later, soon after her marriage to Lord Ashburnham. "I hate life," he
+says characteristically, "when I think it exposed to such accidents; and
+to see so many thousand wretches burdening the earth when such as her die,
+makes me think God did never intend life for a blessing." When Lord
+Pembroke succeeded Ormond, Swift still continued chaplain, and carried on
+a queer commerce of punning with Pembroke. It is the first indication of a
+habit which lasted, as we shall see, through life. One might be tempted to
+say, were it not for the conclusive evidence to the contrary, that this
+love of the most mechanical variety of facetiousness implied an absence of
+any true sense of humour. Swift, indeed, was giving proofs that he
+possessed a full share of that ambiguous talent. It would be difficult to
+find a more perfect performance of its kind than the poem by which he
+amused the Berkeley family in 1700. It is the _Petition of Mrs. Frances
+Harris_, a chambermaid, who had lost her purse, and whose peculiar style
+of language, as well as the unsympathetic comments of her various
+fellow-servants, are preserved with extraordinary felicity in a peculiar
+doggerel invented for the purpose by Swift. One fancies that the famous
+Mrs. Harris of Mrs. Gamp's reminiscences was a phantasmal descendant of
+Swift's heroine. He lays bare the workings of the menial intellect with
+the clearness of a master.
+
+Neither Laracor nor Dublin could keep Swift from London.[15] During the
+ten years succeeding 1700, he must have passed over four in England. In
+the last period mentioned he was acting as an agent for the Church of
+Ireland. In the others he was attracted by pleasure or ambition. He had
+already many introductions to London society, through Temple, through the
+Irish Viceroys, and through Congreve, the most famous of then living wits.
+A successful pamphlet, to be presently mentioned, helped his rise to fame.
+London society was easy of access for a man of Swift's qualities. The
+divisions of rank were doubtless more strongly marked than now. Yet
+society was relatively so small, and concentrated in so small a space,
+that admission into the upper circle meant an easy introduction to every
+one worth knowing. Any noticeable person became, as it were, member of a
+club which had a tacit existence, though there was no single place of
+meeting or recognized organization. Swift soon became known at the
+coffee-houses, which have been superseded by the clubs of modern times. At
+one time, according to a story vague as to dates, he got the name of the
+"mad parson" from Addison and others, by his habit of taking
+half-an-hour's smart walk to and fro in the coffee-house, and then
+departing in silence. At last he abruptly accosted a stranger from the
+country: "Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the world?" "Yes,
+sir," was the reply, "I thank God I remember a great deal of good weather
+in my time." "That," said Swift, "is more than I can say. I never remember
+any weather that was not too hot, or too cold, or too wet, or too dry:
+but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all
+very well;" with which sentiment he vanished. Whatever his introduction
+Swift would soon make himself felt. The _Tale of a Tub_ appeared--with a
+very complimentary dedication to Somers--in 1704, and revealed powers
+beyond the rivalry of any living author.
+
+In the year 1705 Swift became intimate with Addison, who wrote in a copy
+of his _Travels in Italy_, To _Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable
+companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age, this
+work is presented by his most humble servant the author_. Though the word
+"genius" had scarcely its present strength of meaning, the phrase
+certainly implies that Addison knew Swift's authorship of the _Tale_, and
+with all his decorum was not repelled by its audacious satire. The pair
+formed a close friendship, which is honourable to both. For it proves that
+if Swift was imperious and Addison a little too fond of the adulation of
+"wits and Templars," each could enjoy the society of an intellectual
+equal. They met, we may fancy, like absolute kings, accustomed to the
+incense of courtiers, and not inaccessible to its charms; and yet glad at
+times to throw aside state and associate with each other without jealousy.
+Addison, we know, was most charming when talking to a single companion,
+and Delany repeats Swift's statement that, often as they spent their
+evenings together, they never wished for a third. Steele, for a time, was
+joined in what Swift calls a triumvirate; and though political strife led
+to a complete breach with Steele and a temporary eclipse of familiarity
+with Addison, it never diminished Swift's affection for his great rival.
+"That man," he said once, "has virtue enough to give reputation to an
+age," and the phrase expresses his settled opinion. Swift, however, had a
+low opinion of the society of the average "wit." "The worst conversation I
+ever heard in my life," he says, "was that at Wills' coffee-house, where
+the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble;" and he speaks
+with a contempt recalling Pope's satire upon the "little senate," of the
+absurd self-importance and the foolish adulation of the students and
+Templars who listened to these oracles. Others have suspected that many
+famous coteries of which literary people are accustomed to speak with
+unction, probably fell as far short in reality of their traditional
+pleasantness. Swift's friendship with Addison was partly due, we may
+fancy, to the difference in temper and talent which fitted each to be
+complement of the other. A curious proof of the mutual goodwill is given
+by the history of Swift's _Baucis and Philemon_. It is a humorous and
+agreeable enough travesty of Ovid; a bit of good-humoured pleasantry,
+which we may take as it was intended. The performance was in the spirit of
+the time, and if Swift had not the lightness of touch of his
+contemporaries, Prior, Gay, Parnell, and Pope, he perhaps makes up for it
+by greater force and directness. But the piece is mainly remarkable
+because, as he tells us, Addison made him "blot out four score lines, add
+four score, and alter four score," though the whole consisted of only 178
+verses.[16] Swift showed a complete absence of the ordinary touchiness of
+authors. His indifference to literary fame as to its pecuniary rewards,
+was conspicuous. He was too proud, as he truly said, to be vain. His sense
+of dignity restrained him from petty sensibility. When a clergyman
+regretted some emendations which had been hastily suggested by himself and
+accepted by Swift, Swift replied that it mattered little, and that he
+would not give grounds by adhering to his own opinion, for an imputation
+of vanity. If Swift was egotistical, there was nothing petty even in his
+egotism.
+
+A piece of facetiousness, started by Swift in the last of his visits to
+London, has become famous. A cobbler called Partridge had set up as an
+astrologer, and published predictions in the style of _Zadkiel's Almanac_.
+Swift amused himself in the beginning of 1708 by publishing a rival
+prediction under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff. Bickerstaff professed that
+he would give verifiable and definite predictions, instead of the vague
+oracular utterances of his rival. The first of these predictions announced
+the approaching death, at 11 p.m., on March 29th, of Partridge himself.
+Directly after that day appeared a letter "to a person of honour,"
+announcing the fulfilment of the prediction by the death of Partridge
+within four hours of the date assigned. Partridge took up the matter
+seriously, and indignantly declared himself, in a new Almanac, to be
+alive. Bickerstaff retorted in a humorous Vindication, arguing that
+Partridge was really dead; that his continuing to write almanacs was no
+proof to the contrary, and so forth. All the wits, great and small, took
+part in the joke: the Portuguese inquisition, so it is said, were
+sufficiently taken in to condemn Bickerstaff to the flames; and Steele,
+who started the _Tatler_, whilst the joke was afoot, adopted the name of
+Bickerstaff for the imaginary author. Dutiful biographers agree to admire
+this as a wonderful piece of fun. The joke does not strike me, I will
+confess, as of very exquisite flavour; but it is a curious illustration of
+a peculiarity to which Swift owed some of his power, and which seems to
+have suggested many of the mythical anecdotes about him. His humour very
+easily took the form of practical joking. In those days, the mutual
+understanding of the little clique of wits made it easy to get a hoax
+taken up by the whole body. They joined to persecute poor Partridge, as
+the undergraduates at a modern college might join to tease some obnoxious
+tradesman. Swift's peculiar irony fitted him to take the load; for it
+implied a singular pleasure in realizing the minute consequences of some
+given hypothesis, and working out in detail some grotesque or striking
+theory. The love of practical jokes, which seems to have accompanied him
+through life, is one of the less edifying manifestations of the tendency.
+It seems as if he could not quite enjoy a jest till it was translated into
+actual tangible fact. The fancy does not suffice him till it is realized.
+If the story about "dearly beloved Roger" be true, it is a case in point.
+Sydney Smith would have been content with suggesting that such a thing
+might be done. Swift was not satisfied till he had done it. And even if it
+be not true, it has been accepted because it is like the truth. We could
+almost fancy that if Swift had thought of Charles Lamb's famous quibble
+about walking on an empty stomach ("on whose empty stomach?"), he would
+have liked to carry it out by an actual promenade on real human flesh and
+blood.
+
+Swift became intimate with Irish viceroys, and with the most famous wits
+and statesmen of London. But he received none of the good things bestowed
+so freely upon contemporary men of letters. In 1705, Addison, his intimate
+friend, and his junior by five years, had sprung from a garret to a
+comfortable office. Other men passed Swift in the race. He notes
+significantly in 1708, that "a young fellow," a friend of his, had just
+received a sinecure of 400_l._ a year, as an addition to another of
+300_l._ Towards the end of 1704 he had already complained that he got
+"nothing but the good words and wishes of a decayed ministry, whose lives
+and mine will probably wear out before they can serve either my little
+hopes, or their own ambition." Swift still remained in his own district,
+"a hedge-parson," flattered, caressed and neglected. And yet he held,[17]
+that it was easier to provide for ten men in the church, than for one in a
+civil employment. To understand his claims, and the modes by which he used
+to enforce them, we must advert briefly to the state of English politics.
+A clear apprehension of Swift's relation to the ministers of the day is
+essential to any satisfactory estimate of his career.
+
+The reign of Queen Anne was a period of violent party spirit. At the end
+of 1703, Swift humorously declares that even the cats and dogs were
+infected with the Whig and Tory animosity. The "very ladies" were divided
+into high church and low; and, "out of zeal for religion, had hardly time
+to say their prayers." The gentle satire of Addison and Steele, in the
+_Spectator_, confirms Swift's contemporary lamentations, as to the baneful
+effects of party zeal upon private friendship. And yet, it has been often
+said, that the party issues were hopelessly confounded. Lord Stanhope
+argues--and he is only repeating what Swift frequently said--that Whigs
+and Tories had exchanged principles.[18] In later years, Swift constantly
+asserted that he attacked the Whigs in defence of the true Whig faith. He
+belonged indeed to a party, almost limited to himself: for he avowed
+himself to be the anomalous hybrid, a High-church Whig. We must therefore
+inquire a little further into the true meaning of the accepted
+shibboleths.
+
+Swift had come from Ireland, saturated with the prejudices of his caste.
+The highest Tory in Ireland, as he told William, would make a tolerable
+Whig in England. For the English colonists in Ireland, the expulsion of
+James was a condition not of party success but of existence. Swift, whose
+personal and family interests were identified with those of the English in
+Ireland, could repudiate James with his whole heart, and heartily accepted
+the revolution; he was therefore a Whig, so far as attachment to
+"revolution principles" was the distinctive badge of Whiggism. Swift
+despised James, and he hated Popery from first to last. Contempt and
+hatred with him were never equivocal, and in this case they sprang as much
+from his energetic sense as from his early prejudices. Jacobitism was
+becoming a sham, and therefore offensive to men of insight into facts. Its
+ghost walked the earth for some time longer, and at times aped reality;
+but it meant mere sentimentalism or vague discontent. Swift, when asked to
+explain its persistence, said that when he was in pain and lying on his
+right side, he naturally turned to his left, though he might have no
+prospect of benefit from the change.[19] The country squire, who drank
+healths to the king over the water, was tired of the Georges, and shared
+the fears of the typical Western, that his lands were in danger of being
+sent to Hanover. The Stuarts had been in exile long enough to win the love
+of some of their subjects. Sufficient time had elapsed to erase from short
+memories the true cause of their fall. Squires and parsons did not cherish
+less warmly the privileges in defence of which they had sent the last
+Stuart king about his business. Rather the privileges had become so much a
+matter of course that the very fear of any assault seemed visionary. The
+Jacobitism of later days did not mean any discontent with revolution
+principles, but dislike to the revolution dynasty. The Whig indeed argued
+with true party logic, that every Tory must be a Jacobite, and every
+Jacobite a lover of arbitrary rule. In truth a man might wish to restore
+the Stuarts without wishing to restore the principles for which the
+Stuarts had been expelled: he might be a Jacobite without being a lover of
+arbitrary rule; and still more easily might he be a Tory without being a
+Jacobite. Swift constantly asserted--and in a sense with perfect
+truth--that the revolution had been carried out in defence of the Church
+of England, and chiefly by attached members of the Church. To be a sound
+churchman was, so far, to be pledged against the family which had assailed
+the Church.
+
+Swift's Whiggism would naturally be strengthened by his personal relation
+with Temple, and with various Whigs whom he came to know through Temple.
+But Swift, I have said, was a churchman as well as a Whig; as staunch a
+churchman as Laud, and as ready, I imagine, to have gone to the block or
+to prison in defence of his church as any one from the days of Laud to
+those of Mr. Green. For a time his zeal was not called into play; the war
+absorbed all interests. Marlborough and Godolphin, the great heads of the
+family clique which dominated poor Queen Anne, had begun as Tories and
+churchmen, supported by a Tory majority. The war had been dictated by a
+national sentiment: but from the beginning it was really a Whig war: for
+it was a war against Louis, Popery, and the Pretender. And thus, the great
+men who were identified with the war, began slowly to edge over to the
+party whose principles were the war principles; who hated the Pope, the
+Pretender, and the King of France, as their ancestors had hated Phillip of
+Spain, or as their descendants hated Napoleon. The war meant alliance with
+the Dutch, who had been the martyrs, and were the enthusiastic defenders
+of toleration and free thought; and it forced English ministers, almost in
+spite of themselves, into the most successful piece of statesmanship of
+the century, the Union with Scotland. Now Swift hated the Dutch and hated
+the Scotch, with a vehemence that becomes almost ludicrous. The margin of
+his Burnet was scribbled over with execrations against the Scots. "Most
+damnable Scots," "Scots hell-hounds," "Scotch dogs," "cursed Scots still,"
+"hellish Scottish dogs," are a few of his spontaneous flowers of speech.
+His prejudices are the prejudices of his class intensified as all passions
+were intensified in him. Swift regarded Scotchmen as the most virulent and
+dangerous of all dissenters; they were represented to him by the Irish
+Presbyterians, the natural rivals of his church. He reviled the Union,
+because it implied the recognition by the State of a sect which regarded
+the Church of England as little better than a manifestation of Antichrist.
+And, in this sense, Swift's sympathies were with the Tories. For in truth
+the real contrast between Whigs and Tories, in respect of which there is a
+perfect continuity of principle, depended upon the fact that the Whigs
+reflected the sentiments of the middle classes, the "monied men" and the
+dissenters; whilst the Tories reflected the sentiments of the land and the
+church. Each party might occasionally adopt the commonplaces or accept the
+measures generally associated with its antagonists; but at bottom, the
+distinction was between squire and parson on one side, tradesmen and
+banker on the other.
+
+The domestic politics of the reign of Anne turned upon this difference.
+The history is a history of the gradual shifting of government to the Whig
+side, and the growing alienation of the clergy and squires, accelerated by
+a system which caused the fiscal burden of the war to fall chiefly upon
+the land. Bearing this in mind, Swift's conduct is perfectly intelligible.
+His first plunge into politics was in 1701. Poor King William was in the
+thick of the perplexities caused by the mysterious perverseness of English
+politicians. The king's ministers, supported by the House of Lords, had
+lost the command of the House of Commons. It had not yet come to be
+understood that the Cabinet was to be a mere committee of the House of
+Commons. The personal wishes of the sovereign, and the alliances and
+jealousies of great courtiers, were still highly important factors in the
+political situation; as indeed both the composition and the subsequent
+behaviour of the Commons could be controlled to a considerable extent by
+legitimate and other influences of the Crown. The Commons, unable to make
+their will obeyed, proceeded to impeach Somers and other ministers. A
+bitter struggle took place between the two Houses, which was suspended by
+the summer recess. At this crisis Swift published his _Discourse on the
+Dissensions in Athens and Rome_. The abstract political argument is as
+good or as bad as nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand political
+treatises--that is to say, a repetition of familiar commonplaces; and the
+mode of applying precedents from ancient politics would now strike us as
+pedantic. The pamphlet, however, is dignified and well-written, and the
+application to the immediate difficulty is pointed. His argument is,
+briefly, that the House of Commons is showing a factious, tyrannical
+temper, identical in its nature with that of a single tyrant and as
+dangerous in its consequences, that it has therefore ceased to reflect the
+opinions of its constituents, and has endangered the sacred balance
+between the three primary elements of our constitution, upon which its
+safe working depends.
+
+The pamphlet was from beginning to end a remonstrance against the
+impeachments, and therefore a defence of the Whig lords; for whom
+sufficiently satisfactory parallels are vaguely indicated in Pericles,
+Aristides, and so forth. It was "greedily bought;" it was attributed to
+Somers and to the great Whig bishop, Burnet, who had to disown it for fear
+of an impeachment. An Irish bishop, it is said, called Swift a "very
+positive young man" for doubting Burnet's authorship; whereupon Swift had
+to claim it for himself. Youthful vanity, according to his own account,
+induced him to make the admission, which would certainly not have been
+withheld by adult discretion. For the result was that Somers, Halifax, and
+Sunderland, three of the great Whig junto, took him up, often admitted him
+to their intimacy, and were liberal in promising him "the greatest
+preferments" should they come into power. Before long Swift had another
+opportunity which was also a temptation. The Tory House of Commons had
+passed the bill against occasional conformity. Ardent partisans generally
+approved this bill, as it was clearly annoying to dissenters. It was
+directed against the practice of qualifying for office by taking the
+sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England without
+permanently conforming. It might be fairly argued--as Defoe argued, though
+with questionable sincerity--that such a temporary compliance would be
+really injurious to dissent. The Church would profit by such an
+exhibition of the flexibility of its opponents' principles. Passions were
+too much heated for such arguments; and in the winter of 1703-4, people,
+says Swift, talked of nothing else. He was "mightily urged by some great
+people" to publish his opinion. An argument from a powerful writer, and a
+clergyman, against the bill would be very useful to his Whig friends. But
+Swift's high church prejudices made him hesitate. The Whig leaders assured
+him that nothing should induce them to vote against the bill if they
+expected its rejection to hurt the church or "do kindness to the
+dissenters." But it is precarious to argue from the professed intentions
+of statesmen to their real motives, and yet more precarious to argue to
+the consequences of their actions. Swift knew not what to think. He
+resolved to think no more. At last he made up his mind to write against
+the bill, but he made it up too late. The bill failed to pass; and Swift
+felt a relief in dismissing this delicate subject. He might still call
+himself a Whig, and exult in the growth of Whiggism. Meanwhile he
+persuaded himself that the dissenters and their troubles were beneath his
+notice.
+
+They were soon to come again to the front. Swift came to London at the end
+of 1707, charged with a mission on behalf of his church. Queen Anne's
+Bounty was founded in 1704. The crown restored to the church the
+first-fruits and tenths which Henry VIII. had diverted from the papal into
+his own treasury, and appropriated them to the augmentation of small
+livings. It was proposed to get the same boon for the Church of Ireland.
+The whole sum amounted to about 1000_l._ a year, with a possibility of an
+additional 2000_l._ Swift, who had spoken of this to King, the Archbishop
+of Dublin, was now to act as solicitor on behalf of the Irish clergy, and
+hoped to make use of his influence with Somers and Sunderland. The
+negotiation was to give him more trouble than he foresaw, and initiate
+him, before he had done with it, into certain secrets of cabinets and
+councils which he as yet very imperfectly appreciated. His letters to
+King, continued over a long period, throw much light on his motives. Swift
+was in England from November, 1707, till March, 1709. The year 1708 was
+for him, as he says, a year of suspense, a year of vast importance to his
+career, and marked by some characteristic utterances. He hoped to use his
+influence with Somers. Somers, though still out of office, was the great
+oracle of the Whigs, whilst Sunderland was already Secretary of State. In
+January, 1708, the bishopric of Waterford was vacant, and Somers tried to
+obtain the see for Swift. The attempt failed, but the political
+catastrophe of the next month gave hopes that the influence of Somers
+would soon be paramount. Harley, the prince of wire-pulling and back-stair
+intrigue, had exploded the famous Masham plot. Though this project failed,
+it was "reckoned," says Swift, "the greatest piece of court skill that has
+been acted many years." Queen Anne was to take advantage of the growing
+alienation of the church party to break her bondage to the Marlboroughs,
+and change her ministers. But the attempt was premature, and discomfited
+its devisers. Harley was turned out of office; Marlborough and Godolphin
+came into alliance with the Whig junto; and the queen's bondage seemed
+more complete than ever. A cabinet crisis in those days, however, took a
+long time. It was not till October, 1708, that the Whigs, backed by a new
+Parliament and strengthened by the victory of Oudenarde, were in full
+enjoyment of power. Somers at last became President of the Council and
+Wharton Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Wharton's appointment was specially
+significant for Swift. He was, as even Whigs admitted, a man of infamous
+character, redeemed only by energy and unflinching fidelity to his party.
+He was licentious and a freethinker; his infidelity showed itself in the
+grossest outrages against common decency. If he had any religious
+principle it was a preference of Presbyterians, as sharing his antipathy
+to the church. No man could be more radically antipathetic to Swift.
+Meanwhile, the success of the Whigs meant in the first instance the
+success of the men from whom Swift had promises of preferment. He tried to
+use his influence as he had proposed. In June he had an interview about
+the first-fruits with Godolphin, to whom he had been recommended by Somers
+and Sunderland. Godolphin replied in vague officialisms, suggesting with
+studied vagueness that the Irish clergy must show themselves more grateful
+than the English. His meaning, as Swift thought, was that the Irish clergy
+should consent to a repeal of the Test Act, regarded by them and by him as
+the essential bulwark of the Church. Nothing definite, however, was said;
+and meanwhile Swift, though he gave no signs of compliance, continued to
+hope for his own preferment. When the final triumph of the Whigs came he
+was still hoping, though with obvious qualms as to his position. He begged
+King (in Nov. 1708) to believe in his fidelity to the church. Offers might
+be made to him, but "no prospect of making my fortune shall ever prevail
+on me to go against what becomes a man of conscience and truth, and an
+entire friend to the established church." He hoped that he might be
+appointed secretary to a projected embassy to Vienna, a position which
+would put him beyond the region of domestic politics.
+
+Meanwhile he had published certain tracts which may be taken as the
+manifesto of his faith at the time when his principles were being most
+severely tested. Would he or would he not sacrifice his churchmanship to
+the interests of the party with which he was still allied? There can be no
+doubt that by an open declaration of Whig principles in church
+matters--such a declaration, say, as would have satisfied Burnet--he would
+have qualified himself for preferment, and have been in a position to
+command the fulfilment of the promises made by Somers and Sunderland.
+
+The writings in question were the _Argument to prove the inconvenience of
+abolishing Christianity_; a _Project for the Advancement of Religion_; and
+the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_. The first, as I have said,
+was meant to show that the satirical powers which had given offence in the
+_Tale of a Tub_, could be applied without equivocation in defence of
+Christianity. The _Project_ is a very forcible exposition of a text which
+is common enough in all ages--namely, that the particular age of the
+writer is one of unprecedented corruption. It shares, however, with
+Swift's other writings, the merit of downright sincerity, which convinces
+us that the author is not repeating platitudes, but giving his own
+experience and speaking from conviction. His proposals for a reform,
+though he must have felt them to be chimerical, are conceived in the
+spirit common in the days before people had begun to talk about the State
+and the individual. He assumes throughout that a vigorous action of the
+court and the government will reform the nation. He does not contemplate
+the now commonplace objection that such a revival of the Puritanical
+system might simply stimulate hypocrisy. He expressly declares that
+religion may be brought into fashion "by the power of the administration,"
+and assumes that to bring religion into fashion is the same thing as to
+make men religious. This view--suitable enough to Swift's imperious
+temper--was also the general assumption of the time. A suggestion thrown
+out in his pamphlet is generally said to have led to the scheme soon
+afterwards carried out under Harley's administration for building fifty
+new churches in London. A more personal touch is Swift's complaint that
+the clergy sacrifice their influence by "sequestering themselves" too
+much, and forming a separate caste. This reads a little like an implied
+defence of himself for frequenting London coffee-houses, when cavillers
+might have argued that he should be at Laracor. But like all Swift's
+utterances, it covered a settled principle. I have already noticed this
+peculiarity, which he shows elsewhere when describing himself as
+
+  A clergyman of special note
+  For shunning others of his coat;
+  Which made his brethren of the gown
+  Take care betimes to run him down.
+
+The _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_ is more significant. It is a
+summary of his unvarying creed. In politics he is a good Whig. He
+interprets the theory of passive obedience as meaning obedience to the
+"legislative power;" not therefore to the king specially; and he
+deliberately accepts the revolution on the plain ground of the _salus
+populi_. His leading maxim is that the "administration cannot be placed in
+too few hands nor the legislature in too many." But this political
+liberality is associated with unhesitating churchmanship. Sects are
+mischievous: to say that they are mischievous is to say that they ought to
+be checked in their beginning; where they exist they should be tolerated,
+but not to the injury of the church. And hence he reaches his leading
+principle that a "government cannot give them (sects) too much ease, nor
+trust them with too little power." Such doctrines clearly and tersely laid
+down were little to the taste of the Whigs, who were more anxious than
+ever to conciliate the dissenters. But it was not till the end of the year
+that Swift applied his abstract theory to a special case. There had been
+various symptoms of a disposition to relax the Test Acts in Ireland. The
+appointment of Wharton to be Lord Lieutenant was enough to alarm Swift,
+even though his friend Addison was to be Wharton's secretary. In December,
+1708, he published a pamphlet, ostensibly a letter from a member of the
+Irish to a member of the English House of Commons, in which the necessity
+of keeping up the Test was vigorously enforced. It is the first of Swift's
+political writings in which we see his true power. In those just noticed
+he is forced to take an impartial tone. He is trying to reconcile himself
+to his alliance with the Whigs, or to reconcile the Whigs to their
+protection of himself. He speaks as a moderator, and poses as the
+dignified moralist above all party-feeling. But in this letter he throws
+the reins upon his humour, and strikes his opponents full in the face.
+From his own point of view the pamphlet is admirable. He quotes Cowley's
+verse,
+
+  Forbid it, heaven, my life should be
+  Weighed with thy least conveniency.
+
+The Irish, by which he means the English, and the English exclusively of
+the Scotch, in Ireland, represent this enthusiastic lover, and are called
+upon to sacrifice themselves to the political conveniency of the Whig
+party. Swift expresses his usual wrath against the Scots, who are eating
+up the land, boasts of the loyalty of the Irish Church, and taunts the
+Presbyterians with their tyranny in former days. Am I to be forced, he
+asks, "to keep my chaplain disguised like my butler, and steal to prayers
+in a back room, as my grandfather used in those times when the Church of
+England was malignant?" Is not this a ripping up of old quarrels? Ought
+not all Protestants to unite against Papists? No, the enemy is the same as
+ever. "It is agreed among naturalists that a lion is a larger, a stronger,
+and more dangerous enemy than a cat; yet if a man were to have his choice,
+either a lion at his foot fast bound with three or four chains, his teeth
+drawn out, and his claws pared to the quick, or an angry cat in full
+liberty at his throat, he would take no long time to determine." The bound
+lion means the Catholic natives, whom Swift declares to be as
+"inconsiderable as the women and children."
+
+Meanwhile the long first-fruits negotiation was languidly proceeding. At
+last it seemed to be achieved. Lord Pembroke, the outgoing Lord
+Lieutenant, sent Swift word that the grant had been made. Swift reported
+his success to Archbishop King with a very pardonable touch of complacency
+at his "very little" merit in the matter. But a bitter disappointment
+followed. The promise made had never been fulfilled. In March, 1709, Swift
+had again to write to the Archbishop, recounting his failure, his attempt
+to remonstrate with Wharton, the new Lord Lieutenant, and the too certain
+collapse of the whole business. The failure was complete; the promised
+boon was not granted, and Swift's chance of a bishopric had pretty well
+vanished. Halifax, the great Whig Mæcenas, and the Bufo of Pope, wrote to
+him in his retirement at Dublin, declaring that he had "entered into a
+confederacy with Mr. Addison" to urge Swift's claims upon Government, and
+speaking of the declining health of South, then a Prebendary of
+Westminster. Swift endorsed this "I lock up this letter as a true original
+of courtiers and court promises," and wrote in a volume he had begged from
+the same person that it was the only favour "he ever received from him or
+his party." In the last months of his stay he had suffered cruelly from
+his old giddiness, and he went to Ireland, after a visit to his mother in
+Leicester, in sufficiently gloomy mood; retired to Laracor, and avoided
+any intercourse with the authorities at the Castle, excepting always
+Addison.
+
+To this it is necessary to add one remark. Swift's version of the story is
+substantially that which I have given, and it is everywhere confirmed by
+contemporary letters. It shows that he separated from the Whig party when
+at the height of their power, and separated because he thought them
+opposed to the church principles which he advocated from first to last. It
+is most unjust, therefore to speak of Swift as a deserter from the Whigs,
+because he afterwards joined the church party, which shared all his
+strongest prejudices. I am so far from seeing any ground for such a
+charge, that I believe that few men have ever adhered more strictly to the
+principles with which they have started. But such charges have generally
+an element of truth; and it is easy here to point out what was the really
+weak point in Swift's position.
+
+Swift's writings, with one or two trifling exceptions, were originally
+anonymous. As they were very apt to produce warrants for the apprehension
+of publisher and author, the precaution was natural enough in later years.
+The mask was often merely ostensible; a sufficient protection against
+legal prosecution, but in reality covering an open secret. When in the
+_Sentiments of a Church of England Man_ Swift professes to conceal his
+name carefully, it may be doubted how far this is to be taken seriously.
+But he went much further in the letter on the Test Act. He inserted a
+passage intended really to blind his adversaries by a suggestion that Dr.
+Swift was likely to write in favour of abolishing the test; and he even
+complains to King of the unfairness of this treatment. His assault,
+therefore, upon the supposed Whig policy was clandestine. This may
+possibly be justified; he might even urge that he was still a Whig, and
+was warning ministers against measures which they had not yet adopted, and
+from which, as he thinks, they may still be deterred by an alteration of
+the real Irish feeling.[20] He complained afterwards that he was
+ruined--that is, as to his chances of preferment from the party--by the
+suspicion of his authorship of this tract. That is to say, he was "ruined"
+by the discovery of his true sentiments. This is to admit that he was
+still ready to accept preferment from the men whose supposed policy he was
+bitterly attacking, and that he resented their alienation as a grievance.
+The resentment indeed was most bitter and pertinacious. He turned savagely
+upon his old friends because they would not make him a bishop. The answer
+from their point of view was conclusive. He had made a bitter and covert
+attack, and he could not at once claim a merit from churchmen for
+defending the church against the Whigs, and revile the Whigs for not
+rewarding him. But inconsistency of this kind is characteristic of Swift.
+He thought the Whigs scoundrels for not patronizing him, and not the less
+scoundrels because their conduct was consistent with their own scoundrelly
+principles. People who differ from me must be wicked, argued this
+consistent egotist, and their refusal to reward me is only an additional
+wickedness. The case appeared to him as though he had been a Nathan
+sternly warning a David of his sins, and for that reason deprived of
+honour. David could not have urged his sinful desires as an excuse for
+ill-treatment of Nathan. And Swift was inclined to class indifference to
+the welfare of the church as a sin even in an avowed Whig. Yet he had to
+ordinary minds forfeited any right to make non-fulfilment a grievance,
+when he ought to have regarded performance as a disgrace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION.
+
+
+In the autumn of 1710 Swift was approaching the end of his forty-third
+year. A man may well feel at forty-two that it is high time that a post
+should have been assigned to him. Should an opportunity be then, and not
+till then, put in his way, he feels that he is throwing for heavy stakes;
+and that failure, if failure should follow, would be irretrievable. Swift
+had been longing vainly for an opening. In the remarkable letter (of
+April, 1722) from which I have quoted the anecdote of the lost fish, he
+says that, "all my endeavours from a boy to distinguish myself were only
+for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by
+those who have an opinion of my parts; whether right or wrong is no great
+matter; and so the reputation of wit or great learning does the office of
+a blue riband or of a coach and six horses." The phrase betrays Swift's
+scornful self-mockery; that inverted hypocrisy which led him to call his
+motives by their worst names, and to disavow what he might have been sorry
+to see denied by others. But, like all that Swift says of himself, it also
+expresses a genuine conviction. Swift was ambitious, and his ambition
+meant an absolute need of imposing his will upon others. He was a man born
+to rule; not to affect thought, but to control conduct. He was therefore
+unable to find full occupation, though he might seek occasional
+distraction, in literary pursuits. Archbishop King, who had a strange
+knack of irritating his correspondent--not, it seems, without
+intention--annoyed Swift intensely in 1711 by advising him (most
+superfluously) to get preferment, and with that view to write a serious
+treatise upon some theological question. Swift, who was in the thick of
+his great political struggle, answered that it was absurd to ask a man
+floating at sea what he meant to do when he got ashore. "Let him get there
+first and rest and dry himself, and then look about him." To find firm
+footing amidst the welter of political intrigues, was Swift's first
+object. Once landed in a deanery he might begin to think about writing;
+but he never attempted, like many men in his position, to win preferment
+through literary achievements. To a man of such a temperament, his career
+must so far have been cruelly vexatious. We are generally forced to judge
+of a man's life by a few leading incidents; and we may be disposed to
+infer too hastily that the passions roused on those critical occasions
+coloured the whole tenor of every-day existence. Doubtless Swift was not
+always fretting over fruitless prospects. He was often eating his dinner
+in peace and quiet, and even amusing himself with watching the Moor Park
+rooks or the Laracor trout. Yet it is true that so far as a man's
+happiness depends upon the consciousness of a satisfactory employment of
+his faculties, whether with a view to glory or solid comfort, Swift had
+abundant causes of discontent. The "conjured spirit" was still weaving
+ropes of sand. For ten years he had been dependent upon Temple, and his
+struggles to get upon his own legs had been fruitless: on Temple's death
+he managed when past thirty to wring from fortune a position of bare
+independence, not of satisfying activity, he had not gained a fulcrum from
+which to move the world, but only a bare starting-point whence he might
+continue to work. The promises from great men had come to nothing. He
+might perhaps have realized them, could he have consented to be faithless
+to his dearest convictions; the consciousness that he had so far
+sacrificed his position to his principles gave him no comfort, though it
+nourished his pride. His enforced reticence produced an irritation against
+the ministers whom it had been intended to conciliate, which deepened into
+bitter resentment for their neglect. The year and a half passed in Ireland
+during 1709-10 was a period in which his day-dreams must have had a
+background of disappointed hopes. "I stayed above half the time," he says,
+"in one scurvy acre of ground, and I always left it with regret." He shut
+himself up at Laracor, and nourished a growing indignation against the
+party represented by Wharton.
+
+Yet events were moving rapidly in England, and opening a new path for his
+ambition. The Whigs were in full possession of power, though at the price
+of a growing alienation of all who were weary of a never-ending war, or
+hostile to the Whig policy in Church and State. The leaders, though warned
+by Somers, fancied that they would strengthen their position by attacking
+the defeated enemy. The prosecution of Sacheverell in the winter of
+1709-10, if not directed by personal spite, was meant to intimidate the
+high-flying Tories. It enabled the Whig leaders to indulge in a vast
+quantity of admirable constitutional rhetoric; but it supplied the High
+Church party with a martyr and a cry, and gave the needed impetus to the
+growing discontent. The queen took heart to revolt against the
+Marlboroughs; the Whig Ministry were turned out of office; Harley became
+Chancellor of the Exchequer in August; and the parliament was dissolved in
+September, 1710, to be replaced in November by one in which the Tories had
+an overwhelming majority.
+
+We are left to guess at the feelings with which Swift contemplated these
+changes. Their effect upon his personal prospects was still problematical.
+In spite of his wrathful retirement, there was no open breach between him
+and the Whigs. He had no personal relations with the new possessors of
+power. Harley and St. John, the two chiefs, were unknown to him. And,
+according to his own statement, he started for England once more with
+great reluctance in order again to take up the weary Firstfruits
+negociation. Wharton, whose hostility had intercepted the proposed bounty,
+went with his party, and was succeeded by the High Church Duke of Ormond.
+The political aspects were propitious for a renewed application, and
+Swift's previous employment pointed him out as the most desirable agent.
+
+And now Swift suddenly comes into full light. For two or three years we
+can trace his movements day by day; follow the development of his hopes
+and fears; and see him more clearly than he could be seen by almost any of
+his contemporaries. The famous _Journal to Stella_, a series of letters
+written to Esther Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, from September, 1710, till
+April, 1713, is the main and central source of information. Before telling
+the story, a word or two may be said of the nature of this document, one
+of the most interesting that ever threw light upon the history of a man of
+genius. The _Journal_ is one of the very few that were clearly written
+without the faintest thought of publication. There is no indication of
+any such intention in the _Journal to Stella_. It never occurred to Swift
+that it could ever be seen by any but the persons primarily interested.
+The journal rather shuns politics; they will not interest his
+correspondent, and he is afraid of the post-office clerks--then and long
+afterwards often employed as spies. Interviews with ministers have
+scarcely more prominence than the petty incidents of his daily life. We
+are told that he discussed business, but the discussion is not reported.
+Much more is omitted which might have been of the highest interest. We
+hear of meetings with Addison; not a phrase of Addison's is vouchsafed to
+us; we go to the door of Harley or St. John; we get no distinct vision of
+the men who were the centres of all observation. Nor, again, are there any
+of those introspective passages which give to some journals the interest
+of a confession. What, then, is the interest of the _Journal to Stella_?
+One element of strange and singular fascination, to be considered
+hereafter, is the prattle with his correspondent. For the rest, our
+interest depends in great measure upon the reflections with which we must
+ourselves clothe the bare skeleton of facts. In reading the _Journal to
+Stella_ we may fancy ourselves waiting in a parliamentary lobby during an
+excited debate. One of the chief actors hurries out at intervals; pours
+out a kind of hasty bulletin; tells of some thrilling incident, or
+indicates some threatening symptom; more frequently he seeks to relieve
+his anxieties by indulging in a little personal gossip, and only
+interjects such comments upon politics as can be compressed into a hasty
+ejaculation, often, as may be supposed, of the imprecatory kind. Yet he
+unconsciously betrays his hopes and fears; he is fresh from the thick of
+the fight, and we perceive that his nerves are still quivering, and that
+his phrases are glowing with the ardour of the struggle. Hopes and fears
+are long since faded, and the struggle itself is now but a war of
+phantoms. Yet with the help of the _Journal_ and contemporary documents,
+we can revive for the moment the decaying images, and cheat ourselves into
+the momentary persuasion that the fate of the world depends upon Harley's
+success, as we now hold it to depend upon Mr. Gladstone's.
+
+Swift reached London on September 7th, 1710; the political revolution was
+in full action, though Parliament was not yet dissolved. The Whigs were
+"ravished to see him;" they clutched at him, he says, like drowning men at
+a twig, and the great men made him their "clumsy apologies." Godolphin was
+"short, dry and morose;" Somers tried to make explanations, which Swift
+received with studied coldness. The ever-courteous Halifax gave him
+dinners; and asked him to drink to the resurrection of the Whigs, which
+Swift refused unless he would add "to their reformation." Halifax
+persevered in his attentions, and was always entreating him to go down to
+Hampton Court; "which will cost me a guinea to his servants, and twelve
+shillings coach hire, and I will see him hanged first." Swift, however,
+retained his old friendship with the wits of the party; dined with Addison
+at his retreat in Chelsea, and sent a trifle or two to the _Tatler_. The
+elections began in October; Swift had to drive through a rabble of
+Westminster electors, judiciously agreeing with their sentiments to avoid
+dead cats and broken glasses; and though Addison was elected ("I believe,"
+says Swift, "if he had a mind to be chosen king, he would hardly be
+refused"), the Tories were triumphant in every direction. And meanwhile,
+the Tory leaders were delightfully civil.
+
+On the 4th of October Swift was introduced to Harley, getting himself
+described (with undeniable truth) "as a discontented person, who was ill
+used for not being Whig enough." The poor Whigs lamentably confess, he
+says, their ill usage of him, "but I mind them not." Their confession came
+too late. Harley had received him with open arms, and won not only Swift's
+adhesion, but his warm personal attachment. The fact is indisputable,
+though rather curious. Harley appears to us as a shifty and feeble
+politician, an inarticulate orator, wanting in principles and resolution,
+who made it his avowed and almost only rule of conduct that a politician
+should live from hand to mouth.[21] Yet his prolonged influence in
+Parliament seems to indicate some personal attraction, which was
+perceptible to his contemporaries, though rather puzzling to us. All
+Swift's panegyrics leave the secret in obscurity. Harley seems indeed to
+have been eminently respectable and decorously religious, amiable in
+personal intercourse, and able to say nothing in such a way as to suggest
+profundity instead of emptiness. His reputation as a party manager was
+immense; and is partly justified by his quick recognition of Swift's
+extraordinary qualifications. He had inferior scribblers in his pay,
+including, as we remember with regret, the shifty Defoe. But he wanted a
+man of genuine ability and character. Some months later the ministers told
+Swift that they had been afraid of none but him; and resolved to have him.
+
+They got him. Harley had received him "with the greatest kindness and
+respect imaginable." Three days later (Oct. 7th) the firstfruits business
+is discussed, and Harley received the proposals as warmly as became a
+friend of the Church, besides overwhelming Swift with civilities. Swift is
+to be introduced to St. John; to dine with Harley next Tuesday; and after
+an interview of four hours, the minister sets him down at St James's
+Coffee-house in a hackney coach. "All this is odd and comical!" exclaims
+Swift; "he knew my Christian name very well," and, as we hear next day,
+begged Swift to come to him often, but not to his levée: "that was not a
+place for friends to meet." On the 10th of October, within a week from the
+first introduction, Harley promises to get the firstfruits business, over
+which the Whigs had haggled for years, settled by the following Sunday.
+Swift's exultation breaks out. On the 14th he declares that he stands ten
+times better with the new people than ever he did with the old, and is
+forty times more caressed. The triumph is sharpened by revenge. Nothing,
+he says of the sort was ever compassed so soon; "and purely done by my
+personal credit with Mr. Harley, who is so excessively obliging, that I
+know not what to make of it, unless to show the rascals of the other side
+that they used a man unworthily who deserved better." A passage on Nov.
+8th sums up his sentiments. "Why," he says in answer to something from
+Stella, "should the Whigs think I came from Ireland to leave them? Sure my
+journey was no secret! I protest sincerely, I did all I could to hinder
+it, as the dean can tell you, though now I do not repent it. But who the
+devil cares what they think? Am I under obligations in the least to any of
+them all? Rot them for ungrateful dogs; I will make them repent their
+usage before I leave this place." The thirst for vengeance may not be
+edifying; the political zeal was clearly not of the purest; but in truth,
+Swift's party prejudices and his personal resentments are fused into
+indissoluble unity. Hatred of Whig principles and resentment of Whig
+"ill-usage" of himself, are one and the same thing. Meanwhile, Swift was
+able (on Nov. 4) to announce his triumph to the Archbishop. He was greatly
+annoyed by an incident, of which he must also have seen the humorous side.
+The Irish bishops had bethought themselves after Swift's departure that he
+was too much of a Whig to be an effective solicitor. They proposed
+therefore to take the matter out of his hands and apply to Ormond, the new
+Lord Lieutenant. Swift replied indignantly; the thing was done, however,
+and he took care to let it be known that the whole credit belonged to
+Harley, and of course, in a subordinate sense, to himself. Official
+formalities were protracted for months longer, and formed one excuse for
+Swift's continued absence from Ireland; but we need not trouble ourselves
+with the matter further.
+
+Swift's unprecedented leap into favour meant more than a temporary
+success. The intimacy with Harley and with St. John rapidly developed.
+Within a few months, Swift had forced his way into the very innermost
+circle of official authority. A notable quarrel seems to have given the
+final impulse to his career. In February, 1711, Harley offered him a
+fifty-pound note. This was virtually to treat him as a hireling instead of
+an ally. Swift resented the offer as an intolerable affront. He refused to
+be reconciled without ample apology, and after long entreaties. His pride
+was not appeased for ten days, when the reconciliation was sealed by an
+invitation from Harley to a Saturday dinner.[22] On Saturdays, the Lord
+Keeper (Harcourt) and the Secretary of State (St. John) dined alone with
+Harley: "and at last," says Swift, in reporting the event, "they have
+consented to let me among them on that day." He goes next day, and already
+chides Lord Rivers for presuming to intrude into the sacred circle. "They
+call me nothing but Jonathan," he adds; "and I said I believed they would
+leave me Jonathan, as they found me." These dinners were continued, though
+they became less select. Harley called Saturday his "whipping-day;" and
+Swift was the heartiest wielder of the lash. From the same February, Swift
+began to dine regularly with St. John every Sunday; and we may note it as
+some indication of the causes of his later preference of Harley, that on
+one occasion he has to leave St. John early. The company, he says, were in
+constraint, because he would suffer no man to swear or talk indecently in
+his presence.
+
+Swift had thus conquered the ministry at a blow. What services did he
+render in exchange? His extraordinary influence seems to have been due in
+a measure to sheer force of personal ascendency. No man could come into
+contact with Swift without feeling that magnetic influence. But he was
+also doing a more tangible service. In thus admitting Swift to their
+intimacy, Harley and St. John were in fact paying homage to the rising
+power of the pen. Political writers had hitherto been hirelings, and often
+little better than spies. No preceding, and, we may add, no succeeding
+writer ever achieved such a position by such means. The press has become
+more powerful as a whole: but no particular representative of the press
+has made such a leap into power. Swift came at the time when the influence
+of political writing was already great: and when the personal favour of a
+prominent minister could still work miracles. Harley made him a favourite
+of the old stamp, to reward his supremacy in the use of the new weapon.
+
+Swift had begun in October by avenging himself upon Godolphin's coldness,
+in a copy of Hudibrastic verses about the virtues of Sid Hamet the
+Magician's Rod--that is, the treasurer's staff of office--which had a
+wonderful success. He fell savagely upon the hated Wharton not long after,
+in what he calls "a damned libellous pamphlet," of which 2000 copies were
+sold in two days. Libellous, indeed, is a faint epithet to describe a
+production which, if its statements be true, proves that Wharton deserved
+to be hunted from society. Charges of lying, treachery, atheism,
+Presbyterianism, debauchery, indecency, shameless indifference to his own
+reputation and his wife's, the vilest corruption and tyranny in his
+government are piled upon his victim as thickly as they will stand. Swift
+does not expect to sting Wharton. "I neither love nor hate him," he says.
+"If I see him after this is published, he will tell me 'that he is
+damnably mauled;' and then, with the easiest transition in the world, ask
+about the weather, or the time of day." Wharton might possibly think that
+abuse of this kind might almost defeat itself by its own virulence. But
+Swift had already begun writings of a more statesmanlike and effective
+kind.
+
+A paper war was already raging when Swift came to London. The _Examiner_
+had been started by St. John, with the help of Atterbury, Prior, and
+others; and, opposed for a short time by Addison, in the _Whig Examiner_.
+Harley, after granting the first-fruits, had told Swift, that the great
+want of the ministry was "some good pen," to keep up the spirits of the
+party. The _Examiner_, however, was in need of a firmer and more regular
+manager; and Swift took it in hand, his first weekly article appearing
+November 2nd, 1710, his last on June 14th, 1711. His _Examiners_ achieved
+an immediate and unprecedented success. And yet to say the truth, a modern
+reader is apt to find them decidedly heavy. No one, indeed, can fail to
+perceive the masculine sense, the terseness and precision of the
+utterance. And yet many writings which produced less effect are far more
+readable now. The explanation is simple, and applies to most of Swift's
+political writings. They are all rather acts than words. They are blows
+struck in a party-contest: and their merit is to be gauged by their
+effect. Swift cares nothing for eloquence, or logic, or invective--and
+little, it must be added, for veracity--so long as he hits his mark. To
+judge him by a merely literary standard, is to judge a fencer by the grace
+of his attitudes. Some high literary merits are implied in efficiency, as
+real grace is necessary to efficient fencing: but in either case, a clumsy
+blow which reaches the heart is better than the most dexterous flourish in
+the air. Swift's eye is always on the end, as a good marksman looks at
+nothing but the target.
+
+What, then, is Swift's aim in the _Examiner_? Mr. Kinglake has told us how
+a great journal throve by discovering what was the remark that was on
+every one's lips, and making the remark its own. Swift had the more
+dignified task of really striking the keynote for his party. He was to put
+the ministerial theory into that form in which it might seem to be the
+inevitable utterance of strong common-sense. Harley's supporters were to
+see in Swift's phrases just what they would themselves have said--if they
+had been able. The shrewd, sturdy, narrow prejudices of the average
+Englishman were to be pressed into the service of the ministry, by
+showing how admirably they could be clothed in the ministerial formulas.
+
+The real question, again, as Swift saw, was the question of peace. Whig
+and Tory, as he said afterwards,[23] were really obsolete words. The true
+point at issue was peace or war. The purpose, therefore, was to take up
+his ground so that peace might be represented as the natural policy of the
+church or Tory party; and war as the natural fruit of the selfish Whigs.
+It was necessary, at the same time, to show that this was not the
+utterance of high-flying Toryism or downright Jacobitism, but the plain
+dictate of a cool and impartial judgment. He was not to prove but to take
+for granted that the war had become intolerably burdensome; and to express
+the growing wish for peace in terms likely to conciliate the greatest
+number of supporters. He was to lay down the platform which could attract
+as many as possible, both of the zealous Tories and of the lukewarm Whigs.
+
+Measured by their fitness for this end, the _Examiners_ are admirable.
+Their very fitness for the end implies the absence of some qualities which
+would have been more attractive to posterity. Stirring appeals to
+patriotic sentiment may suit a Chatham rousing a nation to action; but
+Swift's aim is to check the extravagance in the name of selfish prosaic
+prudence. The philosophic reflections of Burke, had Swift been capable of
+such reflection, would have flown above the heads of his hearers. Even the
+polished and elaborate invective of Junius would have been out of place.
+No man, indeed, was a greater master of invective than Swift. He shows it
+in the _Examiners_ by onslaughts upon the detested Wharton. He shows,
+too, that he is not restrained by any scruples when it comes in his way to
+attack his old patrons, and he adopts the current imputations upon their
+private character. He could roundly accuse Cowper of bigamy, and
+Somers--the Somers whom he had elaborately praised some years before in
+the dedication to the _Tale of a Tub_--of the most abominable perversion
+of justice. But these are taunts thrown out by the way. The substance of
+the articles is not invective, but profession of political faith. One
+great name, indeed, is of necessity assailed. Marlborough's fame was a
+tower of strength for the Whigs. His duchess and his colleagues had
+fallen; but whilst war was still raging, it seemed impossible to dismiss
+the greatest living commander. Yet whilst Marlborough was still in power,
+his influence might be used to bring back his party. Swift's treatment of
+this great adversary is significant. He constantly took credit for having
+suppressed many attacks[24] upon Marlborough. He was convinced that it
+would be dangerous for the country to dismiss a general whose very name
+carried victory.[25] He felt that it was dangerous for the party to make
+an unreserved attack upon the popular hero. Lord Rivers, he says, cursed
+the _Examiner_ to him for speaking civilly of Marlborough; and St. John,
+upon hearing of this, replied that if the counsels of such men as Rivers
+were taken, the ministry "would be blown up in twenty-four hours." Yet
+Marlborough was the war personified; and the way to victory lay over
+Marlborough's body. Nor had Swift any regard for the man himself, who, he
+says,[26] is certainly a vile man, and has no sort of merit except the
+military--as "covetous as hell, and as ambitious as the prince of
+it."[27] The whole case of the ministry implied the condemnation of
+Marlborough. Most modern historians would admit that continuance of the
+war could at this time be desired only by fanatics or interested persons.
+A psychologist might amuse himself by inquiring what were the actual
+motives of its advocates; in what degrees personal ambition, a misguided
+patriotism, or some more sordid passions were blended. But in the ordinary
+dialect of political warfare there is no room for such refinements. The
+theory of Swift and Swift's patrons was simple. The war was the creation
+of the Whig "ring;" it was carried on for their own purposes by the
+stock-jobbers and "monied men," whose rise was a new political phenomenon,
+and who had introduced the diabolical contrivance of public debts. The
+landed interest and the church had been hoodwinked too long by the union
+of corrupt interests supported by Dutchmen, Scotchmen, dissenters,
+freethinkers, and other manifestations of the evil principle. Marlborough
+was the head and patron of the whole. And what was Marlborough's motive?
+The answer was simple. It was that which has been assigned, with even more
+emphasis, by Macaulay--Avarice. The twenty-seventh _Examiner_ (Feb. 8th,
+1711) probably contains the compliments to which Rivers objected. Swift,
+in fact, admits that Marlborough had all the great qualities generally
+attributed to him; but all are spoilt by this fatal blemish. How far the
+accusation was true matters little. It is put at least with force and
+dignity; and it expressed in the pithiest shape Swift's genuine
+conviction, that the war now meant corrupt self-interest. Invective, as
+Swift knew well enough in his cooler moments, is a dangerous weapon, apt
+to recoil on the assailant unless it carries conviction. The attack on
+Marlborough does not betray personal animosity; but the deliberate and the
+highly plausible judgment of a man determined to call things by their
+right names, and not to be blinded by military glory.
+
+This, indeed, is one of the points upon which Swift's Toryism was unlike
+that of some later periods. He always disliked and despised soldiers and
+their trade. "It will no doubt be a mighty comfort to our grandchildren,"
+he says in another pamphlet,[28] "when they see a few rags hung up in
+Westminster Hall which cost a hundred millions, whereof they are paying
+the arrears, to boast as beggars do that their grandfathers were rich and
+great." And in other respects he has some right to claim the adhesion of
+thorough Whigs. His personal attacks, indeed, upon the party have a
+questionable sound. In his zeal he constantly forgets that the corrupt
+ring which he denounces were the very men from whom he expected
+preferment. "I well remember," he says[29] elsewhere, "the clamours often
+raised during the late reign of that party (the Whigs) against the leaders
+by those who thought their merits were not rewarded; and they had, no
+doubt, reason on their side, because it is, no doubt, a misfortune to
+forfeit honour and conscience for nothing"--rather an awkward remark from
+a man who was calling Somers "a false, deceitful rascal" for not giving
+him a bishopric! His eager desire to make the "ungrateful dogs" repent
+their ill-usage of him prompts attacks which injure his own character with
+that of his former associates. But he has some ground for saying that
+Whigs have changed their principles, in the sense that their dislike of
+prerogative and of standing armies had curiously declined when the Crown
+and the army came to be on their side. Their enjoyment of power had made
+them soften some of the prejudices learnt in days of depression. Swift's
+dislike of what we now call "militarism" really went deeper than any party
+sentiment; and in that sense, as we shall hereafter see, it had really
+most affinity with a radicalism which would have shocked Whigs and Tories
+alike. But in this particular case it fell in with the Tory sentiment. The
+masculine vigour of the _Examiners_ served the ministry, who were scarcely
+less in danger from the excessive zeal of their more bigoted followers
+than from the resistance of the Whig minority. The pig-headed country
+squires had formed an October Club, to muddle themselves with beer and
+politics, and hoped--good honest souls--to drive ministers into a genuine
+attack on the corrupt practices of their predecessors. All Harley's skill
+in intriguing and wire-pulling would be needed. The ministry, said Swift
+(on March 4th), "stood like an isthmus" between Whigs and violent Tories.
+He trembled for the result. They are able seamen, but the tempest "is too
+great, the ship too rotten, and the crew all against them." Somers had
+been twice in the queen's closet. The Duchess of Somerset, who had
+succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough, might be trying to play Mrs.
+Masham's game. Harley, "though the most fearless man alive," seemed to be
+nervous, and was far from well. "Pray God preserve his health," says
+Swift; "everything depends upon it." Four days later, Swift is in an
+agony. "My heart," he exclaims, "is almost broken." Harley had been
+stabbed by Guiscard (March 8th, 1711) at the council-board. Swift's
+letters and journals show an agitation, in which personal affection seems
+to be even stronger than political anxiety. "Pray pardon my distraction,"
+he says to Stella, in broken sentences. "I now think of all his kindness
+to me. The poor creature now lies stabbed in his bed by a desperate French
+popish villain. Good night, and God bless you both, and pity me; I want
+it." He wrote to King under the same excitement. Harley, he says, "has
+always treated me with the tenderness of a parent, and never refused me
+any favour I asked for a friend; therefore I hope your Grace will excuse
+the character of this letter." He apologizes again in a postscript for his
+confusion; it must be imputed to the "violent pain of mind I am
+in--greater than ever I felt in my life." The danger was not over for
+three weeks. The chief effect seems to have been that Harley became
+popular as the intended victim of an hypothetical Popish conspiracy; he
+introduced an applauded financial scheme in Parliament after his recovery,
+and was soon afterwards made Earl of Oxford by way of consolation. "This
+man," exclaimed Swift, "has grown by persecutions, turnings out, and
+stabbings. What waiting and crowding and bowing there will be at his
+levee!"
+
+Swift had meanwhile (April 26) retired to Chelsea "for the air," and to
+have the advantage of a compulsory walk into town (two miles, or 5748
+steps each way, he calculates). He was liable, indeed, to disappointment
+on a rainy day, when "all the three stage-coaches" were taken up by the
+"cunning natives of Chelsea;" but he got a lift to town in a gentleman's
+coach for a shilling. He bathed in the river on the hot nights, with his
+Irish servant, Patrick, standing on the bank to warn off passing boats.
+The said Patrick, who is always getting drunk, whom Swift cannot find it
+in his heart to dismiss in England, who atones for his general
+carelessness and lying by buying a linnet for Dingley, making it wilder
+than ever in his attempts to tame it, is a characteristic figure in the
+journal. In June Swift gets ten days' holiday at Wycombe, and in the
+summer he goes down pretty often with the ministers to Windsor. He came to
+town in two hours and forty minutes on one occasion: "twenty miles are
+nothing here." The journeys are described in one of the happiest of his
+occasional poems--
+
+  'Tis (let me see) three years or more
+  (October next it will be four)
+  Since Harley bid me first attend
+  And chose me for an humble friend:
+  Would take me in his coach to chat
+  And question me of this or that:
+  As "What's o'clock?" and "How's the wind?"
+  "Whose chariot's that we left behind?"
+  Or gravely try to read the lines
+  Writ underneath the country signs.
+  Or, "Have you nothing new to-day,
+  From Pope, from Parnell, or from Gay?"
+  Such tattle often entertains
+  My lord and me as far as Staines,
+  As once a week we travel down
+  To Windsor, and again to town,
+  Where all that passes _inter nos_
+  Might be proclaimed at Charing Cross.
+
+And when, it is said, St. John was disgusted by the frivolous amusements
+of his companions; and his political discourses might be interrupted by
+Harley's exclamation, "Swift, I am up; there's a cat"--the first who saw a
+cat or an old woman, winning the game.
+
+Swift and Harley were soon playing a more exciting game. Prior had been
+sent to France to renew peace negotiations, with elaborate mystery. Even
+Swift was kept in ignorance. On his return Prior was arrested by
+officious custom-house officers, and the fact of his journey became
+public. Swift took advantage of the general interest by a pamphlet
+intended to "bite the town." Its political purpose, according to Swift,
+was to "furnish fools with something to talk of;" to draw a false scent
+across the trail of the angry and suspicious Whigs. It seems difficult to
+believe that any such effect could be produced or anticipated; but the
+pamphlet, which purports to be an account of Prior's journey given by a
+French valet, desirous of passing himself off as a secretary, is an
+amusing example of Swift's power of grave simulation of realities. The
+peace negotiations brought on a decisive political struggle. Parliament
+was to meet in September. The Whigs resolved to make a desperate effort.
+They had lost the House of Commons, but were still strong in the Peers.
+The Lords were not affected by the rapid oscillations of public opinion.
+They were free from some of the narrower prejudices of country squires,
+and true to a revolution which gave the chief power for more than a
+century to the aristocracy: while the recent creations had ennobled the
+great Whig leaders, and filled the bench with low churchmen. Marlborough
+and Godolphin had come over to the Whig junto, and an additional alliance
+was now made. Nottingham had been passed over by Harley, as it seems, for
+his extreme Tory principles. In his wrath, he made an agreement with the
+other extreme. By one of the most disgraceful bargains of party history,
+Nottingham was to join the Whigs in attacking the peace, whilst the Whigs
+were to buy his support by accepting the Occasional Conformity Bill--the
+favourite high church measure. A majority in the House of Lords could not
+indeed determine the victory. The Government of England, says Swift in
+1715,[30] "cannot move a step while the House of Commons continues to
+dislike proceedings or persons employed." But the plot went further. The
+House of Lords might bring about a deadlock, as it had done before. The
+queen, having thrown off the rule of the Duchess of Marlborough, had
+sought safety in the rule of two mistresses, Mrs. Masham and the Duchess
+of Somerset. The Duchess of Somerset was in the Whig interest; and her
+influence with the queen caused the gravest anxiety to Swift and the
+ministry. She might induce Anne to call back the Whigs, and in a new House
+of Commons, elected under a Whig ministry wielding the crown influence and
+appealing to the dread of a discreditable peace, the majority might be
+reversed. Meanwhile Prince Eugene was expected to pay a visit to England,
+bringing fresh proposals for war, and stimulating by his presence the
+enthusiasm of the Whigs.
+
+Towards the end of September the Whigs began to pour in a heavy fire of
+pamphlets, and Swift rather meanly begs the help of St. John and the law.
+But he is confident of victory. Peace is certain; and a peace "very much
+to the honour and advantage of England." The Whigs are furious; "but we'll
+wherret them, I warrant, boys." Yet he has misgivings. The news comes of
+the failure of the Tory expedition against Quebec, which was to have
+anticipated the policy and the triumphs of Chatham. Harley only laughs as
+usual; but St. John is cruelly vexed, and begins to suspect his colleagues
+of suspecting him. Swift listens to both, and tries to smooth matters; but
+he is growing serious. "I am half weary of them all," he exclaims, and
+begins to talk of retiring to Ireland. Harley has a slight illness, and
+Swift is at once in a fright. "We are all undone without him," he says,
+"so pray for him, sirrahs!" Meanwhile, as the parliamentary struggle comes
+nearer, Swift launches the pamphlet which has been his summer's work. The
+_Conduct of the Allies_ is intended to prove what he had taken for granted
+in the _Examiners_. It is to show, that is, that the war has ceased to be
+demanded by national interests. We ought always to have been auxiliaries;
+we chose to become principals; and have yet so conducted the war that all
+the advantages have gone to the Dutch. The explanation of course is the
+selfishness or corruption of the great Whig junto. The pamphlet, forcible
+and terse in the highest degree, had a success due in part to other
+circumstances. It was as much a State paper as a pamphlet; a manifesto
+obviously inspired by the ministry and containing the facts and papers
+which were to serve in the coming debates. It was published on Nov. 27th;
+on December 1st the second edition was sold in five hours; and by the end
+of January 11,000 copies had been sold. The parliamentary struggle began
+on December 7th; and the amendment to the address, declaring that no peace
+could be safe which left Spain to the Bourbons, was moved by Nottingham,
+and carried by a small majority. Swift had foreseen this danger; he had
+begged ministers to work up the majority; and the defeat was due to
+Harley's carelessness. It was Swift's temper to anticipate though not to
+yield to the worst. He could see nothing but ruin. Every rumour increased
+his fears, The queen had taken the hand of the Duke of Somerset on leaving
+the House of Lords, and refused Shrewsbury's. She must be going over.
+Swift, in his despair, asked St. John to find him some foreign post, where
+he might be out of harm's way if the Whigs should triumph. St. John
+laughed and affected courage, but Swift refused to be comforted. Harley
+told him that "all would be well;" but Harley for the moment had lost his
+confidence. A week after the vote he looks upon the ministry as certainly
+ruined; and "God knows," he adds, "what may be the consequences." By
+degrees a little hope began to appear; though the ministry, as Swift still
+held, could expect nothing till the Duchess of Somerset was turned out. By
+way of accelerating this event, he hit upon a plan, which he had reason to
+repent, and which nothing but his excitement could explain. He composed
+and printed one of his favourite squibs, the _Windsor Prophecy_, and
+though Mrs. Masham persuaded him not to publish it, distributed too many
+copies for secrecy to be possible. In this production, now dull enough, he
+calls the duchess "carrots," as a delicate hint at her red hair, and says
+that she murdered her second husband.[31] These statements, even if true,
+were not conciliatory; and it was folly to irritate without injuring.
+Meanwhile reports of ministerial plans gave him a little courage; and in a
+day or two the secret was out. He was on his way to the post on Saturday,
+December 28th, when the great news came. The ministry had resolved on
+something like a _coup d'état_, to be long mentioned with horror by all
+orthodox Whigs and Tories. "I have broke open my letter," scribbled Swift
+in a coffee-house, "and tore it into the bargain, to let you know that we
+are all safe. The queen has made no less than twelve new peers ... and has
+turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is awaked at last, and so is Lord
+Treasurer. I want nothing now but to see the duchess out. But we shall do
+without her. We are all extremely happy. Give me joy, sirrahs!" The Duke
+of Somerset was not out; but a greater event happened within three days;
+the Duke of Marlborough was removed from all his employments. The Tory
+victory was for the time complete.
+
+Here, too, was the culminating point of Swift's career. Fifteen months of
+energetic effort had been crowned with success. He was the intimate of the
+greatest men in the country; and the most powerful exponent of their
+policy. No man in England, outside the ministry, enjoyed a wider
+reputation. The ball was at his feet; and no position open to a clergyman
+beyond his hopes. Yet from this period begins a decline. He continued to
+write, publishing numerous squibs, of which many have been lost, and
+occasionally firing a gun of heavier metal. But nothing came from him
+having the authoritative and masterly tone of the _Conduct of the Allies_.
+His health broke down. At the beginning of April, 1712, he was attacked by
+a distressing complaint; and his old enemy, giddiness, gave him frequent
+alarms. The daily journal ceased, and was not fairly resumed till
+December, though its place is partly supplied by occasional letters. The
+political contest had changed its character. The centre of interest was
+transferred to Utrecht, where negotiations began in January, to be
+protracted over fifteen months: the ministry had to satisfy the demand for
+peace, without shocking the national self-esteem. Meanwhile jealousies
+were rapidly developing themselves, which Swift watched with ever-growing
+anxiety.
+
+Swift's personal influence remained or increased. He drew closer to
+Oxford, but was still friendly with St. John; and to the public his
+position seemed more imposing than ever. Swift was not the man to bear his
+honours meekly. In the early period of his acquaintance with St. John
+(February 12, 1711), he sends the Prime Minister into the House of
+Commons, to tell the Secretary of State that "I would not dine with him if
+he dined late." He is still a novice at the Saturday dinners when the Duke
+of Shrewsbury appears: Swift whispers that he does not like to see a
+stranger among them; and St. John has to explain that the Duke has written
+for leave. St. John then tells Swift that the Duke of Buckingham desires
+his acquaintance. The Duke, replied Swift, has not made sufficient
+advances: and he always expects greater advances from men in proportion to
+their rank. Dukes and great men yielded, if only to humour the pride of
+this audacious parson: and Swift soon came to be pestered by innumerable
+applicants, attracted by his ostentation of influence. Even ministers
+applied through him. "There is not one of them," he says, in January,
+1713, "but what will employ me as gravely to speak for them to Lord
+Treasurer, as if I were their brother or his." He is proud of the burden
+of influence with the great, though he affects to complain. The most vivid
+picture of Swift in all his glory, is in a familiar passage from Bishop
+Kennett's diary:--
+
+    "Swift," says Kennett, in 1713, "came into the coffee-house, and had a
+    bow from everybody but me. When I came to the antechamber to wait
+    before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business,
+    and acted as minister of requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran
+    to speak to his brother the Duke of Ormond to get a chaplain's place
+    established in the garrison of Hull, for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in
+    that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and published sermons
+    to pay fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake with my Lord
+    Treasurer that according to his petition he should obtain a salary of
+    200_l._ per annum, as minister of the English Church at Rotterdam. He
+    stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the red bag to the queen, and
+    told him aloud he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer.
+    He talked with the son of Dr. Davenant to be sent abroad, and took out
+    his pocket-book and wrote down several things as _memoranda_, to do
+    for him. He turned to the fire, and took out his gold watch, and
+    telling him the time of day, complained it was very late. A gentleman
+    said, "it was too fast." "How can I help it," says the Doctor, "if the
+    courtiers give me a watch that won't go right?" Then he instructed a
+    young nobleman that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist),
+    who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which, he
+    said, he must have them all subscribe. 'For,' says he, 'the author
+    _shall not_ begin to print till _I have_ a thousand guineas for him.'
+    Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the room,
+    beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him; both went off just before prayers."
+
+There is undoubtedly something offensive in this blustering
+self-assertion. "No man," says Johnson, with his usual force, "can pay a
+more servile tribute to the great than by suffering his liberty in their
+presence to aggrandize him in his own esteem." Delicacy was not Swift's
+strong point; his compliments are as clumsy as his invectives are
+forcible; and he shows a certain taint of vulgarity in his intercourse
+with social dignitaries. He is perhaps avenging himself for the
+humiliations received at Moor Park. He has a Napoleonic absence of
+magnanimity. He likes to relish his triumph; to accept the pettiest as
+well as the greatest rewards; to flaunt his splendours in the eyes of the
+servile as well as to enjoy the consciousness of real power. But it would
+be a great mistake to infer that this ostentatiousness of authority
+concealed real servility. Swift preferred to take the bull by the horns.
+He forced himself upon ministers by self-assertion; and he held them in
+awe of him as the lion-tamer keeps down the latent ferocity of the wild
+beast. He never takes his eye off his subjects, nor lowers his imperious
+demeanour. He retained his influence, as Johnson observes, long after his
+services had ceased to be useful. And all this demonstrative patronage
+meant real and energetic work. We may note, for example, and it
+incidentally confirms Kennett's accuracy, that he was really serviceable
+to Davenant,[32] and that Fiddes got the chaplaincy at Hull. No man ever
+threw himself with more energy into the service of his friends. He
+declared afterwards that in the days of his credit he had done fifty times
+more for fifty people, from whom he had received no obligations, than
+Temple had done for him.[33] The journal abounds in proofs that this was
+not overstated. There is "Mr. Harrison," for example, who has written
+"some mighty pretty things." Swift takes him up; rescues him from the fine
+friends who are carelessly tempting him to extravagance; tries to start
+him in a continuation of the _Tatler_; exults in getting him a
+secretaryship abroad, which he declares to be "the prettiest post in
+Europe for a young gentleman;" and is most unaffectedly and deeply grieved
+when the poor lad dies of a fever. He is carrying 100_l._ to his young
+friend, when he hears of his death. "I told Parnell I was afraid to knock
+at the door, my mind misgave me," he says. On his way to bring help to
+Harrison, he goes to see a "poor poet, one Mr. Diaper, in a nasty garret,
+very sick," and consoles him with twenty guineas from Lord Bolingbroke. A
+few days before he has managed to introduce Parnell to Harley, or rather
+to contrive it so that "the ministry desire to be acquainted with Parnell,
+and not Parnell with the ministry." His old schoolfellow Congreve was in
+alarm about his appointments. Swift spoke at once to Harley, and went off
+immediately to report his success to Congreve: "so," he says, "I have made
+a worthy man easy, and that is a good day's work."[34] One of the latest
+letters in his journal refers to his attempt to serve his other
+schoolfellow, Berkeley. "I will favour him as much as I can," he says;
+"this I think I am bound to in honour and conscience, to use all my little
+credit toward helping forward men of worth in the world." He was always
+helping less conspicuous men; and he prided himself, with justice, that he
+had been as helpful to Whigs as to Tories. The ministry complained that he
+never came to them "without a Whig in his sleeve." Besides his friend
+Congreve, he recommended Rowe for preferment, and did his best to protect
+Steele and Addison. No man of letters ever laboured more heartily to
+promote the interests of his fellow-craftsmen, as few have ever had
+similar opportunities.
+
+Swift, it is plain, desired to use his influence magnificently. He hoped
+to make his reign memorable by splendid patronage of literature. The great
+organ of munificence was the famous Brothers' Club, of which he was the
+animating spirit. It was founded in June, 1711, during Swift's absence at
+Wycombe; it was intended to "advance conversation and friendship," and
+obtain patronage for deserving persons. It was to include none but wits
+and men able to help wits, and, "if we go on as we begun," says Swift, "no
+other club in this town will be worth talking of." In March, 1712, it
+consisted, as Swift tells us, of nine lords and ten commoners.[35] It
+excluded Harley and the Lord Keeper (Harcourt) apparently as they were to
+be the distributors of the patronage; but it included St. John and several
+leading ministers, Harley's son and son-in-law, and Harcourt's son; whilst
+literature was represented by Swift, Arbuthnot, Prior, and Friend, all of
+whom were more or less actively employed by the ministry. The club was
+therefore composed of the ministry and their dependents, though it had not
+avowedly a political colouring. It dined on Thursday during the
+Parliamentary session, when the political squibs of the day were often
+laid on the table, including Swift's famous _Windsor Prophecy_, and
+subscriptions were sometimes collected for such men as Diaper and
+Harrison. It flourished, however, for little more than the first season.
+In the winter of 1712-13 it began to suffer from the common disease of
+such institutions. Swift began to complain bitterly of the extravagance of
+the charges. He gets the club to leave a tavern in which the bill[36] "for
+four dishes and four, first and second course, without wine and drink,"
+had been 21_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ The number of guests, it seems, was fourteen.
+Next winter the charges are divided. "It cost me nineteen shillings to-day
+for my club dinner," notes Swift, Dec. 18, 1712. "I don't like it." Swift
+had a high value for every one of the nineteen shillings. The meetings
+became irregular: Harley was ready to give promises, but no patronage: and
+Swift's attendance falls off. Indeed, it may be noted that he found
+dinners and suppers full of danger to his health. He constantly complains
+of their after-effects; and partly perhaps for that reason he early ceases
+to frequent coffee-houses. Perhaps too his contempt for coffee-house
+society, and the increasing dignity which made it desirable to keep
+possible applicants at a distance, had much to do with this. The Brothers'
+Club, however, was long remembered by its members, and in later years they
+often address each other by the old fraternal title.
+
+One design which was to have signalized Swift's period of power, suggested
+the only paper which he had ever published with his name. It was a
+"proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English
+language," published in May, 1712, in the form of a letter to Harley. The
+letter itself, written offhand in six hours (Feb. 21, 1712), is not of
+much value; but Swift recurs to the subject frequently enough to show that
+he really hoped to be the founder of an English Academy. Had Swift been
+his own minister instead of the driver of a minister, the project might
+have been started. The rapid development of the political struggle sent
+Swift's academy to the limbo provided for such things; and few English
+authors will regret the failure of a scheme unsuited to our natural
+idiosyncrasy, and calculated, as I fancy, to end in nothing but an
+organization of pedantry.
+
+One remark meanwhile occurs which certainly struck Swift himself. He says
+(March 17, 1712) that Sacheverel, the Tory martyr, has come to him for
+patronage, and observes that when he left Ireland neither of them could
+have anticipated such a relationship. "This," he adds, "is the seventh I
+have now provided for since I came, and can do nothing for myself." Hints
+at a desire for preferment do not appear for some time; but as he is
+constantly speaking of an early return to Ireland, and is as regularly
+held back by the entreaties of the ministry, there must have been at least
+an implied promise. A hint had been given that he might be made chaplain
+to Harley, when the minister became Earl of Oxford. "I will be no man's
+chaplain alive," he says. He remarks about the same time (May 23, 1711)
+that it "would look extremely little" if he returned without some
+distinction; but he will not beg for preferment. The ministry, he says in
+the following August, only want him for one bit of business (the _Conduct
+of the Allies_ presumably). When that is done, he will take his leave of
+them. "I never got a penny from them nor expect it." The only post for
+which he made a direct application was that of historiographer. He had
+made considerable preparations for his so-called _History of the Last Four
+Years of Queen Anne_, which appeared posthumously; and which may be
+described as one of his political pamphlets without the vigour[37]--a dull
+statement of facts put together by a partisan affecting the historical
+character. This application, however, was not made till April, 1714, when
+Swift was possessed of all the preferment that he was destined to receive.
+He considered in his haughty way that he should be entreated rather than
+entreat; and ministers were perhaps slow to give him anything which could
+take him away from them. A secret influence was at work against him. The
+_Tale of a Tub_ was brought up against him; and imputations upon his
+orthodoxy were common. Nottingham even revenged himself by describing
+Swift in the House of Lords as a divine "who is hardly suspected of being
+a Christian." Such insinuations were also turned to account by the Duchess
+of Somerset, who retained her influence over Anne in spite of Swift's
+attacks. His journal in the winter of 1712-13 shows growing discontent. In
+December, 1712, he resolves to write no more till something is done for
+him. He will get under shelter before he makes more enemies. He declares
+that he is "soliciting nothing" (February 4, 1713), but he is growing
+impatient. Harley is kinder than ever. "Mighty kind!" exclaims Swift,
+"with a ----; less of civility and more of interest;" or as he puts it in
+one of his favourite "proverbs" soon afterwards--"my grandmother used to
+say,--
+
+  More of your lining
+  And less of your dining."
+
+At last Swift, hearing that he was again to be passed over, gave a
+positive intimation that he would retire if nothing was done; adding that
+he should complain of Harley for nothing but neglecting to inform him
+sooner of the hopelessness of his position.[38] The dean of St. Patrick's
+was at last promoted to a bishopric, and Swift appointed to the vacant
+deanery. The warrant was signed on April 23, and in June Swift set out to
+take possession of his deanery. It was no great prize; he would have to
+pay 1000_l._ for the house and fees, and thus, he says, it would be three
+years before he would be the richer for it; and, moreover, it involved
+what he already described as "banishment" to a country which he hated.
+
+His state of mind when entering upon his preferment was painfully
+depressed. "At my first coming," he writes to Miss Vanhomrigh, "I thought
+I should have died with discontent; and was horribly melancholy while they
+were installing me; but it begins to wear off, and change to dulness."
+This depression is singular, when we remember that Swift was returning to
+the woman for whom he had the strongest affection, and from whom he had
+been separated for nearly three years; and moreover, that he was returning
+as a famous and a successful man. He seems to have been received with some
+disfavour by a society of Whig proclivities; he was suffering from a fresh
+return of ill-health; and besides the absence from the political struggles
+in which he was so keenly interested, he could not think of them without
+deep anxiety. He returned to London in October at the earnest request of
+political friends. Matters were looking serious; and though the journal to
+Stella was not again taken up, we can pretty well trace the events of the
+following period.
+
+There can rarely have been a less congenial pair of colleagues than Harley
+and St. John. Their union was that of a still more brilliant, daring, and
+self-confident Disraeli with a very inferior edition of Sir Robert Peel,
+with smaller intellect and exaggerated infirmities. The timidity,
+procrastination, and "refinement" of the Treasurer were calculated to
+exasperate his audacious colleague. From the earliest period Swift had
+declared that everything depended upon the good mutual understanding of
+the two; he was frightened by every symptom of discord, and declares (in
+August, 1711) that he has ventured all his credit with the Ministers to
+remove their differences. He knew, as he afterwards said (October 20,
+1711), that this was the way to be sent back to his willows at Laracor,
+but everything must be risked in such a case. When difficulties revived
+next year he hoped that he had made a reconciliation. But the discord was
+too vital. The victory of the Tories brought on a serious danger. They had
+come into power to make peace. They had made it. The next question was
+that of the succession of the crown. Here they neither reflected the
+general opinion of the nation nor were agreed amongst themselves. Harley,
+as we now know, had flirted with the Jacobites; and Bolingbroke was deep
+in treasonable plots. The existence of such plots was a secret to Swift,
+who indignantly denied their existence. When King hinted at a possible
+danger to Swift from the discovery of St. John's treason, he indignantly
+replied that he must have been "a most false and vile man" to join in
+anything of the kind.[39] He professes elsewhere his conviction that there
+were not at this period 500 Jacobites in England; and "amongst these not
+six of any quality or consequence."[40] Swift's sincerity, here as
+everywhere, is beyond all suspicion; but his conviction proves
+incidentally that he was in the dark as to the "wheels within wheels"--the
+backstairs plots, by which the administration of his friends was hampered
+and distracted. With so many causes for jealousy and discord, it is no
+wonder that the political world became a mass of complex intrigue and
+dispute. The queen, meanwhile, might die at any moment, and some decided
+course of action become imperatively necessary. Whenever the queen was
+ill, said Harley, people were at their wits' end; as soon as she recovered
+they acted as if she were immortal. Yet, though he complained of the
+general indecision, his own conduct was most hopelessly undecided.
+
+It was in the hopes of pacifying these intrigues that Swift was recalled
+from Ireland. He plunged into the fight, but not with his old success. Two
+pamphlets which he published at the end of 1713 are indications of his
+state of mind. One was an attack upon a wild no-popery shriek emitted by
+Bishop Burnet, whom he treats, says Johnson, "like one whom he is glad of
+an opportunity to insult." A man who, like Burnet, is on friendly terms
+with those who assail the privileges of his order must often expect such
+treatment from its zealous adherents. Yet the scornful assault, which
+finds out weak places enough in Burnet's mental rhetoric, is in painful
+contrast to the dignified argument of earlier pamphlets. The other
+pamphlet was an incident in a more painful contest. Swift had tried to
+keep on good terms with Addison and Steele. He had prevented Steele's
+dismissal from a Commissionership of Stamps. Steele, however, had lost his
+place of Gazetteer for an attack upon Harley. Swift persuaded Harley to be
+reconciled to Steele, on condition that Steele should apologize. Addison
+prevented Steele from making the required submission, "out of mere spite,"
+says Swift, at the thought that Steele should require other help; rather,
+we guess, because Addison thought that the submission would savour of
+party infidelity. A coldness followed; "all our friendship is over," says
+Swift of Addison (March 6th, 1711); and though good feeling revived
+between the principals, their intimacy ceased. Swift, swept into the
+ministerial vortex, pretty well lost sight of Addison; though they now and
+then met on civil terms. Addison dined with Swift and St. John upon April
+3rd, 1713, and Swift attended a rehearsal of _Cato_--the only time when we
+see him at a theatre. Meanwhile the ill feeling to Steele remained, and
+bore bitter fruit.
+
+Steele and Addison had to a great extent retired from politics, and during
+the eventful years 1711-12 were chiefly occupied in the politically
+harmless _Spectator_. But Steele was always ready to find vent for his
+zeal; and in 1713 he fell foul of the _Examiner_ in the _Guardian_. Swift
+had long ceased to write _Examiners_ or to be responsible for the conduct
+of the paper, though he still occasionally inspired the writers. Steele,
+naturally enough, supposed Swift to be still at work; and in defending a
+daughter of Steele's enemy, Nottingham, not only suggested that Swift was
+her assailant, but added an insinuation that Swift was an infidel. The
+imputation stung Swift to the quick. He had a sensibility to personal
+attacks, not rare with those who most freely indulge in them, which was
+ridiculed by the easy-going Harley. An attack from an old friend--from a
+friend whose good opinion he still valued, though their intimacy had
+ceased; from a friend, moreover, whom in spite of their separation he had
+tried to protect; and, finally, an attack upon the tenderest part of his
+character, irritated him beyond measure. Some angry letters passed, Steele
+evidently regarding Swift as a traitor, and disbelieving his professions
+of innocence and his claims to active kindness; whilst Swift felt Steele's
+ingratitude the more deeply from the apparent plausibility of the
+accusation. If Steele was really unjust and ungenerous, we may admit as a
+partial excuse that in such cases the less prosperous combatant has a kind
+of right to bitterness. The quarrel broke out at the time of Swift's
+appointment to the deanery. Soon after the new dean's return to England,
+Steele was elected member for Stockbridge, and rushed into political
+controversy. His most conspicuous performance was a frothy and pompous
+pamphlet called the _Crisis_, intended to rouse alarms as to French
+invasion and Jacobite intrigues. Swift took the opportunity to revenge
+himself upon Steele. Two pamphlets--_The importance of the "Guardian"
+considered_, and _The Public Spirit of the Whigs_ (the latter in answer to
+the _Crisis_)--are fierce attacks upon Steele personally and politically.
+Swift's feeling comes out sufficiently in a remark in the first. He
+reverses the saying about Cranmer, and says that he may affirm of Steele,
+"Do him a good turn, and he is your enemy for ever." There is vigorous
+writing enough, and effective ridicule of Steele's literary style and
+political alarmism. But it is painfully obvious, as in the attack upon
+Burnet, that personal animosity is now the predominant instead of an
+auxiliary feeling. Swift is anxious beyond all things to mortify and
+humiliate an antagonist. And he is in proportion less efficient as a
+partizan, though more amusing. He has, moreover, the disadvantage of being
+politically on the defensive. He is no longer proclaiming a policy, but
+endeavouring to disavow the policy attributed to his party. The wrath
+which breaks forth, and the bitter personality with which it is edged,
+were far more calculated to irritate his opponents than to disarm the
+lookers-on of their suspicions.
+
+Part of the fury was no doubt due to the growing unsoundness of his
+political position. Steele in the beginning of 1714 was expelled from the
+House for the _Crisis_; and an attack made upon Swift in the House of
+Lords for an incidental outburst against the hated Scots in his reply to
+the _Crisis_, was only staved off by a manoeuvre of the ministry.
+Meanwhile Swift was urging the necessity of union upon men who hated each
+other more than they regarded any public cause whatever. Swift at last
+brought his two patrons together in Lady Masham's lodgings, and entreated
+them to be reconciled. If, he said, they would agree, all existing
+mischiefs could be remedied in two minutes. If they would not, the
+ministry would be ruined in two months. Bolingbroke assented: Oxford
+characteristically shuffled, said "all would be well," and asked Swift to
+dine with him next day. Swift, however, said that he would not stay to see
+the inevitable catastrophe. It was his natural instinct to hide his head
+in such moments; his intensely proud and sensitive nature could not bear
+to witness the triumph of his enemies, and he accordingly retired at the
+end of May, 1714, to the quiet parsonage of Upper Letcombe in Berkshire.
+The public wondered and speculated; friends wrote letters describing the
+scenes which followed, and desiring Swift's help; and he read, and walked,
+and chewed the cud of melancholy reflection, and thought of stealing away
+to Ireland. He wrote, however, a very remarkable pamphlet, giving his view
+of the situation, which was not published at the time; events went too
+fast.
+
+Swift's conduct at this critical point is most noteworthy. The pamphlet
+(_Free Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs_) exactly coincides with
+all his private and public utterances. His theory was simple and
+straightforward. The existing situation was the culminating result of
+Harley's policy of refinement and procrastination. Swift two years before
+had written a very able remonstrance with the October Club, who had
+sought to push Harley into decisive measures; but though he preached
+patience, he really sympathized with their motives. Instead of making a
+clean sweep of his opponents, Harley had left many of them in office,
+either from "refinement"--that over-subtlety of calculation which Swift
+thought inferior to plain common sense, and which, to use his favourite
+illustration, is like the sharp knife that mangles the paper, when a
+plain, blunt paper-knife cuts it properly--or else from inability to move
+the Queen, which he had foolishly allowed to pass for unwillingness, in
+order to keep up the appearance of power. Two things were now to be done;
+first, a clean sweep should be made of all Whigs and dissenters from
+office and from the army; secondly, the Court of Hanover should be
+required to break off all intercourse with the Opposition, on which
+condition the heir-presumptive (the infant Prince Frederick) might be sent
+over to reside in England. Briefly, Swift's policy was a policy of
+"thorough." Oxford's vacillations were the great obstacle, and Oxford was
+falling before the alliance of Bolingbroke with Lady Masham. Bolingbroke
+might have turned Swift's policy to the account of the Jacobites; but
+Swift did not take this into account, and in the _Free Thoughts_ he
+declares his utter disbelief in any danger to the succession. What side,
+then, should he take? He sympathized with Bolingbroke's avowed principles.
+Bolingbroke was eager for his help, and even hoped to reconcile him to the
+red-haired duchess. But Swift was bound to Oxford by strong personal
+affection; by an affection which was not diminished even by the fact that
+Oxford had procrastinated in the matter of Swift's own preferment; and
+was, at this very moment, annoying him by delaying to pay the 1000_l._
+incurred by his installation in the deanery. To Oxford he had addressed
+(Nov. 21, 1713) a letter of consolation upon the death of a daughter,
+possessing the charm which is given to such letters only by the most
+genuine sympathy with the feelings of the loser, and by a spontaneous
+selection of the only safe topic--praise of the lost, equally tender and
+sincere. Every reference to Oxford is affectionate. When, at the beginning
+of July, Oxford was hastening to his fall, Swift wrote to him another
+manly and dignified letter, professing an attachment beyond the reach of
+external accidents of power and rank. The end came soon. Swift heard that
+Oxford was about to resign. He wrote at once (July 25, 1714) to propose to
+accompany him to his country house. Oxford replied two days later in a
+letter oddly characteristic. He begs Swift to come with him; "If I have
+not tired you _tête-à-tête_, fling away so much of your time upon one who
+loves you;" and then rather spoils the pathos by a bit of hopeless
+doggerel. Swift wrote to Miss Vanhomrigh on August 1. "I have been asked,"
+he says, "to join with those people now in power; but I will not do it. I
+told Lord Oxford I would go with him, when he was out; and now he begs it
+of me, and I cannot refuse him. I meddle not with his faults, as he was a
+Minister of State; but you know his personal kindness to me was excessive;
+he distinguished and chose me above all other men, while he was great, and
+his letter to me the other day was the most moving imaginable."
+
+An intimacy which bore such fruit in time of trial was not one founded
+upon a servility varnished by self-assertion. No stauncher friend than
+Swift ever lived. But his fidelity was not to be put to further proof. The
+day of the letter just quoted was the day of Queen Anne's death. The crash
+which followed ruined the "people now in power" as effectually as Oxford.
+The party with which Swift had identified himself, in whose success all
+his hopes and ambitions were bound up, was not so much ruined as
+annihilated. "The Earl of Oxford," wrote Bolingbroke to Swift, "was
+removed on Tuesday. The Queen died on Sunday. What a world is this, and
+how does fortune banter us!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+STELLA AND VANESSA.
+
+
+The final crash of the Tory administration found Swift approaching the end
+of his forty-seventh year. It found him in his own opinion prematurely
+aged both in mind and body. His personal prospects and political hopes
+were crushed. "I have a letter from Dean Swift," says Arbuthnot in
+September; "he keeps up his noble spirit, and though like a man knocked
+down, you may behold him still with a stern countenance and aiming a blow
+at his adversaries." Yet his adversaries knew, and he knew only too well,
+that such blows as he could now deliver could at most show his wrath
+without gratifying his revenge. He was disarmed as well as "knocked down."
+He writes to Bolingbroke from Dublin in despair. "I live a country life in
+town," he says, "see nobody, and go every day once to prayers, and hope in
+a few months to grow as stupid as the present situation of affairs will
+require. Well, after all, parsons are not such bad company, especially
+when they are under subjection; and I let none but such come near me."
+Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond were soon in exile or the tower; and a
+letter to Pope next year gives a sufficient picture of Swift's feelings.
+"You know," he said, "how well I loved both Lord Oxford and Bolingbroke,
+and how dear the Duke of Ormond is to me; do you imagine I can be easy
+while their enemies are endeavouring to take off their heads?--_I nunc et
+versus tecum meditare canoros!_" "You are to understand," he says in
+conclusion, "that I live in the corner of a vast unfurnished house; my
+family consists of a steward, a groom, a helper in the stable, a footman,
+and an old maid, who are all at board wages, and when I do not dine abroad
+or make an entertainment (which last is very rare), I eat a mutton pie and
+drink half a pint of wine; my amusements are defending my small dominions
+against the archbishop, and endeavouring to reduce my rebellious choir.
+_Perditur hæc inter misero lux._" In another of the dignified letters
+which show the finest side of his nature, he offered to join Oxford, whose
+intrepid behaviour, he says, "has astonished every one but me, who know
+you so well." But he could do nothing beyond showing sympathy; and he
+remained alone asserting his authority in his ecclesiastical domains,
+brooding over the past, and for the time unable to divert his thoughts
+into any less distressing channel. Some verses written in October "in
+sickness" give a remarkable expression of his melancholy,--
+
+  'Tis true--then why should I repine
+  To see my life so fast decline?
+  But why obscurely here alone
+  Where I am neither loved nor known?
+  My state of health none care to learn,
+  My life is here no soul's concern,
+  And those with whom I now converse
+  Without a tear will tend my hearse.
+
+Yet we might have fancied that his lot would not be so unbearable. After
+all, a fall which ends in a deanery should break no bones. His friends,
+though hard pressed, survived; and, lastly, was any one so likely to shed
+tears upon his hearse as the woman to whom he was finally returning? The
+answer to this question brings us to a story imperfectly known to us, but
+of vital importance in Swift's history.
+
+We have seen in what masterful fashion Swift took possession of great men.
+The same imperious temper shows itself in his relations to women. He
+required absolute submission. Entrance into the inner circle of his
+affections could only be achieved by something like abasement; but all
+within it became as a part of himself, to be both cherished and protected
+without stint. His affectation of brutality was part of a system. On first
+meeting Lady Burlington at her husband's house, he ordered her to sing.
+She declined. He replied, "Sing, or I will make you. Why, madam, I suppose
+you take me for one of your English hedge-parsons; sing when I tell you."
+She burst into tears and retired. The next time he met her he began,
+"Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured as when I saw you last?"
+She good-humouredly gave in, and Swift became her warm friend. Another
+lady to whom he was deeply attached was a famous beauty, Anne Long. A
+whimsical treaty was drawn up, setting forth that "the said Dr. Swift,
+upon the score of his merit and extraordinary qualities, doth claim the
+sole and undoubted right that all persons whatever shall make such advance
+to him as he pleases to demand, any law, claim, custom, privilege of sex,
+beauty, fortune or quality to the contrary notwithstanding;" and providing
+that Miss Long shall cease the contumacy in which she has been abetted by
+the Vanhomrighs, but be allowed in return, in consideration of her being
+"a Lady of the Toast," to give herself the reputation of being one of
+Swift's acquaintance. Swift's affection for Miss Long is touchingly
+expressed in private papers, and in a letter written upon her death in
+retirement and poverty. He intends to put up a monument to her memory, and
+wrote a notice of her, "to serve her memory," and also, as he
+characteristically adds, to spite the brother who had neglected her. Years
+afterwards he often refers to the "edict" which he annually issued in
+England, commanding all ladies to make him the first advances. He
+graciously makes an exception in favour of the Duchess of Queensberry,
+though he observes incidentally that he now hates all people whom he
+cannot command. This humorous assumption, like all Swift's humour, has a
+strong element of downright earnest. He gives whimsical prominence to a
+genuine feeling. He is always acting the part of despot, and acting it
+very gravely. When he stays at Sir Arthur Acheson's, Lady Acheson becomes
+his pupil, and is "severely chid" when she reads wrong. Mrs. Pendarves,
+afterwards Mrs. Delany, says in the same way that Swift calls himself "her
+master," and corrects her when she speaks bad English.[41] He behaved in
+the same way to his servants. Delany tells us that he was "one of the best
+masters in the world," paid his servants the highest rate of wages known,
+and took great pains to encourage and help them to save. But, on engaging
+them, he always tested their humility. One of their duties, he told them,
+would be to take turns in cleaning the scullion's shoes, and if they
+objected, he sent them about their business. He is said to have tested a
+curate's docility in the same way by offering him sour wine. His dominion
+was most easily extended over women; and a long list might be easily made
+out of the feminine favourites who at all periods of his life were in
+more or less intimate relations with this self-appointed sultan. From the
+wives of peers and the daughters of lord-lieutenants down to Dublin
+tradeswomen with a taste for rhyming, and even scullerymaids with no
+tastes at all, a whole hierarchy of female slaves bowed to his rule, and
+were admitted into higher and lower degrees of favour.
+
+Esther Johnson, or Stella--to give her the name which she did not receive
+until after the period of the famous journals--was one of the first of
+these worshippers. As we have seen, he taught her to write, and when he
+went to Laracor, she accepted the peculiar position already described. We
+have no direct statement of their mutual feelings before the time of the
+journal; but one remarkable incident must be noticed. During his stay in
+England in 1703-4 Swift had some correspondence with a Dublin clergyman
+named Tisdall. He afterwards regarded Tisdall with a contempt which, for
+the present, is only half perceptible in some good-humoured raillery.
+Tisdall's intimacy with "the ladies," Stella and Mrs. Dingley, is one
+topic, and in the last of Swift's letters we find that Tisdall has
+actually made an offer for Stella. Swift had replied in a letter (now
+lost), which Tisdall called unfriendly, unkind, and unaccountable. Swift
+meets these reproaches coolly, contemptuously, and straightforwardly. He
+will not affect unconsciousness of Tisdall's meaning. Tisdall obviously
+takes him for a rival in Stella's affections. Swift replies that he will
+tell the naked truth. The truth is that "if his fortune and humour served
+him to think of that state" (marriage) he would prefer Stella to any one
+on earth. So much, he says, he has declared to Tisdall before. He did not,
+however, think of his affection as an obstacle to Tisdall's hopes.
+Tisdall had been too poor to marry; but the offer of a living has removed
+that objection; and Swift undertakes to act what he has hitherto acted, a
+friendly though passive part. He had thought, he declares, that the affair
+had gone too far to be broken off; he had always spoken of Tisdall in
+friendly terms; "no consideration of my own misfortune in losing so good a
+friend and companion as her" shall prevail upon him to oppose the match,
+"since it is held so necessary and convenient a thing for ladies to marry,
+and that time takes off from the lustre of virgins in all other eyes but
+mine."
+
+The letter must have suggested some doubts to Tisdall. Swift alleges as
+his only reasons for not being a rival in earnest his "humour" and the
+state of his fortune. The last obstacle might be removed at any moment.
+Swift's prospects, though deferred, were certainly better than Tisdall's.
+Unless, therefore, the humour was more insurmountable than is often the
+case, Swift's coolness was remarkable or ominous. It may be that, as some
+have held, there was nothing behind. But another possibility undoubtedly
+suggests itself. Stella had received Tisdall's suit so unfavourably that
+it was now suspended, and that it finally failed. Stella was corresponding
+with Swift. It is easy to guess that between the "unaccountable" letter
+and the contemptuous letter, Swift had heard something from Stella, which
+put him thoroughly at ease in regard to Tisdall's attentions.
+
+We have no further information until, seven years afterwards, we reach the
+_Journal to Stella_, and find ourselves overhearing the "little language."
+The first editors scrupled at a full reproduction of what might strike an
+unfriendly reader as almost drivelling; and Mr. Forster reprinted for the
+first time the omitted parts of the still accessible letters. The little
+language is a continuation of Stella's infantile prattle. Certain letters
+are a cipher for pet names which may be conjectured. Swift calls himself
+Pdfr, or Podefar, meaning, as Mr. Forster guesses, "Poor, dear Foolish
+Rogue." Stella, or rather Esther Johnson, is Ppt, say "Poppet." MD, "my
+dear," means Stella, and sometimes includes Mrs. Dingley. FW means
+"farewell," or "foolish wenches;" Lele is taken by Mr. Forster to mean
+"truly" or "lazy," or "there, there," or to have "other meanings not
+wholly discoverable." The phrases come in generally by way of
+leave-taking. "So I got into bed," he says, "to write to MD, MD, for we
+must always write to MD, MD, MD, awake or asleep;" and he ends, "Go to
+bed. Help pdfr. Rove pdfr, MD, MD. Nite darling rogues." Here is another
+scrap, "I assure oo it im vely late now; but zis goes to-morrow; and I
+must have time to converse with own deerichar MD. Nite de deer Sollahs."
+One more leave-taking may be enough. "Farewell, dearest hearts and souls,
+MD. Farewell, MD, MD, MD. FW, FW, FW. ME, ME. Lele, Lele, Lele, Sollahs,
+Lele."
+
+The reference to the Golden Farmer already noted is in the words, "I
+warrant oo don't remember the Golden Farmer neither, Figgarkick Solly,"
+and I will venture to a guess at what Mr. Forster pronounces to be
+inexplicable.[42] May not Solly be the same as "Sollah," generally
+interpreted by the editors as "sirrah;" and "Figgarkick" possibly be the
+same as Pilgarlick, a phrase which he elsewhere applies to Stella,[43] and
+which the dictionaries say means "poor, deserted creature"?
+
+Swift says that as he writes his language he "makes up his mouth just as
+if he was speaking it." It fits the affectionate caresses in which he is
+always indulging. Nothing, indeed, can be more charming than the playful
+little prattle which occasionally interrupts the gossip and the sharp
+utterances of hope or resentment. In the snatches of leisure, late at
+night or before he has got up in the morning, he delights in an imaginary
+chat; for a few minutes of little fondling talk help him to forget his
+worries, and anticipate the happiness of reunion. He caresses her letters,
+as he cannot touch her hand. "And now let us come and see what this saucy,
+dear letter of MD says. Come out, letter, come out from between the
+sheets; here it is underneath, and it will not come out. Come out again, I
+says; so there. Here it is. What says Pdf to me, pray? says it. Come and
+let me answer for you to your ladies. Hold up your head then like a good
+letter." And so he begins a little talk, and prays that they may be never
+separated again for ten days, whilst he lives. Then he follows their
+movements in Dublin in passages which give some lively little pictures of
+their old habits. "And where will you go to-day? for I cannot be with you
+for the ladies." [He is off sight-seeing to the Tower and Bedlam with Lady
+Kerry and a friend.] "It is a rainy, ugly day; I would have you send for
+Wales, and go to the dean's; but do not play small games when you lose.
+You will be ruined by Manilio, Basto, the queen, and two small trumps in
+red. I confess it is a good hand against the player. But, then, there are
+Spadilio, Punto, the king, strong trumps against you, which with one rump
+more are three tricks ten ace; for suppose you play your Manilio--O,
+silly, how I prate and cannot get away from MD in a morning. Go, get you
+gone, dear naughty girls, and let me rise." He delights again in turning
+to account his queer talent for making impromptu proverbs,--
+
+  Be you lords or be you earls,
+  You must write to naughty girls.
+
+Or again,--
+
+  Mr. White and Mr. Red
+  Write to M.D. when abed:
+  Mr. Black and Mr. Brown
+  Write to M.D. when you are down:
+  Mr. Oak and Mr. Willow
+  Write to M.D. on your pillow.
+
+And here is one more for the end of the year,--
+
+  Would you answer M.D.'s letter
+  On New Year's Day you will do it better:
+  For when the year with M.D. 'gins
+  It without M.D. never 'lins.
+
+"These proverbs," he explains, "have always old words in them; _lin_ is
+leave off."
+
+  But if on new year you write nones
+  M.D. then will bang your bones.
+
+Reading these fond triflings we feel even now as though we were
+unjustifiably prying into the writer's confidence. What are we to say to
+them? We might simply say that the tender playfulness is charming; and
+that it is delightful to find the stern gladiator turning from
+party-warfare to soothe his wearied soul with these tender caresses. There
+is but one drawback. Macaulay imitates some of this prattle in his
+charming letters to his younger sister, and there we can accept it
+without difficulty. But Stella was not Swift's younger sister. She was a
+beautiful and clever woman of thirty, when he was in the prime of his
+powers at forty-four. If Tisdall could have seen the journal he would have
+ceased to call Swift "unaccountable." Did all this caressing suggest
+nothing to Stella? Swift does not write as an avowed lover; Dingley serves
+as a chaperone even in these intimate confidences; and yet a word or two
+escapes which certainly reads like something more than fraternal
+affection. He apologizes (May 23, 1711) for not returning; "I will say no
+more, but beg you to be easy till fortune takes her course, and to believe
+that MD's felicity is the great goal I aim at in all my pursuits." If such
+words addressed under such circumstances did not mean "I hope to make you
+my wife as soon as I get a deanery," there must have been some distinct
+understanding to limit their force.
+
+But another character enters the drama, Mrs. Vanhomrigh,[44] a widow rich
+enough to mix in good society, was living in London with two sons and two
+daughters, and made Swift's acquaintance in 1708. Her eldest daughter,
+Hester, was then seventeen, or about ten years younger than Stella. When
+Swift returned to London in 1710, he took lodgings close to the
+Vanhomrighs, and became an intimate of the family. In the daily reports of
+his dinner, the name Van occurs more frequently than any other. Dinner,
+let us observe in passing, had not then so much as now the character of a
+solemn religious rite, implying a formal invitation. The ordinary hour was
+three (though Harley with his usual procrastination often failed to sit
+down till six), and Swift, when not pre-engaged, looked in at Court or
+elsewhere in search of an invitation. He seldom failed: and when nobody
+else offered he frequently went to the "Vans." The name of the daughter is
+only mentioned two or three times; whilst it is perhaps a suspicious
+circumstance that he very often makes a quasi-apology for his
+dining-place. "I was so lazy I dined where my new gown was, at Mrs.
+Vanhomrigh's," he says, in May, 1711; and a day or two later explains that
+he keeps his "best gown and periwig" there whilst he is lodging at
+Chelsea, and often dines there "out of mere listlessness." The phrase may
+not have been consciously insincere; but Swift was drifting into an
+intimacy which Stella could hardly approve, and, if she desired Swift's
+love, would regard as ominous. When Swift took possession of his deanery,
+he revealed his depression to Miss Vanhomrigh, who about this time took
+the title Vanessa; and Vanessa again received his confidences from
+Letcombe. A full account of their relations is given in the remarkable
+poem called _Cadenus and Vanessa_, less remarkable, indeed, as a poem than
+as an autobiographical document. It is singularly characteristic of Swift
+that we can use what, for want of a better classification, must be called
+a love poem, as though it were an affidavit in a law-suit. Most men would
+feel some awkwardness in hinting at sentiments conveyed by Swift in the
+most downright terms; to turn them into a poem would seem preposterous.
+Swift's poetry, however, is always plain matter of fact, and we may read
+_Cadenus_ (which means of course _Decanus_) _and Vanessa_ as Swift's
+deliberate and palpably sincere account of his own state of mind. Omitting
+a superfluous framework of mythology in the contemporary taste, we have a
+plain story of the relations of this new Heloïse and Abelard. Vanessa, he
+tells us, united masculine accomplishments to feminine grace; the
+fashionable fops (I use Swift's own words as much as possible) who tried
+to entertain her with the tattle of the day, stared when she replied by
+applications of Plutarch's morals; the ladies from the purlieus of St.
+James's found her reading Montaigne at her toilet, and were amazed by her
+ignorance of the fashions. Both were scandalized at the waste of such
+charms and talents due to the want of so called knowledge of the world.
+Meanwhile, Vanessa, not yet twenty, met and straightway admired Cadenus,
+though his eyes were dim with study and his health decayed. He had grown
+old in politics and wit; was caressed by ministers; dreaded and hated by
+half mankind, and had forgotten the arts by which he had once charmed
+ladies, though merely for amusement and to show his wit.[45] He did not
+understand what was love; he behaved to Vanessa as a father might behave
+to a daughter;
+
+  That innocent delight he took
+  To see the virgin mind her book
+  Was but the master's secret joy
+  In school to hear the finest boy.
+
+Vanessa, once the quickest of learners, grew distracted. He apologized for
+having bored her by his pedantry, and offered a last adieu. She then
+startled him by a confession. He had taught her, she said, that virtue
+should never be afraid of disclosures; that noble minds were above common
+maxims (just what he had said to Varina), and she therefore told him
+frankly that his lessons, aimed at her head, had reached her heart.
+Cadenus was utterly taken aback. Her words were too plain to be in jest.
+He was conscious of having never for a moment meant to be other than a
+teacher. Yet every one would suspect him of intentions to win her heart
+and her five thousand pounds. He tried not to take things seriously.
+Vanessa, however, became eloquent. She said that he had taught her to love
+great men through their books; why should she not love the living reality?
+Cadenus was flattered and half converted. He had never heard her talk so
+well, and admitted that she had a most unfailing judgment and discerning
+head. He still maintained that his dignity and age put love out of the
+question, but he offered in return as much friendship as she pleased. She
+replies that she will now become tutor and teach him the lesson which he
+is so slow to learn. But--and here the revelation ends--
+
+  But what success Vanessa met
+  Is to the world a secret yet.[46]
+
+Vanessa loved Swift; and Swift, it seems, allowed himself to be loved. One
+phrase in a letter written to him during his stay at Dublin, in 1713,
+suggests the only hint of jealousy. If you are happy, she says, "it is
+ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent
+with mine." Soon after Swift's final retirement to Ireland, Mrs.
+Vanhomrigh died; her husband had left a small property at Celbridge. One
+son was dead; the other behaved badly to his sisters; the daughters were
+for a time in money difficulties, and it became convenient for them to
+retire to Ireland, where Vanessa ultimately settled at Celbridge. The two
+women who worshipped Swift were thus almost in presence of each other. The
+situation almost suggests comedy; but unfortunately it was to take a most
+tragical and still partly mysterious development.
+
+The fragmentary correspondence between Swift and Vanessa establishes
+certain facts. Their intercourse was subject to restraints. He begs her,
+when he is starting for Dublin, to get her letters directed by some other
+hand, and to write nothing that may not be seen, for fear of
+"inconveniences." The post-office clerk surely would not be more attracted
+by Vanessa's hand than by that of such a man as Lewis, a subordinate of
+Harley's who had formerly forwarded her letters. He adds that if she comes
+to Ireland, he will see her very seldom. "It is not a place for freedom,
+but everything is known in a week and magnified a hundred times." Poor
+Vanessa soon finds the truth of this. She complains that she is amongst
+"strange prying deceitful people;" that he flies her and will give no
+reason except that they are amongst fools and must submit. His reproofs
+are terrible to her. "If you continue to treat me as you do," she says
+soon after, "you will not be made uneasy by me long." She would rather
+have borne the rack than those "killing, killing words" of his. She writes
+instead of speaking, because when she ventures to complain in person "you
+are angry, and there is something in your look so awful that it shakes me
+dumb"--a memorable phrase in days soon to come. She protests that she says
+as little as she can. If he knew what she thought, he must be moved. The
+letter containing these phrases is dated 1714, and there are but a few
+scraps till 1720; we gather that Vanessa submitted partly to the
+necessities of the situation: and that this extreme tension was often
+relaxed. Yet she plainly could not resign herself or suppress her passion.
+Two letters in 1720 are painfully vehement. He has not seen her for ten
+long weeks, she says in her first, and she has only had one letter and one
+little note with an excuse. She will sink under his "prodigious neglect."
+Time or accident cannot lessen her inexpressible passion. "Put my passion
+under the utmost restraint; send me as distant from you as the earth will
+allow, yet you cannot banish those charming ideas which will stick by me,
+whilst I have the use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in
+my soul, for there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended
+with it." She thinks him changed, and entreats him not to suffer her to
+"live a life like a languishing death, which is the only life I can lead,
+if you have lost any of your tenderness for me." The following letter is
+even more passionate. She passes days in sighing and nights in watching
+and thinking of one who thinks not of her. She was born with "violent
+passions, which terminate all in one, that inexpressible passion I have
+for you." If she could guess at his thoughts, which is impossible ("for
+never any one living thought like you") she would guess that he wishes her
+"religious"--that she might pay her devotions to heaven. "But that should
+not spare you, for was I an enthusiast, still you'd be the deity I should
+worship." "What marks are there of a deity but what you are to be known
+by--you are (at?) present everywhere; your dear image is always before my
+eyes. Sometimes you strike me with that prodigious awe, I tremble with
+fear; at other times a charming compassion shines through your
+countenance, which moves my soul. Is it not more reasonable to adore a
+radiant form one has seen, than one only described?"[47]
+
+The man who received such letters from a woman whom he at least admired
+and esteemed, who felt that to respond was to administer poison, and to
+fail to respond was to inflict the severest pangs, must have been in the
+cruellest of dilemmas. Swift, we cannot doubt, was grieved and perplexed.
+His letters imply embarrassment; and, for the most part, take a lighter
+tone; he suggests his universal panacea of exercise; tells her to fly from
+the spleen instead of courting it; to read diverting books, and so forth;
+advice more judicious probably than comforting. There are, however, some
+passages of a different tendency. There is a mutual understanding to use
+certain catch-words, which recall the "little language." He wishes that
+her letters were as hard to read as his, in case of accident. "A stroke
+thus ... signifies everything that may be said to _Cad_, at the beginning
+and conclusion." And she uses this written caress, and signs herself--his
+own "Skinage." There are certain "questions," to which reference is
+occasionally made; a kind of catechism, it seems, which he was expected to
+address to himself at intervals, and the nature of which must be
+conjectured. He proposes to continue the _Cadenus and Vanessa_--a proposal
+which makes her happy beyond "expression,"--and delights her by recalling
+a number of available incidents. He recurs to them in his last letter, and
+bids her "go over the scenes of Windsor, Cleveland Row, Rider Street, St.
+James's Street, Kensington, the Shrubbery, the Colonel in France, &c. Cad
+thinks often of these, especially on horseback,[48] as I am assured." This
+prosaic list of names recall, as we find, various old meetings. And,
+finally, one letter contains an avowal of a singular kind. "Soyez
+assurée," he says, after advising her "to quit this scoundrel island,"
+"que jamais personne du monde a été aimée, honorée, estimée, adorée par
+votre ami que vous." It seems as though he were compelled to throw her
+just a crumb of comfort here: but, in the same breath, he has begged her
+to leave him for ever.
+
+If Vanessa was ready to accept a "gown of forty-four," to overlook his
+infirmities in consideration of his fame, why should Swift have refused?
+Why condemn her to undergo this "languishing death,"--a long agony of
+unrequited passion? One answer is suggested by the report that Swift was
+secretly married to Stella in 1716. The fact is not proved, nor
+disproved:[49] nor, to my mind, is the question of its truth of much
+importance. The ceremony, if performed, was nothing but a ceremony. The
+only rational explanation of the fact, if it be taken for a fact, must be
+that Swift, having resolved not to marry, gave Stella this security that
+he would, at least, marry no one else. Though his anxiety to hide the
+connexion with Vanessa may only mean a dread of idle tongues, it is at
+least highly probable that Stella was the person from whom he specially
+desired to keep it. Yet his poetical addresses to Stella upon her birthday
+(of which the first is dated 1719, and the last 1727) are clearly not the
+addresses of a lover. Both in form and substance they are even pointedly
+intended to express friendship instead of love. They read like an
+expansion of his avowal to Tisdall, that her charms for him, though for no
+one else, could not be diminished by her growing old without marriage. He
+addresses her with blunt affection, and tells her plainly of her growing
+size and waning beauty; comments even upon her defects of temper, and
+seems expressly to deny that he loved her in the usual way.
+
+  Thou, Stella, wert no longer young
+  When first for thee my harp I strung,
+  Without one word of Cupid's darts
+  Of killing eyes and bleeding hearts;
+  With friendship and esteem possess'd
+  I ne'er admitted love a guest.
+
+We may almost say that he harps upon the theme of "friendship and esteem."
+His gratitude for her care of him is pathetically expressed; he admires
+her with the devotion of a brother for the kindest of sisters; his plain
+prosaic lines become poetical, or perhaps something better; but there is
+an absence of the lover's strain which is only not, if not, ostentatious.
+
+The connexion with Stella, whatever its nature, gives the most
+intelligible explanation of his keeping Vanessa at a distance. A collision
+between his two slaves might be disastrous. And, as the story goes (for we
+are everywhere upon uncertain ground), it came. In 1721 poor Vanessa had
+lost her only sister,[50] and companion: her brothers were already dead,
+and, in her solitude, she would naturally be more than ever eager for
+Swift's kindness. At last, in 1723, she wrote (it is said) a letter to
+Stella, and asked whether she was Swift's wife.[51] Stella replied that
+she was, and forwarded Vanessa's letter to Swift. How Swift could resent
+an attempt to force his wishes, has been seen in the letter to Varina. He
+rode in a fury to Celbridge. His countenance, says Orrery, could be
+terribly expressive of the sterner passions. Prominent eyes--"azure as the
+heavens" (says Pope)--arched by bushy black eyebrows, could glare, we can
+believe from his portraits, with the green fury of a cat's. Vanessa had
+spoken of the "something awful in his looks," and of his killing words. He
+now entered her room, silent with rage, threw down her letter on the table
+and rode off. He had struck Vanessa's death-blow. She died soon
+afterwards, but lived long enough to revoke a will made in favour of
+Swift, and leave her money between Judge Marshal and the famous Bishop
+Berkeley. Berkeley, it seems, had only seen her once in his life.
+
+The story of the last fatal interview has been denied. Vanessa's death,
+though she was under thirty-five, is less surprising when we remember that
+her younger sister and both her brothers had died before her; and that her
+health had always been weak, and her life for some time a languishing
+death. That there was in any case a terribly tragic climax to the
+half-written romance of _Cadenus and Vanessa_ is certain. Vanessa
+requested that the poem and the letters might be published by her
+executors. Berkeley suppressed the letters for the time; and they were not
+published in full until Scott's edition of Swift's works.
+
+Whatever the facts, Swift had reasons enough for bitter regret if not for
+deep remorse. He retired to hide his head in some unknown retreat;
+absolute seclusion was the only solace to his gloomy, wounded spirit.
+After two months he returned to resume his retired habits. A period
+followed, as we shall see in the next chapter, of fierce political
+excitement. For a time too he had a vague hope of escaping from his exile.
+An astonishing literary success increased his reputation. But another
+misfortune approached which crushed all hope of happiness in life.
+
+In 1726 Swift at last revisited England. He writes in July that he has for
+two months been anxious about Stella's health, and as usual feared the
+worst. He has seen through the disguises of a letter from Mrs. Dingley.
+His heart is so sunk that he will never be the same man again, but drag on
+a wretched life till it pleases God to call him away. Then in an agony of
+distress he contemplates her death; he says that he could not bear to be
+present; he should be a trouble to her, and the greatest torment to
+himself. He forces himself to add that her death must not take place at
+the deanery. He will not return to find her just dead or dying. "Nothing
+but extremity could make me so familiar with those terrible words applied
+to so dear a friend." "I think," he says in another letter, "that there is
+not a greater folly than that of entering into too strict a partnership or
+friendship with the loss of which a man must be absolutely miserable; but
+especially [when the loss occurs] at an age when it is too late to engage
+in a new friendship." The morbid feeling which could withhold a man from
+attending a friend's deathbed, or allow him to regret the affection to
+which his pain was due, is but too characteristic of Swift's egoistic
+attachments. Yet we forgive the rash phrase, when we read his passionate
+expressions of agony. Swift returned to Ireland in the autumn, and Stella
+struggled through the winter. He was again in England in the following
+summer; and for a time in better spirits. But once more the news comes
+that Stella is probably on her deathbed; and he replies in letters which
+we read as we listen to groans of a man in sorest agony. He keeps one
+letter for an hour before daring to open it. He does not wish to live to
+see the loss of the person for whose sake alone life was worth preserving.
+"What have I to do in the world? I never was in such agonies as when I
+received your letter, and had it in my pocket. I am able to hold up my
+sorry head no longer." In another distracted letter, he repeats in Latin
+the desire that Stella shall not die in the deanery, for fear of malignant
+misinterpretations. If any marriage had taken place, the desire to conceal
+it had become a rooted passion.
+
+Swift returned to Ireland to find Stella still living. It is said that in
+the last period of her life Swift offered to make the marriage public, and
+that she declined, saying that it was now too late.[52] She lingered till
+January 28, 1728. He sat down the same night to write a few scattered
+reminiscences. He breaks down; and writes again during the funeral, which
+he is too ill to attend. The fragmentary notes give us the most authentic
+account of Stella, and show, at least, what she appeared in the eyes of
+her lifelong friend and protector. We may believe that she was intelligent
+and charming; as we can be certain that Swift loved her in every sense but
+one. A lock of her hair was preserved in an envelope in which he had
+written one of those vivid phrases by which he still lives in our memory:
+"_Only a woman's hair_." What does it mean? Our interpretation will depend
+partly upon what we can see ourselves in a lock of hair. But I think that
+any one who judges Swift fairly will read in those four words the most
+intense utterance of tender affection, and of pathetic yearning for the
+irrevocable past strangely blended with a bitterness springing not from
+remorse, but indignation at the cruel tragi-comedy of life. The destinies
+laugh at us whilst they torture us; they make cruel scourges of trifles,
+and extract the bitterest passion from our best affections.
+
+Swift was left alone. Before we pass on we must briefly touch the problems
+of this strange history. It was a natural guess that some mysterious cause
+condemned Swift to his loneliness. A story is told by Scott (on poor
+evidence) that Delany went to Archbishop King's library about the time of
+the supposed marriage. As he entered Swift rushed out with a distracted
+countenance. King was in tears, and said to Delany, "You have just met the
+most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must
+never ask a question." This has been connected with a guess made by
+somebody that Swift had discovered Stella to be his natural sister. It can
+be shown conclusively that this is impossible; and the story must be left
+as picturesque but too hopelessly vague to gratify any inference whatever.
+We know without it that Swift was unhappy; but we know nothing of any
+definite cause.
+
+Another view is that there is no mystery. Swift, it is said, retained
+through life the position of Stella's "guide, philosopher and friend," and
+was never anything more. Stella's address to Swift (on his birthday,
+1721), may be taken to confirm this theory. It says with a plainness like
+his own that he had taught her to despise beauty and hold her empire by
+virtue and sense. Yet the theory is in itself strange. The less love
+entered into Swift's relations to Stella, the more difficult to explain
+his behaviour to Vanessa. If he regarded Stella only as a daughter or a
+younger sister, and she returned the same feeling, he had no reason for
+making any mystery about the woman who would not in that case be a rival.
+If, again, we accept this view, we naturally ask why Swift "never admitted
+love a guest." He simply continued, it is suggested, to behave as teacher
+to pupil. He thought of her when she was a woman as he had thought of her
+when she was a child of eight years old. But it is singular that a man
+should be able to preserve such a relation. It is quite true that a
+connexion of this kind may blind a man to its probable consequences; but
+it is contrary to ordinary experience that it should render the
+consequences less probable. The relation might explain why Swift should be
+off his guard; but could hardly act as a safeguard. An ordinary man who
+was on such terms with a beautiful girl as are revealed in the _Journal to
+Stella_ would have ended by falling in love with her. Why did not Swift?
+We can only reply by remembering the "coldness" of temper to which he
+refers in his first letter: and his assertion that he did not understand
+love, and that his frequent flirtations never meant more than a desire for
+distraction. The affair with Varina is an exception: but there are grounds
+for holding that Swift was constitutionally indisposed to the passion of
+love. The absence of any traces of such a passion from writings
+conspicuous for their amazing sincerity, and (it is added) for their
+freedoms of another kind, has been often noticed as a confirmation of this
+hypothesis. Yet it must be said that Swift could be strictly reticent
+about his strongest feelings--and was specially cautious, for whatever
+reason, in regard to his relation with Stella.[53]
+
+If Swift constitutionally differed from other men, we have some
+explanation of his strange conduct. But we must take into account other
+circumstances. Swift had very obvious motives for not marrying. In the
+first place, he gradually became almost a monomaniac upon the question of
+money. His hatred of wasting a penny unnecessarily began at Trinity
+College, and is prominent in all his letters and journals. It coloured
+even his politics, for a conviction that the nation was hopelessly ruined
+is one of his strongest prejudices. He kept accounts down to halfpence,
+and rejoices at every saving of a shilling. The passion was not the
+vulgar desire for wealth of the ordinary miser. It sprang from the
+conviction stored up in all his aspirations that money meant independence.
+"Wealth," he says, "is liberty; and liberty is a blessing fittest for a
+philosopher--and Gay is a slave just by two thousand pounds too
+little."[54] Gay was a duchess's lapdog: Swift, with all his troubles, at
+least a free man. Like all Swift's prejudices, this became a fixed idea
+which was always gathering strength. He did not love money for its own
+sake. He was even magnificent in his generosity. He scorned to receive
+money for his writings; he abandoned the profit to his printers in
+compensation for the risks they ran, or gave it to his friends. His
+charity was splendid relatively to his means. In later years he lived on a
+third of his income, gave away a third, and saved the remaining third for
+his posthumous charity,[55]--and posthumous charity which involves present
+saving is charity of the most unquestionable kind. His principle was that
+by reducing his expenditure to the lowest possible point, he secured his
+independence and could then make a generous use of the remainder. Until he
+had received his deanery, however, he could only make both ends meet.
+Marriage would therefore have meant poverty, probably dependence, and the
+complete sacrifice of his ambition.
+
+If under these circumstances Swift had become engaged to Stella upon
+Temple's death, he would have been doing what was regularly done by
+fellows of colleges under the old system. There is, however, no trace of
+such an engagement. It would be in keeping with Swift's character, if we
+should suppose that he shrank from the bondage of an engagement; that he
+designed to marry Stella as soon as he should achieve a satisfactory
+position, and meanwhile trusted to his influence over her, and thought
+that he was doing her justice by leaving her at liberty to marry if she
+chose. The close connexion must have been injurious to Stella's prospects
+of a match; but it continued only by her choice. If this were in fact the
+case, it is still easy to understand why Swift did not marry upon becoming
+dean. He felt himself, I have said, to be a broken man. His prospects were
+ruined, and his health precarious. This last fact requires to be
+remembered in every estimate of Swift's character. His life was passed
+under a Damocles' sword. He suffered from a distressing illness which he
+attributed to an indigestion produced by an over-consumption of fruit at
+Temple's when he was a little over twenty-one. The main symptoms were a
+giddiness, which frequently attacked him, and was accompanied by deafness.
+It is quite recently that the true nature of the complaint has been
+identified. Dr. Bucknill[56] seems to prove that the symptoms are those of
+"Labyrinthine vertigo," or Ménière's disease, so called because discovered
+by Ménière in 1861. The references to his sufferings, brought together by
+Sir William Wilde in 1849,[57] are frequent in all his writings. It
+tormented him for days, weeks, and months, gradually becoming more
+permanent in later years. In 1731 he tells Gay that his giddiness attacks
+him constantly, though it is less violent than of old; and in 1736 he says
+that it is continual. From a much earlier period it had alarmed and
+distressed him. Some pathetic entries are given by Mr. Forster from one of
+his note-books:--"Dec. 5 (1708).--Horribly sick. 12th.--Much better,
+thank God and M.D.'s prayers.... April 2nd (1709).--Small giddy fit and
+swimming in the head. M.D. and God help me.... July, 1710.--Terrible fit.
+God knows what may be the event. Better towards the end." The terrible
+anxiety, always in the background, must count for much in Swift's gloomy
+despondency. Though he seems always to have spoken of the fruit as the
+cause, he must have had misgivings as to the nature and result. Dr.
+Bucknill tells us that it was not necessarily connected with the disease
+of the brain, which ultimately came upon him; but he may well have thought
+that this disorder of the head was prophetic of such an end. It was
+probably in 1717 that he said to Young of the _Night Thoughts_, "I shall
+be like that tree; I shall die at the top." A man haunted perpetually by
+such forebodings might well think that marriage was not for him. In
+_Cadenus and Vanessa_ he insists upon his declining years with an emphasis
+which seems excessive even from a man of forty-four (in 1713 he was really
+forty-five) to a girl of twenty. In a singular poem called the _Progress
+of Marriage_ he treats the supposed case of a divine of fifty-two marrying
+a lively girl of fashion, and speaks with his usual plainness of the
+probable consequences of such folly. We cannot doubt that here as
+elsewhere he is thinking of himself. He was fifty-two when receiving the
+passionate love-letters of Vanessa; and the poem seems to be specially
+significant.
+
+This is one of those cases in which we feel that even biographers are not
+omniscient; and I must leave it to my readers to choose their own theory,
+only suggesting that readers too are fallible. But we may still ask what
+judgment is to be passed upon Swift's conduct. Both Stella and Vanessa
+suffered from coming within the sphere of Swift's imperious attraction.
+Stella enjoyed his friendship through her life at the cost of a partial
+isolation from ordinary domestic happiness. She might and probably did
+regard his friendship as a full equivalent for the sacrifice. It is one of
+the cases in which, if the actors be our contemporaries, we hold that
+outsiders are incompetent to form a judgment, as none but the principals
+can really know the facts. Is it better to be the most intimate friend of
+a man of genius or the wife of a commonplace Tisdall? If Stella chose, and
+chose freely, it is hard to say that she was mistaken, or to blame Swift
+for a fascination which he could not but exercise. The tragedy of Vanessa
+suggests rather different reflections. Swift's duty was plain. Granting
+what seems to be probable, that Vanessa's passion took him by surprise,
+and that he thought himself disqualified for marriage by infirmity and
+weariness of life, he should have made his decision perfectly plain. He
+should have forbidden any clandestine relations. Furtive caresses--even on
+paper, understandings to carry on a private correspondence, fond
+references to old meetings, were obviously calculated to encourage her
+passion. He should not only have pronounced it to be hopeless, but made
+her, at whatever cost, recognize the hopelessness. This is where Swift's
+strength seems to have failed him. He was not intentionally cruel; he
+could not foresee the fatal event; he tried to put her aside, and he felt
+the "shame, disappointment, grief, surprise," of which he speaks on the
+avowal of her love. He gave her the most judicious advice, and tried to
+persuade her to accept it. But he did not make it effectual. He shrank
+from inflicting pain upon her and upon himself. He could not deprive
+himself of the sympathy which soothed his gloomy melancholy. His affection
+was never free from the egoistic element which prevented him from acting
+unequivocally as an impartial spectator would have advised him to act, or
+as he would have advised another to act in a similar case. And therefore
+when the crisis came the very strength of his affection produced an
+explosion of selfish wrath; and he escaped from the intolerable position
+by striking down the woman whom he loved, and whose love for him had
+become a burden. The wrath was not the less fatal because it was half
+composed of remorse, and the energy of the explosion proportioned to the
+strength of the feeling which had held it in check.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+WOOD'S HALFPENCE.
+
+
+In one of Scott's finest novels, the old Cameronian preacher, who had been
+left for dead by Claverhouse's troopers, suddenly rises to confront his
+conquerors, and spends his last breath in denouncing the oppressors of the
+saints. Even such an apparition was Jonathan Swift to comfortable Whigs
+who were flourishing in the place of Harley and St. John, when, after ten
+years' quiescence, he suddenly stepped into the political arena. After the
+first crushing fall he had abandoned partial hope, and contented himself
+with establishing supremacy in his chapter. But undying wrath smouldered
+in his breast till time came for an outburst.
+
+No man had ever learnt more thoroughly the lesson, "put not your faith in
+princes;" or had been impressed with a lower estimate of the wisdom
+displayed by the rulers of the world. He had been behind the scenes, and
+knew that the wisdom of great ministers meant just enough cunning to court
+the ruin which a little common sense would have avoided. Corruption was at
+the prow and folly at the helm. The selfish ring which he had denounced so
+fiercely had triumphed. It had triumphed, as he held, by flattering the
+new dynasty, hoodwinking the nation, and maligning its antagonists. The
+cynical theory of politics was not for him, as for some comfortable
+cynics, an abstract proposition, which mattered very little to a sensible
+man; but was embodied in the bitter wrath with which he regarded his
+triumphant adversaries. Pessimism is perfectly compatible with bland
+enjoyment of the good things in a bad world; but Swift's pessimism was not
+of this type. It meant energetic hatred of definite things and people who
+were always before him.
+
+With this feeling, he had come to Ireland; and Ireland--I am speaking of a
+century and a half ago--was the opprobrium of English statesmanship. There
+Swift had (or thought he had) always before him a concrete example of the
+basest form of tyranny. By Ireland, I have said, Swift meant, in the first
+place, the English in Ireland. In the last years of his sanity he
+protested indignantly against the confusion between the "savage old
+Irish," and the English gentry who, he said, were much better bred, spoke
+better English, and were more civilized than the inhabitants of many
+English counties.[58] He retained to the end of his life his antipathy to
+the Scotch colonists. He opposed their demand for political equality as
+fiercely in the last as in his first political utterances. He contrasted
+them unfavourably[59] with the Catholics, who had indeed been driven to
+revolt by massacre and confiscation under Puritan rule, but who were now,
+he declared, "true Whigs, in the best and most proper sense of the word,"
+and thoroughly loyal to the house of Hanover. Had there been a danger of a
+Catholic revolt, Swift's feelings might have been different; but he always
+held, that they were "as inconsiderable as the women and children," mere
+"hewers of wood and drawers of water," "out of all capacity of doing any
+mischief, if they were ever so well inclined."[60] Looking at them in this
+way, he felt a sincere compassion for their misery and a bitter resentment
+against their oppressors. The English, he said, in a remarkable
+letter,[61] should be ashamed of their reproaches of Irish dulness,
+ignorance and cowardice. Those defects were the products of slavery. He
+declared that the poor cottagers had "a much better natural taste for good
+sense, humour and raillery, than ever I observed among people of the like
+sort in England. But the millions of oppressions they lie under, the
+tyranny of their landlords, the ridiculous zeal of their priests, and the
+misery of the whole nation have been enough to damp the best spirits under
+the sun." Such a view is now commonplace enough. It was then a heresy to
+English statesmen, who thought that nobody but a Papist or a Jacobite
+could object to the tyranny of Whigs.
+
+Swift's diagnosis of the chronic Irish disease was thoroughly political.
+He considered that Irish misery sprang from the subjection to a government
+not intentionally cruel, but absolutely selfish; to which the Irish
+revenue meant so much convenient political plunder, and which acted on the
+principle quoted from Cowley, that the happiness of Ireland should not
+weigh against the "least conveniency" of England. He summed up his views
+in a remarkable letter,[62] to be presently mentioned, the substance of
+which had been orally communicated to Walpole. He said to Walpole, as he
+said in every published utterance:--first, that the colonists were still
+Englishmen and entitled to English rights; secondly, that their trade was
+deliberately crushed, purely for the benefit of the English of England;
+thirdly, that all valuable preferments were bestowed upon men born in
+England, as a matter of course; and finally, that in consequence of this,
+the upper classes, deprived of all other openings, were forced to
+rack-rent their tenants to such a degree that not one farmer in the
+kingdom out of a hundred "could afford shoes or stockings to his children,
+or to eat flesh or drink anything better than sour milk and water twice in
+a year: so that the whole country, except the Scotch plantation in the
+north, is a scene of misery and desolation hardly to be matched on this
+side Lapland." A modern reformer would give the first and chief place to
+this social misery. It is characteristic that Swift comes to it as a
+consequence from the injustice to his own class:--as, again, that he
+appeals to Walpole not on the simple ground that the people are wretched,
+but on the ground that they will be soon unable to pay the tribute to
+England, which he reckons at a million a year. But his conclusion might be
+accepted by any Irish patriot. Whatever, he says, can make a country poor
+and despicable, concurs in the case of Ireland. The nation is controlled
+by laws to which it does not consent; disowned by its brethren and
+countrymen; refused the liberty of trading even in its natural
+commodities; forced to seek for justice many hundred miles by sea and
+land; rendered in a manner incapable of serving the king and country in
+any place of honour, trust, or profit; whilst the governors have no
+sympathy with the governed, except what may occasionally arise from the
+sense of justice and philanthropy.
+
+I am not to ask how far Swift was right in his judgments. Every line which
+he wrote shows that he was thoroughly sincere and profoundly stirred by
+his convictions. A remarkable pamphlet, published in 1720, contained his
+first utterance upon the subject. It is an exhortation to the Irish to use
+only Irish manufactures. He applies to Ireland the fable of _Arachne and
+Pallas_. The goddess, indignant at being equalled in spinning, turned her
+rival into a spider, to spin for ever out of her own bowels in a narrow
+compass. He always, he says, pitied poor Arachne for so cruel and unjust a
+sentence, "which, however, is fully executed upon us by England with
+further additions of rigour and severity; for the greatest part of our
+bowels and vitals is extracted, without allowing us the liberty of
+spinning and weaving them." Swift of course accepts the economic fallacy
+equally taken for granted by his opponents, and fails to see that England
+and Ireland injured themselves as well as each other by refusing to
+interchange their productions. But he utters forcibly his righteous
+indignation against the contemptuous injustice of the English rulers, in
+consequence of which the "miserable people" are being reduced "to a worse
+condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and
+Poland." Slaves, he says, have a natural disposition to be tyrants; and he
+himself, when his betters give him a kick, is apt to revenge it with six
+upon his footman. That is how the landlords treat their tenantry.
+
+The printer of this pamphlet was prosecuted. The chief justice (Whitshed)
+sent back the jury nine times and kept them eleven hours before they would
+consent to bring in a "special verdict." The unpopularity of the
+prosecution became so great that it was at last dropped. Four years
+afterwards a more violent agitation broke out. A patent had been given to
+a certain William Wood for supplying Ireland with a copper coinage. Many
+complaints had been made, and in September, 1723, addresses were voted by
+the Irish Houses of Parliament, declaring that the patent had been
+obtained by clandestine and false representations: that it was mischievous
+to the country: and that Wood had been guilty of frauds in his coinage.
+They were pacified by vague promises; but Walpole went on with the scheme
+on the strength of a favourable report of a committee of the Privy
+Council; and the excitement was already serious when (in 1724) Swift
+published the _Drapier's Letters_, which give him his chief title to
+eminence as a patriotic agitator.
+
+Swift either shared or took advantage of the general belief that the
+mysteries of the currency are unfathomable to the human intelligence. They
+have to do with that world of financial magic in which wealth may be made
+out of paper, and all ordinary relations of cause and effect are
+suspended. There is, however, no real mystery about the halfpence. The
+small coins which do not form part of the legal tender may be considered
+primarily as counters. A penny is a penny, so long as twelve are change
+for a shilling. It is not in the least necessary for this purpose that the
+copper contained in the twelve penny pieces should be worth or nearly
+worth a shilling. A sovereign can never be worth much more than the gold
+of which it is made. But at the present day bronze worth only twopence is
+coined into twelve penny pieces.[63] The coined bronze is worth six times
+as much as the uncoined. The small coins must have some intrinsic value to
+deter forgery, and must be made of good materials to stand wear and tear.
+If these conditions be observed, and a proper number be issued, the value
+of the penny will be no more affected by the value of the copper than the
+value of the banknote by that of the paper on which it is written. This
+opinion assumes that the copper coins cannot be offered or demanded in
+payment of any but trifling debts. The halfpence coined by Wood seem to
+have fulfilled these conditions, and as copper worth twopence (on the
+lowest computation) was coined into ten halfpence, worth fivepence, their
+intrinsic value was more than double that of modern halfpence.
+
+The halfpence, then, were not objectionable upon this ground. Nay, it
+would have been wasteful to make them more valuable. It would have been as
+foolish to use more copper for the pence as to make the works of a watch
+of gold if brass is equally durable and convenient. But another
+consequence is equally clear. The effect of Wood's patent was that a mass
+of copper worth about 60,000_l._,[64] became worth 100,800_l._ in the
+shape of halfpenny pieces. There was therefore a balance of about
+40,000_l._ to pay for the expenses of coinage. It would have been waste to
+get rid of this by putting more copper in the coins; but if so large a
+profit arose from the transaction, it would go to somebody. At the present
+day it would be brought into the national treasury. This was not the way
+in which business was done in Ireland. Wood was to pay 1000_l._ a year for
+fourteen years to the Crown.[65] But 14,000_l._ still leaves a large
+margin for profit. What was to become of it? According to the admiring
+biographer of Sir R. Walpole, the patent had been originally given by
+Lord Sunderland to the Duchess of Kendal, a lady whom the king delighted
+to honour. She already received 3000_l._ a year in pensions upon the Irish
+establishment, and she sold this patent to Wood for 10,000_l._ Enough was
+still left to give Wood a handsome profit; as in transactions of this
+kind, every accomplice in a dirty business expects to be well paid. So
+handsome, indeed, was the profit that Wood received ultimately a pension
+of 3000_l._ for eight years, 24,000_l._, that is, in consideration of
+abandoning the patent. It was right and proper that a profit should be
+made on the transaction, but shameful that it should be divided between
+the king's mistress and William Wood, and that the bargain should be
+struck without consulting the Irish representatives, and maintained in
+spite of their protests. The Duchess of Kendal was to be allowed to take a
+share of the wretched halfpence in the pocket of every Irish beggar. A
+more disgraceful transaction could hardly be imagined, or one more
+calculated to justify Swift's view of the selfishness and corruption of
+the English rulers.
+
+Swift saw his chance, and went to work in characteristic fashion, with
+unscrupulous audacity of statement, guided by the keenest strategical
+instinct. He struck at the heart as vigorously as he had done in the
+_Examiner_, but with resentment sharpened by ten years of exile. It was
+not safe to speak of the Duchess of Kendal's share in the transaction,
+though the story, as poor Archdeacon Coxe pathetically declares, was
+industriously propagated. But the case against Wood was all the stronger.
+Is he so wicked, asks Swift, as to suppose that a nation is to be ruined
+that he may gain three or fourscore thousand pounds? Hampden went to
+prison, he says, rather than pay a few shillings wrongfully; I, says
+Swift, would rather be hanged than have all my "property taxed at
+seventeen shillings in the pound at the arbitrary will and pleasure of the
+venerable Mr. Wood." A simple constitutional precedent might rouse a
+Hampden; but to stir a popular agitation, it is as well to show that the
+evil actually inflicted is gigantic, independently of possible results. It
+requires, indeed, some audacity to prove that debasement of the copper
+currency can amount to a tax of seventeen shillings in the pound on all
+property. Here, however, Swift might simply throw the reins upon the neck
+of his fancy. Anybody may make any inferences he pleases in the mysterious
+regions of currency; and no inferences, it seems, were too audacious for
+his hearers, though we are left to doubt how far Swift's wrath had
+generated delusions in his own mind, and how far he perceived that other
+minds were ready to be deluded. He revels in prophesying the most
+extravagant consequences. The country will be undone; the tenants will not
+be able to pay their rents; "the farmers must rob, or beg, or leave the
+country; the shopkeepers in this and every other town must break or
+starve; the squire will hoard up all his good money to send to England and
+keep some poor tailor or weaver in his house, who will be glad to get
+bread at any rate."[66] Concrete facts are given to help the imagination.
+Squire Conolly must have 250 horses to bring his half-yearly rents to
+town; and the poor man will have to pay thirty-six of Wood's halfpence to
+get a quart of twopenny ale.
+
+How is this proved? One argument is a sufficient specimen. Nobody,
+according to the patent, was to be forced to take Wood's halfpence; nor
+could any one be obliged to receive more than fivepence halfpenny in any
+one payment. This, of course, meant that the halfpence could only be used
+as change, and a man must pay his debts in silver or gold whenever it was
+possible to use a sixpence. It upsets Swift's statement about Squire
+Connolly's rents. But Swift is equal to the emergency. The rule means, he
+says, that every man must take fivepence halfpenny in every payment, _if
+it be offered_; which, on the next page, becomes simply in every payment;
+therefore making an easy assumption or two, he reckons that you will
+receive 160_l._ a year in these halfpence; and therefore (by other
+assumptions) lose 140_l._ a year.[67] It might have occurred to Swift, one
+would think, that both parties to the transaction could not possibly be
+losers. But he calmly assumes that the man who pays will lose in
+proportion to the increased number of coins; and the man who receives, in
+proportion to the depreciated value of each coin. He does not see, or
+think it worth notice, that the two losses obviously counterbalance each
+other; and he has an easy road to prophesying absolute ruin for everybody.
+It would be almost as great a compliment to call this sophistry, as to
+dignify with the name of satire a round assertion that an honest man is a
+cheat or a rogue.
+
+The real grievance, however, shows through the sham argument. "It is no
+loss of honour," thought Swift, "to submit to the lion; but who, with the
+figure of a man, can think with patience of being devoured alive by a
+rat?" Why should Wood have this profit (even if more reasonably estimated)
+in defiance of the wishes of the nation? It is, says Swift, because he is
+an Englishman and has great friends. He proposes to meet the attempt by a
+general agreement not to take the halfpence. Briefly, the halfpence were
+to be "Boycotted."
+
+Before this second letter was written the English ministers had become
+alarmed. A Report of the Privy Council (July 24, 1724) defended the
+patent, but ended by recommending that the amount to be coined should be
+reduced to 40,000_l._ Carteret was sent out as Lord Lieutenant to get this
+compromise accepted. Swift replied by a third letter, arguing the question
+of the patent, which he can "never suppose," or in other words, which
+everybody knew, to have been granted as a "job for the interest of some
+particular person." He vigorously asserts that the patent can never make
+it obligatory to accept the halfpence, and tells a story much to the
+purpose from old Leicester experience. The justices had reduced the price
+of ale to three-halfpence a quart. One of them therefore requested that
+they would make another order to appoint who should drink it, "for by
+God," said he, "I will not."
+
+The argument thus naturally led to a further and more important question.
+The discussion as to the patent brought forward the question of right.
+Wood and his friends, according to Swift, had begun to declare that the
+resistance meant Jacobitism and rebellion; they asserted that the Irish
+were ready to shake off their dependence upon the crown of England. Swift
+took up the challenge and answered resolutely and eloquently. He took up
+the broadest ground. Ireland, he declared, depended upon England in no
+other sense than that in which England depended upon Ireland. Whoever
+thinks otherwise, he said, "I, M. B. despair, desire to be excepted; for I
+declare, next under God, I depend only on the king my sovereign, and the
+laws of my own country. I am so far," he added, "from depending upon the
+people of England, that if they should rebel, I would take arms and lose
+every drop of my blood, to hinder the Pretender from being king of
+Ireland."
+
+It had been reported that somebody (Walpole presumably) had sworn to
+thrust the halfpence down the throats of the Irish. The remedy, replied
+Swift, is totally in your own hands, "and therefore I have digressed a
+little ... to let you see that by the laws of God, of Nature, of Nations,
+and of your own country, you are and ought to be as free a people as your
+brethren in England." As Swift had already said in the third letter, no
+one could believe that any English patent would stand half an hour after
+an address from the English houses of Parliament such as that which had
+been passed against Wood's by the Irish Parliament. Whatever
+constitutional doubts might be raised, it was therefore come to be the
+plain question whether or not the English ministers should simply override
+the wishes of the Irish nation.
+
+Carteret, upon landing, began by trying to suppress his adversary. A
+reward of 300_l._ was offered for the discovery of the author of the
+fourth letter. A prosecution was ordered against the printer. Swift went
+to the levée of the Lord Lieutenant, and reproached him bitterly for his
+severity against a poor tradesman who had published papers for the good of
+his country. Carteret answered in a happy quotation from Virgil, a feat
+which always seems to have brought consolation to the statesman of that
+day.
+
+  Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt
+  Moliri.
+
+Another story is more characteristic. Swift's butler had acted as his
+amanuensis, and absented himself one night whilst the proclamation was
+running. Swift thought that the butler was either treacherous or presuming
+upon his knowledge of the secret. As soon as the man returned he ordered
+him to strip off his livery and begone. "I am in your power," he said,
+"and for that very reason I will not stand your insolence." The poor
+butler departed, but preserved his fidelity; and Swift, when the tempest
+had blown over, rewarded him by appointing him verger in the cathedral.
+The grand jury threw out the bill against the printer in spite of all
+Whitshed's efforts; they were discharged; and the next grand jury
+presented Wood's halfpence as a nuisance. Carteret gave way, the patent
+was surrendered, and Swift might congratulate himself upon a complete
+victory.
+
+The conclusion is in one respect rather absurd. The Irish succeeded in
+rejecting a real benefit at the cost of paying Wood the profit which he
+would have made, had he been allowed to confer it. Another point must be
+admitted. Swift's audacious misstatements were successful for the time in
+rousing the spirit of the people. They have led, however, to a very
+erroneous estimate of the whole case. English statesmen and historians[68]
+have found it so easy to expose his errors that they have thought his
+whole case absurd. The grievance was not what it was represented,
+therefore it is argued that there was no grievance. The very essence of
+the case was that the Irish people were to be plundered by the German
+mistress; and such plunder was possible because the English people, as
+Swift says, never thought of Ireland except when there was nothing else
+to be talked of in the coffee-houses.[69] Owing to the conditions of the
+controversy, this grievance only came out gradually, and could never be
+fully stated. Swift could never do more than hint at the transaction. His
+letters (including three which appeared after the last mentioned,
+enforcing the same case) have often been cited as models of eloquence, and
+compared to Demosthenes. We must make some deduction from this, as in the
+case of his former political pamphlets. The intensity of his absorption in
+the immediate end, deprives them of some literary merits; and we, to whom
+the sophistries are palpable enough, are apt to resent them. Anybody can
+be effective in a way, if he chooses to lie boldly. Yet, in another sense,
+it is hard to over-praise the letters. They have in a high degree the
+peculiar stamp of Swift's genius; the vein of the most nervous
+common-sense and pithy assertion with an undercurrent of intense passion,
+the more impressive because it is never allowed to exhale in mere
+rhetoric.
+
+Swift's success, the dauntless front which he had shown to the oppressor,
+made him the idol of his countrymen. A drapier's club was formed in his
+honour, which collected the letters and drank toasts and sang songs to
+celebrate their hero. In a sad letter to Pope, in 1737, he complains that
+none of his equals care for him; but adds that as he walks the streets he
+has "a thousand hats and blessings upon old scores which those we call the
+gentry have forgot." The people received him as their champion. When he
+returned from England in 1726, bells were rung, bonfires lighted and a
+guard of honour escorted him to the deanery. Towns voted him their
+freedom and received him like a prince. When Walpole spoke of arresting
+him, a prudent friend told the minister that the messenger would require a
+guard of 10,000 soldiers. Corporations asked his advice in elections, and
+the weavers appealed to him on questions about their trade. In one of his
+satires,[70] Swift had attacked a certain Serjeant Bettesworth--
+
+  Thus at the bar the booby Bettesworth
+  Though half-a-crown o'erpays his sweat's worth.
+
+Bettesworth called upon him with, as Swift reports, a knife in his pocket,
+and complained in such terms as to imply some intention of personal
+violence. The neighbours instantly sent a deputation to the dean,
+proposing to take vengeance upon Bettesworth, and though he induced them
+to disperse peaceably, they formed a guard to watch the house; and
+Bettesworth complained that his attack upon the dean had lowered his
+professional income by 1200_l._ a year. A quaint example of his popularity
+is given by Sheridan. A great crowd had collected to see an eclipse. Swift
+thereupon sent out the bellman to give notice that the eclipse had been
+postponed by the dean's orders; and the crowd dispersed.
+
+Influence with the people, however, could not bring Swift back to power.
+At one time there seemed to be a gleam of hope. Swift visited England
+twice in 1726 and 1727. He paid long visits to his old friend Pope, and
+again met Bolingbroke, now returned from exile, and trying to make a place
+in English politics. Peterborough introduced the dean to Walpole, to whom
+Swift detailed his views upon Irish politics. Walpole was the last man to
+set about a great reform from mere considerations of justice and
+philanthropy, and was not likely to trust a confidant of Bolingbroke. He
+was civil but indifferent. Swift, however, was introduced by his friends
+to Mrs. Howard, the mistress of the Prince of Wales, soon to become George
+II. The princess, afterwards Queen Caroline, ordered Swift to come and see
+her, and he complied, as he says, after nine commands. He told her that
+she had lately seen a wild boy from Germany, and now he supposed she
+wanted to see a wild dean from Ireland. Some civilities passed; Swift
+offered some plaids of Irish manufacture, and the princess promised some
+medals in return. When, in the next year, George I. died, the Opposition
+hoped great things from the change. Pulteney had tried to get Swift's
+powerful help for the _Craftsman_, the Opposition organ; and the
+Opposition hoped to upset Walpole. Swift, who had thought of going to
+France for his health, asked Mrs. Howard's advice. She recommended him to
+stay; and he took the recommendation as amounting to a promise of support.
+He had some hopes of obtaining English preferment in exchange for his
+deanery in what he calls (in the date to one of his letters[71]) "wretched
+Dublin in miserable Ireland." It soon appeared, however, that the mistress
+was powerless; and that Walpole was to be as firm as ever in his seat.
+Swift returned to Ireland, never again to leave it: to lose soon
+afterwards his beloved Stella, and nurse an additional grudge against
+courts and favourites.
+
+The bitterness with which he resented Mrs. Howard's supposed faithlessness
+is painfully illustrative in truth of the morbid state of mind which was
+growing upon him. "You think," he says to Bolingbroke in 1729, "as I
+ought to think, that it is time for me to have done with the world; and so
+I would, if I could get into a better before I was called into the best,
+and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." That terrible
+phrase expresses but too vividly the state of mind which was now becoming
+familiar to him. Separated by death and absence from his best friends, and
+tormented by increasing illness, he looked out upon a state of things in
+which he could see no ground for hope. The resistance to Wood's halfpence
+had staved off immediate ruin; but had not cured the fundamental evil.
+Some tracts upon Irish affairs, written after the Drapier's Letters,
+sufficiently indicate his despairing vein. "I am," he says in 1737, when
+proposing some remedy for the swarms of beggars in Dublin, "a desponder by
+nature," and he has found out that the people will never stir themselves
+to remove a single grievance. His old prejudices were as keen as ever, and
+could dictate personal outbursts. He attacked the bishops bitterly for
+offering certain measures which in his view sacrificed the permanent
+interests of the Church to that of the actual occupants. He showed his own
+sincerity by refusing to take fines for leases which would have benefited
+himself at the expense of his successors. With equal earnestness he still
+clung to the Test Acts, and assailed the Protestant dissenters with all
+his old bitterness, and ridiculed their claims to brotherhood with
+Churchmen. To the end he was a Churchman before everything. One of the
+last of his poetical performances was prompted by the sanction given by
+the Irish Parliament to an opposition to certain "titles of ejectment." He
+had defended the right of the Irish Parliament against English rulers; but
+when it attacked the interests of his Church his fury showed itself in
+the most savage satire that he ever wrote, the _Legion Club_. It is an
+explosion of wrath tinged with madness.
+
+  Could I from the building's top
+  Hear the rattling thunder drop,
+  While the devil upon the roof
+  (If the devil be thunder-proof)
+  Should with poker fiery red
+  Crack the stones and melt the lead,
+  Drive them down on every skull
+  When the den of thieves is full;
+  Quite destroy the harpies' nest,
+  How might this our isle be blest!
+
+What follows fully keeps up to this level. Swift flings filth like a
+maniac, plunges into ferocious personalities, and ends fitly with the
+execration,--
+
+  May their God, the devil, confound them.
+
+He was seized with one of his fits whilst writing the poem and was never
+afterwards capable of sustained composition.
+
+Some further pamphlets--especially one on the State of Ireland--repeat and
+enforce his views. One of them requires special mention. The _Modest
+Proposal_ (written in 1729) _for Preventing the Children of Poor People in
+Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country_--the proposal
+being that they should be turned into articles of food--gives the very
+essence of Swift's feeling, and is one of the most tremendous pieces of
+satire in existence. It shows the quality already noticed. Swift is
+burning with a passion, the glow of which makes other passions look cold,
+as it is said that some bright lights cause other illuminating objects to
+cast a shadow. Yet his face is absolutely grave, and he details his plan
+as calmly as a modern projector suggesting the importation of Australian
+meat. The superficial coolness may be revolting to tender-hearted people,
+and has indeed led to condemnation of the supposed ferocity of the author
+almost as surprising as the criticisms which can see in it nothing but an
+exquisite piece of humour. It is, in truth, fearful to read even now. Yet
+we can forgive and even sympathize when we take it for what it really
+is--the most complete expression of burning indignation against
+intolerable wrongs. It utters, indeed, a serious conviction. "I confess
+myself," says Swift in a remarkable paper,[72] "to be touched with a very
+sensible pleasure when I hear of a mortality in any country parish or
+village, where the wretches are forced to pay for a filthy cabin and two
+ridges of potatoes treble the worth; brought up to steal and beg for want
+of work; to whom death would be the best thing to be wished for, on
+account both of themselves and the public." He remarks in the same place
+on the lamentable contradiction presented in Ireland to the maxim that the
+"people are the riches of a nation," and the _Modest Proposal_ is the
+fullest comment on this melancholy reflection. After many visionary
+proposals, he has at last hit upon the plan, which has at least the
+advantage that by adopting it "we can incur no danger of disobliging
+England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh
+being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt,
+although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up a
+whole nation without it."
+
+Swift once asked Delany[73] whether the "corruptions and villanies of men
+in power did not eat his flesh and exhaust his spirits?" "No," said
+Delany. "Why, how can you help it?" said Swift. "Because," replied
+Delany, "I am commanded to the contrary--_fret not thyself because of the
+ungodly_." That, like other wise maxims, is capable of an ambiguous
+application. As Delany took it, Swift might perhaps have replied that it
+was a very comfortable maxim--for the ungodly. His own application of
+Scripture is different. It tells us, he says, in his proposal for using
+Irish manufactures, that "oppression makes a wise man mad." If, therefore,
+some men are not mad, it must be because they are not wise. In truth, it
+is characteristic of Swift that he could never learn the great lesson of
+submission even to the inevitable. He could not, like an easy-going
+Delany, submit to oppression which might possibly be resisted with
+success; but as little could he submit when all resistance was hopeless.
+His rage, which could find no better outlet, burnt inwardly and drove him
+mad. It is very interesting to compare Swift's wrathful denunciations with
+Berkeley's treatment of the same before in the _Querist_ (1735-7).
+Berkeley is full of luminous suggestions upon economical questions which
+are entirely beyond Swift's mark. He is in a region quite above the
+sophistries of the _Drapier's Letters_. He sees equally the terrible
+grievance that no people in the world is so beggarly, wretched, and
+destitute as the common Irish. But he thinks all complaints against the
+English rule useless and therefore foolish. If the English restrain our
+trade ill-advisedly, is it not, he asks, plainly our interest to
+accommodate ourselves to them (No. 136)? Have we not the advantage of
+English protection without sharing English responsibilities? He asks,
+"whether England doth not really love us and wish well to us as bone of
+her bone and flesh of her flesh? and whether it be not our part to
+cultivate this love and affection all manner of ways?" (Nos. 322, 323.)
+One can fancy how Swift must have received this characteristic suggestion
+of the admirable Berkeley, who could not bring himself to think ill of any
+one. Berkeley's main contention is no doubt sound in itself, namely, that
+the welfare of the country really depended on the industry and economy of
+its inhabitants, and that such qualities would have made the Irish
+comfortable in spite of all English restrictions and Government abuses.
+But, then, Swift might well have answered that such general maxims are
+idle. It is all very well for divines to tell people to become good and to
+find out that then they will be happy. But how are they to be made good?
+Are the Irish intrinsically worse than other men, or is their laziness and
+restlessness due to special and removable circumstances? In the latter
+case is there not more real value in attacking tangible evils than in
+propounding general maxims and calling upon all men to submit to
+oppression, and even to believe in the oppressor's good-will in the name
+of Christian charity? To answer those questions would be to plunge into
+interminable and hopeless controversies. Meanwhile Swift's fierce
+indignation against English oppression might almost as well have been
+directed against a law of nature for any immediate result. Whether the
+rousing of the national spirit was any benefit is a question which I must
+leave to others. In any case, the work, however darkened by personal
+feeling or love of class-privilege, expressed as hearty a hatred of
+oppression as ever animated a human being.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.
+
+
+The winter of 1713-14 passed by Swift in England was full of anxiety and
+vexation. He found time, however, to join in a remarkable literary
+association. The so-called Scriblerus Club does not appear, indeed, to
+have had any definite organization. The rising young wits, Pope and Gay,
+both of them born in 1688, were already becoming famous, and were taken up
+by Swift, still in the zenith of his political power. Parnell, a few years
+their senior, had been introduced by Swift to Oxford as a convert from
+Whiggism. All three became intimate with Swift and Arbuthnot, the most
+learned and amiable of the whole circle of Swift's friends. Swift declared
+him to have every quality that could make a man amiable and useful with
+but one defect--he had "a sort of slouch in his walk;" he was loved and
+respected by every one, and was one of the most distinguished of the
+Brothers. Swift and Arbuthnot and their three juniors discussed literary
+plans in the midst of the growing political excitement. Even Oxford used,
+as Pope tells us, to amuse himself during the very crisis of his fate by
+scribbling verses and talking nonsense with the members of this informal
+Club, and some doggerel lines exchanged with him remain as a specimen--a
+poor one it is to be hoped--of their intercourse. The familiarity thus
+begun continued through the life of the members. Swift can have seen very
+little of Pope. He hardly made his acquaintance till the latter part of
+1713; they parted in the summer of 1714; and never met again except in
+Swift's two visits to England in 1726-27. Yet their correspondence shows
+an affection which was no doubt heightened by the consciousness of each
+that the friendship of his most famous contemporary author was creditable;
+but which, upon Swift's side at least, was thoroughly sincere and cordial,
+and strengthened with advancing years.
+
+The final cause of the Club was supposed to be the composition of a
+joint-stock satire. We learn from an interesting letter[74] that Pope
+formed the original design; though Swift thought that Arbuthnot was the
+only one capable of carrying it out. The scheme was to write the memoirs
+of an imaginary pedant, who had dabbled with equal wrong-headedness in all
+kinds of knowledge; and thus recalls Swift's early performances--the
+_Battle of the Books_ and the _Tale of a Tub_. Arbuthnot begs Swift to
+work upon it during his melancholy retirement at Letcombe. Swift had other
+things to occupy his mind; and upon the dispersion of the party the Club
+fell into abeyance. Fragments of the original plan were carried out by
+Pope and Arbuthnot, and form part of the _Miscellanies_, to which Swift
+contributed a number of poetical scraps, published under Pope's direction
+in 1726-27. It seems probable that _Gulliver_ originated in Swift's mind
+in the course of his meditations upon Scriblerus. The composition of
+_Gulliver_ was one of the occupations by which he amused himself after
+recovering from the great shock of his "exile." He worked, as he seems
+always to have done, slowly and intermittently. Part of Brobdingnag at
+least, as we learn from a letter of Vanessa's, was in existence by 1722.
+Swift brought the whole manuscript to England in 1726, and it was
+published anonymously in the following winter. The success was
+instantaneous and overwhelming. "I will make over all my profits" (in a
+work then being published) "to you," writes Arbuthnot, "for the property
+of _Gulliver's Travels_, which, I believe, will have as great a run as
+John Bunyan." The anticipation was amply fulfilled. _Gulliver's Travels_
+is one of the very few books some knowledge of which may be fairly assumed
+in any one who reads anything. Yet something must be said of the secret of
+the astonishing success of this unique performance.
+
+One remark is obvious. _Gulliver's Travels_ (omitting certain passages) is
+almost the most delightful children's book ever written. Yet it has been
+equally valued as an unrivalled satire. Old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough,
+was "in raptures with it," says Gay, "and can dream of nothing else." She
+forgives his bitter attacks upon her party in consideration of his assault
+upon human nature. He gives, she declares, "the most accurate" (that is,
+of course, the most scornful) "account of kings, ministers, bishops, and
+courts of justice, that is possible to be writ." Another curious testimony
+may be noticed. Godwin, when tracing all evils to the baneful effects of
+government, declares that the author of _Gulliver_ showed a "more profound
+insight into the true principles of political justice than any preceding
+or contemporary author." The playful form was unfortunate, thinks this
+grave philosopher, as blinding mankind to the "inestimable wisdom" of the
+work. This double triumph is remarkable. We may not share the opinions of
+the cynics of the day, or of the revolutionists of a later generation; but
+it is strange that they should be fascinated by a work which is studied
+with delight, without the faintest suspicion of any ulterior meaning, by
+the infantile mind.
+
+The charm of Gulliver for the young depends upon an obvious quality, which
+is indicated in Swift's report of the criticism by an Irish bishop, who
+said that "the book was full of improbable lies, and for his part he
+hardly believed a word of it." There is something pleasant in the intense
+gravity of the narrative, which recalls and may have been partly suggested
+by _Robinson Crusoe_, though it came naturally to Swift. I have already
+spoken of his delight in mystification, and the detailed realization of
+pure fiction seems to have been delightful in itself. The Partridge
+pamphlets and its various practical jokes are illustrations of a tendency
+which fell in with the spirit of the time, and of which _Gulliver_ may be
+regarded as the highest manifestation. Swift's peculiarity is in the
+curious sobriety of fancy, which leads him to keep in his most daring
+flights upon the confines of the possible. In the imaginary travels of
+Lucian and Rabelais, to which _Gulliver_ is generally compared, we frankly
+take leave of the real world altogether. We are treated with arbitrary and
+monstrous combinations which may be amusing, but which do not challenge
+even a semblance of belief. In _Gulliver_ this is so little the case that
+it can hardly be said in strictness that the fundamental assumptions are
+even impossible. Why should there not be creatures in human form with whom
+as in Lilliput, one of our inches represents a foot, or, as in
+Brobdingnag, one of our feet represents an inch? The assumption is so
+modest that we are presented--it may be said--with a definite and soluble
+problem. We have not, as in other fictitious worlds, to deal with a state
+of things in which the imagination is bewildered, but with one in which it
+is agreeably stimulated. We have certainly to consider an extreme and
+exceptional case; but one to which all the ordinary laws of human nature
+are still strictly applicable. In Voltaire's trifle, _Micromegas_, we are
+presented to beings eight leagues in height and endowed with seventy-two
+senses. For Voltaire's purpose the stupendous exaggeration is necessary;
+for he wishes to insist upon the minuteness of human capacities. But the
+assumption of course disqualifies us from taking any intelligent interest
+in a region where no precedent is available for our guidance. We are in
+the air; anything and everything is possible. But Swift modestly varies
+only one element in the problem. Imagine giants and dwarfs as tall as a
+house or as low as a footstool, and let us see what comes of it. That is a
+plain, almost a mathematical problem; and we can therefore judge his
+success, and receive pleasure from the ingenuity and verisimilitude of his
+creations.
+
+"When you have once thought of big men and little men," said Johnson,
+perversely enough, "it is easy to do the rest." The first step might
+perhaps seem in this case to be the easiest; yet nobody ever thought of it
+before Swift; and nobody has ever had similar good fortune since. There is
+no other fictitious world the denizens of which have become so real for
+us, and which has supplied so many images familiar to every educated mind.
+But the apparent ease is due to the extreme consistency and sound judgment
+of Swift's realization. The conclusions follow so inevitably from the
+primary data that when they are once drawn we agree that they could not
+have been otherwise; and infer, rashly, that anybody else could have
+drawn them. It is as easy as lying; but everybody who has seriously tried
+the experiment knows that even lying is by no means so easy as it appears
+at first sight. In fact, Swift's success is something unique. The charming
+plausibility of every incident, throughout the two first parts, commends
+itself to children, who enjoy definite concrete images, and are fascinated
+by a world which is at once full of marvels, surpassing Jack the Giant
+Killer and the wonders seen by Sinbad, and yet as obviously and undeniably
+true as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe himself. Nobody who has read the
+book can ever forget it; and we may add that besides the childlike
+pleasure which arises from a distinct realization of a strange world of
+fancy, the two first books are sufficiently good-humoured. Swift seems to
+be amused as well as amusing. They were probably written during the least
+intolerable part of his exile. The period of composition includes the
+years of the Vanessa tragedy and of the war of Wood's halfpence; it was
+finished when Stella's illness was becoming constantly more threatening,
+and published little more than a year before her death. The last books
+show Swift's most savage temper; but we may hope that in spite of disease,
+disappointments, and a growing alienation from mankind, Swift could still
+enjoy an occasional piece of spontaneous, unadulterated fun. He could
+still forget his cares, and throw the reins on the neck of his fancy. At
+times there is a certain charm even in the characters. Every one has a
+liking for the giant maid of all work, Glumdalelitch, whose affection for
+her plaything is a quaint inversion of the ordinary relations between
+Swift and his feminine adorers. The grave, stern, irascible man can relax
+after a sort, though his strange idiosyncrasy comes out as distinctly in
+his relaxation as in his passions.
+
+I will not dwell upon this aspect of _Gulliver_, which is obvious to every
+one. There is another question which we are forced to ask, and which is
+not very easy to answer. What does _Gulliver_ mean? It is clearly a
+satire--but who and what are its objects? Swift states his own view very
+unequivocally. "I heartily hate and detest that animal called man," he
+says,[75] "although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth." He
+declares that man is not an _animal rationale_, but only _rationis capax_:
+and he then adds, "Upon this great foundation of misanthropy ... the whole
+building of my travels is erected." "If the world had but a dozen
+Arbuthnots in it," he says in the same letter, "I would burn my travels."
+He indulges in a similar reflection to Sheridan.[76] "Expect no more from
+man," he says, "than such an animal is capable of, and you will every day
+find my description of Yahoos more resembling. You should think and deal
+with every man as a villain, without calling him so, or flying from him or
+valuing him less. This is an old true lesson." In spite of these avowals,
+of a kind which, in Swift, must not be taken too literally, we find it
+rather hard to admit that the essence of _Gulliver_ can be an expression
+of this doctrine. The tone becomes morose and sombre, and even ferocious;
+but it has been disputed whether in any case it can be regarded simply as
+an utterance of misanthropy.
+
+_Gulliver's Travels_ belongs to a literary genus full of grotesque and
+anomalous forms. Its form is derived from some of the imaginary travels of
+which Lucian's _True History_--itself a burlesque of some early
+travellers' tales--is the first example. But it has an affinity also to
+such books as Bacon's _Atlantis_, and More's _Utopia_; and, again, to
+later philosophical romances like _Candide_ and _Rasselas_; and not least,
+perhaps, to the ancient fables, such as _Reynard the Fox_, to which Swift
+refers in the _Tale of a Tub_. It may be compared, again, to the
+_Pilgrim's Progress_, and the whole family of allegories. The full-blown
+allegory resembles the game of chess said to have been played by some
+ancient monarch, in which the pieces were replaced by real human beings.
+The movements of the actors were not determined by the passions proper to
+their character, but by the external set of rules imposed upon them by the
+game. The allegory is a kind of picture-writing, popular, like
+picture-writing at a certain stage of development, but wearisome at more
+cultivated periods, when we prefer to have abstract theories conveyed in
+abstract language, and limit the artist to the intrinsic meanings of the
+images in which he deals. The whole class of more or less allegorical
+writing has thus the peculiarity that something more is meant than meets
+the ear. Part of its meaning depends upon a tacit convention in virtue of
+which a beautiful woman, for example, is not simply a beautiful woman, but
+also a representative of Justice and Charity. And as any such convention
+is more or less arbitrary, we are often in perplexity to interpret the
+author's meaning, and also to judge of the propriety of the symbols. The
+allegorical intention, again, may be more or less present: and such a book
+as Gulliver must be regarded as lying somewhere between the allegory and
+the direct revelation of truth, which is more or less implied in the work
+of every genuine artist. Its true purpose has thus rather puzzled critics.
+Hazlitt[77] urges, for example, with his usual brilliancy, that Swift's
+purpose was to "strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air which
+external circumstances throw around them." Swift accordingly varies the
+scale, so as to show the insignificance or the grossness of our self-love.
+He does this with "mathematical precision;" he tries an experiment upon
+human nature; and with the result that "nothing solid, nothing valuable is
+left in his system but wisdom and virtue." So Gulliver's carrying off the
+fleet of Blefuscu is "a mortifying stroke, aimed at national glory."
+"After that, we have only to consider which of the contending parties was
+in the right."
+
+Hazlitt naturally can see nothing misanthropical or innocent in such a
+conclusion. The mask of imposture is torn off the world, and only
+imposture can complain. This view, which has no doubt its truth, suggests
+some obvious doubts. We are not invited, as a matter of fact, to attend to
+the question of right and wrong, as between Lilliput and Blefuscu. The
+real sentiment in Swift is that a war between these miserable pygmies is,
+in itself, contemptible; and therefore, as he infers, war between men six
+feet high is equally contemptible. The truth is that, although Swift's
+solution of the problem may be called mathematically precise, the
+precision does not extend to the supposed argument. If we insist upon
+treating the question as one of strict logic, the only conclusion which
+could be drawn from Gulliver is the very safe one that the interest of the
+human drama does not depend upon the size of the actors. A pygmy or a
+giant endowed with all our functions and thoughts would be exactly as
+interesting as a being of the normal stature. It does not require a
+journey to imaginary regions to teach us so much. And if we say that Swift
+has shown us in his pictures the real essence of human life, we only say
+for him what might be said with equal force of Shakspeare or Balzac, or
+any great artist. The bare proof that the essence is not dependent upon
+the external condition of size is superfluous and irrelevant; and we must
+admit that Swift's method is childish, or that it does not adhere to this
+strict logical canon.
+
+Hazlitt, however, comes nearer the truth, as I think, when he says that
+Swift takes a view of human nature such as might be taken by a being of a
+higher sphere. That, at least, is his purpose; only, as I think, he
+pursues it by a neglect of "scientific reasoning." The use of the
+machinery is simply to bring us into a congenial frame of mind. He strikes
+the key-note of contempt by his imagery of dwarfs and giants. We despise
+the petty quarrels of beings six inches high; and therefore we are
+prepared to despise the wars carried on by a Marlborough and a Eugene. We
+transfer the contempt based upon mere size, to the motives, which are the
+same in big men and little. The argument, if argument there be, is a
+fallacy; but it is equally efficacious for the feelings. You see the
+pettiness and cruelty of the Lilliputians, who want to conquer an empire
+defended by toy-ships; and you are tacitly invited to consider whether the
+bigness of French men-of-war makes an attack upon them more respectable.
+The force of the satire depends ultimately upon the vigour with which
+Swift has described the real passions of human beings, big or little. He
+really means to express a bitter contempt for statesmen and warriors, and
+seduces us to his side, for the moment, by asking us to look at a
+diminutive representation of the same beings. The quarrels which depend
+upon the difference between the high-boots and the low-heeled shoes; or
+upon breaking eggs at the big or little end; the party intrigues which
+are settled by cutting capers on the tight-rope, are meant, of course, in
+ridicule of political and religious parties; and its force depends upon
+our previous conviction that the party-quarrels between our fellows are,
+in fact, equally contemptible. Swift's satire is congenial to the mental
+attitude of all who have persuaded themselves that men are, in fact, a set
+of contemptible fools and knaves, in whose quarrels and mutual
+slaughterings the wise and good could not persuade themselves to take a
+serious interest. He "proves" nothing, mathematically or otherwise. If you
+do not share his sentiments, there is nothing in the mere alteration of
+the scale to convince you that they are right; you may say, with Hazlitt,
+that heroism is as admirable in a Lilliputian as in a Brobdingnagian, and
+believe that war calls forth patriotism, and often advances civilization.
+What Swift has really done is to provide for the man who despises his
+species a number of exceedingly effective symbols for the utterance of his
+contempt. A child is simply amused with Bigendians and Littleendians; a
+philosopher thinks that the questions really at the bottom of church
+quarrels are in reality of more serious import: but the cynic who has
+learnt to disbelieve in the nobility or wisdom of the great mass of his
+species finds a most convenient metaphor for expressing his disbelief. In
+this way _Gulliver's Travels_ contains a whole gallery of caricatures
+thoroughly congenial to the despisers of humanity.
+
+In Brobdingnag Swift is generally said to be looking, as Scott expresses
+it, through the other end of the telescope. He wishes to show the
+grossness of men's passions, as before he has shown their pettiness. Some
+of the incidents are devised in this sense; but we may notice that in
+Brobdingnag he recurs to the Lilliput view. He gives such an application
+to his fable as may be convenient, without bothering himself as to logical
+consistency. He points out indeed the disgusting appearances which would
+be presented by a magnified human body; but the King of Brobdingnag looks
+down upon Gulliver, just as Gulliver looked down upon the Lilliputians.
+The monarch sums up his view emphatically enough by saying, after
+listening to Gulliver's version of modern history, that "the bulk of your
+natives appear to me to be the most pernicious race of little odious
+vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the earth." In
+Lilliput and Brobdingnag, however, the satire scarcely goes beyond
+pardonable limits. The details are often simply amusing, such as
+Gulliver's fear when he gets home, of trampling upon the pygmies whom he
+sees around him. And even the severest satire may be taken without offence
+by every one who believes that petty motives, folly and selfishness, play
+a large enough part in human life to justify some indignant exaggerations.
+It is in the later parts that the ferocity of the man utters itself more
+fully. The ridicule of the inventors in the third book is, as Arbuthnot
+said at once, the least successful part of the whole; not only because
+Swift was getting beyond his knowledge, and beyond the range of his
+strongest antipathies, but also because there is no longer the ingenious
+plausibility of the earlier books. The voyage to the Houyhnhnms, which
+forms the best part, is more powerful, but more painful and repulsive.
+
+A word must here be said of the most unpleasant part of Swift's character.
+A morbid interest in the physically disgusting is shown in several of his
+writings. Some minor pieces, which ought to have been burnt, simply make
+the gorge rise. Mrs. Pilkington tells us, and we can for once believe her,
+that one "poem" actually made her mother sick. It is idle to excuse this
+on the ground of contemporary freedom of speech. His contemporaries were
+heartily disgusted. Indeed, though it is true that they revealed certain
+propensities more openly, I see no reason to think that such propensities
+were really stronger in them than in their descendants. The objection to
+Swift is not that he spoke plainly, but that he brooded over filth
+unnecessarily. No parallel can be found for his tendency even in writers,
+for example, like Smollett and Fielding, who can be coarse enough when
+they please, but whose freedom of speech reveals none of Swift's morbid
+tendency. His indulgence in revolting images is to some extent an
+indication of a diseased condition of his mind, perhaps of actual mental
+decay. Delany says that it grew upon him in his later years, and, very
+gratuitously, attributes it to Pope's influence. The peculiarity is the
+more remarkable, because Swift was a man of the most scrupulous personal
+cleanliness. He was always enforcing this virtue with special emphasis. He
+was rigorously observant of decency in ordinary conversation. Delany once
+saw him "fall into a furious resentment" with Stella for "a very small
+failure of delicacy." So far from being habitually coarse, he pushed
+fastidiousness to the verge of prudery. It is one of the superficial
+paradoxes of Swift's character that this very shrinking from filth became
+perverted into an apparently opposite tendency. In truth, his intense
+repugnance to certain images led him to use them as the only adequate
+expression of his savage contempt. Instances might be given in some early
+satires, and in the attack upon dissenters in the _Tale of a Tub_. His
+intensity of loathing leads him to besmear his antagonists with filth. He
+becomes disgusting in the effort to express his disgust. As his
+misanthropy deepened, he applied the same method to mankind at large. He
+tears aside the veil of decency to show the bestial elements of human
+nature; and his characteristic irony makes him preserve an apparent
+calmness during the revolting exhibition. His state of mind is strictly
+analogous to that of some religious ascetics, who stimulate their contempt
+for the flesh by fixing their gaze upon decaying bodies. They seek to
+check the love of beauty by showing us beauty in the grave. The cynic in
+Mr. Tennyson's poem tells us that every face, however full--
+
+  Padded round with flesh and blood,
+  Is but moulded on a skull.
+
+Swift--a practised self-tormentor, though not in the ordinary ascetic
+sense--mortifies any disposition to admire his fellows by dwelling upon
+the physical necessities which seem to lower and degrade human pride.
+Beauty is but skin deep; beneath it is a vile carcase. He always sees the
+"flayed woman" of the _Tale of a Tub_. The thought is hideous, hateful,
+horrible, and therefore it fascinates him. He loves to dwell upon the
+hateful, because it justifies his hate. He nurses his misanthropy, as he
+might tear his flesh to keep his mortality before his eyes.
+
+The Yahoo is the embodiment of the bestial element in man; and Swift in
+his wrath takes the bestial for the predominating element. The hideous,
+filthy, lustful monster yet asserts its relationship to him in the most
+humiliating fashion: and he traces in its conduct the resemblance to all
+the main activities of the human being. Like the human being it fights and
+squabbles for the satisfaction of its lust, or to gain certain shiny
+yellow stones; it befouls the weak and fawns upon the strong with
+loathsome compliance; shows a strange love of dirt, and incurs diseases by
+laziness and gluttony. Gulliver gives an account of his own breed of
+Yahoos, from which it seems that they differ from the subjects of the
+Houyhnhnms only by showing the same propensities on a larger scale; and
+justifies his master's remark that all their institutions are owing to
+"gross defects in reason and by consequence in virtue." The Houyhnhnms
+meanwhile represent Swift's Utopia; they prosper and are happy, truthful
+and virtuous, and therefore able to dispense with lawyers, physicians,
+ministers and all the other apparatus of an effete civilization. It is in
+this doctrine, as I may observe in passing, that Swift falls in with
+Godwin and the revolutionists, though they believed in human
+perfectibility, whilst they traced every existing evil to the impostures
+and corruptions essential to all systems of government. Swift's view of
+human nature, is too black to admit of any hopes of their millennium.
+
+The full wrath of Swift against his species shows itself in this ghastly
+caricature. It is lamentable and painful, though even here we recognize
+the morbid perversion of a noble wrath against oppression. One other
+portrait in Swift's gallery demands a moment's notice. No poetic picture
+in Dante or Milton can exceed the strange power of his prose description
+of the Struldbrugs--those hideous immortals who are damned to an
+everlasting life of drivelling incompetence. It is a translation of the
+affecting myth of Tithonus into the repulsive details of downright prose.
+It is idle to seek for any particular moral from these hideous phantoms of
+Swift's dismal _Inferno_. They embody the terror which was haunting his
+imagination as old age was drawing upon him. The sight, he says himself,
+should reconcile a man to death. The mode of reconciliation is terribly
+characteristic. Life is but a weary business at best; but, at least, we
+cannot wish to drain so repulsive a cup to the dregs, when even the
+illusions which cheered us at moments have been ruthlessly destroyed.
+Swift was but too clearly prophesying the melancholy decay into which he
+was himself to sink.
+
+The later books of _Gulliver_ have been in some sense excised from the
+popular editions of the Travels. The Yahoos, and Houyhnhnms, and
+Struldbrugs, are indeed known by name almost as well as the inhabitants of
+Lilliput and Brobdingnag; but this part of the book is certainly not
+reading for babes. It was probably written during the years when he was
+attacking public corruption, and when his private happiness was being
+destroyed, when therefore his wrath against mankind and against his own
+fate was stimulated to the highest pitch. Readers who wish to indulge in a
+harmless play of fancy will do well to omit the last two voyages; for the
+strain of misanthropy which breathes in them is simply oppressive. They
+are probably the sources from which the popular impression of Swift's
+character is often derived. It is important, therefore, to remember that
+they were wrung from him in later years, after a life tormented by
+constant disappointment and disease. Most people hate the misanthropist
+even if they are forced to admire his power. Yet we must not be carried
+too far by the words. Swift's misanthropy was not all ignoble. We
+generally prefer flattery even to sympathy. We like the man who is blind
+to our faults better than the man who sees them and yet pities our
+distresses. We have the same kind of feeling for the race as we have in
+our own case. We are attracted by the kindly optimist who assures us that
+good predominates in everything and everybody, and believes that a speedy
+advent of the millennium must reward our manifold excellence. We cannot
+forgive those who hold men to be "mostly fools," or, as Swift would
+assert, mere brutes in disguise, and even carry out that disagreeable
+opinion in detail. There is something uncomfortable and therefore
+repellent of sympathy in the mood which dwells upon the darker side of
+society, even though with wrathful indignation against the irremovable
+evils. Swift's hatred of oppression, burning and genuine as it was, is no
+apology with most readers for his perseverance in asserting its existence.
+"Speak comfortable things to us" is the cry of men to the prophet in all
+ages; and he who would assault abuses must count upon offending many who
+do not approve them, but who would therefore prefer not to believe in
+them. Swift, too, mixed an amount of egoism with his virtuous indignation,
+which clearly lowers his moral dignity. He really hates wrongs to his
+race; but his sensitiveness is roused when they are injuries to himself,
+and committed by his enemies. The indomitable spirit which made him
+incapable even of yielding to necessity, which makes him beat incessantly
+against the bars which it was hopeless to break, and therefore waste
+powers which might have done good service by aiming at the unattainable,
+and nursing grudges against inexorable necessity, limits our sympathy with
+his better nature. Yet some of us may take a different view, and rather
+pity than condemn the wounded spirit so tortured and perverted, in
+consideration of the real philanthropy which underlies the misanthropy,
+and the righteous hatred of brutality and oppression which is but the
+seamy side of a generous sympathy. At least we should be rather awed than
+repelled by this spectacle of a nature of magnificent power struck down,
+bruised and crushed under fortune, and yet fronting all antagonists with
+increasing pride, and comforting itself with scorn even when it can no
+longer injure its adversaries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+DECLINE.
+
+
+Swift survived his final settlement in Ireland for more than thirty years,
+though during the last five or six it was but the outside shell of him
+that lived. During every day in all those years Swift must have eaten and
+drunk, and somehow or other got through the twenty-four hours. The war
+against Wood's halfpence employed at most a few months in 1724, and all
+his other political writings would scarcely fill a volume of this size. A
+modern journalist who could prove that he had written as little in six
+months would deserve a testimonial. _Gulliver's Travels_ appeared in 1727;
+and ten years were to pass before his intellect became hopelessly clouded.
+How was the remainder of his time filled?
+
+The death of Stella marks a critical point. Swift told Gay in 1723 that it
+had taken three years to reconcile him to the country to which he was
+condemned for ever. He came back "with an ill head and an aching
+heart."[78] He was separated from the friends he had loved, and too old to
+make new friends. A man, as he says elsewhere,[79] who had been bred in a
+coal-pit might pass his time in it well enough; but if sent back to it
+after a few months in upper air, he would find content less easy. Swift,
+in fact, never became resigned to the "coal-pit," or, to use another of
+his phrases, the "wretched, dirty dog-hole and prison," of which he could
+only say that it was a "place good enough to die in." Yet he became so far
+acclimatized as to shape a tolerable existence out of the fragments left
+to him. Intelligent and cultivated men in Dublin, especially amongst the
+clergy and the fellows of Trinity College, gathered round their famous
+countryman. Swift formed a little court; he rubbed up his classics to the
+academical standard, read a good deal of history, and even amused himself
+with mathematics. He received on Sundays at the deanery, though his
+entertainments seem to have been rather too economical for the taste of
+his guests. "The ladies," Stella and Mrs. Dingley, were recognized as more
+or less domesticated with him. Stella helped to receive his guests, though
+not ostensibly as mistress of the household; and, if we may accept Swift's
+estimate of her social talents, must have been a very charming hostess. If
+some of Swift's guests were ill at ease in presence of the imperious and
+moody exile, we may believe that during Stella's life there was more than
+a mere semblance of agreeable society at the deanery. Her death, as Delany
+tells us,[80] led to a painful change. Swift's temper became sour and
+ungovernable; his avarice grew into a monomania; at times he grudged even
+a single bottle of wine to his friends; the giddiness and deafness which
+had tormented him by fits, now became a part of his life. Reading came to
+be impossible, because (as Delany thinks) his obstinate refusal to wear
+spectacles had injured his sight. He still struggled hard against disease;
+he rode energetically, though two servants had to accompany him in case
+of accidents from giddiness; he took regular "constitutionals" up and down
+stairs when he could not go out. His friends thought that he injured
+himself by over-exercise; and the battle was necessarily a losing one.
+Gradually the gloom deepened; friends dropped off by death, and were
+alienated by his moody temper; he was surrounded, as they thought, by
+designing sycophants. His cousin, Mrs. Whiteway, who took care of him in
+his last years, seems to have been both kindly and sensible; but he became
+unconscious of kindness, and in 1741 had to be put under restraint. We may
+briefly fill up some details in the picture.
+
+Swift at Dublin recalls Napoleon at Elba. The duties of a deanery are not
+supposed, I believe, to give absorbing employment for all the faculties of
+the incumbent; but an empire, however small, may be governed; and Swift at
+an early period set about establishing his supremacy within his small
+domains. He maintained his prerogatives against the archbishop, and
+subdued his chapter. His inferiors submitted, and could not fail to
+recognize his zeal for the honour of the body. But his superiors found him
+less amenable. He encountered episcopal authority with his old
+haughtiness. He bade an encroaching bishop remember that he was speaking
+"to a clergyman, and not to a footman."[81] He fell upon an old friend,
+Sterne, the Bishop of Clogher, for granting a lease to some "old fanatic
+knight." He takes the opportunity of reviling the bishops for favouring
+"two abominable bills for beggaring and enslaving the clergy (which took
+their birth from hell)," and says that he had thereupon resolved to have
+"no more commerce with persons of such prodigious grandeur, who, I
+feared, in a little time, would expect me to kiss their slipper."[82] He
+would not even look into a coach, lest he should see such a thing as a
+bishop--a sight that would strike him with terror. In a bitter satire he
+describes Satan as the bishop to whom the rest of the Irish bench are
+suffragans. His theory was that the English Government always appointed
+admirable divines, but that unluckily all the new bishops were murdered on
+Hounslow Heath by highwaymen, who took their robes and patents, and so
+usurped the Irish sees. It is not surprising that Swift's episcopal
+acquaintance was limited.
+
+In his deanery Swift discharged his duties with despotic benevolence. He
+performed the services, carefully criticized young preachers, got his
+musical friends to help him in regulating his choir, looked carefully
+after the cathedral repairs, and improved the revenues at the cost of his
+own interests. His pugnacity broke out repeatedly even in such apparently
+safe directions. He erected a monument to the Duke of Schomberg after an
+attempt to make the duke's descendants pay for it themselves. He said that
+if they tried to avoid the duty by reclaiming the body, he would take up
+the bones, and put the skeleton "in his register office, to be a memorial
+of their baseness to all posterity."[83] He finally relieved his feelings
+by an epitaph, which is a bitter taunt against the duke's relations.
+
+Happily he gave less equivocal proofs of the energy which he could put
+into his duties. His charity was unsurpassed both for amount and judicious
+distribution. Delany declares that in spite of his avarice he would give
+five pounds more easily than richer men would give as many shillings. "I
+never," says this good authority, "saw poor so carefully and
+conscientiously attended to in my life as those of his cathedral." He
+introduced and carried out within his own domains a plan for
+distinguishing the deserving poor by badges--in anticipation of modern
+schemes for "organization of charity." With the first five hundred pounds
+which he possessed he formed a fund for granting loans to industrious
+tradesmen and citizens, to be repaid by weekly instalments. It was said
+that by this scheme he had been the means of putting more than 200
+families in a comfortable way of living.[84] He had, says Delany, a whole
+"seraglio" of distressed old women in Dublin; there was scarcely a lane in
+the whole city where he had not such a "mistress." He saluted them kindly,
+inquired into their affairs, bought trifles from them, and gave them such
+titles as Pullagowna, Stumpa-Nympha, and so forth. The phrase "seraglio"
+may remind us of Johnson's establishment, who has shown his prejudice
+against Swift in nothing more than in misjudging a charity akin to his
+own, though apparently directed with more discretion. The "rabble," it is
+clear, might be grateful for other than political services. To personal
+dependents he was equally liberal. He supported his widowed sister, who
+had married a scapegrace in opposition to his wishes. He allowed an
+annuity of 52_l._ a year to Stella's companion, Mrs. Dingley, and made her
+suppose that the money was not a gift, but the produce of a fund for which
+he was trustee. He showed the same liberality to Mrs. Ridgway, daughter of
+his old housekeeper, Mrs. Brent; paying her an annuity of 20_l._, and
+giving her a bond to secure the payment in case of accidents. Considering
+the narrowness of Swift's income, and that he seems also to have had
+considerable trouble about obtaining his rents and securing his invested
+savings, we may say that his so-called "avarice" was not inconsistent with
+unusual munificence. He pared his personal expenditure to the quick, not
+that he might be rich, but that he might be liberal.
+
+Though for one reason or other Swift was at open war with a good many of
+the higher classes, his court was not without distinguished favourites.
+The most conspicuous amongst them were Delany and Sheridan. Delany
+(1685-1768), when Swift first knew him, was a Fellow of Trinity College.
+He was a scholar, and a man of much good feeling and intelligence, and
+eminently agreeable in society; his theological treatises seem to have
+been fanciful, but he could write pleasant verses, and had great
+reputation as a college tutor. He married two rich wives, and Swift
+testifies that his good qualities were not the worse for his wealth, nor
+his purse generally fuller. He was so much given to hospitality as to be
+always rather in difficulties. He was a man of too much amiability and
+social suavity not to be a little shocked at some of Swift's savage
+outbursts, and scandalized by his occasional improprieties. Yet he
+appreciated the nobler qualities of the staunch, if rather alarming,
+friend. It is curious to remember that his second wife, who was one of
+Swift's later correspondents, survived to be the venerated friend of Fanny
+Burney (1752-1840), and that many living people may thus remember one who
+was familiar with the latest of Swift's female favourites. Swift's closest
+friend and crony, however, was the elder Sheridan, the ancestor of a race
+fertile in genius, though unluckily his son, Swift's biographer, seems to
+have transmitted without possessing any share of it. Thomas Sheridan, the
+elder, was the typical Irishman--kindly, witty, blundering, full of
+talents and imprudences, careless of dignity, and a child in the ways of
+the world. He was a prosperous schoolmaster in Dublin when Swift first
+made his acquaintance (about 1718), so prosperous as to decline a less
+precarious post, of which Swift got him the offer.
+
+After the war of Wood's halfpence Swift became friendly with Carteret,
+whom he respected as a man of genuine ability, and who had besides the
+virtue of being thoroughly distrusted by Walpole. When Carteret was asked
+how he had succeeded in Ireland, he replied that he had pleased Dr. Swift.
+Swift took advantage of the mutual goodwill to recommend several promising
+clergymen to Carteret's notice. He was specially warm in behalf of
+Sheridan, who received the first vacant living and a chaplaincy. Sheridan
+characteristically spoilt his own chances by preaching a sermon upon the
+day of the accession of the Hanoverian family, from the text, "Sufficient
+unto the day is the evil thereof." The sermon was not political, and the
+selection of the text a pure accident; but Sheridan was accused of
+Jacobitism, and lost his chaplaincy in consequence. Though generously
+compensated by the friend in whose pulpit he had committed this
+"Sheridanism," he got into difficulties. His school fell off; he exchanged
+his preferments for others less preferable; he failed in a school at
+Cavan, and ultimately the poor man came back to die at Dublin, in 1738, in
+distressed circumstances. Swift's relations with him were thoroughly
+characteristic. He defended his cause energetically; gave him most
+admirably good advice in rather dictatorial terms; admitted him to the
+closest familiarity, and sometimes lost his temper when Sheridan took a
+liberty at the wrong moment, or resented the liberties taken by himself.
+A queer character of the "Second Solomon," written, it seems, in 1729,
+shows the severity with which Swift could sometimes judge his shiftless
+and impulsive friend, and the irritability with which he could resent
+occasional assertions of independence. "He is extremely proud and
+captious," says Swift, and "apt to resent as an affront or indignity what
+was never intended for either," but what, we must add, had a strong
+likeness to both. One cause of poor Sheridan's troubles was doubtless that
+assigned by Swift. Mrs. Sheridan, says this frank critic, is "the most
+disagreeable beast in Europe," a "most filthy slut, lazy, and slothful,
+luxurious, ill-natured, envious, suspicious," and yet managing to govern
+Sheridan. This estimate was apparently shared by her husband, who makes
+various references to her detestation of Swift. In spite of all jars,
+Swift was not only intimate with Sheridan and energetic in helping him,
+but to all appearance really loved him. Swift came to Sheridan's house
+when the workmen were moving the furniture, preparatory to his departure
+for Cavan. Swift burst into tears, and hid himself in a dark closet before
+he could regain his self-possession. He paid a visit to his old friend
+afterwards; but was now in that painful and morbid state in which violent
+outbreaks of passion made him frequently intolerable. Poor Sheridan rashly
+ventured to fulfil an old engagement that he would tell Swift frankly of a
+growing infirmity, and said something about avarice. "Doctor," replied
+Swift, significantly, "did you never read _Gil Blas_?" When Sheridan soon
+afterwards sold his school to return to Dublin, Swift received his old
+friend so inhospitably that Sheridan left him, never again to enter the
+house. Swift indeed had ceased to be Swift; and Sheridan died soon
+afterwards.
+
+Swift often sought relief from the dreariness of the deanery by retiring
+to, or rather by taking possession of, his friends' country-houses. In
+1725 he stayed for some months, together with "the ladies," at Quilca, a
+small country-house of Sheridan's, and compiled an account of the
+deficiencies of the establishment--meant to be continued weekly. Broken
+tables, doors without locks, a chimney stuffed with the dean's great-coat,
+a solitary pair of tongs forced to attend all the fireplaces and also to
+take the meat from the pot, holes in the floors, spikes protruding from
+the bedsteads, are some of the items; whilst the servants are all thieves,
+and act upon the proverb, "The worse their sty, the longer they lie."
+Swift amused himself here and elsewhere by indulging his taste in
+landscape gardening, without the consent and often to the annoyance of the
+proprietor. In 1728--the year of Stella's death--he passed eight months at
+Sir Arthur Acheson's, near Market Hill. He was sickly, languid, and
+anxious to escape from Dublin, where he had no company but that of his
+"old presbyterian housekeeper, Mrs. Brent." He had, however, energy enough
+to take the household in hand after his usual fashion. He superintended
+Lady Acheson's studies, made her read to him, gave her plenty of good
+advice; bullied the butler; looked after the dairy and the garden, and
+annoyed Sir Arthur by summarily cutting down an old thorn-tree. He liked
+the place so much that he thought of building a house there, which was to
+be called Drapier's Hall, but abandoned the project for reasons which,
+after his fashion, he expressed with great frankness in a poem. Probably
+the chief reason was the very obvious one which strikes all people who
+are tempted to build; but that upon which he chiefly dwells is Sir
+Arthur's defects as an entertainer. The knight used, it seems, to lose
+himself in metaphysical moonings when he should have been talking to Swift
+and attending to his gardens and farms. Swift entered a house less as a
+guest than a conqueror. His dominion, it is clear, must have become
+burdensome in his later years, when his temper was becoming savage and his
+fancies more imperious.
+
+Such a man was the natural prey of sycophants, who would bear his humours
+for interested motives. Amongst Swift's numerous clients some doubtless
+belonged to this class. The old need of patronizing and protecting still
+displays itself; and there is something very touching in the zeal for his
+friends which survived breaking health and mental decay. His
+correspondence is full of eager advocacy. Poor Miss Kelly, neglected by an
+unnatural parent, comes to Swift as her natural adviser. He intercedes on
+behalf of the prodigal son of a Mr. FitzHerbert in a letter which is a
+model of judicious and delicate advocacy. His old friend, Barber, had
+prospered in business; he was Lord Mayor of London in 1733, and looked
+upon Swift as the founder of his fortunes. To him, "my dear good old
+friend in the best and worst times," Swift writes a series of letters,
+full of pathetic utterances of his regrets for old friends amidst
+increasing infirmities, and full also of appeals on behalf of others. He
+induced Barber to give a chaplaincy to Pilkington, a young clergyman of
+whose talent and modesty Swift was thoroughly convinced. Mrs. Pilkington
+was a small poetess, and the pair had crept into some intimacy at the
+deanery. Unluckily Swift had reasons to repent his patronage. The pair
+were equally worthless. The husband tried to get a divorce; and the wife
+sank into misery. One of her last experiments was to publish by
+subscription certain "Memoirs," which contain some interesting but
+untrustworthy anecdotes of Swift's later years.[85] He had rather better
+luck with Mrs. Barber, wife of a Dublin woollendraper, who, as Swift says,
+was "poetically given, and, for a woman, had a sort of genius that way."
+He pressed her claims not only upon her namesake, the Mayor, but upon Lord
+Carteret, Lady Betty Germaine, and Gay and his duchess. A forged letter to
+Queen Caroline in Swift's name on behalf of this poetess naturally raised
+some suspicions. Swift, however, must have been convinced of her
+innocence. He continued his interest in her for years, during which we are
+glad to find that she gave up poetry for selling Irish linens and letting
+lodgings at Bath; and one of Swift's last acts before his decay was to
+present her, at her own request, with the copyright of his _Polite
+Conversations_. Everybody, she said, would subscribe for a work of
+Swift's, and it would put her in easy circumstances. Mrs. Barber clearly
+had no delicacy in turning Swift's liberality to account; but she was a
+respectable and sensible woman, and managed to bring up two sons to
+professions. Liberality of this kind came naturally to Swift. He provided
+for a broken-down old officer, Captain Creichton, by compiling his memoirs
+for him, to be published by subscription. "I never," he says in 1735, "got
+a farthing by anything I wrote--except once by Pope's prudent management."
+This probably refers to _Gulliver_, for which he seems to have received
+200_l._ He apparently gave his share in the profits of the _Miscellanies_
+to the widow of a Dublin printer.
+
+A few words may now be said about these last writings. In reading some of
+them, we must remember his later mode of life. He generally dined alone,
+or with old Mrs. Brent, then sat alone in his closet till he went to bed
+at eleven. The best company in Dublin, he said, was barely tolerable, and
+those who had been tolerable were now unsupportable. He could no longer
+read by candle-light, and his only resource was to write rubbish, most of
+which he burnt. The merest trifles that he ever wrote, he says in 1731,
+"are serious philosophical lucubrations in comparison to what I now busy
+myself about." This, however, was but the development of a lifelong
+practice. His favourite maxim, _Vive la bagatelle_, is often quoted by
+Pope and Bolingbroke. As he had punned in his youth with Lord Berkeley, so
+he amused himself in later years by a constant interchange of trifles with
+his friends, and above all with Sheridan. Many of these trifles have been
+preserved; they range from really good specimens of Swift's rather
+sardonic humour down to bad riddles and a peculiar kind of playing upon
+words. A brief specimen of one variety will be amply sufficient. Sheridan
+writes to Swift. _Times a re veri de ad nota do it oras hi lingat almi e
+state._ The words separately are Latin, and are to be read into the
+English: "Times are very dead; not a doit or a shilling at all my estate."
+Swift writes to Sheridan in English, which reads into Latin, "Am I say
+vain a rabble is," means, _Amice venerabilis_--and so forth. Whole
+manuscript books are still in existence filled with jargon of this kind.
+Charles Fox declared that Swift must be a goodnatured man to have had such
+a love of nonsense. We may admit some of it to be a proof of good-humour
+in the same sense as a love of the backgammon in which he sometimes
+indulged. It shows, that is, a willingness to kill time in company. But it
+must be admitted that the impression becomes different when we think of
+Swift in his solitude wasting the most vigorous intellect in the country
+upon ingenuities beneath that of the composer of double acrostics. Delany
+declares that the habit helped to weaken his intellect. Rather it showed
+that his intellect was preying upon itself. Once more we have to think of
+the "conjured spirit," and the ropes of sand. Nothing can well be more
+lamentable. Books full of this stuff impress us like products of the
+painful ingenuity by which some prisoner for life has tried to relieve
+himself of the intolerable burden of solitary confinement. Swift seems to
+betray the secret when he tells Bolingbroke that at his age "I often
+thought of death; but now it is never out of my mind." He repeats this
+more than once. He does not fear death, he says; indeed he longed for it.
+His regular farewell to a friend was, "Good night; I hope I shall never
+see you again." He had long been in the habit of "lamenting" his birthday,
+though, in earlier days, Stella and other friends had celebrated the
+anniversary. Now it became a day of unmixed gloom, and the chapter in
+which Job curses the hour of his birth lay open all day on his table. "And
+yet," he says, "I love _la bagatelle_ better than ever." Rather we should
+say, "and therefore," for in truth the only excuse for such trifling was
+the impossibility of finding any other escape from settled gloom. Friends
+indeed seem to have adopted at times the theory that a humourist must
+always be on the broad grin. They called him the "laughter-loving" dean,
+and thought Gulliver a "merry book." A strange effect is produced when
+between two of the letters in which Swift utters the bitterest agonies of
+his soul during Stella's illness, we have a letter from Bolingbroke to the
+"three Yahoos of Twickenham" (Pope, Gay, and Swift), referring to Swift's
+"divine science, _la bagatelle_" and ending with the benediction, "Mirth
+be with you!" From such mirth we can only say, may heaven protect us; for
+it would remind us of nothing but the mirth of Redgauntlet's companions
+when they sat dead (and damned) at their ghastly revelry, and their
+laughter passed into such wild sounds as made the daring piper's "very
+nails turn blue."
+
+It is not, however, to be inferred that all Swift's recreations were so
+dreary as this Anglo-Latin, or that his facetiousness always covered an
+aching heart. There is real humour, and not all of bitter flavour, in some
+of the trifles which passed between Swift and his friends. The most famous
+is the poem called _The Grand Question Debated_, the question being
+whether an old building called Hamilton's Bawn, belonging to Sir A.
+Acheson, should be turned into a malthouse or a barrack. Swift takes the
+opportunity of caricaturing the special object of his aversion, the
+blustering and illiterate soldier, though he indignantly denies that he
+had said anything disagreeable to his hospitable entertainer. Lady Acheson
+encouraged him in writing such "lampoons." Her taste cannot have been very
+delicate,[86] and she perhaps did not perceive how a rudeness which
+affects to be only playful may be really offensive. If the poem shows that
+Swift took liberties with his friends, it also shows that he still
+possessed the strange power of reproducing the strain of thought of a
+vulgar mind which he exhibited in Mr. Harris's petition. Two other works
+which appeared in these last years are more remarkable proofs of the same
+power. _The Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation_ and
+the _Directions to Servants_, are most singular performances, and
+curiously illustrative of Swift's habits of thought and composition. He
+seems to have begun them during some of his early visits to England. He
+kept them by him and amused himself by working upon them, though they were
+never quite finished. The _Polite Conversation_ was given, as we have
+seen, to Mrs. Barber in his later years, and the _Directions to Servants_
+came into the printer's hands when he was already imbecile. They show how
+closely Swift's sarcastic attention was fixed through life upon the ways
+of his inferiors. They are a mass of materials for a natural history of
+social absurdities such as Mr. Darwin was in the habit of bestowing upon
+the manners and customs of worms. The difference is that Darwin had none
+but kindly feelings for worms, whereas Swift's inspection of social vermin
+is always edged with contempt. The conversations are a marvellous
+collection of the set of cant phrases which at best have supplied the
+absence of thought in society. Incidentally there are some curious
+illustrations of the customs of the day; though one cannot suppose that
+any human beings had ever the marvellous flow of pointless proverbs with
+which Lord Sparkish, Mr. Neverout, Miss Notable and the rest manage to
+keep the ball incessantly rolling. The talk is nonsensical, as most
+small-talk would be, if taken down by a reporter, and, according to modern
+standard, hideously vulgar, and yet it flows on with such vivacity that it
+is perversely amusing.
+
+    _Lady Answerall._ But, Mr. Neverout, I wonder why such a handsome,
+    straight young gentleman as you don't get some rich widow?
+
+    _Lord Sparkish._ Straight! Ay, straight as my leg, and that's crooked
+    at the knee.
+
+    _Neverout._ Truth, madam, if it rained rich widows, none would fall
+    upon me. Egad, I was born under a threepenny planet, never to be worth
+    a groat.
+
+And so the talk flows on, and to all appearance might flow for ever.
+
+Swift professes in his preface to have sat many hundred times with his
+table-book ready, without catching a single phrase for his book in eight
+hours. Truly he is a kind of Boswell of inanities; and one is amazed at
+the quantity of thought which must have gone into this elaborate trifling
+upon trifles. A similar vein of satire upon the emptiness of writers is
+given in his _Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Human Mind_; but
+that is a mere skit compared with this strange performance. The
+_Directions to Servants_ shows an equal amount of thought exerted upon the
+various misdoings of the class assailed. Some one has said that it is
+painful to read so minute and remorseless an exposure of one variety of
+human folly. Undoubtedly it suggests that Swift must have appeared to be
+an omniscient master. Delany, as I have said, testifies to his excellence
+in that capacity. Many anecdotes attest the close attention which he
+bestowed upon every detail of his servants' lives, and the humorous
+reproofs which he administered. "Sweetheart," he said to an ugly cookmaid
+who had overdone a joint, "take this down to the kitchen and do it less."
+"That is impossible," she replied. "Then," he said, "if you must commit
+faults, commit faults that can be mended." Another story tells how when a
+servant had excused himself for not cleaning boots on the ground that
+they would soon be dirty again, Swift made him apply the same principle to
+eating breakfast, which would be only a temporary remedy for hunger. In
+this, as in every relation of life, Swift was under a kind of necessity of
+imposing himself upon every one in contact with him, and followed out his
+commands into the minutest details. In the _Directions to Servants_ he has
+accumulated the results of his experience in one department; and the
+reading may not be without edification to the people who every now and
+then announce as a new discovery that servants are apt to be selfish,
+indolent, and slatternly, and to prefer their own interests to their
+master's. Probably no fault could be found with the modern successors of
+eighteenth-century servants, which has not already been exemplified in
+Swift's presentment of that golden age of domestic comfort. The details
+are not altogether pleasant; but, admitting such satire to be legitimate,
+Swift's performance is a masterpiece.
+
+Swift, however, left work of a more dignified kind. Many of the letters in
+his correspondence are admirable specimens of a perishing art. The most
+interesting are those which passed between him, Pope, and Bolingbroke, and
+which were published by Pope's contrivance during Swift's last period. "I
+look upon us three," says Swift, "as a peculiar triumvirate, who have
+nothing to expect or fear, and so far fittest to converse with one
+another." We may perhaps believe Swift when he says that he "never leaned
+on his elbow to consider what he should write" (except to fools, lawyers,
+and ministers), though we certainly cannot say the same of his friends.
+Pope and Bolingbroke are full of affectations, now transparent enough; but
+Swift in a few trenchant, outspoken phrases, dashes out a portrait of
+himself as impressive as it is in some ways painful. We must, indeed,
+remember in reading his inverse hypocrisy, his tendency to call his own
+motives by their ugliest names--a tendency which is specially pronounced
+in writing letters to the old friends whose very names recall the memories
+of past happiness, and lead him to dwell upon the gloomiest side of the
+present. There is too a characteristic reserve upon some points. In his
+last visit to Pope, Swift left his friend's house after hearing the bad
+accounts of Stella's health, and hid himself in London lodgings. He never
+mentioned his anxieties to his friend, who heard of them first from
+Sheridan; and in writing afterwards from Dublin, Swift excuses himself for
+the desertion by referring to his own ill-health--doubtless a true cause
+("two sick friends never did well together")--and his anxiety about his
+affairs, without a word about Stella. A phrase of Bolingbroke's in the
+previous year about "the present Stella, whoever she may be," seems to
+prove that he too had no knowledge of Stella except from the poems
+addressed to the name. There were depths of feeling which Swift could not
+lay bare to the friend in whose affection he seems most thoroughly to have
+trusted. Meanwhile he gives full vent to the scorn of mankind and himself,
+the bitter and unavailing hatred of oppression, and above all for that
+strange mingling of pride and remorse which is always characteristic of
+his turn of mind. When he leaves Arbuthnot and Pope he expresses the
+warmth of his feelings by declaring that he will try to forget them. He is
+deeply grieved by the death of Congreve, and the grief makes him almost
+regret that he ever had a friend. He would give half his fortune for the
+temper of an easy-going acquaintance who could take up or lose a friend as
+easily as a cat. "Is not this the true happy man?" The loss of Gay cuts
+him to the heart; he notes on the letter announcing it that he had kept
+the letter by him five days "by an impulse foreboding some misfortune." He
+cannot speak of it except to say that he regrets that long living has not
+hardened him; and that he expects to die poor and friendless. Pope's
+ill-health "hangs on his spirits." His moral is that if he were to begin
+the world again, he would never run the risk of a friendship with a poor
+or sickly man--for he cannot harden himself. "Therefore I argue that
+avarice and hardness of heart are the two happiest qualities a man can
+acquire who is late in his life, because by living long we must lessen our
+friends or may increase our fortunes." This bitterness is equally apparent
+in regard to the virtues on which he most prided himself. His patriotism
+was owing to "perfect rage and resentment, and the mortifying sight of
+slavery, folly, and baseness;" in which, as he says, he is the direct
+contrary of Pope, who can despise folly and hate vice without losing his
+temper or thinking the worse of individuals. "Oppression tortures him,"
+and means bitter hatred of the concrete oppressor. He tells Barber in 1738
+that for three years he has been but the shadow of his former self, and
+has entirely lost his memory, "except when it is roused by perpetual
+subjects of vexation." Commentators have been at pains to show that such
+sentiments are not philanthropic; yet they are the morbid utterance of a
+noble and affectionate nature soured by long misery and disappointment.
+They brought their own punishment. The unhappy man was fretting himself
+into melancholy and was losing all sources of consolation. "I have nobody
+now left but you," he writes to Pope in 1736; his invention is gone; he
+makes projects which end in the manufacture of waste paper; and what vexes
+him most is that his "female friends have now forsaken him." "Years and
+infirmities," he says in the end of the same year (about the date of the
+_Legion Club_), "have quite broke me; I can neither read, nor write, nor
+remember, nor converse. All I have left is to walk and ride." A few
+letters are preserved in the next two years--melancholy wails over his
+loss of health and spirit--pathetic expressions of continual affection for
+his "dearest and almost only constant friend," and a warm request or two
+for services to some of his acquaintance.
+
+The last stage was rapidly approaching. Swift who had always been thinking
+of death in these later years, had anticipated the end in the remarkable
+verses _On the Death of Dr. Swift_. This and two or three other
+performances of about the same period, especially the _Rhapsody on Poetry_
+(1733) and the _Verses to a Lady_ are Swift's chief title to be called a
+poet. How far that name can be conceded to him is a question of
+classification. Swift's originality appears in the very fact that he
+requires a new class to be made for him. He justified Dryden's remark in
+so far as he was never a poet in the sense in which Milton or Wordsworth
+or Shelley or even Dryden himself were poets. His poetry may be called
+rhymed prose, and should perhaps be put at about the same level in the
+scale of poetry as _Hudibras_. It differs from prose not simply in being
+rhymed, but in that the metrical form seems to be the natural and
+appropriate mode of utterance. Some of the purely sarcastic and humorous
+phrases recall _Hudibras_ more nearly than anything else; as, for example,
+the often-quoted verses upon small critics in the _Rhapsody_.
+
+  The vermin only tease and pinch
+  Their foes superior by an inch.
+  So, naturalists observe a flea
+  Has smaller fleas that on him prey,
+  And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
+  And so proceed _ad infinitum_.
+
+In the verses on his own death, the suppressed passion, the glow and force
+of feeling which we perceive behind the merely moral and prosaic phrases
+seem to elevate the work to a higher level. It is a mere running of
+every-day language into easy-going verse; and yet the strangely mingled
+pathos and bitterness, the peculiar irony of which he was the great
+master, affect us with a sentiment which may be called poetical in
+substance, more forcibly than far more dignified and in some sense
+imaginative performances. Whatever name we may please to give to such
+work, Swift has certainly struck home and makes an impression which it is
+difficult to compress into a few phrases. It is the essence of all that is
+given at greater length in the correspondence; and starts from a comment
+upon Rochefoucauld's congenial maxim about the misfortunes of our friends.
+He tells how his acquaintance watch his decay, tacitly congratulating
+themselves that "it is not yet so bad with us;" how, when he dies, they
+laugh at the absurdity of his will.
+
+  To public uses! there's a whim!
+  What had the public done for him?
+  Mere envy, avarice, and pride,
+  He gave it all--but first he died.
+
+Then we have the comments of Queen Caroline and Sir Robert and the
+rejoicings of Grub Street at the chance of passing off rubbish by calling
+it his. His friends are really touched.
+
+  Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
+  A week, and Arbuthnot a day,
+  St. John himself will scarce forbear
+  To bite his pen and drop a tear,
+  The rest will give a shrug and cry,
+  "'Tis pity, but we all must die!"
+
+The ladies talk over it at their cards. They have learnt to show their
+tenderness, and
+
+  Receive the news in doleful dumps.
+  The dean is dead (pray what is trumps?);
+  Then, Lord have mercy on his soul!
+  (Ladies, I'll venture for the _vole_).
+
+The poem concludes, as usual, with an impartial character of the dean. He
+claims, with a pride not unjustifiable, the power of independence, love of
+his friends, hatred of corruption and so forth; admits that he may have
+had "too much satire in his vein," though adding the very questionable
+assertion that he "lashed the vice but spared the name." Marlborough,
+Wharton, Burnet, Steele, Walpole and a good many more might have had
+something to say upon that head. The last phrase is significant,--
+
+  He gave the little wealth he had
+  To build a house for fools and mad;
+  And showed by one satiric touch
+  No nation needed it so much,
+  That kingdom he hath left his debtor,
+  I wish it soon may have a better!
+
+For some years, in fact, Swift had spent much thought and time in
+arranging the details of this bequest. He ultimately left about
+12,000_l._, with which, and some other contributions, St. Patrick's
+Hospital was opened for fifty patients in the year 1757.
+
+The last few years of Swift's life were passed in an almost total eclipse
+of intellect. One pathetic letter to Mrs. Whiteway gives almost the last
+touch. "I have been very miserable all night, and to-day extremely deaf
+and full of pain. I am so stupid and confounded that I cannot express the
+mortification I am under both of body and mind. All I can say is that I am
+not in torture; but I daily and hourly expect it. Pray let me know how
+your health is and your family. I hardly understand one word I write. I am
+sure my days will be very few, for miserable they must be. If I do not
+blunder, it is Saturday, July 26, 1740. If I live till Monday, I shall
+hope to see you, perhaps for the last time." Even after this he
+occasionally showed gleams of his former intelligence, and is said to have
+written a well-known epigram during an outing with his attendants:--
+
+  Behold a proof of Irish sense!
+  Here Irish wit is seen!
+  When nothing's left that's worth defence
+  They build a magazine.
+
+Occasionally he gave way to furious outbursts of violent temper; and once
+suffered great torture from a swelling in the eye. But his general state
+seems to have been apathetic; sometimes he tried to speak, but was unable
+to find words. A few sentences have been recorded. On hearing that
+preparations were being made for celebrating his birthday, he said, "It is
+all folly; they had better let it alone." Another time he was heard to
+mutter, "I am what I am; I am what I am." Few details have been given of
+this sad period of mental eclipse; nor can we regret their absence. It is
+enough to say that he suffered occasional tortures from the development of
+the brain-disease; though as a rule he enjoyed the painlessness of torpor.
+The unhappy man lingered till the 19th of October, 1745, when he died
+quietly at three in the afternoon, after a night of convulsions. He was
+buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral, and over his grave was placed an
+epitaph, containing the last of those terrible phrases which cling to our
+memory whenever his name is mentioned. Swift lies, in his own words,--
+
+  Ubi sæva indignatio
+  Cor ulterius lacerare nequit.
+
+What more can be added?
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LIMITED,
+  ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Deane Swift_, p. 15.
+
+[2] Readers may remember a clever adaptation of this incident in Lord
+Lytton's _My Novel_.
+
+[3] Possibly this was his cousin Thomas, but the probabilities are clearly
+in favour of Jonathan.
+
+[4] In the _Short Character of Thomas, Earl of Wharton_.
+
+[5] It will be seen that I accept Dr. Barrett's statements, _Earlier Part
+of the Life of Swift_, pp. 13, 14. His arguments seem to me sufficiently
+clear and conclusive, and they are accepted by Monck Mason, though treated
+contemptuously by Mr. Forster, p. 34. On the other hand, I agree with Mr.
+Forster that Swift's complicity in the _Terræ Filius_ oration is not
+proved, though it is not altogether improbable.
+
+[6] Temple had the reversion of his father's office.
+
+[7] It may be noticed in illustration of the growth of the Swift legend,
+that two demonstrably false anecdotes--one imputing a monstrous crime, the
+other a romantic piece of benevolence to Swift--refer to this period.
+
+[8] M. Maralt. See appendix to Courtenay's _Life of Temple_.
+
+[9] The publichouse at the point thus named on the ordnance map is now (I
+regret to say) called the Jolly Farmer.
+
+[10] The most direct statement to this effect was made in an article in
+the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1757. It professes to speak with authority,
+but includes such palpable blunders as to carry little weight.
+
+[11] I am not certain whether this means 1681 or 1681-82. I have assumed
+the former date in mentioning Stella's age; but the other is equally
+possible.
+
+[12] Wotton first accused Swift of borrowing the idea of the battle from a
+French book, by one Coutray, called _Histoire Poétique de la Guerre
+nouvellement declarée entre les Anciens et Modernes_. Swift declared (I
+have no doubt truly) that he had never seen or heard of this book. But
+Coutray, like Swift, uses the scheme of a mock Homeric battle. The book is
+prose, but begins with a poem. The resemblance is much closer than Mr.
+Forster's language would imply; but I agree with him that it does not
+justify Johnson and Scott in regarding it as more than a natural
+coincidence. Every detail is different.
+
+[13] This was a treatise by Thomas, twin brother of Henry Vaughan, the
+"Silurist." It led to a controversy with Henry More. Vaughan was a
+Rosicrucian. Swift's contempt for mysteries is characteristic. Sendivogus
+was a famous alchemist (1566-1646).
+
+[14] See Forster, p. 117.
+
+[15] He was in England from April to September in 1701, from April to
+November in 1702, from November 1703 till May 1704, for an uncertain part
+of 1705, and again for over fifteen months from the end of 1707 till the
+beginning of 1709.
+
+[16] Mr. Forster found the original MS., and gives us the exact numbers:
+96 omitted, 44 added, 22 altered. The whole was 178 lines _after_ the
+omissions.
+
+[17] See letter to _Peterborough_, May 6, 1711.
+
+[18] In most of their principles the two parties seem to have shifted
+opinions since their institution in the reign of Charles II. _Examiner_,
+No. 43. May 31, 1711.
+
+[19] Delany, p. 211.
+
+[20] Letter to King, Jan. 6th, 1709.
+
+[21] Swift to King, July 12, 1711.
+
+[22] These dinners, it may be noticed, seem to have been held on Thursdays
+when Harley had to attend the court at Windsor. This may lead to some
+confusion with the Brothers' Club, which met on Thursdays during the
+parliamentary session.
+
+[23] _Letter to a Whig Lord_, 1712.
+
+[24] _Journal to Stella_, Feb. 6th, 1712, and Jan. 8th and 25th, 1712.
+
+[25] _Ib._ Jan. 7th, 1711.
+
+[26] _Ib._ Jan. 21st, 1712.
+
+[27] _Ib._ Dec. 31st, 1710.
+
+[28] _Conduct of the Allies._
+
+[29] _Advice to October Club._
+
+[30] _Behaviour of Queen's Ministry._
+
+[31] There was enough plausibility in this scandal to give it a sting. The
+duchess had left her second husband, a Mr. Thynne, immediately after the
+marriage ceremony, and fled to Holland. There Count Coningsmark paid her
+his addresses, and, coming to England, had Mr. Thynne shot by ruffians in
+Pall Mall. See the curious case in the _State Trials_, vol. ix.
+
+[32] Letters from Smalridge and Dr. Davenant in 1713.
+
+[33] Letter to Lord Palmerston, Jan. 29th, 1726.
+
+[34] June 22nd, 1711.
+
+[35] The list, so far as I can make it out from references in the journal,
+appears to include more names. One or two had probably retired. The peers
+are as follows:--The Dukes of Shrewsbury (perhaps only suggested), Ormond
+and Beaufort; Lords Orrery, Rivers, Dartmouth, Dupplin, Masham, Bathurst,
+and Lansdowne (the last three were of the famous twelve); and the
+commoners are Swift, Sir R. Raymond, Jack Hill, Disney, Sir W. Wyndham,
+St. John, Prior, Friend, Arbuthnot, Harley (son of Lord Oxford), and
+Harcourt (son of Lord Harcourt).
+
+[36] Feb. 28th, 1712.
+
+[37] Its authenticity was doubted, but, as I think, quite gratuitously, by
+Johnson, by Lord Stanhope, and, as Stanhope says, by Macaulay. The dulness
+is easily explicable by the circumstances of the composition.
+
+[38] April 13, 1713.
+
+[39] Letter to King, Dec. 16th, 1716.
+
+[40] _Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's last Ministry._
+
+[41] _Autobiography_, i. 407.
+
+[42] _Foster_, p. 108.
+
+[43] Oct. 20th, 1711. The last use I have observed of this word is in a
+letter of Carlyle's, Nov. 7th, 1824. "Strange pilgarlic-looking figures."
+Froude's _Life of Carlyle_, i. 247.
+
+[44] Lord Orrery instructs us to pronounce this name Vanummery.
+
+[45] This simply repeats what he says in his first published letters about
+his flirtations at Leicester.
+
+[46] The passage which contains this line was said by Orrery to cast an
+unmanly insinuation against Vanessa's virtue. As the accusation has been
+repeated, it is perhaps right to say that one fact sufficiently disproves
+its possibility. The poem was intended for Vanessa alone; and would never
+have appeared had it not been published after her death by her own
+direction.
+
+[47] Compare Pope's _Eloisa_ to _Abelard_ which appeared in 1717. If
+Vanessa had read it, she might almost be suspected of borrowing; but her
+phrases seem to be too genuine to justify the hypothesis.
+
+[48] Scott appropriately quotes Hotspur. The phrase is apparently a hint
+at Swift's usual recipe of exercise.
+
+[49] I cannot here discuss the evidence. The original statements are in
+_Orrery_, p. 22 &c.; _Delany_, p. 52; _Dean Swift_, p. 93; _Sheridan_, p.
+282; _Monck Berkeley_, p. xxxvi. Scott accepted the marriage, and the
+evidence upon which he relied was criticized by Monck Mason, p. 297, &c.
+Monck Mason makes some good points, and especially diminishes the value of
+the testimony of Bishop Berkeley, showing by dates that he could not have
+heard the story, as his grandson affirms, from Bishop Ashe, who is said to
+have performed the ceremony. It probably came, however, from Berkeley,
+who, we may add, was tutor to Ashe's son, and had special reasons for
+interest in the story. On the whole, the argument for the marriage comes
+to this: that it was commonly reported by the end of Swift's life, that it
+was certainly believed by his intimate friend Delany, in all probability
+by the elder Sheridan and by Mrs. Whiteway. Mrs. Sican, who told the story
+to Sheridan, seems also to be a good witness. On the other hand, Dr. Lyon,
+a clergyman who was one of Swift's guardians in his imbecility, says that
+it was denied by Mrs. Dingley and by Mrs. Brent, Swift's old housekeeper,
+and by Stella's executors. The evidence seems to me very indecisive. Much
+of it may be dismissed as mere gossip, but a certain probability remains.
+
+[50] _Monck Mason_, p. 310, note.
+
+[51] This is Sheridan's story. Orrery speaks of the letter as written to
+Swift himself.
+
+[52] Scott heard this from Mrs. Whiteway's grandson. Sheridan tells the
+story as though Stella had begged for publicity, and Swift cruelly
+refused. Delany's statement (p. 56), which agrees with Mrs. Whiteway's,
+appears to be on good authority, and, if true, proves the reality of the
+marriage.
+
+[53] Besides Scott's remarks (see v. of his life) see Orrery, _Letter_ 10;
+_Deane Swift_, p. 93, _Sheridan_, p. 297.
+
+[54] _Letter to Pope_, July 16th, 1728.
+
+[55] _Sheridan_, p. 23.
+
+[56] _Brain_ for Jan., 1882.
+
+[57] _Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life._
+
+[58] Letter to Pope, July 13th, 1737.
+
+[59] _Catholic Reasons for Repealing the Test._
+
+[60] _Letters on Sacramental Test in 1738._
+
+[61] To Sir Charles Wigan, July, 1732.
+
+[62] To Lord Peterborough, April 21st, 1726.
+
+[63] The ton of bronze, I am informed, is coined into 108,000 pence, that
+is 450_l._ The metal is worth about 74_l._
+
+[64] Simon, in his work on the Irish coinage, makes the profit 60,000_l._;
+but he reckons the copper at 1_s._ a lb., whereas from the Report of the
+Privy Council it would seem to be properly 1_s._ 6_d._ a lb. Swift and
+most later writers say 108,000_l._, but the right sum is 100,800_l._ 360
+tons coined into 2_s._ 6_d._ a lb.
+
+[65] Monck Mason says only 300_l._ a year, but this is the sum mentioned
+in the Report and by Swift.
+
+[66] Letter I.
+
+[67] Letter II.
+
+[68] See for example Lord Stanhope's account. For the other view see Mr.
+Lecky's _History of the Eighteenth Century_, and Mr. Froude's _English in
+Ireland_.
+
+[69] Letter IV.
+
+[70] "On the words Brother Protestants, &c."
+
+[71] To Lord Stafford, Nov. 26, 1725.
+
+[72] _Maxims Controuled in Ireland._
+
+[73] _Delany_, p. 148.
+
+[74] It is in the Forster library, and, I believe, unpublished, in answer
+to Arbuthnot's letter mentioned in the text.
+
+[75] Letter to Pope, Sept. 29th, 1725.
+
+[76] Letter to Sheridan, Sept. 11th, 1725.
+
+[77] _Lectures on the English Poets._
+
+[78] To Bolingbroke, May, 1719.
+
+[79] To Pope and Gay, Oct. 15th, 1726.
+
+[80] _Delany_, p. 144.
+
+[81] Bishop of Meath, May 22nd, 1719.
+
+[82] To Bishop of Clogher, July, 1733.
+
+[83] To Carteret, May 10th, 1728.
+
+[84] Substance of a speech to the Mayor of Dublin. Franklin left a sum of
+money to be employed in a similar way.
+
+[85] See also the curious letters from Mrs. Pilkington in Richardson's
+Correspondence.
+
+[86] Or she would hardly have written the _Panegyric_.
+
+
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