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author: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-05-09 08:22:42 -0700
committer: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-05-09 08:22:42 -0700
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+      Swift | Project Gutenberg
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78641 ***</div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover">
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>SWIFT</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f1">
+<img src="images/fig1.jpg" alt="bust">
+<p class="caption">Jonathan Swift</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>The bust in St. Patrick’s Cathedral</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="c big red">
+SWIFT</p>
+
+<p class="c xlarge">
+BY</p>
+
+<p class="c up sp">
+CARL VAN DOREN</p>
+
+<p class="c xlarge p6">
+NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p class="c up2 sp">
+THE VIKING PRESS</p>
+
+<p class="c large">
+1930
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fig2.jpg" alt="decoration">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c more">
+PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1930</p>
+<p class="c more">
+SECOND PRINTING NOVEMBER, 1930</p>
+<p class="c more">
+COPYRIGHT 1930 BY CARL VAN DOREN</p>
+<p class="c more">
+PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="c xlarge">CONTENTS</p>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c1">I</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">POOR RELATION</td>
+  <td class="tdr">3</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c2">II</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">DEPENDENT</td>
+  <td class="tdr">17</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c3">III</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">VICAR AND WIT</td>
+  <td class="tdr">48</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c4">IV</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">MAN IN POWER</td>
+  <td class="tdr">94</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c5">V</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">DEAN AND PATRIOT</td>
+  <td class="tdr">140</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c6">VI</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">TRAVELLER</td>
+  <td class="tdr">179</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c7">VII</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">KING OF TRIFLERS</td>
+  <td class="tdr">220</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c8">VIII</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">CONJURED SPIRIT</td>
+  <td class="tdr">255</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#c9">BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</a> &#160; &#160; &#160; &#160; </td>
+  <td class="tdr">269</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#c10">INDEX</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">273</td></tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="c xlarge">ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">JONATHAN SWIFT<br>
+<i>From the bust by Patrick Cunningham in St. Patrick’s Cathedral,
+Dublin</i></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f1"><span class="allsmcap">FRONTISPIECE</span></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><span class="mid">FACING PAGE</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">JONATHAN SWIFT as a student at Trinity College<br>
+<i>From a portrait by an unknown painter. The portrait is no longer
+known to exist, nor is it certainly a portrait of Swift though generally
+thought to be</i></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f3">14</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdlp">ESTHER JOHNSON (Stella)<br><i>From a portrait by an unknown painter, now in private hands.
+The date is unknown but it represents Stella as a young woman</i></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f4">60</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdlp">JONATHAN SWIFT<br>
+<i>From a portrait by Charles Jervas, now in the National Portrait
+Gallery, London</i></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f5">122</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdlp">ESTHER VANHOMRIGH (Vanessa)<br>
+<i>From a portrait by an unknown painter, now in private hands.
+The date is uncertain</i></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f6">148</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdlp">ESTHER JOHNSON (Stella)<br>
+<i>From a portrait by an unknown painter, now in private hands. It
+seems to be of a later date than the portrait of Stella listed above</i></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f7">168</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdlp">JONATHAN SWIFT as Dean of St. Patrick’s<br>
+<i>From a portrait by Francis Bindon, now in the Deanery House of
+St. Patrick’s Cathedral</i></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f8">226</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdlp">JONATHAN SWIFT in old age<br>
+<i>From a portrait attributed to Stephen Slaughter, now in private
+hands</i></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f9">254</a></td></tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p>
+<p class="c xlarge">SWIFT</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c1">I</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c xlarge sp">POOR RELATION</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">J</span>onathan Swift</span> aimed at mankind the most venomous
+arrow that scorn has ever yet let loose.
+Mankind, bland abstraction, caught his arrow, laughed
+at it, and turned it over to children to play with. Children,
+inoculated with <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i> at an age when
+it cannot harm them, are thereafter innocently immune.
+If they hear of Swift they recollect their toy,
+unaware that it was intended to be deadly or that it
+has still lost little of its furious poison. Mankind, by a
+stroke so bold that it must have been indifferent, has
+protected itself. Swift remains a show, the story of his
+wild assault fades from the record. Touch the pages of
+the record, however, and it blazes, a story of fire in a
+language of ice.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere fire and ice, everywhere together.
+“Remember,” Swift wrote to a woman who loved him
+as only men like Swift are loved, “that riches are nine
+parts in ten of all that is good in life.” Though he was,
+when he said this, designing to chill a love which was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>
+warmer than he wanted it, design alone would not
+have been enough to prompt these cold words. He
+could not have formed them if they had not come
+from what he felt to be his reason and what he believed
+to be his experience. Always he refused to speak about
+his fate except in the hard accents of reason. Always he
+refused to share in passions, outside his experience,
+which might have transformed the universe for him,
+softening it and comforting him. Even when they were
+offered, Swift held back, obstinate and doubtful. He
+could imagine no easier freedom. He could imagine no
+kinder world.</p>
+
+<p>This caution, in a nature so imperious, had to be
+learned early to be learned at all. Swift learned it from
+an expert teacher waiting for him when he was born.
+Poverty of different degrees might have bred him to
+resignation or to unconcern, to holiness or to outlawry.
+Swift’s poverty had a subtler craft. It fed and
+clothed and housed everything about him but his
+pride. Had that been the mild vanity which is what
+most young men mean by pride, he might have gone
+through his dependent years unscarred. But the pride
+of Swift was constitutional, ceaseless, sensitive, and
+headlong. Nourished, it would still have fretted;
+starved, it rebelled and gave itself to rage for want of
+action.</p>
+
+<p>“And this it is,” he wrote at twenty-five, “which a
+person of great honour in Ireland (and who was pleased<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>
+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 would not give it employment.”</p>
+
+<p>The conjured spirit often brooded over events older
+than its birth, telling itself that its mishaps had begun
+with its ancestors. To go no further back, there was
+Swift’s grandfather, Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich
+in Herefordshire. He had been so stubborn and defiant
+a victim of Parliament during the Civil War that
+when he died in 1658 he had had no longer any fortune
+to be divided among his many sons and daughters. At
+least five of his sons had consequently taken to the law.
+All five of them had gone to Ireland, which was then
+poor enough to lack lawyers but not poor enough to be
+overlooked by Englishmen in search of a conquered
+province where they might have the benefit of their
+blood as well as of their merits.</p>
+
+<p>Within six or seven years after the father’s death
+Godwin, Dryden, Abraham (a merchant), William,
+Jonathan, and Adam Swift had established themselves
+in Dublin. Godwin, four times married, had
+prospered most. He had had three heiresses in the
+steady series of his wives, and had made other advantageous
+speculations. Jonathan had prospered least.
+Trusting to a minor post as steward of the King’s Inns,
+he had married the dowerless Abigail Erick of Leicestershire,
+begot a daughter, begot a son, and died. He
+left his widow a few debts, a few arrears due her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>
+if she could collect them, and an income of twenty
+pounds a year. When the posthumous son was born,
+30 November 1667, he became at once a general
+charge upon a family which was itself dispersed and
+insecure.</p>
+
+<p>Dispersed and insecure, and yet too mindful of its
+rank to decline smoothly to a lower. Had not Barnam
+Swift, of the Yorkshire branch, been made an Irish
+viscount by Charles I, and had not his daughters married
+one of them the Earl of Eglinton and the other
+that Robert Feilding who for a third or fourth wife was
+to have, somewhat bigamously, a former mistress
+of Charles II? Had not the wife of Thomas Swift,
+vicar of Goodrich, been the niece of Sir Erasmus
+Dryden? Had not the wife of Thomas Swift, son of the
+vicar of Goodrich, been the daughter of Sir William
+Davenant? Had not the first wife of Godwin Swift
+been a cousin of the Marchioness of Ormond? Had not
+the Swifts as a rule, whether in Yorkshire or Kent or
+Herefordshire or Ireland, married like gentlemen? Had
+they not lived as much like gentlemen as the shifting
+past century had permitted, holding on to land, gaining
+place by favour? Was not Godwin Swift, head of the
+house in Ireland, attorney-general of the Palatinate of
+Tipperary because his first, though not his present,
+wife was related to the Ormonds who had favoured
+him?</p>
+
+<p>The Irish Swifts might be unsettled, but they went<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
+their ways in the shadow of distinction and the light of
+expectations. For one of them, the one genius of the
+race, there was in his youth no relief from the bitter
+contrast between his birthright and his circumstances.
+As a Swift he could not dig. As Jonathan Swift he
+could not beg. He had to accommodate himself to the
+moods of a family’s charity.</p>
+
+<p>How poor he was must be measured not by his
+needs but by his pride. His mother lived in Hoey’s
+Court, then respectable enough. She had a nurse
+whose devotion to him appears in the only incident recorded
+of his early childhood. When he was a year old,
+Swift himself tells, this nurse, “who was a woman of
+Whitehaven, being under an absolute necessity of seeing
+one of her relations, who was then extremely sick,
+and from whom she expected a legacy, and being at
+the same time extremely fond of the infant, she stole
+him on shipboard unknown to his mother and uncle
+and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he
+continued for almost three years. For when the matter
+was discovered his mother sent orders by all means not
+to hazard a second voyage till he could be better able
+to bear it. His nurse was so careful of him that before he
+returned he had learned to spell; and by the time that
+he was three years old he could read any chapter in the
+Bible.” This was no beggar’s brat. And after the child’s
+return to Dublin, whether he lived with his mother in
+Hoey’s Court or at his uncle’s house in Chancery Lane,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
+there was little change in his condition. He was fed and
+clothed and housed.</p>
+
+<p>But when at six he was sent to Kilkenny School
+there was a change. His mother had gone, or soon went,
+with her daughter to her own people in Leicester.
+The boy was more than ever dependent upon his
+uncle, who had chosen this school because it was under
+the patronage of the Ormonds. It is possible only to
+guess wherein Godwin Swift, who kept the boy in the
+school for the next eight years, fell short of what the
+nephew expected. Perhaps he stinted him in affection;
+perhaps he stinted him in pocket money. That the
+busy lawyer had not much tenderness to give to a
+random nephew, or that he had less money to distribute
+than his hungry clan supposed, is now easy to
+understand. It was not easy for a schoolboy to understand.
+This schoolboy, increasing in pride and exigence,
+blamed his growing discontent upon his kinsman.
+Like other restive children, he cast himself as the
+tragic hero in an imagined drama of neglect, multiplying
+his adversities with an angry egotism.</p>
+
+<p>“I remember, when I was a little boy,” he wrote
+long afterwards, “I felt a great fish at the end of my
+line, which I drew up almost to 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.” He had formed his habits of brooding
+early, if he could be so deeply disappointed as never<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>
+to forget this mischance, if he could regard the fish,
+flopping to preserve its life, as somehow in league
+against the tragic hero.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing at Kilkenny broke up the drama of neglect
+in which he played his resentful part. Intellectually he
+was not precocious. He excelled among the young
+grammarians, if at all, only by his knack at dog-Latin
+and rhymed macaronics. His temper did not dispose
+him towards obedience to his masters or towards
+cheerfulness among his companions. He was on good
+terms with his cousin Thomas, son of the son of the
+vicar of Goodrich, sent over from England where his
+father died young, and with a boy named Francis
+Stratford, with whom Swift during his subsequent
+days of power in London often dined. With William
+Congreve, also English, also in Ireland because his
+father had sought a post there, Swift was later to be on
+kind if not close terms. But there is nothing to prove
+that in Congreve, two years younger than he, any
+more than in Thomas Swift or Stratford, Swift found
+at school a friend who met his demanding eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>However far he may have gone in his conscious
+Ishmaelism at Kilkenny, he went further at Trinity
+College, Dublin, to which, with his cousin Thomas
+and a few months after his friend Stratford, he was
+admitted as a pensioner in April 1682. There, in his
+own words, “by the ill treatment of his nearest relations
+he was so discouraged and sunk in his spirits that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
+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 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 <i>speciali gratia</i> on the 15th February
+1685 [1686] with four more on the same footing; and
+this discreditable mark, as I am told, stands upon
+record in their college registry.”</p>
+
+<p>Plain words, but not altogether disinterested. Back
+of them appears the tragic hero’s instinct to accuse the
+inimical or, at best, obtuse world in which he moved at
+Trinity. What the dispassionate records show is that
+the special grace by which he was admitted to the
+degree was an indulgence. A part of his work being
+unsatisfactory, he might have been required to wait
+another year. He was instead admitted on his general
+standing. No less than Thomas Swift, reported <i>mediocriter</i>
+in all three subjects of the examination preceding
+the degree, and no less than Stratford, <i>mediocriter</i> in one
+and <i>vix mediocriter</i> in two of them, Jonathan Swift,
+<i>male</i> in philosophy, <i>bene</i> in Greek and Latin, and
+<i>negligenter</i> in his Latin essay, became a bachelor of arts.
+Nothing but a little annoyance and a Latin phrase
+differentiated his wilful degree from their mediocre<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
+ones. Moreover, he remained at Trinity three years
+longer, and would have become a master of arts there
+if the Revolution had not driven him elsewhere early
+in 1689.</p>
+
+<p>Swift had seemed insufficient only because he was
+impatient. Contemptuous of philosophy, which he
+thought “vain babbling, and a mere sound of words,”
+and careless of Latin prose, by which he planned to
+live no more than by philosophy, he would not give to
+them the slight attention which would have been
+enough. He would read only on his own impulse, for
+his own purpose, and without pedantry. “If a rational
+man reads an excellent author with just application he
+shall find himself extremely improved, and perhaps
+insensibly led to imitate that author’s perfections,
+although in a little time he should not remember one
+word in the book, nor even the subject it handled; for
+books give the same turn to our thoughts and way of
+reasoning that good and ill company do to our behaviour
+and conversation; without either loading our
+memories or making us even sensible of the change.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift’s reading was always an experience. In a world
+too narrow for his powers he turned to poets and historians,
+who, he discovered and later said, enlarge the
+mind and thoughts, extend and refine the imagination,
+direct the judgment, lessen the “admiration,” and increase
+the fortitude of their readers. For such experiences,
+during his seven years at college, the academic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
+penalty of being called irregular was not a ruinous
+price.</p>
+
+<p>For Swift, however, too proud to be bored and yet
+too proud to go without the rewards of boredom, it was
+humiliation. He was a rebel who could not quite glory
+in his rebellion. If, perversely, he flung himself now
+and then into irregularities of conduct, they left him
+unsatisfied. Nor were they, it appears, important. He
+was fined for absences from chapel and from lectures;
+he was fined for “town-haunting,” which meant not
+being present at nine each evening when the roll of
+students was called over. On the date of his twenty-first
+birthday, a few weeks before he left the college, a
+“Sir Swift,” either Jonathan or Thomas, was censured
+for being contumacious and contemptuous to the
+junior dean, suspended for a month, and ordered to
+beg pardon, on his knees and publicly, to the insulted
+officer. This was of course nearly three years after
+Jonathan’s degree, and may indicate that he had
+fallen off from his regularity and observance of the
+statutes. He had now passed seven years in Dublin.
+The town had possibly come to tempt him as much as
+the college bored him. His later days at the University,
+however, were devoted rather to idleness and scorn
+than to the ordinary vices of young men.</p>
+
+<p>Drunkenness, gambling, lechery, and rioting were
+as uncongenial to him as scholastic disputation. These
+were for looser minds than his. He had the pride of intellect<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>
+which fosters virtue by making vice seem trifling
+by comparison, the vagary of feeble wills, the waste
+of energy diverted. He could not help realizing that
+irregularity was folly, and that it was absurd for him to
+have lost what fools had won by merely being regular.
+His instincts were profoundly on the side of order.
+When he disobeyed it was only because he was denied
+the opportunity to command.</p>
+
+<p>As tragic hero in his own drama he blamed his
+faults upon the ill treatment of his relations, chiefly his
+uncle Godwin. The accusation is melodrama. Godwin
+Swift so declined from his prosperity during these same
+years that his health gave way, his mind failed, and he
+died soon after, leaving a broken estate to his heirs.
+During the last stage he may well have had little
+money for his nephew, and less tact than ever in
+bestowing it, but his failure and death were hardly
+spite. Towards William Swift, “the best of my relations,”
+to whom the nephew thereafter owed his principal
+support, and towards certain other uncles and
+cousins, Swift felt gratitude. It was Godwin whom he
+accused of giving him the education of a dog. The
+nephew was as unjust as the uncle was untactful.</p>
+
+<p>All that Swift needed to make him happy was a
+cheerful way of taking what he could get. All that he
+needed to make him blond was fair hair instead of
+black on his proud head and in the thick eyebrows
+under which his blue eyes burned and challenged out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
+of a face in which discontent was being written over
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>These different needs were equally beyond his
+reach. He could not be cheerful, because he was filled
+and driven by the sense and need of power. It was his
+heritage, richer than any he longed for. But it brought
+torment as well as exultation. He could not measure
+his endowment by that of his friends. They did the
+same things he did, and did them more successfully. He
+could not consult his elders. They would probably
+regard his sense of superiority as another half-grown
+delusion. He could not even have a full assurance of it
+himself, for it was dark and spasmodic, and it furnished
+no arguments to convince him that it was genuine.
+It was not yet conscious of half its aims. It stirred
+about in him without directing him where to go or
+what to undertake. It demanded knowledge, but not
+the information which it was his duty to acquire. It
+demanded eminence, but not any of the kinds of eminence
+to which he had access in school or college. It
+demanded expression, but in some powerful language
+which he had not yet learned. Above all, it demanded
+sway, over men and events. And Swift was poor,
+obscure, without influence, unable to endure his present
+fortunes, unable to decide what career would mend
+them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f3">
+<img src="images/fig3.jpg" alt="student">
+<p class="caption">Jonathan Swift as a Student at Trinity College</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>Traditionally supposed to be Swift without trustworthy evidence</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Waiting bred impatience. Impatience set up friction.
+Friction hurt. He paid it back with an instinctive
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>hatred which did not always trouble to be just to its
+objects. The fish at Kilkenny had disappointed him
+by living. His uncle in Dublin had disappointed him by
+dying. The world was full of disappointments, and he
+was the chosen victim.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Swift’s plight was not entirely melodrama which
+he had elaborated to console himself. Telling Vanessa
+that riches are nine parts in ten of all that is good in
+life, he added: “and health is the tenth.” On the
+whole, he suffered more from lack of health than from
+lack of money. Soon after he came of age he began to
+be afflicted with the “giddiness and coldness of the
+stomach” which he attributed to a surfeit of apples,
+and not long afterwards with the deafness which he
+attributed to catching cold by sitting on the ground.
+The causes which he fixed upon may not have been
+the real ones. The effects were real, and they harried
+and frightened him.</p>
+
+<p>His malady, it now seems, was a form of auditory
+vertigo, the result perhaps of hæmorrhage in the labyrinth
+of the ear. In this, if he had known the truth, he
+might have found a stroke of malice more sly and
+vindictive than any which he thought to accuse his
+fate of. A little, invisible, incurable defect doomed
+him. While his pride towered and his wrath hurled its
+freezing accusations, fate could be patient, knowing
+that a physical disorder, petty in itself, had helped to
+rouse this spiritual tumult. At its own time it would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
+quiet him more horribly than the most offended
+thunderbolt.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty-one Swift, born to act incessantly, had not
+yet played a part in any actions except those which
+went on inside his own mind. Straitened in school and
+college, he had nevertheless been safe. The Revolution,
+which shook the hold of the English colonists,
+drove him hurriedly from Ireland to a passing refuge
+with his mother in Leicester. He never thought of himself
+as Irish, and always resented it if others thought
+him so. Though he had been born in Ireland, he had
+been a member of the English gentry planted there to
+rule it. He left because the aborigines, “the savage old
+Irish” he called them, had risen to overwhelm their
+conquerors. He was only returning to his true country,
+to make his fortune among his true compatriots. The
+Revolution hurried him, but his restless nature would
+in any case have impelled him, sooner or later, in the
+direction of a larger world than Ireland.</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c2">II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c xlarge sp">DEPENDENT</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">1</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">S</span>wift’s</span> prospects when he arrived at Leicester were
+not encouraging. He could hope for little from
+Ireland, and his mother lived on twenty pounds a
+year. She might be “of an easy, contented spirit,”
+rising early and devoting her pious days to needle and
+book. Her son was of another temper. He chafed in the
+unexciting town, where he thought the inhabitants
+“a parcel of very wretched fools,” given to lying and
+gossiping “above all parts that I was ever in.” His
+energy would not let him rest. If he busied himself at
+all it was with the pastime most likely to engage a
+young man during restless leisure.</p>
+
+<p>He philandered with Betty Jones, a cousin of his
+mother’s. He philandered with other girls, then or at
+later visits, not so much out of interest in them as out
+of his need to exercise his powers upon whoever came
+within range of them. “It is this humour which makes
+me so busy when I am in company, to turn all that
+way; and since it commonly ends in talk, whether it be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+love or common conversation, it is all alike. This is so
+common that I could remember twenty women in my
+life”—he was writing early in 1692—“to whom I
+behaved myself just the same way; and I profess without
+any other design than that of entertaining myself
+when I am very idle, or when something goes amiss in
+my affairs.”</p>
+
+<p>To divert himself or to ease his frustration: these
+were the instincts which had already begun to involve
+Swift with women. His ruling instinct was towards
+action among stubborn men. In relaxed intervals he
+found it soothing to let his powers play over natures
+which seemed yielding and responsive. In frustrate
+intervals he turned greedily, even cruelly, to the same
+sport, to assure himself that he still had the faculty of
+dominion.</p>
+
+<p>His flirtation with Betty Jones, troubling to his
+mother, came to an end, and the girl married an innkeeper.
+Swift before the close of 1689 joined the household
+of Sir William Temple as something less than
+secretary for twenty pounds a year. This connection
+again he owed to his uncles, who had been associated
+in Ireland with Temple’s father and with Temple
+himself. “His whole family having been long known to
+me,” Temple explained, “obliged me ... to take
+care of him.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift went to Temple hoping to learn the ways of
+the world from a man, also from Ireland, who had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
+risen to influence and very near to power. For Temple
+Ireland had been but a springboard. His career had
+led him to more impressive quarters of Europe. Having
+turned to England shortly after the Restoration, he
+had made friends at Court, had been sent to the
+Continent to safeguard British interests, and had
+twice been ambassador at the Hague, where he had
+helped bring about the hopeful marriage of William of
+Orange to the niece of the English king. Charles II,
+valuing his ambassador’s astuteness and dexterity, had
+more than once offered to make him Secretary of
+State. He had each time refused, perceiving that
+Charles and his ministers had little use for other
+qualities which Temple valued in himself, and had
+taken to a serene retirement. Not even the accession of
+William and Mary, or their grateful offer of the post
+which he had refused at the hand of Charles, had been
+able to bring him back. He preferred to live at Moor
+Park, near Farnham in Surrey, remembering the large
+actions in which he had taken part, and being a philosopher
+among the gardens, in the Dutch manner,
+which reminded him of the country where he had had
+his triumphs.</p>
+
+<p>Swift found Temple a man looking at the world as
+in a mirror. No actual affairs now concerned him so
+much as those of his own past, of which he was writing
+his memoirs. Reminiscence had not made his judgment
+less firm and level than it had been while it was constantly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>
+being tested by the intrigues of disingenuous,
+unscrupulous men. He was enlightened, responsible,
+benevolent. But, never having been ambitious, he had
+remained an amateur. “When I was young and in
+some idle company, it was proposed that every one
+should tell what their wishes should be, if they were
+sure to be granted; some were very pleasant, and some
+very extravagant; mine were health and peace and
+fair weather.” Such desires had allowed Temple to
+cherish as a virtue what included a touch of weakness
+and vanity. His retirement had been, in part, surrender.
+Disgusted by the conduct of men less virtuous
+than he, but also weak and vain, he had retreated to a
+happy vacuum where he had gone on cherishing his
+virtue till it now glowed with the colours of a philosophic
+heroism.</p>
+
+<p>Swift, a conjured spirit aching for employment, was
+employed as Temple’s amanuensis while the master
+composed mellifluous essays on gardens, on health and
+long life, on popular discontents, on poetry, and on
+heroic virtue. Swift, starving for the world, might
+sometimes be allowed to keep pace with Temple when,
+leaving off his moral considerations, he walked in his
+gardens, along his trim canal, perhaps despising the
+new sciences which had lately come to the notice of
+gentlemen, and perhaps wondering from what herbs
+he could concoct more potent doses for his household
+and even for his hopeless, hereditary gout.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span></p>
+
+<p>Between Swift and Temple there was enough difference
+to make a war, but there was no war. Neither
+of them entirely realized that they were wrong pupil
+and wrong teacher. Temple never realized it. Though
+he was kind enough, he was not, as he could not have
+been, enough concerned to see deeply into the vexed
+spirit forced to bend itself to his placid will. Recommending
+his dependent to Sir Robert Southwell in
+May 1690, he said of Swift only that “he has lived in
+my house, read to me, writ for me, and kept all accounts
+so far as my small occasions required. He has
+Latin and Greek, some French, writes a good and current
+hand, is very honest and diligent, and has good
+friends, though they have for the present lost their
+fortunes, in Ireland.” Any later conflicts between them
+Temple overlooked or forgave with calm magnanimity.
+At his death, after a decade of this service of talent by
+genius, “that great man,” as Swift precisely put it,
+“beside a legacy left him the care and trust and advantage
+of publishing his posthumous writings.” And on
+that same occasion the greater man wrote in his journal
+that with Temple had died “all that was good and
+amiable among men.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift may have been often bored by Temple’s
+heroic virtue and by his amateur erudition. He may
+have felt bewildered when Temple “would look cold
+and out of humour for three or four days, and I used
+to suspect a hundred reasons.” But the dependent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+judged his patron rather by his actions than by his
+poses. He had gone to Temple to better fortunes
+which were desperately low. He had lived nearer
+to the world than if he had become a fellow of
+Trinity. He had learned everything Temple had to
+teach.</p>
+
+<p>What fretted Swift at Moor Park was not so much
+the character of his patron, or even the mere fact of his
+own dependence, as the unsatisfying uses to which he
+had to put his still undetermined powers. With all his
+pride, he could only serve, never command. With all
+his acuteness, he could not name his own gifts even to
+himself. When, after his first brief stay with Temple,
+he went to Ireland with a recommendation to Southwell
+in the summer of 1690, he could still consider a
+fellowship in the college which he hated. Failing to
+obtain that, or the degree which he had missed, he
+continued in Ireland for another restless year, further
+broken by ill health, returned to his mother, and
+visited his cousin Thomas, who was now at Oxford
+reading for his degree at Balliol. Jonathan Swift,
+again at Moor Park by Christmas, may already have
+decided to turn from Trinity to Oxford, but it was the
+only decision he had reached before he settled back
+into his lowering dependence.</p>
+
+<p>He helped his patron with other of his dilettante
+labours and copied the translations from Spanish poetry
+with which Lady Giffard, Temple’s sister, embellished<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>
+the leisure which she could spare from being Temple’s
+chief of staff.</p>
+
+<p>Between Lady Giffard and Swift there was, at least
+in time, a sharp hostility. If he was bored by the
+brother he was angered by the sister, whose record of
+long devotion was not enough to reconcile him to
+her present influence in the household. She, virtual
+chatelaine by reason of Lady Temple’s illness, resented
+the secretary’s unconcern. Lady Temple—“Mild
+Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great”—Swift
+apparently liked. There was little to bring them into
+opposition. Nor was there manifest opposition between
+him and the other members of the family or the numerous
+dependents who had drifted to this patriarchal
+shelter. Among them all, however, he found no equal,
+no congenial friend. Urged by his pride to passions if
+not to frenzies, he could pour himself out neither in
+activity nor in confidences. Whatever refuge he had
+from his idleness and his secrecy was in the society of a
+child.</p>
+
+<p>The child was Esther Johnson, whom Swift eventually
+called Stella. Her father, younger son of a good
+family in Nottinghamshire, had probably been a dependent
+of Temple who served as steward. But by
+1689 he was dead, and his widow was companion to
+Lady Giffard. Bridget Johnson and her daughter, or
+daughters, lived at the edge of the Park in a cottage
+where Swift, after he had made friends there, could<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
+sometimes forget his subordination. Stella was eight
+years old when the young man, then twenty-two,
+arrived from Leicester. “Her hair was blacker than a
+raven, and every feature of her face in perfection,” he
+said. “I ... had some share in her education, by
+directing what books she should read, and perpetually
+instructing her in the principles of honour and virtue.”
+He taught her to write, taught her so well that her
+handwriting could later be mistaken for his own. He
+taught himself to depend upon comforts which only
+she could give him during those restive years: admiration
+without analysis, affection without exigence, a
+child’s obedience, a child’s worship.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">2</p>
+
+<p>But Stella was for the present at most only an episode,
+a casual breathing-spell between battles. Not
+that Swift was overworked by Temple. He had too
+much time on his hands. “There is something in me
+which must be employed,” he wrote in February of
+this second winter at Moor Park, “and when I am
+alone turns all, for want of practice, into speculation
+and thought; insomuch that in these seven weeks I
+have been here, I have writ, and burnt and writ
+again, upon almost all manner of subjects, more perhaps
+than any man in England.” What he wrote could
+hardly have been history. He had enough of that with
+Temple. It was not philosophy. Writing to his cousin<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>
+Thomas in May he said he was getting up his Greek
+and Latin for the Oxford degree, “but to enter upon
+the causes of philosophy is what I protest I will rather
+die in a ditch than go about.” It was probably poetry.
+Some of his poetry has survived.</p>
+
+<p>That his poetry was bad means less than that it was
+Pindaric. For that Temple shares the blame. He advised
+Swift to write like Cowley, and Swift for a year
+or so fiercely beat imagined wings to raise himself to an
+alien elevation. Flight was not in him.</p>
+
+<p>“It makes me mad,” he wrote to his cousin, “to
+hear you talk of making ... next morning ... what
+I could not do under two or three days, nor does
+it enter into my head to make anything of a sudden
+but what I find to be exceeding silly stuff except by
+great chance. I esteem the time of studying poetry to
+be two hours in the morning, and that only when the
+humour sits, which I esteem for the flower of the whole
+day, and truly I make bold to employ them that way,
+and yet I seldom write above two stanzas in a week—I
+mean such as are to any Pindaric ode—and yet I have
+known myself in so good a humour as to make two in a
+day, but it may be no more in a week after, and when
+all is done I alter them a hundred times, and yet I do
+not believe myself to be a laborious dry writer, because
+if the fit comes not immediately I never heed it, but
+think of something else.”</p>
+
+<p>About this bad poetry he wrote bad prose, but the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>
+straggling clauses make clear what he did not know he
+said. Lacking the nature for poetry, he lacked the full
+desire; lacking the full desire, he lacked both the ease
+with which some true poets write and the passion
+which keeps the others from caring whether they write
+with ease or not. Swift was writing because he was
+raging. He wanted to be heard if he could not be felt.
+Poetry was a kind of power.</p>
+
+<p>Being Swift, he could not take his struggles lightly.
+“I am over-fond of my own writings,” he confided.
+“I would not have the world think so, for a million,
+but it is so, and I find when I write what pleases me
+I am Cowley to myself and can read it a hundred
+times over. I know it is a desperate weakness, and has
+nothing to defend it but its secrecy, and I know farther
+that I am wholly in the wrong, but have the same
+pretence the baboon had to praise her children.” The
+image is pleasant but incomplete. Though he might
+then set the baboon’s value on his strophes, and might
+all his life hate his cousin John Dryden for telling him
+the truth about them, Swift within another year or so
+had come to hate them, with that hate which was twin
+to his love. Or rather, he had come to hate whatever
+it was that had fascinated and then disappointed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>When he found his hope falling off with his delusion,
+Swift turned furious and accusatory. In the last of his
+early poems he angrily renounced his Muse:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Malignant Goddess! bane to my repose,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Thou universal cause of all my woes;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Say whence it comes that thou art grown of late</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>A poor amusement of my scorn and hate....</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To thee I owe that fatal bent of mind,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To thee, what oft I vainly strive to hide,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride....</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Madness like this no fancy ever seized,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Still to be cheated, never to be pleased.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent28"><i>... From this hour</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I here renounce thy visionary power;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And since thy essence on my breath depends,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Thus with a breath the whole delusion ends.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Poetry had failed him. As soon as he had learned to be
+honest he said a bitter farewell. Then he went on to
+prose.</p>
+
+<p>The second stay with Temple was not continually
+midnight. In July 1692, after a brief residence at
+Oxford, Swift received from Hart Hall, now Hertford
+College, the degree of master of arts. “I never was more
+satisfied,” he wrote his uncle, “than in the behaviour
+of the University of Oxford to me. I had all the civilities
+I could wish for, and so many favours that I am
+ashamed to have been more obliged in a few weeks to
+strangers than ever I was in seven years to Dublin
+College.” At Moor Park, too, his rank became more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>
+gratifying. Temple not only treated his secretary with
+confidence at home, among his memoirs and his gardens,
+but even trusted him abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Once in the spring of 1693, when King William had
+sent the Earl of Portland to consult Temple about a
+proposed bill for triennial parliaments, Temple, who
+did not feel sure the Earl would carry his full message,
+sent Swift after him to Kensington. There the secretary
+talked with both Portland and the King. “But,”
+as Swift himself related it, “all in vain. For the King
+by ill advisers was prevailed upon to refuse passing the
+bill. This was the first time that Mr. Swift had ever any
+converse with courts, and he told his friends it was
+the first incident that helped to cure him of vanity.”
+But not, plainly, of pride, which had made him
+expect that his country counsel would naturally be
+taken.</p>
+
+<p>These successes, however, were too small to quiet
+his fierce restlessness, which with the decline of his
+Pindaric hopes began to clarify itself into satiric
+hatred. Just before he said his farewell to poetry he
+wrote some complimentary verses to Congreve, who
+had risen to a sudden fame in London with his first
+comedy. The compliments were confused. The lines in
+which Swift spoke of his own slow fortunes and his
+savage plans were as unmistakable as lightning. His
+“old unvanquish’d pride,” he wrote, looked with scorn
+on half mankind, which must beware of impending<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
+maledictions. He wondered that the world could be so
+clumsy in the face of</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>My hate, whose lash just Heaven has long decreed</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Did the world not know that his wrath was its ruin?</p>
+
+<p>This was language above the capacity of a disappointed
+minor poet. It was fury, not peevishness,
+that lay behind Swift’s threat. His fury, so long wasted
+in aimless blows at phantoms, had become confident.
+Such confidence, in a man who was not a fool, was a
+sign of dangerous powers gathering to attack. They
+might be in their present mood because they had so
+long been checked in their impulses towards action.
+They may have sullenly decided upon words because
+they saw no opportunity for deeds. But all their hatred
+was not the consequence of frustration. Hatred was
+native to Swift, as love was to St. Francis. If Swift has
+been more frequently misunderstood than St. Francis,
+it is because men are allowed to love without giving
+reasons for it, but not to hate.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of Swift’s purpose was of course not
+obvious to him, and it was not regular. No doubt he
+was often at peace in his occupations at Moor Park or
+in his relaxed intervals with Stella. His anger rose or
+fell with contrary or prosperous days. He could, like
+many men, be busy whether he was happy or unhappy.
+But by nature he was always restless. His energy drove<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>
+him to violent exercise, particularly to walking, which
+he thought his health required. He liked to walk from
+Farnham to London, nearly forty miles away, and even
+to Leicester, stopping at dubious inns and amusing
+himself with the speech and customs of the people.
+Nor would his restlessness permit him to regard his
+dependence, outwardly comfortable, as more than a
+starting-point. His temper demanded independence.</p>
+
+<p>With the help of his uncles he might possibly have
+become a lawyer. With the help of the King it is said
+that he might have become a captain of dragoons.
+With the help of Temple he might have become a
+clerk in the Rolls office at Dublin, and he was indeed
+offered such a post. But none of these careers suited his
+tastes or promised what he was looking for. Instead,
+he decided to take orders and enter the Church. When
+Temple had failed to obtain for him, through the favour
+of the King, a prebend of Westminster or Canterbury,
+Swift chose to take his own steps.</p>
+
+<p>He went to Ireland in May 1694, leaving Temple
+angry. But as soon as Swift humbly applied, in October
+of that year, for a certificate of “morals and learning”
+which would satisfy the Irish bishops that he
+had properly conducted himself since he left Trinity,
+Temple, relenting, furnished it. Swift was ordained
+deacon the same month and priest in the following
+January. Almost immediately he was appointed to the
+prebend of Kilroot, a rural parish near Belfast.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p>
+
+<p>Though Swift had had scruples about entering the
+Church solely as a livelihood, there was no mystery in
+his position. “I look upon myself, in the capacity of
+clergyman,” he said, “to be one appointed by Providence
+for defending a post assigned to me, and for
+gaining over as many enemies as I can. Although I
+think my cause is just, yet one great motive is my submitting
+to the pleasure of Providence, and to the laws
+of my country.” As to belief: “To say a man is bound
+to believe is neither truth nor sense”; “I am in all
+opinions to believe according to my own impartial
+reason; which I am bound to inform and improve, as
+far as my capacity and opportunities will permit.”
+Yet Swift had no urge towards any heresy. “Violent
+zeal for truth,” he thought, “hath an hundred to one
+odds to be either petulancy, ambition, or pride.”
+Order was more important than zeal. “Liberty of
+conscience, properly speaking, is no more than the
+liberty of possessing our own thoughts and opinions,
+which every man enjoys without fear of the magistrate:
+but how far he shall publicly act in pursuance of
+those opinions is to be regulated by the laws of the
+country.” “Every man, as a member of the commonwealth,
+ought to be content with the possession of his
+own opinion in private, without perplexing his neighbour
+or disturbing the public.” So a soldier might
+reason, or a magistrate, or a prime minister. Swift was
+not a philosopher full of ideas, not a prospector for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>
+truths still to be found. Although, in spite of this
+rational attitude towards his calling, he later became
+jealously devoted to the Church, that was because
+they were his calling and his Church.</p>
+
+<p>If he had any illusions as to what it might mean to
+rule in a parish, he lost them. Kilroot was dreary and
+remote, and Swift was no more contented in his uncomfortable
+independence than he was rich on his
+hundred pounds a year. One such year was as much as
+he could stand. He surrendered his prebend to a fellow-clergyman
+whom he had known at Oxford, and was
+back again at Moor Park two years after he had left it.</p>
+
+<p>How idle and frustrate he had been appears from a
+letter he wrote just before his willing departure. The
+letter was to Jane Waring of Belfast, a cousin to two
+men who had been students at Trinity when Swift was
+there. With her, by Swift poetically called Varina, he
+had carried on another of his flirtations. He had even
+been involved to the point of a proposal. Cured of
+poetry, he had not yet been cured of philandering. He
+could still use, in writing to her, a language which
+comes strangely from a pen assigned to the cause of
+wrath.</p>
+
+<p>“Impatience,” he began, speaking of himself, “is
+the most inseparable quality of a lover,” and he explained,
+what none knew better than he, that “every
+one who hunts after pleasure or fame or fortune is still
+restless and uneasy till he has hunted down his game;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>
+and all this is not only very natural but something
+reasonable too, for a violent desire is little better than
+a distemper, and therefore men are not to blame in
+looking after a cure.”</p>
+
+<p>When he began to speak of Varina he once more
+flapped almost Pindaric wings. “That dearest object
+upon which all my prospect of happiness entirely depends
+is in perpetual danger to be removed for ever
+from my sight. Varina’s life is daily wasting ... yet
+some power that repines at human felicity has that
+influence to hold her continually doating on her
+cruelty, and me upon the cause of it.... Why was I
+so foolish to put my hopes and fears into the power or
+management of another?” Having, however, subdued
+his independence to his longing for her, he was eager
+to forgo all other prospects. For her he would stay in
+Ireland, even in Kilroot. “But listen to what I here
+solemnly protest, by all that can be witness to an oath,
+that if I leave this kingdom before you are mine, I will
+endure the utmost indignities of fortune rather than
+ever return again, though the King would send me
+back his deputy.”</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his passion Swift still seemed to be
+counting on a refusal, not, possibly, without a bearable
+sense of safety no matter how he might forecast his
+despair. “It was your pity opened the first way to my
+misfortune; and now your love is finishing my ruin.
+And is it so then? In one fortnight I must take eternal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>
+farewell of Varina, and I wonder will she weep at
+parting a little to justify her poor pretences of affection
+to me?” The certainty of this eternal farewell made
+Swift free to bring up his reproaches. “The only
+felicity permitted to human life we clog with tedious
+circumstances and barbarous formality. By Heaven,
+Varina, you are more experienced, and have less
+virgin innocence than I. Would not your conduct make
+one think you were hugely skilled in all the little
+politic methods of intrigue?”</p>
+
+<p>Swift himself had been, he said, completely without
+craft, as without limits. Such a passion as his had “a
+property peculiar to itself, to be most commendable in
+its extremes.” It was no more capable than piety
+of any blameworthy excess. Now he would withhold
+from her the full reality of his anguish. “O Varina,
+how imagination leads me beyond myself and all my
+sorrows! It is sunk, and a thousand graves lie open!
+No, Madam, I will give you no more of my unhappy
+temper, though I derive it all from you.... Only
+remember, that if you still refuse to be mine, you will
+quickly lose, for ever lose, him that is resolved to die
+as he has lived, all yours.”</p>
+
+<p>Protest as he might, Swift was in this letter surely as
+crafty as he was mawkish. He contrived to put Varina
+in the wrong so that she might seem to blame for the
+end of their provincial interlude. He had been playing
+at love because he had had nothing to work at. Now<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>
+that he had something better to do, no doubt he meant
+to do it. But he preferred to take his leave with his
+broken heart in his hand. He could at once pay a
+generous tribute to the lady’s charms and call attention
+to his own sad, proud, faithful carriage at the
+moment of defeat. His farewell, however, was not that
+of a lover who would grieve long. And Swift, soon back
+with Temple, quickly found exercise for his powers in
+concerns much nearer his heart than any possible
+Varina.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">3</p>
+
+<p>There was now little in his situation at Moor Park
+to fret his pride. He knew that if at any time his post
+became tedious or humiliating he could again turn
+for independence, at least, to the Church. He was a
+clergyman on leave, as he might have been a soldier
+temporarily out of active service. He was a man of
+learning, already entered upon a profession, who had
+consented to be of use to Temple in tasks which interested
+them both. Lady Temple had died. Temple,
+lonely, infirm, depended probably as much upon
+Swift’s youth and strength as Swift upon Temple’s
+wealth and influence.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, Stella, fifteen when Swift returned from
+Kilroot, was an old comfort and a new delight. “She
+was sickly from her childhood until about the age of
+fifteen; but then grew into perfect health, and was
+looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>
+and agreeable young women in London”—and here
+Swift, writing on the night of Stella’s death, added his
+touch of ice—“only a little too fat.” But at fifteen she
+could hardly yet have outgrown her design, or have
+come to stir in him the affection which he later felt.
+To her, or to her mother in the knowledge that it
+would reach Stella’s eyes, he wrote cheerfully during
+one of their visits to London with Temple and Lady
+Giffard: “I desire your absence heartily, for now I
+live in great state, and the cook comes in to know what
+I please to have for dinner. I ask very gravely what is
+in the house, and accordingly give orders for a dish of
+pigeons.... You shall have no more ale unless you
+send us a letter. Here is a great bundle and a letter for
+you; both came together from London. We all keep
+home like so many cats.”</p>
+
+<p>That Swift at thirty was at last learning to be easy
+in his letters is a sign, possibly that he was happier,
+certainly that he was busier. “I myself was never
+miserable while my thoughts were in a ferment, for I
+imagine a dead calm is the troublesomest part of our
+voyage through the world.” His calling chosen, Swift
+could read and write without the sense, like eating
+without hunger, that beyond his pleasure lay no purpose.
+Reading, he now knew better what to look for.
+Writing, he now knew better what to aim at.</p>
+
+<p>For if reading to Swift was experience, writing was
+action. He later declared to Pope that “all my endeavours<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>
+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 it is no great matter;
+and so the reputation of wit or great learning does the
+office of a blue ribbon or of a coach and six horses.”
+He wrote to gain influence and to exert it. For literary
+reputation he cared almost as little as some gentlemen
+of letters say they care. He never took money for his
+writings except what “Mr. Pope’s prudent management”
+got him for <i>Gulliver</i>. Swift might be fated by
+his gifts to captivate men’s tastes and entertain their
+imaginations, but he wanted to master their wills and
+direct their conduct.</p>
+
+<p>As a preacher he set himself to tell his congregations
+so clearly what their duty was that they could have no
+doubt and no excuse. As a journalist he used all his
+skill to move public opinion to political action. And by
+his satires he intended to clear the paths of mankind
+of the affectations, follies, and vices which tangled
+what he thought the straight course of virtue and
+order. For Swift the words he used were as bayonets
+to a soldier, verdicts to a magistrate, laws to a minister.
+When at thirty he turned to words in his campaign
+against fortune, he meant them to be more than
+words.</p>
+
+<p>The character of his first satires was determined by
+his circumstances. Living a little out of the world, in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
+Temple’s walled, heroic realm, he had come to despise
+the buzzing wits and upstart scientists who, he thought,
+infested the moral and intellectual life of the times.
+Though Dryden was one of the wits and Newton one
+of the scientists, Swift did not bother to distinguish
+among them. His hatred was no more disposed to
+scrupulous justice than another man’s love.</p>
+
+<p>As Swift’s cause was partly unjust, so was his ground
+for this attack partly accidental. Temple, stalking in
+virtue, had taken sides in the controversy, then disturbing
+France, over the relative merits of the ancients
+and the moderns. He had pronounced like a gentleman
+for the ancients. “I know of no new philosophers,”
+Temple said, “that have made entries upon that noble
+stage for fifteen hundred years past, unless Descartes
+and Hobbes should pretend to it.... There is nothing
+new in astronomy to vie with the ancients, unless it be
+the Copernican system; nor in physic, unless Harvey’s
+circulation of the blood.... ’Tis agreed by the
+learned that the science of music so admired by the
+ancients is wholly lost in the world.... So as those
+two divine excellencies of music and poetry are grown,
+in a manner, but the one fiddling and the other
+rhyming.... What traces have we left of that admirable
+science or skill in architecture, by which such
+stupendous fabrics have been raised of old ... that
+they hardly fall within our imagination?... The
+arts of painting and statuary began to revive with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>
+learning in Europe, and made a great but short flight;
+so as, for these last hundred years, we have not had
+one master, in either of them, who deserved a rank
+with those that flourished in that short period.”</p>
+
+<p>Temple could not know that Bach was then alive.
+Having refused the embassy to Spain, he had missed a
+possible chance to hear about Velasquez. But he
+might, except for his rank and preoccupations, have
+met Rembrandt in Holland or Molière in France or
+Milton in England. He had not. He could with a
+peaceful conscience, plausibly, courteously, and only
+now and then ironically, dismiss the moderns.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the chief fault of modern learning, he concluded,
+was that so many of the learned were not quite
+men of the world. “The shallow, the superficial, and
+the sufficient among scholars” had attracted ridicule,
+“and very justly, by pretending to more than they had,
+or to more esteem than what they had could deserve,
+by broaching it in all places, at all times, upon all
+occasions, and by living so much among themselves,
+or in their closets and cells, as to make them unfit for
+all other business and ridiculous in all other conversations.”
+From this it had come about that true learning
+was confused with pedantry and that both suffered
+from the present mode of ridicule. “’Tis the itch of
+our age and climate, and has overrun both the Court
+and the stage; enters a House of Lords and Commons
+as boldly as a coffee house, debates of Council as well<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>
+as private conversation; and I have known in my life
+more than one or two ministers of state that would
+rather have said a witty thing than done a wise one;
+and made the company laugh rather than the kingdom
+rejoice.”</p>
+
+<p>This was Temple’s attitude, but so was it Swift’s.
+Though the <i>Battle of the Books</i> and the <i>Tale of a Tub</i>
+may have been planned at Kilroot and subsequently
+revised in London, they were the fruits, however unexpected,
+of that suave garden at Moor Park. Swift took
+the superiority of the ancients for granted, with nothing
+but ridicule for any modern who doubted it. The
+contemporary world of learning he assumed to be
+made up almost altogether of mean, starved, envious,
+strident, stingless fools and fops, ignorant and arrogant,
+who swarmed about their betters with a fly’s
+equal appetite for dung or honey.</p>
+
+<p>Where Swift differed from Temple was where genius
+differs from talent, not in mere attitude but in
+art and passion. Temple had been content to survey
+the world in a smooth, stately exposition. Swift brought
+his arguments to England, and put them into stories
+which, in spite of their humorous allegory, slashed his
+victims with all the edges of realism. His ancients and
+moderns were actual warriors, brawling “on Friday
+last” in the King’s library. His criticism was comedy.</p>
+
+<p>“Virgil appeared in shining armour completely
+fitted to his body. He was mounted on a dapple-grey<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
+steed, the slowness of whose pace was an effect of the
+highest mettle and vigour. He cast his eye on the
+adverse wing, with a desire to find an object worthy of
+his valour, when, behold, upon a sorrel gelding of a
+monstrous size, appeared a foe issuing from among the
+thickest of the enemy’s squadrons; but his speed was
+less than his noise; for his horse, old and lean, spent
+the dregs of his strength in a high trot which, though
+it made slow advances, yet caused a loud clashing of
+his armour, terrible to hear. The two cavaliers had
+now approached within the throw of a lance, when the
+stranger desired a parley, and, lifting up the vizard of
+his helmet, a face hardly appeared from within, which,
+after a pause, was known for that of the renowned
+Dryden. The brave Ancient suddenly started, as one
+possessed with surprise and disappointment together;
+for the helmet was nine times too large for the head,
+which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even
+like the lady in a lobster, or like a mouse under a
+canopy of state, or like a shrivelled beau from within
+the penthouse of a modern periwig; and the voice was
+suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote.”</p>
+
+<p>Nor did the genius of Swift surpass the talent of
+Temple only by the reach of drama over debate.
+Temple, speaking of the wits, had said: “But the last
+maim given to learning has been by the scorn of
+pedantry, which the shallow, the superficial, and the
+sufficient among scholars first drew to themselves, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>
+very justly” ... and then he had gone on to a mild
+simile of an infection in a town from which everybody
+stayed away. Swift, starting at the same point, with
+the compliment of imitation, made Temple look like
+the moon in the same sky with the sun: “But the
+greatest maim given to that general reception which
+the writings of our society have formerly received
+(next to the transitory state of all sublunary things)
+has been a superficial vein among many readers of the
+present age, who will by no means be persuaded to
+inspect beyond the surface and the rind of things;
+whereas, wisdom is a fox, who, after long hunting, will
+at last cost you the pains to dig out. It is a cheese,
+which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the
+homelier, and the coarser coat; and whereof, to a
+judicious palate, the maggots are the best. It is a sack-posset,
+wherein the deeper you go you will find it the
+sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must
+value and consider because it is attended with an egg.
+But then lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose
+with judgment, may cost you a tooth and pay you with
+nothing but a worm.”</p>
+
+<p>Temple, reflective over “the vein of ridiculing all
+that is serious and good, all honour and virtue, as well
+as learning and piety,” had written a polite essay.
+Swift actively declared a war. His satires were like a
+tub thrown by seamen to a whale to keep it off the
+ship. Let the yelping wits and empty scholars butt and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>
+tumble the satires instead of harming the commonwealth.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Battle of the Books</i> was a bagatelle, humorously
+secret about the outcome of the skirmish. So, too, the
+<i>Tale of a Tub</i> did not trouble to complete the story of
+Peter and Martin and Jack, the three brothers who
+stood for the Church of Rome, the Church of England,
+and the Dissenting churches. Swift still lacked, or was
+too unconcerned to use, the art which insists upon
+thorough and finished structure. Broken meats, he
+might have said, were fit enough for dogs. The tale
+itself, satirizing the abuses of religion, made up no
+more than a third of the whole book. The digressions,
+on the abuses of learning, were the larger and more
+varied part. Swift had been a scholar longer than he
+had been a clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>It was his duty to defend his Church by cutting
+down its enemies. He was ruthless with the quibbles of
+theology, fanaticism, superstition, priestly greed and
+imposture. But he felt a more seasoned malice when he
+turned aside to prune and lop among the charlatans
+of wit whom he regarded as his own enemies. The
+strutting poets, the confident blind critics, the mercenary
+adulators and detractors, the treatise-mongers,
+the multipliers of dedications and prefaces and compendiums
+and commentaries and annotations and
+indexes, the proudly obscure writers: all these he
+ridiculed by the contemptuous device of praising<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>
+them. Yet they were for him, at most, annoying
+creatures that he studied briefly before he trod on
+them. They had roused only his irritation. His hate,
+which after years of brooding had finally found the
+language natural to it, was for human life at large.</p>
+
+<p>Temple had said, with a melancholy cadence:
+“When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and
+best, but like a froward child that must be played with
+and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep,
+and then the care is over.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift saw mankind with a colder eye. “If we take an
+examination of what is generally understood by happiness,
+as it has respect either to the understanding or
+the senses, we shall find that all its properties and
+adjuncts will herd under this short definition, that it
+is a perpetual possession of being well deceived. And,
+first, with relation to the mind or understanding, ’tis
+manifest what mighty advantages fiction has over
+truth; and the reason is just at our elbow, because
+imagination can build nobler scenes and produce more
+wonderful revolutions than fortune or nature will be at
+expense to furnish.... Again, if we take this definition
+of happiness and examine it with reference to the
+senses, it will be acknowledged wonderfully adapt.
+How fading and insipid do all objects accost us that
+are not conveyed in the vehicle of delusion! How
+shrunk is everything as it appears in the glass of
+nature! So that if it were not for the assistance of artificial<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>
+mediums, false lights, refracted angles, varnish,
+and tinsel, there would be a mighty level in the felicity
+and enjoyments of mortal men.” Credulity, he argued,
+is better than curiosity, and it is better to accept
+the surfaces of life with the senses than to inquire
+deeper with the reason. “Last week I saw a woman
+flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it
+altered her person for the worse.... He that can,
+with Epicurus, content his ideas with the films and
+images that fly off upon his senses from the superficies
+of things; such a man, truly wise, creams off nature,
+leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and
+reason to lap up. This is the sublime and refined point
+of felicity called the possession of being well deceived;
+the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves.”</p>
+
+<p>To this judgment Swift had arrived at thirty in the
+shadow of Temple at Moor Park. The neat aim and
+witty sting of his sentences had less to do with his
+effects than the mind and passion which showed
+through his clear, hard words. What he said he meant,
+not partly but wholly; not with the momentary earnestness
+of a gesture but with the deep sincerity of a
+belief rooted in his constitution by his nature and his
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>If ever Temple noticed the tiger in his garden he
+must have wondered. He might have asked whether it
+would not be wiser for Swift to smile at the childish
+world, and humour it till it slept. And Swift might<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>
+have answered that it was beyond a tiger to look like a
+lamb with its soft wool, or sound like a lamb with its
+timid bleat, or skip like a lamb with its happy legs.
+Those were the lamb’s gifts. If the lamb was able to
+lead a cheerful life in a world of butchers, then it had
+the gift of being well deceived. But a tiger’s gifts were
+stripes and roars and claws angrier than swords. They
+did not carry with them the other gift of being deceived
+by butchers. The lamb could be caged, and
+would grow tame; it could be starved, and would
+die pitifully. But if the tiger were caged or starved it
+would strike back with all its deadly sinews. To ask a
+tiger to be serene in its trap and peaceful towards its
+captors was simply to ask it to be a lamb. It must be a
+tiger still.</p>
+
+<p>The dry years of Swift’s dependence upon Temple
+came to an end with Temple’s death in January 1699.
+The satires had not yet been published, and Swift left
+Farnham for London with none of the reputation
+which they were to bring him. At Farnham, or soon in
+London, he wrote out a set of resolutions to warn him
+when he should be old, as he had lately seen his
+patron. Most of the resolutions were civil enough. He
+would not, he resolved, be severe with young people
+or force his company on them, as he would force on no
+one his advice or anecdotes. He would not be peevish,
+morose, suspicious, covetous, untidy, garrulous, boastful,
+positive, opinionative, or open to gossip or flattery.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>
+He would not be scornful of current ways or wits or
+fashions or men. He would not marry a young woman.
+In all these he might have been any young man taking
+prudent notes.</p>
+
+<p>But in one of the resolutions he suddenly became
+Swift. “Not to be fond of children, or let them come
+near me hardly.” Stella had been a child. Had she,
+coming near him as a child, grown to be what made
+him feel that other children might also trouble him?
+Or was his resolution only a symptom of his general
+misanthropy, now so wary that it would not let mankind
+approach, even in its least hostile form, for fear
+of a weakening influence on the integrity of his hate?
+At least he had learned, however he loved the one, to
+hate the many. His whole history lay in the seed of
+that antithesis.</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c3">III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c xlarge sp">VICAR AND WIT</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">1</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">J</span>oseph Addison</span>, that year setting out to fit himself
+for service to England by travelling on the Continent,
+could have told Swift, if he had known him,
+how to rise in their world. Addison had lived on at
+Oxford into a fellowship. He had paid court to Dryden,
+and by Dryden had been recommended to Jacob
+Tonson the bookseller, and by Tonson to Congreve,
+and by Congreve to Charles Montague, Chancellor of
+the Exchequer, and by Montague to Somers, the Lord
+Chancellor, and by Somers to the King. At the University
+ready to take orders, the expectant parson had
+yielded to the claims of Montague upon those accomplishments
+and virtues which, Montague told the
+head of Addison’s college, were needed to offset the
+current depravity and corruption.</p>
+
+<p>Dexterous in Latin and English verse, Addison was
+even more dexterous in his virtues. Though vain
+enough, he was not proud. He demanded little besides
+a reasonable prosperity and comfortable homage. He<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>
+felt no anger because men were slow in recognizing
+merits which he had not yet shown. He did not too
+much mind playing at success as it was then played.
+He saw little repugnant in the rules and admired the
+winners. It had never struck him that the world was
+ruled by knaves; it had never struck him that only
+fools could be happy. Having taken what he found for
+what it was usually said to be, he was shortly to begin
+his travels with the approval, and at the expense, of
+his country.</p>
+
+<p>Swift, with more genius than Addison, had less
+talent for success. In 1697 he had, presumably on the
+advice of Temple, put his hopes on the Earl of Sunderland,
+already tottering though still Lord Chamberlain.
+“My Lord Sunderland fell and I with him,” Swift
+wrote a few weeks later. “Since that there have been
+other courses, which if they succeed I shall be proud
+to own the methods, or if otherwise, very much
+ashamed.” All these schemes, whatever they were, had
+failed. With Temple dead, Swift had to trust to the
+Earl of Romney to urge upon the King the preferment
+which Temple had promised to obtain for his secretary.
+Romney, a friend to William in Holland before the
+Revolution, and supposed to have been “the great
+wheel on which the Revolution rolled,” turned out to
+have, Swift said, “not a wheel to turn a mouse.”
+“After long attendance in vain,” which was what
+Swift called a fruitless four or five months, he again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
+went back to Ireland, in June 1699, chaplain and
+temporary secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the
+Lords Justices.</p>
+
+<p>Dublin was as disappointing as London. Berkeley
+refused to make Swift permanent secretary on the
+ground that he was a clergyman, and soon afterwards
+further refused to appoint him dean of Derry on the
+ground that he was too young. The man who had
+found Kilroot unendurable was in February 1700
+assigned to another rustic living, at Laracor, seventeen
+miles from Dublin. Nor did it console him that he was
+made a prebendary of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin,
+and a doctor of divinity of Dublin University in
+February 1701. With all his pride and all his powers,
+he had been sent to what he thought a shabby garrison
+on an unimportant frontier of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>His circumstances seemed now more interesting to
+Varina, still unmarried at Belfast. She wrote him a
+letter. He answered it in a language as cold as any that
+ever ended what had begun as a flirtation.</p>
+
+<p>“You would know what gave my temper that sudden
+turn,” he said, “as to alter the style of my letters
+since I last came over. If there has been that alteration
+you observe, I have told you the cause abundance of
+times. I had used a thousand endeavours and arguments
+to get you from the company and place you are
+in; both on account of your health and humour, which
+I thought were like to suffer very much in such air and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>
+before such examples. All I had in answer from you
+was nothing but a great deal of arguing, and sometimes
+in a style so imperious as I thought might have
+been spared, when I reflected how much you had been
+in the wrong. The other thing you would know is
+whether this change of style be owing to the thoughts
+of a new mistress. I declare, upon the word of a Christian
+and a gentleman, it is not; neither had I ever
+thoughts of being married to any other person but
+yourself.” The cause of his change, he explained, was
+her indifference to his wishes and his opinions, particularly
+about her family. “I think ... that no
+young woman in the world of the same income would
+dwindle away her health and life in such a sink and
+among such family conversation. Neither have all
+your letters been once able to persuade me that you
+have the least value for me, because you so little regarded
+what I so often said upon that matter.... I
+think I have more cause to resent your desires of me in
+that case than you have to be angry at my refusals”—his
+refusals, it appears, to endure the Warings. “If you
+like such company and conduct, much good do you
+with them! My education has been otherwise.”</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, he would tell her what he had
+told his uncle Adam in response to an inquiry which
+Swift implied had come circuitously from Varina:
+“that if your health and my fortune were as they
+ought, I would prefer you above all your sex; but that,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>
+in the present condition of both, I thought it was
+against your opinion, and would certainly make you
+unhappy; that, had you any other offers which your
+friends or yourself thought more to your advantage, I
+should think I were very unjust to be an obstacle in
+your way.” Since, however, her letter had showed her
+satisfied with his fortune, nothing now stood in the
+way of their felicity but her health. Nothing, that is,
+except his terms, which he reduced to questions.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you in a condition to manage domestic affairs,
+with an income of less perhaps than three hundred
+pounds a year? Have you such an inclination to my
+person and humour as to comply with my desires and
+way of living and endeavour to make us both as happy
+as you can? Will you be ready to engage in those
+methods I shall direct for the improvement of your
+mind, so as to make us entertaining company for each
+other, without being miserable when we are neither
+visiting nor visited? Can you bend your love and esteem
+and indifference to others the same way as I do mine?
+Shall I have so much power in your heart, or you so
+much government of your passions, as to grow in a
+good humour upon my approach, though provoked by
+a ——? Have you so much good nature as to endeavour
+by soft words to smooth any rugged humour occasioned
+by the cross accidents of life? Shall the place
+wherever your husband is thrown be more welcome
+than courts or cities without him? In short, these are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>
+some of the necessary methods to please men who,
+like me, are deep-read in the world; and to a person
+thus made I should be proud in giving all due returns
+towards making her happy. These are the questions I
+have always resolved to propose to her with whom I
+meant to pass my life; and whenever you can heartily
+answer them in the affirmative I shall be blessed to
+have you in my arms, without regarding whether your
+person be beautiful or your fortune large. Cleanliness
+in the first and competency in the other is all I look
+for.... I singled you out at first from the rest of
+women; and I expect not to be used like a common
+lover. When you think fit to send me an answer to
+this without ——, I shall then approve myself, by all
+means you shall command, Madam, your most obedient
+humble servant.”</p>
+
+<p>It was as if a glacier had announced the course it
+meant to take down its valley. Swift possibly disliked
+the Warings no more than other men have disliked
+their prospective relatives. His terms were possibly no
+more ruthless than the assumptions on which other
+men have entered into marriage. But few men besides
+Swift can ever, in such a situation, have been so revealing
+and so unsparing. Varina had entertained him at
+tedious Kilroot. She had not known how to give up
+the roundabout arts of courtship for the forthright
+sciences of marriage. Her caution had humiliated him.
+Her advances now embarrassed him. Himself long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>
+past the time of languishing, he turned the truth loose
+upon the coquette. And Varina, who had, as Swift
+said of young ladies in general, spent her time in making
+a net instead of a cage, had had the misfortune to incur
+the frankness of the one man then alive who could put
+the most naked truth into the most naked words.</p>
+
+<p>If Swift struck too hard for the occasion, it was no
+more than his dire intensity often forced him to do.
+His letter at least closed the episode. Varina, with
+these words before her, could understand that she was
+not dealing with a common lover, or with a lover at all.</p>
+
+<p>A man who could demand so much of a wife, and
+say so to a woman, was no longer at any point in a
+man’s life where the odds are still on his marrying.
+About marriage Swift was frequently explicit. At
+twenty-five he declared that, to say nothing of his
+“cold temper and unconfined humour,” “the very
+ordinary observations I made with going half a mile
+beyond the University have taught me experience
+enough not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune
+in the world, which I am sure will not be in some
+years; and even then myself I am so hard to please
+that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world....
+Among all the young gentlemen that I have known to
+have ruined themselves by marrying, which I assure
+you is a great number, I have made this general rule,
+that they are either young, raw, ignorant scholars who,
+for want of knowing company, believe every silk petticoat<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>
+includes an angel, or else they have been a sort of
+honest young men who perhaps are too literal in
+rather marrying than burning.... I think I am very
+far excluded from listing under either of these heads. I
+confess I have known one or two men of sense enough
+who, inclined to frolics, have married and ruined themselves
+out of a maggot; but a thousand household
+thoughts, which always drive matrimony out of my
+mind whenever it chances to come there, will, I am
+sure, fright me from that; besides that, I am naturally
+temperate, and never engaged in the contrary which
+usually produces those effects.”</p>
+
+<p>This may be taken to be the scorn of a young man
+who has not yet felt much desire or loneliness. But
+there is the later belief, cut to an axiom, that “no wise
+man ever married from the dictates of reason.” What
+then could beguile Swift into marriage, when, for all
+his passion, he had undertaken to live as faithfully
+under the dictates of reason as under the orders of the
+Church?</p>
+
+<p>Swift, speaking of himself, seldom spoke less than
+the exact truth, though he often, by his harshness, said
+rather more. In the matter of marriage his course was,
+from first to last, as straight as was possible for a man
+fascinating to women and inclined to play with them
+when his powers were relaxed or his will checked. He
+had decided that, his fortunes being so much lower
+than his pride, and his health so much less than his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>
+strength, he would not marry except on some such
+extravagant terms as he proposed at thirty-three to
+Varina. He knew she would not accept them. Whether
+he realized it or not, he preferred his relationship with
+Stella to marriage with anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>He turned out to prefer it to marriage with Stella.
+During the three or four years after he closed accounts
+with Varina, Swift came no doubt as near to marrying
+Stella as the great drive of his solitary ambition would
+let him. But he did not marry her, and he apparently
+found, as many men would find if they had the
+strength to test the principle, that what seems to be
+the need to marry, even a woman truly loved, is a
+panic impulse in a crisis. Swift, having survived the
+crisis which might have made him a husband, did not
+have to pay the customary price of losing the woman
+who might have become his wife. Stella was still the
+willing focus of that immense affection which turned
+the stare or scowl of hate to the rest of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Only once more did he slip recklessly into his old
+amusement. Vanessa, infatuated and unceasing, threatened
+his solitude. He could not annihilate her with
+a letter or subdue her to friendship. He slackly let
+the affair drag on to a dreary and then vehement end.
+But still he did not break his straight course. He had
+not wanted to marry. He had not had to marry. He did
+not mean to marry. He had said as much to everybody
+whose business it could be.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p>
+
+<p>Swift might have been believed if his course, no
+matter how straight, had also been usual: if he had
+spent his days in a cell; if, having failed to win some
+desired woman, he had desired no other; if he had
+run from woman to woman stopping nowhere long.
+Instead, he lived in the world, had as much of the
+women he wanted as he wanted of them, and was in
+many ways faithful to Stella. Gossip, bothered by what
+is unusual in the story, has tried to make it fit some
+more familiar pattern by imagining hidden circumstances
+which, if known, would show Swift to have
+been more like ordinary men. He may have been
+impotent, gossip suggests, and so avoided marriage out
+of vanity. He may have had syphilis, and so avoided
+marriage out of decency. He may, gossip even during
+his life went so far as to guess, have married Stella
+privately—without licence, witnesses, or record, when
+he was Dean of St. Patrick’s! But all these arguments,
+some of which have been twisted to coiling lengths,
+are still the hypotheses of gossip, one as good as another.
+Not one of them is as simple and sufficient as
+the conclusion that Swift, whom gossips could more
+easily think inadequate, dissolute, or secretive, was
+only, in marriage as in other matters, extraordinary.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">2</p>
+
+<p>Writing to Varina in May 1700 he swore that he
+then had no thoughts of another mistress or of another<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>
+wife. As this was not a lover’s letter, this was hardly a
+lover’s oath, and may have meant what it said. But, as
+chaplain to Lord Berkeley, Swift was still, in a sense, a
+dependent; and at Laracor he saw he would be lonely.
+Of his three livings, Laracor and the incidental Agher
+and Rathbeggan, only Laracor had a church. Swift,
+arriving dejected and resentful, found himself doubtfully
+master of a scattered, monotonous territory with a
+dilapidated church and a vicarage and glebe not then
+fit to live in. The one pleasant thing about his post was
+that he could leave his duties in the hands of curates
+and himself live much of the time in Dublin lodgings.
+In April 1701 he went with Berkeley back to England,
+to remain there till September. And there he visited
+Stella at Farnham.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother had married, or was to marry, another
+steward of Moor Park, and the daughter was living
+with another Temple dependent, Rebecca Dingley, on
+the income of a Temple legacy. “Her fortune,” as
+Swift told the story on the bitter, truthful night of
+Stella’s death, “at that time was in all not above
+fifteen hundred pounds, the interest of which was but
+a scanty maintenance, in so dear a country, for one of
+her spirit. Upon this consideration, and indeed very
+much for my own satisfaction, who had few friends or
+acquaintance in Ireland, I prevailed with her and her
+dear friend and companion, the other lady, to draw
+what money they had into Ireland, a great part of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>
+their fortune being in annuities upon funds. Money
+was then ten per cent in Ireland, besides the advantage
+of turning it, and all the necessaries of life at half the
+price. They complied with my advice, and soon after
+came over; but, I happening to continue some time
+longer in England, they were much discouraged to
+live in Dublin, where they were wholly strangers. She
+was at that time about nineteen years old, and her
+person was soon distinguished. But the adventure
+looked so like a frolic the censure held for some time,
+as if there were a secret history in such a removal;
+which, however, soon blew off by her excellent
+conduct.”</p>
+
+<p>These are the known facts of Stella’s removal to
+Ireland. Nor was her life there less prudent than her
+going. She and Mrs. (that is, Miss) Dingley lived
+ordinarily in lodgings with their own servants. When
+Swift was at Laracor they lived in a cottage not far
+away or lodged in the neighbouring village of Trim.
+When he was in lodgings in Dublin they lodged elsewhere
+in town. Only, it seems, during his absences did
+they economize by living in the vicarage at Laracor
+or in his lodgings in Dublin. The relations between
+Stella and Swift were unwaveringly circumspect. No
+one knew that he made her an allowance of fifty
+pounds a year. “I wonder,” he wrote to a friend in
+1726, “how you could expect to see Mrs. Johnson in a
+morning, which I, her oldest acquaintance, have not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>
+done these dozen years, except once or twice in a
+journey.” The afternoons or evenings which he spent
+with her are said never to have been without at least
+a third person.</p>
+
+<p>She seldom made visits. “But her own lodgings,”
+Swift said, “from before twenty years old were frequented
+by many persons of the graver sort, who all
+respected her highly, upon her good sense, good manners
+and conversation.... And indeed the greatest
+number of her acquaintance was among the clergy.”
+At first she was extravagant, “and so continued till
+about two-and-twenty; when, by advice of some
+friends, and the fright of paying large bills of tradesmen
+who enticed her into their debt, she began to
+reflect upon her own folly.”</p>
+
+<p>Did Stella, prudently setting out for Ireland at
+twenty, foresee so many clergymen? Could she without
+flares of rebellion give up her extravagance, even to
+“avoiding all expense in clothes (which she ever despised)
+beyond what was merely decent”? Had she in
+her nature no veins of natural folly waiting to be
+uncovered? Was there in her no longing for unreasonable
+adventures?</p>
+
+<p>So far as marriage was concerned she knew, before
+too long, where Swift stood. Another of her clergymen,
+William Tisdall, himself began to court Stella. Finding
+how much authority Swift had with her, Tisdall wrote
+to him, then in London, hinting, it seems, that Swift
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>had used his power in behalf of his own designs.
+Swift’s answer, in April 1704, left no doubt in Tisdall,
+nor in Stella, to whom Tisdall must have shown it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f4">
+<img src="images/fig4.jpg" alt="stella">
+<p class="caption">Esther Johnson (Stella)</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>As a young woman</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“I will, upon my conscience and honour, tell you
+the naked truth. First, I think I have said to you before
+that, if my fortunes and humour served me to think of
+that state, I should certainly, among all persons on
+earth, make your choice, because I never saw that
+person whose conversation I utterly valued but hers.
+This was the utmost I ever gave way to. And, secondly,
+I must assure you sincerely that this regard of mine
+never once entered into my head to be an impediment
+to you; but I judged it would, perhaps, be a clog to
+your rising in the world; and I did not conceive you
+were then rich enough to make yourself and her happy
+and easy. But that objection is now quite removed by
+what you have at present.... I declare I have no
+other; nor shall any consideration of my own misfortune
+of losing so good a friend and companion as
+her prevail on me against her interest and settlement
+in the world, 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.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift insisted that he had done nothing to stand in
+Tisdall’s way, and that he had indeed thought the
+affair too far along to be broken off; “since I supposed
+the town had got it in their tongues, and therefore I
+thought it could not miscarry without some disadvantage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>
+to the lady’s credit. I ... must add that though
+it hath come in my way to converse with persons of the
+first rank, and that sex, more than is usual to men of
+my level and of our function, yet I have nowhere met
+with a humour, a wit, or conversation so agreeable, a
+better portion of good sense, or a truer judgment of
+men and things. I mean here in England, for as to the
+ladies of Ireland I am a perfect stranger.... I give
+you joy of your good fortunes, and envy very much
+your prudence and temper, and love of peace and
+settlement; the reverse of which has been the great
+uneasiness of my life, and is like to continue so. And
+what is the result?... I find 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. Therefore
+I am resolved suddenly to retire, like a discontented
+courtier, and vent myself in study and speculation,
+till my own humour or the scene here shall change.”</p>
+
+<p>This was the same language as that Swift used after
+Stella’s death, when he called her “the truest, most
+virtuous and valuable friend that I or perhaps any
+other person ever was blessed with,” and said he could
+not remember that he had “ever once heard her make
+a wrong judgment of persons, books, or affairs.” He
+could then say also, out of his long experience, that
+she was “the most disinterested mortal I ever knew or
+heard of.” But his praise was for her intellectual, moral,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>
+and social virtues, as it had always been. Not a surviving
+syllable about her suggests desire. None comes
+nearer to it than his words that “she had a gracefulness
+somewhat more than human in every motion, word,
+and action.” And they were written for posterity when
+she was dead, not when she was twenty-three and he
+faced a rival.</p>
+
+<p>Stella, scrutinizing the letter to Tisdall, could no
+more find a possible husband there than Varina had
+found in her letter four years earlier. Tisdall, however,
+was rejected.</p>
+
+<p>And not a surviving syllable from Stella tells whether
+she knew of any barrier between her and Swift except
+the cold sword of his ambitious pride, or whether she
+struggled against fitting herself to the place he made
+for her, or whether she ever felt bitterness or regret.
+The discretion as native to her as to Swift protected
+her almost entirely from scandal, even in the mouths
+of his most loquacious enemies. He alone was blamed,
+for leaving her alone. Stella seems not to have blamed
+him. She preferred what she had of Swift to all she
+might have had of Tisdall or any other possible
+husband.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that Swift’s devotion was partly his pride
+admiring itself in its glass. He trusted her judgment,
+which was a bright reflection of his own. He took her
+advice, which was coloured by what she deftly guessed
+to be his will. But she was no such replica in dough as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>
+might have bored him or might have shamed him into
+guilt for using her as he did. She was witty and lively,
+talked back to him, was charmingly perverse when he
+convinced her of her errors, and would not allow him
+to have a maid or housekeeper “with a tolerable face.”
+Stella gave him, when he was resisted elsewhere, the
+comfort of feeling over her that power without which
+his temper could not live. She saw, however, that
+she was a need as well as a comfort. She could feel
+an occasional thrill of power in her general peace of
+compliance.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly a decade after Stella went to Ireland the
+record is so silent about her that she has to be guessed
+at. Then for three years during which Swift wrote his
+journal to her, his light brings her to life. After that,
+silence and obscurity, seldom broken till the light
+shines again in Swift’s grief over her last illness. She
+hardly lives except in his words.</p>
+
+<p>Once, however, Swift’s mirror answered him. It was
+in an exchange of verses between them when she had
+been for twenty years his closest friend. His verses
+showed how little time had taken from her lustre in
+his eyes. He had never “admitted love a guest,” but
+he could imagine nothing beyond what he had had
+from their friendship.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>In all the habitudes of life,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The friend, the mistress, and the wife,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Variety we still pursue,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In pleasure seek for something new;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or else, comparing with the rest,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Take comfort that our own is best....</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But his pursuits are at an end</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whom Stella chooses for a friend.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And Stella, with verses of her own on Swift’s birthday,
+answered him in kind. It was “your pupil and
+your humble friend” who congratulated him. The
+sum of her praise was that he had taught her to value
+her mind more than her person.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>When men began to call me fair,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>You interposed your timely care.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>You early taught me to despise</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The ogling of a coxcomb’s eyes;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Showed where my judgment was misplaced;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Refined my fancy and my taste.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Now, Stella gratefully assured him, she had a better
+fate than that of women “with no endowments but a
+face.”</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>You taught how I might youth prolong,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>By knowing what was right and wrong;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>How from my heart to bring supplies</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Of lustre to my fading eyes;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>How soon a beauteous mind repairs</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The loss of changed or falling hairs;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>How wit and virtue from within</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Send out a smoothness o’er the skin.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Your lectures could my fancy fix,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And I can please at thirty-six.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Yet in this reasonable tribute Stella let her rhyme
+coax her into a favourable prevarication. She was not
+thirty-six, but forty. She would still give herself a slight
+advantage when she pronounced her judgment on the
+frailty of beauty, which she had to endure, Swift only
+to observe. He had been, as she said, her early and her
+only guide. After so many years her verses and her
+words were, as much as her handwriting, like his. But
+with a betraying phrase she could still show a tenderness
+for that person which her philosopher had taught
+her to value less than her mind.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">3</p>
+
+<p>The conquest of Stella, absolute and lasting, gave
+Swift his only relief from his ambition. His outward
+life during these ten years in Ireland need not have
+been hateful to him if his pride had left him free to
+enjoy it. The income from his livings was perhaps
+not much over two hundred pounds a year, but it
+enabled him to rebuild the vicarage at Laracor and to
+lay out a garden. He had a stream straightened to
+resemble a canal and a willow-walk where he might
+remember Moor Park as Temple had remembered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>
+Holland. The parish duties were so slight that Swift
+could consider Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan as
+hardly more than sinecures, of which he took the pay
+and left the work to deputies. In Dublin, where besides
+being a prebendary of the Cathedral he was, after
+Berkeley’s recall, chaplain to the Duke of Ormond and
+the Earl of Pembroke, Lord Lieutenants, Swift was
+domestically allied with the rulers of the kingdom.
+Moreover, he was only once long out of England. He
+travelled back and forth over the anxious bridge of his
+expectations. In London he published the letters,
+essays, and memoirs which Temple had left to him.
+And there he soon took a commanding though scornful
+rank among the wits he ridiculed.</p>
+
+<p>Swift always valued conversation, “so useful and
+innocent a pleasure, so fitted for every period and condition
+of life, and so much in all men’s power.” He
+went to such coffee houses as the Whig St. James’s and
+the more neutral Will’s. But he never thought of himself
+as belonging with the general army of the wits.
+“The worst conversation I ever remember to have
+heard in my life,” he said, “was that at Will’s coffee
+house, where the wits (as they were called) used
+formerly to assemble. That is to say, five or six men
+who had writ plays, or at least prologues, or had share
+in a miscellany, came thither and entertained one
+another with their trifling composures, in so important
+an air as if they had been the noblest efforts of human<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>
+nature or that the fate of kingdoms depended on them.
+And they were usually attended with an humble
+audience of young students from the inns of court or
+the universities, who, at due distance, listened to these
+oracles and returned home with great contempt for
+their law and philosophy, their heads filled with trash,
+under the name of politeness, criticism, and belles
+lettres.”</p>
+
+<p>If now and then Swift unbent his powers and talked
+in clubs, played at cold hoaxes, or wrote verse, no
+longer Pindaric, it was in the mood of idleness which
+had formerly turned him to flirtations. His successes
+came not from the pains he took but from the natural
+skill of his strong mind set to work at trifles. He moved
+among the wits proudly, somewhat gigantic, somewhat
+ominous.</p>
+
+<p>His interests were in public affairs, in the government
+of the realm, in the whole behaviour of mankind.
+He began to write about politics while he was still
+chaplain to Berkeley. The Lords and Commons were
+in abusive conflict. Large tracts of land in Ireland
+having been forfeited to the Crown after the Revolution,
+the King had made grants of it to his favourites and
+to a former mistress. In 1700 the Commons had voted
+to annul these grants and to make other grants to
+other favourites. The Lords had resisted, but had
+finally given way. Lord Somers, the Whig leader of
+the Ministry, had been so displeasing to the Commons<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>
+that the King had forced him to resign. The majority in
+the Parliament of 1701 was Tory, as was the Ministry.
+The Tories, blaming William and his Whig advisers
+for their foreign policy, impeached Somers, Portland,
+Orford, and Halifax (lately Addison’s Charles
+Montague). The Lords supported the impeached
+peers. Swift, returning with Berkeley to England in
+April, saw in the conflict a danger to the state, and
+undertook a warning. He was still so near Moor Park
+that he came only slyly into the open in his discourse,
+full of modern parallels, on the dissensions between
+the nobles and commons in Athens and Rome.</p>
+
+<p>But he wrote less like a philosopher than like a
+governor, contemptuous of political metaphysics. No
+doubt there ought to be a proper balance of power
+among the forces in a state; “although I should think
+that the saying <i>vox populi vox dei</i> ought to be understood
+of the universal bent and current of a people, not of the
+bare majority of a few representatives, which is often
+procured by little arts and great industry and application;
+wherein those who engage in the pursuits of
+malice and revenge are much more sedulous than such
+as would prevent them.” How the universal bent and
+current of a people was to be recognized and encouraged
+Swift did not make plain. “Some physicians have
+thought that if it were practicable to keep the several
+humours of the body in an exact and equal balance of
+each with the opposite, it might be immortal; and so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
+perhaps would a political body if the balance of power
+could be always held exactly even. But, I doubt, this
+is as impossible in practice as the other.”</p>
+
+<p>In practice he found the populace always greedy and
+slippery. “When a child grows easy and content by
+being humoured; and when a lover becomes satisfied
+by small compliances, without farther pursuits; then
+expect to find popular assemblies content with small
+concessions.” “I think it is an universal truth that the
+people are much more dexterous at pulling down and
+setting up than at preserving what is fixed; and they
+are not fonder of seizing more than their own than
+they are of delivering it up again to the worst bidder,
+with their own into the bargain. For, although in their
+corrupt notions of divine worship they are apt to
+multiply their gods, yet their earthly devotion is seldom
+paid to above one idol at a time, of their own creation;
+whose oar they pull with less murmuring, and much
+more skill, than when they share the lading or even
+hold the helm.”</p>
+
+<p>There was, Swift thought, no mysterious virtue in
+any gathering of men. “It is hard to recollect one folly,
+infirmity, or vice to which a single man is subjected and
+from which a body of commons, either collective or
+represented, can be wholly exempt. For, beside that
+they are composed of men with all their infirmities
+about them, they have also the ill fortune to be generally
+led and influenced by the very worst among themselves,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>
+I mean popular orators, tribunes, or, as they
+are now styled, great speakers, leading men, and the
+like. Whence it comes to pass that in their results we
+have sometimes found the same spirit of cruelty and
+revenge, of malice and pride, the same blindness and
+obstinacy and unsteadiness, the same ungovernable
+rage and anger, the same injustice, sophistry, and
+fraud that ever lodged in the breast of any individual.”</p>
+
+<p>The evil to be avoided, Swift held, was the tyranny
+equally of the one, of the few, or of the many. But when
+the many are tyrants the tyranny of the one is not far
+off. “A usurping populace is its own dupe, a mere
+underworker, and a purchaser in trust for some single
+tyrant whose state and power they advance to their
+own ruin, with as blind an instinct as those worms that
+die with weaving magnificent habits for beings of a
+superior nature to their own.”</p>
+
+<p>Any governor, reading Swift’s discourse, must have
+felt behind it a congenial mind and will. Swift might
+dread the tyranny of a king. He might even, as he
+later wrote, “prefer a well-instituted commonwealth
+before a monarchy.” But what he really dreaded was
+disorder. “If,” he said, “I should insist upon liberty
+of conscience, form conventicles of republicans, and
+print books preferring that government and condemning
+what is established, the magistrate would, with
+great justice, hang me and my disciples.” Better the
+certain magistrate than the uncertain mob. Swift was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>
+no less on the side of power because he wanted power
+himself. He regarded the demand for popular rights
+as a king might regard it: that is, as a mode of usurpation.
+He regarded the prospect of revolution as a
+general might regard it: that is, as a threat of mutiny.
+Let theorists be hanged. Though the end of government
+was liberty, the way to it did not lead through
+unrest. Unrest was itself the tyranny of the many, and
+it might at any time become the tyranny of the one.
+Liberty lay between these extremes. Mankind, unless
+it gave itself to dictatorship or to confusion, had to be
+governed by the few.</p>
+
+<p>Not, however, by the casual few of birth or wealth.
+By the chosen few of knowledge, skill, and virtue.
+Swift did not say, at first or ever, how these few were to
+be chosen. Like all the men, in all the ages, who have
+held to this appealing doctrine, he assumed that the
+choice of governors ought to be as natural as it was
+logical. And, like most of them, he assumed that he
+belonged among the governors.</p>
+
+<p>Rather, he assumed that he belonged beside them.
+Swift had already come to think of himself as first of
+all a churchman, not a statesman but the driving
+conscience of statesmen. Having delivered his warning
+in his pamphlet, written in London, he left it with the
+printer and went back to Ireland, to establish himself
+in Laracor. “The book was,” he says, “greedily bought
+and read; and charged sometimes upon my Lord<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>
+Somers and some time upon the Bishop of Salisbury.”
+Associated at a distance with men so powerful, Swift,
+returning to England for the summer of 1702, and
+owning the authorship, came closer to the seats of
+power than he had ever come before. “My Lords
+Somers and Halifax, as well as the Bishop ... desired
+my acquaintance, with great marks of esteem
+and professions of kindness—not to mention the Earl
+of Sunderland, who had been of my old acquaintance.
+They lamented that they were not able to serve me
+since the death of the King; and were very liberal in
+promising me the greatest preferments I could hope
+for, if ever it came in their power. I soon grew domestic
+with Lord Halifax, and was as often with Lord Somers
+as the formality of his nature (the only unconversable
+fault he has) made it agreeable to me.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift was, in his relations with the great, no country
+parson tickled with a dinner. He stood before them
+like a man there in his own right. “It was then I first
+began to trouble myself with the difference between
+the principles of Whig and Tory; having formerly employed
+myself in other and, I think much better, speculations.
+I talked often upon this subject with Lord
+Somers; told him that, having been long conversant
+with the Greek and Roman authors, and therefore a
+lover of liberty, I found myself much inclined to be
+what they called a Whig in politics; and that, besides,
+I thought it impossible, upon any other principle, to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>
+defend or submit to the Revolution. But as to religion
+I confessed myself to be a high churchman, and that I
+did not conceive how any one who wore the habit of
+clergyman could be otherwise.” A high churchman,
+and a haughty one. Though he might then prefer the
+Whigs to the Tories, his real allegiance was to the
+Church. He served it when he served whatever party
+favoured it. He was above the battle in which he
+fought. He looked for large rewards with the assurance
+of his calling as well as with the arrogance of his
+temper.</p>
+
+<p>But Somers and Halifax were not in office. Swift
+went back to Ireland, unrewarded, for another year of
+rueful banishment.</p>
+
+<p>When he once more returned to England late in 1703,
+he seemed, to his own pride, to have done nothing in
+the world. Yet he had an honourable profession. He
+had an income for life. He had a mistress, of a kind,
+who was young, beautiful, witty, and devoted. He had
+ruling friends in Ireland and was beginning to have
+others in England. He was the author of the most
+brilliant prose satire so far written in English, and the
+master of the best prose of his age. Something boundless
+in him, however, or something perverse, kept him
+from more than brief satisfactions. Content to be a
+clergyman, he could not wait to be a bishop. Untroubled
+by debts, he longed for a fortune. Happy with
+Stella for a friend, he would not commit himself to her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
+in marriage. A scholar, a clergyman, and a wit, he
+cared little for the company of his fellows. He thought
+the scholars pedantic, the clergymen dull and tattling—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>And deal in vices of the graver sort,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Tobacco, censure, coffee, pride, and port</i>”—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>the wits frivolous and feeble. His satires had remained
+for half a dozen years unpublished. He could be at
+ease only among the great, and even there he did not
+lend himself wholly to their purposes. He stood solitary
+on the peak of his own nature, his scornful eyes raking
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>From this height he flung down his <i>Tale of a Tub</i>
+early in 1704. Mankind at large took no notice. Mankind
+at large has no eyes to read with, no skin to feel a
+lash with. As Swift himself said in his preface, “Satire,
+being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence
+by any, since every individual person makes bold to
+understand it of others, and very wisely removes his
+particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of
+the world, which are broad enough, and able to bear
+it.” Nor did the pedants and wits flinch at his thrusts
+much more sharply, since he named few of them, than
+the nameless run of men. The pedants might grumble,
+but the wits, who also liked to sting, could take a
+craftsman’s pleasure in the accurate rapture of his
+stinging.</p>
+
+<p>Swift of course pricked no active folly and stabbed no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>
+active vice by his satires. Fools did not read him. Wise
+men were only confirmed in their wisdom. His hatred
+caused less reformation than delight. The delight
+which men felt in his arguments and allegories, so
+cutting, so copious, so downright, so fanciful, was the
+delight which men feel when one of them uses words as
+most of them have not the gift to do, only the bursting
+desire. Swift, who scorned to be a man of words, was
+accepted for his words. Somers, to whom the book was
+dedicated, and Halifax, who knew how to put such
+skill as Swift’s to use, repeated their promises. They
+did not tell him it was not his counsel that they needed.</p>
+
+<p>Yet while he was making friends he was also making
+enemies. Mankind was not a sensitive body, able to
+feel in any of its parts any indignity to the whole. The
+pedants or the wits were not. The Church was. It
+thought of itself as marked off from the world, like its
+consecrated altars, to be approached with reverence.
+There were, as Swift contended, abuses of religion
+which called for satire, and which could be satirized
+without any hurt to true religion. But the line between
+the uses and the abuses of religion was often faint. One
+man’s devotion could be another man’s fanaticism.
+Firmness could become stoniness and never know it.
+Laughter, even when aimed at what was false, could
+wound in two directions. Swift, high on his peak of
+scorn, let his laughter fall with a harsh inclusiveness.</p>
+
+<p>When, for instance, he touched the doctrine of transubstantiation,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>
+he traced its origin to a noisy episode
+in the career of the Catholic among the three brothers
+of the allegory. Peter, having no mutton for his dinner,
+served up a brown loaf to Martin and Jack. He told
+them it was mutton. They refused, at first politely and
+then heatedly, to believe him. “‘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 plain argument: By G——, it is true, good,
+natural mutton as any in Leadenhall market; and
+G—— condemn you both eternally if you believe otherwise.’
+Such a thundering proof as this left no farther
+room for objection.”</p>
+
+<p>Here was rough language to use so near the communion
+table, no matter what the precise beliefs of the
+bystanders regarding the disputed miracle. A total
+unbeliever could not have spoken more gratingly.
+Even in that vigorous age a clergyman had to watch
+his voice if he was to become a bishop. Swift might
+please the lords temporal with his originality and
+force, but he could not please the lords spiritual without
+orthodoxy and decorum. Within the Church he
+was always, from the time <i>A Tale of a Tub</i> was understood
+to be by him, a churchman suspected of irreverence—or,
+as he phrased it, “the sin of wit.”</p>
+
+<p>This dangerous book, published with mystifying
+stealth, Swift never acknowledged, though after a
+scuffle of ascriptions it settled down at his door. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>
+authorship was first his humorous and afterwards his
+cautious secret. When, having published the satires, he
+followed his letter to Tisdall back to Ireland, he was
+still barely known in London for his genius. There are
+almost no records of where he had lodged, of how he
+had spent his days and nights. A dim figure, flashing
+seldom out of the dark.</p>
+
+<p>One anecdote, of the many which have gathered
+about his magnetic reputation, may tell something like
+the truth. For days after his earliest appearance at the
+St. James’s coffee house, the story goes, he did not
+speak. He would come in, lay his hat on a table, walk
+conspicuously up and down the room for an hour, take
+up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and leave without
+a word. At last, one evening, he looked several times at
+a man in boots, who seemed to have just come from
+the country. The mad parson, as he was already called,
+went up to the booted stranger and said abruptly:
+“Pray, Sir, do you remember any good weather in the
+world?” The man stared but said he thanked God he
+could remember a great deal of good weather. “That
+is more,” said Swift, “than I can say. I never remember
+any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too
+wet or too dry. But, however God Almighty contrives
+it, at the end of the year ’tis all very well.” Then again
+he took his hat and left.</p>
+
+<p>The next three and a half years in Ireland saw him
+more at ease with more companions. At Laracor he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+planted, besides willows, holly, apple, cherry trees.
+He fished for eel and pike and trout. “I carry double
+the flesh that you saw about me at London,” he wrote
+to John Temple, who had invited him to revisit Moor
+Park in 1706; though Swift insisted that he had, to such
+a sign of fortune, “no manner of title, having neither
+purchased it by luxury nor good humour.” His congregation
+might be no more than fifteen persons,
+“most of them gentle and all simple,” but he had
+numerous friends in the region of Laracor.</p>
+
+<p>In Dublin he could talk clerical politics with the
+Primate of Ireland and the Archbishop of Dublin,
+both Swift’s friends, and secular politics with the Lord
+Lieutenants to whom he was chaplain. At the Castle
+he was cheerful with the successive households of
+Ormond and Pembroke. With a small circle of Pembroke’s
+intimate guests he punned tumultuously and
+infectiously. He drank wine, took snuff, and gambled
+for trifling stakes. He was often at the house of the dean
+of St. Patrick’s, who gave good dinners to bishops and
+to clergymen willing to become bishops. There was
+also a sort of club with which various women, Stella
+among them, met on Saturday evenings, for dinner
+and ombre or picquet. Stella was liked and admired by
+Swift’s friends. If he was lonely and restless he had his
+genius to blame.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">4</p>
+
+<p>He was lonely and steadily more restless. The idyl of
+Laracor was too mild to hold him. The work and play
+of Dublin were too small. Just before his fortieth birthday
+he left Ireland, in the party of Lord Pembroke,
+again to try at fortune on fortune’s own ground. He
+had at least the advantage, now, of being on an official
+errand to the great men whose favour he personally
+needed. Commissioned by his Archbishop, he was to
+act as lobbyist in the matter of the First Fruits. Queen
+Anne, devoted to the interests of the Church, had
+given up her right to the first year’s income of every
+ecclesiastical benefice in England. The Irish Church
+hoped she would extend the same bounty to Ireland.
+The whole sum at issue was not above a thousand
+pounds a year. Swift, proud as a mountain, took up the
+little cause. It brought him a new experience of the
+delaying, forgetting, bargaining habits of politicians.</p>
+
+<p>He had to move softly to avoid the jealousy of Pembroke,
+who as viceroy of Ireland was the proper channel
+for any such appeal to the Crown. At first Somers,
+though influential with the Ministry, was still out of
+office. He referred Swift to Sunderland, son of Swift’s
+former friend, son-in-law of Marlborough, and a Secretary
+of State. Sunderland said he would go with
+Swift to Godolphin, Lord Treasurer, but ended by
+merely making an appointment. Godolphin declared<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>
+“he was passive in this business,” which was really
+Pembroke’s responsibility. Swift consulted Pembroke,
+and was told that everything depended on the Queen.
+Passed shiftily from hand to hand, Swift saw that none
+of the great men was interested, though none of them
+would take the trouble to tell the truth. After a year he
+heard from Pembroke that the grant had been made,
+and a little later learned that Pembroke had lied. But
+the Earl of Wharton had been appointed Lord Lieutenant.
+Swift went to Wharton, “which was the first
+attendance I ever paid him.” Wharton had nothing
+for him but cloudy excuses and windy promises. “I
+took the boldness to begin answering those objections,
+and designed to offer some reasons; but he rose suddenly,
+turned off the discourse, and seemed in haste;
+so I was forced to take my leave.” At a subsequent
+meeting at Somers’s house Wharton “received me as
+dryly as before.”</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter Swift hated Wharton as he never hated
+another man. All the exasperations of a wasted year
+came together into a single fury which, when Swift had
+a chance, poured itself out into the abuse which has
+made Wharton better known for it than for all he ever
+did himself.</p>
+
+<p>Lobbying for the First Fruits, Swift looked out also
+for his own advancement. But he went through his
+visit to England always in suspense and never satisfied.
+First he hoped to be chosen Bishop of Waterford. He<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>
+believed he had the favour of Somers and possibly of
+the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen. Another
+clergyman of the Pembroke circle was preferred.
+“Now I must retire to my morals,” Swift wrote a
+friend, “and pretend to be wholly without ambition
+and to resign with patience.... And after this if you
+will not allow me to be a good courtier, I will pretend
+to it no more. But let us talk no further on this subject.
+I am stomach-sick of it already.” Then he hoped to be
+sent as secretary to Vienna, if Lord Berkeley should go
+as ambassador. “I shall be out of the way of parties
+until it shall please God I have some place to retire
+to a little above contempt.” The Ministry promised
+Swift the post, but Berkeley’s age and ill health kept
+him in England. Swift would have accepted a Dublin
+parish which had been proposed to him; the living did
+not fall vacant. He might have been expected to be
+chaplain to Wharton, as he had been to Ormond and
+Pembroke; he was not chosen. He was urged by the
+Archbishop of Dublin to try for the deanery of Down;
+Wharton’s chaplain became dean. On the day, after
+Swift’s return to Ireland, when the Bishop of Cork was
+dying of spotted fever Swift wrote to Halifax asking for
+his interest with Somers, now Lord President, for this
+bishopric. Wharton, according to Swift, engaged his
+credit to get the place for a clergyman who had married
+a “cast wench” of Wharton’s—although the Queen,
+indeed, prevented such a scandal. To make the story<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>
+as complete as a farce, the clergyman in question may
+have been that junior dean of Trinity College before
+whom, on his knees, Swift on his twenty-first birthday
+may have had to beg pardon for being contemptuous
+and contumacious.</p>
+
+<p>Yet towards the close of his cycle of anxiety Swift
+could write ingratiatingly to Halifax: “I must take
+leave to reproach your Lordship for a most inhuman
+piece of cruelty, for I can call your extreme good usage
+of me no better, since it has taught me to hate the place
+where I am banished, and raised my thoughts to an
+imagination that I might live to be some way useful or
+entertaining if I were permitted to live in town.... I
+have been studying how to be revenged of your Lordship,
+and have found out the way. They have in
+Ireland the same idea with us, of your Lordship’s
+generosity, magnificence, wit, judgment, and knowledge
+in the enjoyment of life. But I shall quickly undeceive
+them by letting them plainly know that you
+have neither interest nor fortune which you can call
+your own; both having been long made over to the
+corporation of deserving men in want, who have
+appointed you their advocate and steward, which the
+world is pleased to call patron and protector. I shall
+inform them that myself and about a dozen others kept
+the best table in England, to which because we admitted
+your Lordship in common with us, made you
+our manager, and sometimes allowed you to bring a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>
+friend, therefore ignorant people would needs take
+you to be the owner.... Pray, my Lord, desire Dr.
+South to die about the fall of the leaf, for he has a prebend
+of Westminster which will make me your neighbour,
+and a sinecure in the country, both in the
+Queen’s gift, which my friends have often told me
+would fit me extremely.”</p>
+
+<p>And Halifax could magniloquently answer: “I am
+quite ashamed for myself and my friends to see you
+left in a place so incapable of tasting you; and to see
+so much merit and so great qualities unrewarded by
+those who are sensible of them. Mr. Addison and I are
+entered into a new confederacy, never to give over the
+pursuit, nor to cease reminding those who can serve
+you, till your worth is placed in that light where it
+ought to shine. Dr. South holds out still, but he cannot
+be immortal. The situation of his prebendary would
+make me doubly concerned in serving you, and upon
+all occasions that shall offer I will be your constant
+solicitor, your sincere admirer, and your unalterable
+friend.”</p>
+
+<p>Handsome compliment, handsome acknowledgment,
+and no real confidence between the writers.
+What Swift actually thought of Halifax was that he
+gave deserving men “only good words and dinners; I
+never heard him say one good thing, or seem to taste
+what was said by another.” What Halifax actually
+thought of Swift must be guessed at. But no patron<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>
+used to “soft dedication all day long” could quite
+relish a follower so bound to lead. Swift would never
+be as remote from politics as Newton, whom Halifax
+had made Warden and then Master of the Mint, nor
+as obliging and grateful in the midst of politics as
+Addison, who through Halifax had entered the busy
+circle where few men went long without places. Halifax
+and Somers and Pembroke no more than Godolphin
+and Sunderland and Wharton by this time could
+imagine in Swift’s hand the supple, obedient pen
+which they required.</p>
+
+<p>There was proof to support their doubts. They had
+been willing to bargain with him, or through him with
+the Irish Church, about the First Fruits. Let the
+Church consent to the repeal of the Sacramental Test
+which excluded Dissenters from office. The Whigs,
+standing to gain votes from the pleased Dissenters,
+would then be better able to persuade the Queen to
+widen her bounty. The repeal would mean only the
+surrender of a principle, and it would save the Irish
+clergy a thousand pounds a year. Swift, without a
+thought of accommodating the ministers or even of
+earning their possible rewards, had instead written too
+vigorously, and not surreptitiously enough, against the
+repeal. He saw it as a selfish experiment which England
+wanted to try first on Ireland before trying it
+nearer home. “If your little finger be sore,” he said to
+England with a snarling humility, “and you think a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>
+poultice made of our vitals will give it any ease, speak
+the word and it shall be done.” Somers, Lord President,
+and Wharton, Lord Lieutenant, from that
+moment must have known that Swift was not their
+man. The sin of wit they could forgive, and indeed
+encourage. They could neither encourage nor forgive
+the sin of such independence. Braver statesmen than
+they might have hesitated to keep a tiger on the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>Swift, learning on this visit to England that the
+great are not always to be trusted by the proud and
+truthful, should have become finally aware that he was
+not a Whig, perhaps that he was not a Tory. As a
+churchman he stood not so much between the parties
+as above them both. “I should think,” he said in one
+of the pamphlets in which he stretched the muscles
+which the ministers would not let him use, “that ... to
+preserve the constitution entire in Church and
+State, whoever has a true value for both would be sure
+to avoid the extremes of Whig for the sake of the former
+and the extremes of Tory on account of the latter.”
+Arbitrary power he still hated and looked upon “as a
+greater evil than anarchy itself; as much as a savage is
+in a happier state of life than a slave at the oar.” Yet
+his passion was, as always, for order. The legislature,
+he thought, could not be placed in too many hands;
+the administration, however, not in too few. Sects
+might indeed be tolerated in a state, but “a government
+cannot give them too much ease nor trust them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>
+with too little power.” Order, as he understood it, was
+the consequence of virtue among the people, and
+therefore a higher concern than politics could reach to.
+It was the natural concern of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Like a churchman, like a magistrate, Swift proposed
+that manners be reformed by the advancement of
+religion. If the Queen should make stricter demands
+upon all who came near her, “morality and religion
+would soon become fashionable court virtues, and be
+taken up as the only methods to get or keep employments
+there; which alone would have mighty influence
+upon many of the nobility and principal gentry.” The
+example of the Court would go far to reform the town,
+and the town the rest of the kingdom. “How ready
+... would most men be to step into the paths of
+virtue and piety if they infallibly led to favour and
+fortune!” Swift could even contemplate “something
+parallel to the office of censors anciently in Rome,”
+which in England he believed “could be easily limited
+from running into any exorbitances.” British Catos
+could reduce the vices of the army, the universities, the
+law courts, the public service, the press, the taverns.
+And the Church could provide the Catos if clergymen,
+ceasing to live so largely to themselves and with
+each other, would “make themselves as agreeable as
+they can in the conversations of the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Swift stop with arguing soberly like a
+parson. He went on to irony, like a wit. He could not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>
+feel sure, he said, that Christianity had to be abolished,
+as the world thought. He meant, of course, “nominal
+Christianity, the other having been for some time
+wholly laid aside by general consent.” Nominal Christianity
+had its uses. It gave men a God to revile, when
+otherwise they might abuse the government. It furnished
+each parish with at least one person who could
+read and write. It kept ten thousand men so poor that
+they were healthy, and good for the breed. It set one
+day in seven aside for pleasure, extra business, gallantry,
+and sleep. It made certain kinds of behaviour,
+because they were forbidden, more enticing. It gave
+the vulgar various pleasant superstitions with which to
+amuse the children and to shorten tiresome winter
+nights. It sustained the spirit of opposition, of eccentricity,
+of fanaticism. However, Swift ended, if Christianity
+was to be abolished, so ought every vestige of
+religion for fear there might still be some restraint laid
+on human nature. Let freedom come, even though
+bank stocks might fall one per cent.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">5</p>
+
+<p>No matter what grave words he used, Swift had to
+set them to witty tunes. They came, it seems, so effortlessly
+that he undervalued them, overlooking them in
+the thunder of his will. He valued only what he did not
+have: influence at a Court he despised, power over
+men he hated. Addison could call him, for his wit,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>
+“the greatest genius of his age.” Swift wanted, as
+Addison had elsewhere rhetorically put it, to ride in
+the whirlwind and direct the storm. There was no help
+for his charging desire. His will was as truly his nature
+as his wit was.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was by his wit that he won his hearing, and
+from the coffee houses. While he waited, impatient,
+for a single minister to listen to his business of the First
+Fruits, he amused his idleness with a hoax that ran
+through the town like a scandal. He predicted, in a
+burlesque almanac, that the astrologer John Partridge,
+who was a cobbler as well as a quack, would “infallibly
+die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at
+night, of a raging fever.” When the time came Swift
+no less circumstantially announced the death, though
+it had, he said, occurred four hours earlier than he had
+calculated. Partridge, still as much alive as ever, complained.
+The coffee houses laughed. There were other
+pamphlets on the hoax, in one of which Congreve had
+a hand. For more than a year Swift now and then
+worried his victim. Richard Steele thought the joke so
+good, and the name of Isaac Bickerstaff, which Swift
+used, so noted, that he made the imaginary Bickerstaff
+the apparent editor of the <i>Tatler</i>. Another of Swift’s
+hoaxes had a small success. Reading to the Countess
+of Berkeley, he had grown tired of the pompous commonplaces
+which soothed her in her favourite author,
+and had relieved his boredom by tricking her with a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>
+meditation which he had written upon a broomstick.
+Now the story got out, and the wits laughed at the
+trick and at the parody, which was seen in manuscript
+and may have been printed.</p>
+
+<p>In both hoaxes the delighted wits felt not only
+Swift’s comic skill but the imperious insolence which
+lay behind it. Here was a man whose lightest words
+left a mark wherever they touched. Here was a learned
+clergyman who, as the <i>Tatler</i> said, “writes very like a
+gentleman and goes to heaven with a very good mien.”</p>
+
+<p>Much of Swift’s life during this stay in England was
+off the stage of the wits, nearer officials or drawing-rooms.
+When he first arrived he lived in Leicester
+Fields at the house of Sir Andrew Fountaine, who had
+been in Ireland with Pembroke and had found Swift
+the best pastime of that wilderness. Afterward in lodgings
+in the Haymarket, Swift might have letters sent to
+him at the St. James’s coffee house or at Steele’s office
+in the Cockpit, but when he was kept indoors, as he
+once was by broken shins, even Somers came to visit
+him. During 1708 he was a guest of both Berkeley and
+Pembroke in the country. After the hot summer in
+town he spent six weeks in Kent and at Epsom,
+where the Court then retired to drink the fashionable
+waters.</p>
+
+<p>In town he was often—much too often for his future
+peace—at the house of Mrs. Vanhomrigh, the widow
+of a former lord mayor of Dublin, who had come to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+London about the same time as Swift. She had a
+daughter Esther, who claimed to be two years younger
+than she was, and to have been born, as she probably
+had not, on St. Valentine’s day. Through the Vanhomrighs,
+friends of Fountaine, Swift met other women,
+ladies of the Court, toasts of the clubs, whom he
+fascinated by his grave impudence. He insisted that
+each lady who desired to know him should make the
+first advances. When Anne Long, toast of the Kit-Cat
+club, protested and held out, Swift drew up a formal
+treaty of which the plain terms, with whatever circumlocutions,
+were that she must within two hours make
+“all advances to the said Doctor that he shall demand
+... purely upon account of his great merit.”
+The lady yielded. Swift might be resisted when he
+worked, not when he played.</p>
+
+<p>He had the further comfort that Stella and Rebecca
+Dingley were in England for a part of his stay. “Mrs.
+Johnson,” he wrote to Ireland, “cannot make a pun if
+she might have the weight of it in gold.” He did not
+introduce her to his new acquaintances, the one
+Esther to the other, any more than he told the world
+his moody secrets. Stella was his secret. Though he saw
+her in London and wrote to her after she returned to
+Ireland, there are no records of her in his letters except
+a mention of her dog. “Pug is very well, and likes
+London wonderfully, but Greenwich better, where we
+could hardly keep him from hunting down the deer.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p>
+
+<p>What came nearest to satisfying Swift in 1708 was
+Addison. When last Swift had been in London, in the
+winter of 1703-1704, he had been still unknown, and
+Addison, just back from his travels, had been, thanks
+to the bad fortune of the Whigs, in eclipse. Swift, leaving
+his satires behind him, had gone off to his banishment.
+Addison, writing a panegyric on Marlborough
+on account of Blenheim, had stayed to become famous
+over night. When now they met in February, Swift
+was still without any influence except that of his own
+genius, and Addison was an under-secretary of State.
+But there was no difference in their affections. Addison
+was seldom vain with Swift, whom he called “the most
+agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the
+greatest genius of his age.” Swift was seldom proud
+with Addison. “If,” he later wrote, back in Dublin,
+“you will come over again, when you are at leisure, we
+will raise an army and make you king of Ireland.”</p>
+
+<p>They met like princes, with exchange of gifts. Swift
+gave Addison, along with Steele, some of his moral
+fury, which they tempered to moral irony in the <i>Tatler</i>
+and <i>Spectator</i>, preferring to laugh, not scourge, virtue
+into fashion. Addison gave to Swift some of his smooth
+taste with which to revise the story of Baucis and
+Philemon which Swift had written in his gruff exile.
+Too proud to be stubborn about his verses, Swift, as he
+loosely said, let Addison “blot out fourscore, add fourscore,
+and alter fourscore” of the lines. The poem suffered,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>
+but Swift did not. He would, and did, write
+more smoothly if it were more pleasing to Addison. In
+time Swift came to be aware of Addison’s vanity
+and caution, but for months he had no reservations.
+Addison was Swift’s first equal friend. Temple had
+been his teacher, Stella his pupil, his friends in Ireland
+mere accidental comrades, the Whig lords and bishops
+too great to be easy with. Addison had wit, charm,
+learning, virtue, “worth enough,” Swift said, “to give
+reputation to an age.”</p>
+
+<p>All the spring and summer of 1708 they often dined
+together, at different taverns, frequently with Steele
+or Congreve, with Ambrose Philips, Addison’s little
+Whig poetical friend, or with Robert Hunter, the
+friend of Swift who was going to be governor of Virginia
+and who threatened to make Swift his bishop
+in a country even more desolate than Ireland. But it
+was best when the two could, as Swift wrote to Hunter,
+“steal to a pint of bad wine, and wish for no third
+person but you.” When Addison went off to Ireland as
+secretary to Wharton, with a salary of two thousand
+pounds a year and a sinecure worth four hundred
+more, Swift, still without promotion or much hope,
+felt no envy. In Ireland, when he had gone there in
+June 1709, he buried himself with Stella at Laracor
+and left it for Dublin, with its abominable Lord
+Lieutenant, only to see Addison.</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c4">IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c xlarge sp">MAN IN POWER</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">1</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">F</span>ortune</span> prefers to turn its wheel to the advantage
+of men with the talent for success, but now and
+then the geniuses, uncompromising, wilful, audacious,
+swing upward in the sun. A revolution of the wheel in
+London called Swift back in September 1710.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know when he went what he was going
+to. He was almost resigned to Laracor and Dublin.
+“I never went to England with so little desire in my
+life,” he wrote to Stella the day after he landed. “I am
+perfectly resolved to return as soon as I have done my
+commission, whether it succeeds or no.” He had less
+hope as to the success of his errand, which again was
+the First Fruits, than the Irish bishops who this time
+had authorized him. Still, there was a chance. Sunderland
+and Godolphin had been shaken from their posts
+by an upheaval among the Whigs, and Wharton had
+hurried over to serve his party with his gift for wheedling
+and rounding up the voters. Other ministers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>
+might be more favourable to Swift’s embassy. Other
+friends might help him to promotion.</p>
+
+<p>At London he found everything “turning upside
+down; every Whig in great office will, to a man, be
+infallibly put out; and we shall have such a winter as
+has not been seen in England.” It was already such a
+September as Swift had never seen. “The Whigs were
+ravished to see me,” he wrote within two days of his
+arrival, “and would lay hold on me as a twig while
+they are drowning, and the great men making me
+their clumsy apologies” for their former negligence.</p>
+
+<p>But Swift had come into a new world of new men.
+Somers was about to be dismissed. Halifax had only
+his sinecure. Pembroke was in retirement. Wharton
+was to lose his place to the Duke of Ormond. Sunderland
+had given way to Henry St. John (later Viscount
+Bolingbroke) as principal Secretary of State. Godolphin
+had yielded the rank of first minister to Robert Harley
+(later Earl of Oxford), Chancellor of the Exchequer
+though not yet Lord Treasurer. The men of Swift’s
+old world were now able to do for him as little as they
+had been willing to do before. Only the hated Wharton
+“affected very much to caress” him. Somers was merely
+plausible. Halifax moved too slowly. Godolphin, whom
+Swift saw at once, was so “short, dry, and morose”
+that the suitor was enraged. On his third day in London
+Swift spent the evening at the St. James’s coffee
+house with a friend. “For an hour and a half we talked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>
+treason heartily against the Whigs, their baseness and
+ingratitude. And I am come home rolling resentments
+in my mind and framing schemes of revenge.”</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the drowning Whigs, and in spite even of
+Addison, again in England and at first as affectionate
+as ever, Swift began to look towards the Tories. A
+week, and he was dining with his old friend of Kilkenny
+and Trinity, Francis Stratford, a merchant
+who, “worth a plumb,” was “lending the government
+forty thousand pounds.” Two weeks later, and Swift
+expected any day to be taken to Harley by one of
+Stratford’s friends, Erasmus Lewis, who was one of
+Harley’s favourites. “I am already represented to
+Harley,” Swift told Stella, “as a discontented person
+that was ill used for not being Whig enough; and I
+hope for good usage from him. The Tories dryly tell
+me I may make my fortune if I please; but I do not
+understand them, or rather, I do understand them.”</p>
+
+<p>Halifax asked Swift to dinner at Hampton Court
+and “would have kept me tomorrow to show me his
+house and park.... Lord Halifax began a health
+to me today. It was the resurrection of the Whigs,
+which I refused unless he would add their reformation
+too.” The next night “after I had put out my candle
+... my landlady came into my room with a servant of
+Lord Halifax, to desire I would go dine with him” the
+following day. “But I sent him word I had business of
+great importance that hindered me.... And today<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>
+I was brought privately to Mr. Harley, who received
+me with the greatest respect and kindness imaginable.
+He has appointed me an hour on Saturday at four,
+afternoon, when I will open my business to him.”</p>
+
+<p>Exactly a month after Swift reached London he
+handed Harley his memorial regarding the First
+Fruits. “Mr. Harley came out to meet me, brought me
+in, and presented me to his son-in-law ... and his
+own son and, among others, Will Penn the Quaker.
+We sat two hours, drinking ... good wine ... and
+two hours more he and I alone.” Harley read Swift’s
+memorial “and put it in his pocket to show the Queen;
+... told me he must bring Mr. St. John ... and
+me acquainted; and spoke so many things of personal
+kindness and esteem for me that I am inclined half to
+believe what some friends have told me, that he would
+do everything to bring me over.... He has desired
+me to dine with him on Tuesday, and after four hours
+being with him set me down at St. James’s coffee house
+in a hackney coach. All this is odd and comical if you
+consider him and me. He knew my Christian name
+very well.... And now I am going in charity to
+send Steele a <i>Tatler</i>, who is very low of late.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift, writing that night to Stella, thought that even
+the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> might no longer be held against
+him, as he guessed it had been. “They may talk of the
+<i>you know what</i>; but, gad, if it had not been for that I
+should never have been able to get the access I have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>
+had; and if that helps me to succeed, then that same
+thing will be serviceable to the Church.”</p>
+
+<p>Odd and comical, Harley, no more concerned about
+the bounty of the First Fruits than about the orthodoxy
+of the <i>Tale</i>, had set out to seduce the most lively and
+deadly wit in England. At the price of a thousand
+pounds a year, cut out of the Queen’s income, Swift
+would be a bargain for her minister.</p>
+
+<p>The minister did not lag in his pursuit. On Tuesday,
+presenting Swift to Sir Simon Harcourt, the Attorney-General,
+Harley said he had broached the matter of
+the First Fruits to the Queen, and asked Swift to dinner
+on Sunday. On Sunday Harley said the Queen had
+consented to the grant. Matthew Prior, a better poet
+than Addison, dined with them. After dinner, when
+Lord Peterborough had come in, the talk shifted to
+“a paper of verses” on Godolphin which had just been
+printed. “Lord Peterborough would let nobody read
+them but himself; so he did; and Mr. Harley bobbed
+me at every line to take notice of the beauties. Prior
+rallied Lord Peterborough for author of them; and
+Lord Peterborough said he knew them to be his; and
+Prior then turned it upon me, and I on him. I am not
+guessed at all in town to be the author.” Lucky Tories,
+to blunder into such a moving compliment? Or wily
+Tories, used to poets?</p>
+
+<p>There was some formal delay in the execution of
+the grant, but Harley was still, Swift wrote, “so excessively<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>
+obliging that I know not what to make of it,
+unless to show the rascals of the other party that they
+used a man unworthily who had deserved better.”
+St. John, using Swift “with all the kindness in the
+world,” said he had never read anything so good as
+certain verses by the Tories’ new poet which Swift
+himself did not “reckon so very good neither”; and
+pleased Swift further by telling him that “Mr. Harley
+complained he could keep nothing from me, I had
+the way so much of getting into him.” Erasmus Lewis
+tactfully hinted that Swift, not quite comfortable at
+leaving his old friends, might save Steele his post as
+commissioner of stamps. Swift went to Addison, as
+the discreeter person, but “party had so possessed him
+that he talked as if he suspected me, and would not
+fall in with anything I said. So I stopped short in my
+overture, and we parted very dryly.... When shall
+I grow wise? I endeavour to act in the most exact
+points of honour and conscience, and my nearest
+friends will not understand it so.”</p>
+
+<p>It was not in Swift to be patient. Two weeks later he
+inquired of Stella: “Why should the Whigs think I
+came to England to leave them? Sure my journey was
+no secret. I protest sincerely I did all I could to hinder
+it ... although now I do not repent it. But who the
+devil cares what they think?... Rot ’em for ungrateful
+dogs. I will make them repent their usage
+before I leave this place.” He had already begun to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
+punish them. Before the end of October he had
+accepted the secret editorship of the <i>Examiner</i>, the
+Tory weekly which he edited, and wrote, until the
+following June, when, “my style being soon discovered,
+and having contracted a great number of enemies, I
+let it fall into other hands.”</p>
+
+<p>The step cost Swift his Whig friends. In six weeks:
+“Mr. Addison and I hardly meet once a fortnight.” In
+another month: “I called at the coffee house, where I
+had not been in a week, and talked coldly a while with
+Mr. Addison. All our friendship and dearness are off.
+We are civil acquaintances, talk words of course, of
+when we shall meet, and that’s all.” Not even the
+great affection between the two could hold Swift to
+the Whigs. He had never been entirely a Whig, as he
+was not now entirely a Tory. He was a churchman,
+and the Tories had done for his Church what the
+Whigs had not done. He was hot for power, and the
+Tories had taken him into their councils, as the Whigs
+had not. At last he had found something better for
+him than hopes: work that seemed to him important,
+recognition that seemed to him his due. For the first
+time in his life his pride was asked to what he considered
+fit company.</p>
+
+<p>Harley’s dinners were for Swift a sign that his fortunes
+finally stood beside his ambition. Nor was he
+required to argue for principles he did not believe in.
+The Tories were, it was easy for him to think, more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>
+truly than the Whigs the party of order in Church and
+State. When he had spoken his mind about the Sacramental
+Test a year before, the Whigs had turned away
+from him, as if he were a Tory, and the Archbishop of
+Dublin had written to ask “by what artifice did you
+contrive to pass for a Whig.” Perhaps he had been a
+Tory. He would be a Tory. It was enough for Swift,
+as it had been enough when he took orders, that he
+was assigned a post in a cause which he thought good.
+He gave to his cause all his passion, intensity, genius.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">2</p>
+
+<p>When Swift closed with Harley there commenced a
+chapter singular in history. No other man of affairs
+has ever made such use of a man of letters. At the outset
+Harley so misgauged his pamphleteer that after
+three months he could send him a banknote for fifty
+pounds. It was as if the squire had tipped the bishop.
+Swift was furious at “both the thing and the manner.”
+He returned the money, refused to dine with Harley
+the next day, and demanded satisfaction. “If we let
+these great ministers pretend too much,” he wrote to
+Stella, “there will be no governing them.” A week
+later, still unreconciled, he went to the lobby of the
+House of Commons, found Harley, and sent him into
+the House to call St. John, “to let him know I would
+not dine with him if he dined late.” The Chancellor of
+the Exchequer, soon to be Lord Treasurer, ran the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>
+errand to the Secretary of State for the vicar of
+Laracor. The next day Swift told Stella he had “taken
+Mr. Harley into favour again.”</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday of that week Swift was asked to dine
+with Harley in the company of St. John and Harcourt,
+now Lord Keeper, and became a member of the
+group which, meeting every Saturday except when
+the Queen was at Windsor, informally concerted the
+government of the realm. Swift did not come humbly
+to this cabinet. “Lord Rivers was got there before me,
+and I chid him for presuming to come on a day when
+only Lord Keeper, the Secretary, and I were to be
+there; but he regarded me not. So we all dined together,
+and sat down at four; and the Secretary has invited me
+to dine with him tomorrow. I told them I had no
+hopes they could ever keep in but that I saw they loved
+each other so well, as indeed they seem to do. They
+call me nothing but Jonathan; and I said I believed
+they would leave me Jonathan, as they found me.”</p>
+
+<p>Bullying, rallying, Swift took and kept his seat in
+their councils. Together they planned the steps that
+were to be taken to oust the Whigs, to get rid of the
+Duke of Marlborough, to bring about the peace. The
+ministers devised the necessary intrigues. It was left
+to Swift to master and direct public opinion with the
+<i>Examiner</i> and with the pamphlets and lampoons with
+which he entertained, infuriated, aroused, and reassured
+the public.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p>
+
+<p>The political situation was intricate in detail but
+simple in outline. King William, Prince of Orange,
+had involved his adoptive England with his native
+Holland in the Grand Alliance with Austria against
+France. There had for years been a war and there was
+still a war, of which some of the English were very
+tired. The victories of Marlborough abroad, though
+gratifying, were hardly as regular as the taxes at home.
+The landowners, who tended to be Tories, had begun
+to wonder whether they were not paying taxes to help
+the bankers and jobbers, who tended to be Whigs,
+reap enviable profits. Glory was something, but it cost
+money. Men muttered in country houses that the
+Duke had been riding his whirlwind a long time. They
+had noted that Godolphin, who as Lord Treasurer
+had furnished the war chest, was father to one of
+Marlborough’s sons-in-law; and that Sunderland, Secretary
+of State, was a son-in-law himself. They had
+noted, also, that the Duchess, Mistress of the Robes
+and, it was said, mistress of Godolphin, did more than
+anybody else to make up the Queen’s mind for her.
+Civil affairs, hardly less than military, were in the
+hands of Marlborough, who notoriously wanted to be
+Captain-General for life. A little more, and England
+would be mortgaged to the Marlboroughs.</p>
+
+<p>Such a prospect ruffled and alarmed the Tories.
+Marlborough, veering like Godolphin with the Parliamentary
+wind, had formerly called himself a Tory,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>
+but now called himself a Whig. The Whigs must share
+the blame for the prolongation of the war, for the
+increase in taxes and prices. All that was insular in
+England resisted this burden laid upon it for the possible
+benefit of the Continent. The Whigs had been
+kind to the Dissenters to gain their support in Marlborough’s
+enterprises. All that was orthodox in England
+resented this comfort given to the sects which threatened
+the unity and authority of the Church. Finding
+itself on the dizzy brink of altruism and liberalism,
+England had shrunk back in a passion for its good old
+virtues, its stout old order.</p>
+
+<p>The change had not come of itself or from the disinterested
+conclusions of philosophers, but had been
+contrived and forwarded by Harley and St. John.
+Both of them had owed much to Marlborough, who
+in 1704 had approved of Harley for Secretary of State
+and of St. John for Secretary at War. Under the wings
+of that eagle they had plotted against his feathers.
+St. John had gifts of eloquence and manipulation
+which made him incomparable in the House of Commons.
+Harley, enough duller than his colleague to be
+more widely trusted, was adroit on the backstairs.
+Through his cousin Abigail Hill (Mrs. Masham), for
+whom the Duchess of Marlborough, also a cousin to
+the lady, had obtained a post in the Queen’s bed-chamber,
+his whispers reached his sovereign. Marlborough
+and Godolphin, becoming aware of a secret<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>
+influence against them, had in 1708 traced it to Harley
+and had forced him out of the cabinet, along with
+St. John. Harley had continued to whisper. The
+Queen, resenting the constant pressure from the Duke
+and Duchess, observing the popular unrest, and still
+listening to the whispers, had been convinced that
+the Whigs threatened the peace of the State and the
+safety of the Church. From this had come the overthrow
+of the Godolphin ministry and the sudden rise
+to power of the Tories under the whispering Harley
+and the glittering St. John. It was policy to win to
+their side the wit whom they most desired to have with
+them and most feared to have against them.</p>
+
+<p>The arguments put forth may have been suggested
+by any of the three men. Of the three, however, only
+Swift can be credited with the high scorn, the grave
+ingenuity of this polemic. It was he who, though he
+thought Marlborough “as covetous as hell and ambitious
+as the prince of it,” kept his friends from pressing
+the Duke too hard. Swift had the tact to be content
+with pointing out how much it was to the interest of
+the commander-in-chief to have the war go on. Public
+cynicism might be trusted to do the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Swift use only arguments. He hit upon
+the most insidious illustrations, such as his contrast
+between the rewards of a Roman conqueror and those
+of the Duke. British ingratitude, Swift figured out, had
+already been worth something over half a million<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>
+pounds to the British general. Roman gratitude,
+“which a victorious general received after his return
+from the most glorious expedition, conquered some
+great kingdom, brought the king himself, his family,
+and nobles to adorn the triumph in chains, and made
+the kingdom either a Roman province or at best a
+poor depending state in humble alliance to that
+empire,” would have amounted to less than a thousand
+pounds: incense, a sacrificial bull, an embroidered
+garment, a statue, a trophy, copper medals, a triumphal
+arch and car, and a laurel crown worth
+twopence.</p>
+
+<p>Ingenious and insistent, Swift continued to pluck
+the same string until the public could hear no other
+note when it heard of Marlborough. After a year
+Marlborough fell, and the Duke of Ormond, whom
+Swift ranked next to Oxford (lately Harley) and
+Bolingbroke (lately St. John) among his friends, was
+put in command of the armies.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the Whigs at large Swift turned an attention
+which was no less masterly. They were, for him,
+only a brawling faction, hungry for profits, and not
+more than a tenth of England. The Whigs, having
+made their fortunes at the expense of the majority,
+meant to go on making other fortunes, and would stop
+at no lying, no plotting, no uprising, no overthrowing
+which might serve their factious ends. At the same
+time, Swift would not admit that he was partisan. “We<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>
+are unhappily divided into two parties,” he said,
+“both which pretend a mighty zeal for our religion and
+government, only they disagree about the means. The
+evils we must fence against are, on one side, fanaticism
+and infidelity in religion, and anarchy, under the
+name of a commonwealth, in government; on the
+other side, popery, slavery, and the Pretender from
+France.” Between these two extremes of Whig and
+Tory Swift seemed to take his stand. Or rather, again,
+above both. He was still a clergyman, who put religion
+first among his concerns. He was not a politician, but
+the conscience of politicians. He was the conscience of
+England, tight in its island, deep in its prejudices,
+contemptuous of ideals and metaphysics, plain, sturdy,
+obstinate.</p>
+
+<p>No position was so natural for Swift to take, as no
+position was so effective with the voters. Oxford and
+Bolingbroke might work out of sight with their intrigues.
+Swift never ceased to keep the eyes of the
+world upon their main purposes. British purposes, for
+the sake of British interests, through the exercise of
+British virtues. The Revolution was achieved. The
+Succession was established. It was time now to make
+peace with the Continent and to settle down to a British
+destiny. The change must not be too precipitate.
+Swift wrote as firmly against the ferocious Tories, demanding
+all places instantly for their party, as against
+the ousted Whigs. His variety was in his art, not in his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>
+argument. He could abuse, ridicule, hoax, lampoon,
+in grim prose or easy verse. He could parade the accomplishments
+of the Ministry in sober pamphlets or
+could raise clouds of bright dust to hoodwink the
+opposition. But always he was Swift, looking down
+from his peak at the whole race of mankind, only
+incidentally and temporarily supporting Oxford and
+Bolingbroke.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the Oxford administration Swift was
+loyal, less out of need than out of love. When his
+associates, disregarding the Grand Alliance, made a
+stealthy treaty of peace with France; when, insecure
+in the House of Lords, Oxford got the Queen to create
+a dozen Tory peers who would know why they were
+peers; when England, at the treaty of Utrecht, took
+the largest share of the spoils though she had tricked
+and abandoned the allies: even then Swift loved his
+friends. Passionately loyal, he could be affectionately
+blind.</p>
+
+<p>In Oxford’s thick skin Swift saw a stoic dignity, and
+in Oxford’s procrastination something not too far from
+a noble patience. “Regular in life,” Swift described
+the Lord Treasurer to the Archbishop of Dublin,
+“with a true sense of religion, an excellent scholar and
+a good divine, of a very mild and affable disposition,
+intrepid in his notions and indefatigable in business, an
+utter despiser of money for himself yet frugal, perhaps
+to an extremity, for the public.” Nor about Bolingbroke,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>
+libertine in thought and habit, would Swift be
+squeamish. He admired that “graceful, amiable person”
+and that mind “which was adorned with the
+choicest gifts that God hath yet thought fit to bestow
+upon the children of men.” It was true that the Secretary
+had been “too great and criminal a pursuer” of
+pleasures which could “by no means be reconciled to
+religion or morals.” But, Swift explained, “he was fond
+of mixing pleasure with business, and of being esteemed
+excellent at both; upon which account he had a great
+respect for the characters of Alcibiades and Petronius.”
+Could Socrates resist the charm of Alcibiades, or
+Seneca the charm of Petronius?</p>
+
+<p>Swift, moralist that he was, was little less susceptible
+to the dissolute Secretary than to the decorous Treasurer.
+His affection covered them with its flood. Bolingbroke
+hated Oxford, and Oxford suspected Bolingbroke.
+There was harmony between them only for a
+few months, if so long as that. Yet Swift, by nature so
+misanthropic, by experience so wary, set out with them
+in what he thought was a fellowship of love.</p>
+
+<p>Though he learned better, he remained, to the end
+of his great episode, somewhat at the mercy of his love.
+It was, of course, the corollary of his hate. Hitherto
+alone with his pride in what seemed to him a prison,
+he had been able to hate all those whose neglect had
+kept him there. Such companions as Stella and Addison
+had been only alleviating visitors. But now half the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>
+circle of his enemies had turned friends, and had entreated
+him to help them. They had taken him, apparently,
+to their hearts. They had let him, apparently,
+into their minds. They had given him a tiger’s share
+not only in the battle but in the command. Swift, all
+of whose emotions were profound, responded with
+emotions which were simple: gratitude, fidelity, delight
+in effort, ardent comradeship. He was so exultant at
+being delivered from his prison that he did not notice
+that he had been brought out to be harnessed.</p>
+
+<p>Oxford and Bolingbroke must have smiled at his
+generous tribute to their virtues. Others did. When
+Swift wrote to Peterborough, then in Vienna, that the
+ministers seemed “heartily to love one another” and
+that they loved him too, Peterborough, who had been
+sent on an embassy to get him out of the way of the
+intriguing pair, sceptically wondered how Swift had
+come “to frame a system—in the times we live in—to
+govern the world by love.” Oxford and Bolingbroke
+did not trouble themselves over the excess of Swift’s
+affection, any more than they minded his arrogance.
+They were men of the stormy world, determined to get
+places and keep them. They worked for profit. If
+Swift worked for love or hate, that was his business. He
+was not, perhaps, as indispensable as the backstairs
+Mrs. Masham, but he could hurt the Whigs. They gave
+him all the room they could spare and applauded his
+blows.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span></p>
+
+<p>Loving too much, Swift hated too much, as in his
+attack on the Earl of Wharton. “He is,” Swift said,
+“without the sense of shame or glory as some men are
+without the sense of smelling; and therefore a good
+name to him is no more than a precious ointment
+would be to those....</p>
+
+<p>“He seems to be but an ill dissembler and an ill liar,
+though they are the two talents he most practises and
+most values himself upon. The ends he has gained by
+lying appear to be more owing to the frequency than
+the art of them; his lies being sometimes detected in an
+hour, often in a day, and always in a week.... He
+swears solemnly he loves and will serve you, and your
+back is no sooner turned but he tells those about him
+you are a dog and a rascal. He goes constantly to
+prayers in the forms of his place, and will talk bawdy
+and blasphemy at the chapel door. He is a Presbyterian
+in politics and an atheist in religion, but he chooses
+at present to whore with a Papist. In his commerce
+with mankind his general rule is to endeavour imposing
+on their understandings, for which he has but one
+receipt, a composition of lies and oaths; and this he
+applies indifferently to a freeholder of forty shillings
+and a privy councillor, by which the honest are often
+either deceived or amused; and either way he gains
+his point.... With a good natural understanding,
+a great fluency in speaking, and no ill taste of wit, he
+is generally the worst companion in the world; his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>
+thoughts being wholly taken up between vice and
+politics so that bawdy, profaneness, and business fill up
+his whole conversation.... As some vain young
+fellows, to make a gallantry appear of consequence,
+will choose to venture their necks by climbing up a
+wall or window at midnight to a common wench,
+where they might as freely have gone at the door and
+at noonday; so his Excellency, either to keep himself in
+practice or to advance the fame of his politics, affects
+the most obscure, troublesome, and winding paths,
+even in the commonest affairs, those which would as
+well be brought about in the ordinary forms or which
+would proceed of course whether he intervened or no.</p>
+
+<p>“He bears the gallantries of his lady with the indifference
+of a stoic, and thinks them well recompensed
+by a return of children to support his family, without
+the fatigues of being a father.</p>
+
+<p>“He has three predominant passions which you will
+seldom observe united in the same man, as arising
+from different dispositions of mind, and naturally
+thwarting each other; these are love of power, love of
+money, and love of pleasure. They ride him sometimes
+by turns and sometimes all together.... He
+was never known to refuse or keep a promise....
+But here I desire to distinguish between a promise and
+a bargain; for he will be sure to keep the latter, when
+he has had the fairest offer.”</p>
+
+<p>There was, Swift insisted, nothing personal in his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>
+remarks. “Whoever were to describe the nature of a
+serpent, a wolf, a crocodile, or a fox must be understood
+to do it for the sake of others, without any personal
+love or hatred of the animals themselves.” Nor
+would Wharton take it personally. “When these papers
+are public ’tis odds but he will tell me, as he once did
+upon a like occasion, that ‘he is damnably mauled,’
+and then with the easiest transition in the world ask
+about the weather or time of the day.” And in fact,
+when Swift encountered Wharton at White’s chocolate
+house after the character was published, “Lord
+Wharton saw me at the door, and I saw him but took
+no notice and was going away, but he came through
+the crowd, called after me, and asked me how I did.”</p>
+
+<p>This was, as Swift said, “not a humour put on to
+serve a turn or keep a countenance, not arising from
+the consciousness of his innocence or any grandeur of
+mind, but the mere unaffected bent of his nature.”
+Yet few moralists could have carried themselves more
+justly under such abuse. Wharton needed no philosophy
+in the circumstances. Experience was enough to
+tell him that Swift, accusing him of so finished, so
+universal a villainy, had blamed him for what was
+remarkably near a virtue. The victim himself looked
+brilliant in this glare of wrath. Swift’s hate, in its
+white-hot excess, had grown creative and had shaped
+a monster which had an insolent animal beauty along
+with its human vices.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p>
+
+<p>But not all of Swift’s victims had Wharton’s whistling
+unconcern. There was the Duchess of Somerset,
+the red-haired Mistress of the Robes after the Marlboroughs
+had gone from Court. She had disliked
+Swift before he joined the Tories. With Lady Giffard,
+Temple’s sister, she had resented the final volume of
+Temple’s memoirs in 1709. It contained reflections on
+certain of the Whig lords, and Swift had published it.
+The Duchess, friend to Whigs, decided that he was “a
+man of no principle, either of honour or religion.”
+Swift, knowing this, perversely circulated a lampoon
+in which he called her “Carrots” and brought up the
+old charge that she had connived in the assassination
+of her second husband. The Duchess, who though she
+had reached a third husband at fifteen had had no
+other for nearly thirty years, never forgave Swift.
+More than any of his enemies, more than the Archbishop
+of York, who inflexibly held the <i>Tale of a Tub</i>
+against him, she stood between him and the favour of
+the Queen. He might serve the ministers as only he
+could, but he could not become a bishop without the
+Queen’s approval. That, while the angry Duchess
+lived, he could not get. And the Duchess outlived the
+Queen.</p>
+
+<p>More love than he needed, more hate than he
+needed: these were what hampered Swift in politics.
+He was impatient of craft, of what he called “refinements.”
+“Whatever may be thought or practised by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>
+profound politicians, they will hardly be able to convince
+the reasonable part of mankind that the most
+plain, short, easy, safe, and lawful way to any good
+end is not more eligible than one directly contrary in
+some or all of these qualities. I have been frequently
+assured by great ministers that politics were nothing
+but common sense; which, as it was the only true thing
+they spoke, so it was the only thing they could have
+wished I should not believe.” Swift did believe it. His
+whole instinct was to frame clear policies and go the
+straight way to work with them. In this he resembled
+statesmen of the first rank. But he lacked, what statesmen
+of the first rank have, the touch of dispassion in
+his passion. He trusted his friends more than they deserved,
+because they were his friends. He worried and
+tore his enemies, even when nothing was to be gained
+by it, because they were his enemies. Zealous for order
+in the state, he could not keep order in himself. He
+had the excess and disproportion of genius.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did his defects reduce him merely to the second
+rank of statesmen. They reduced him to the third. In
+the second were Oxford and Bolingbroke. They were
+neither clear in their policies nor straightforward in
+their methods, but they had the patience of guile, the
+persistence of selfishness, the pliability of talent. Moreover,
+they were men of rank and fortune, and they
+were in office. If at first they were afraid of Swift, and
+then came to treasure his virtues, they also found that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>
+they could, by dividing his love and hate, rule him.
+After his hate had sent him out against their enemies,
+his love brought him back to their leash. Let him hold
+himself to be their conscience. They knew how to deal
+with consciences.</p>
+
+<p>There is a record, written about October 1713,
+which painfully, almost shockingly, places Swift in his
+true relations with the Ministry. The scene is the
+Queen’s antechamber at Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business
+and acted as master 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 gaol 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 two hundred pounds 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 he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>Painful and shocking to see a genius so happy in his
+business, when it was such small business to be happy
+in. This was not the carriage of a man who, for all his
+sporadic arrogance, would force great rewards from
+his patrons.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout 1711 and most of 1712 Swift worked
+too hard and too exultantly to have much time for
+hopes. He wrote often to Stella of his return to Ireland.
+Ormond might give him an addition to Laracor. He
+might get a Dublin parish. When Peterborough talked
+of bishops and deans Swift said his highest ambition
+was “to live in England, and with a competency to
+support me with honour.” It was nearly enough to be
+able to advance his friends. The ministers declared
+that Swift never came to them without a Whig in his
+sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>But by the third winter of his power he had begun to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>
+starve on his diet of promises. The rumour that he had
+been made dean of Wells, when he had not, fretted
+him. The deaneries of Ely and Lichfield were vacant
+to no advantage of his. The Ministry must, he grumbled
+through the winter, do something for him or he
+would go back to Laracor. In January 1713 he wrote
+to Oxford: “I most humbly beg leave to inform your
+Lordship that the dean of Wells died this morning at
+one o’clock. I entirely submit my poor fortunes to your
+Lordship.” And Bolingbroke wrote to Swift with a
+rhythmic unction: “Though I have not seen you I did
+not fail to write to Lord Treasurer. <i>Non tua res agitur</i>,
+dear Jonathan. It is the Treasurer’s cause; it is my
+cause; it is every man’s cause who is embarked in our
+bottom. Depend upon it that I never will neglect any
+opportunity of showing that true esteem, that sincere
+affection and honest friendship for you which fill the
+breast of your faithful servant.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a ministerial vow. That same month the
+bishopric of Hereford was filled, but not by Swift. In
+April, when the treaty of Utrecht had at last been
+signed and Swift considered his work done, there
+were vacant preferments on every tree: in England
+the deaneries of Wells, Ely, and Lichfield and the
+canonry of Windsor; in Ireland the bishoprics of
+Raphoe and Dromore. Not one of them fell to Swift.
+Oxford shuffled. Bolingbroke had Swift to dinner.
+The Archbishop of York shook his head. The Duchess<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>
+of Somerset hissed. The Queen held out. She would
+not have Swift a dean or canon in England, or a bishop
+anywhere. Help came from the Duke of Ormond. If the
+present dean of St. Patrick’s in Dublin might be made
+Bishop of Dromore, Swift could have that deanery.
+The Queen consented.</p>
+
+<p>Oxford suddenly became eager to keep Swift in
+England. Let him be prebendary of Windsor. “Thus,”
+wrote Swift, “he perplexes things. I expect neither.
+But I confess, as much as I love England, I am so
+angry at this treatment that if I had my choice I
+would rather have St. Patrick’s.” Did he remember
+that his old friend Robert Hunter, now governor of
+New York, had lately written that he wished Swift
+could come to be bishop there? No matter. The appointment
+was patched up, and Swift became, as he
+was to be for the rest of his life, the Dean of St. Patrick’s.</p>
+
+<p>“All that the Court or Ministry did for me was to let me
+choose my station in the country where I am banished.”
+He was not even allowed to become Historiographer,
+to chronicle the reign which he no longer influenced.</p>
+
+<p>This was the career and this the climax of Swift’s
+life among the great. After a summer in Ireland he
+was, it is true, called back to London for the fourth and
+last winter of the Ministry, but his own future was
+settled, and his time was chiefly taken up with keeping
+the peace between Oxford and Bolingbroke. They
+were, it seemed to Swift, “a ship’s crew quarrelling in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>
+a storm, or while their enemies are within gunshot.”
+The fellowship of love had ceased to exist even for
+Swift’s loyal eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The victors were wrangling over the spoils. What
+about their futures? The Queen would not live for
+ever. The Elector of Hanover, upon whom the Succession
+had been fixed, was certain to be favourable to
+the Whigs. Both Oxford and Bolingbroke, both secretly,
+were dealing with the Pretender, willing to ruin the
+Succession if they could bring in a prince favourable
+to Tories. Meanwhile the mutinous Bolingbroke had
+determined to be first minister himself. Out-intriguing
+Oxford, he won Oxford’s cousin, now Lady Masham,
+to another allegiance. London and Windsor buzzed
+and rumbled. All winter and all spring Swift struggled
+to divert or pacify the wranglers. Their war went on.
+Swift, despairing, took to a dull, angry retreat in
+Berkshire. In July 1714 Oxford was forced to break
+the white staff of his office. Bolingbroke, however, did
+not supplant him. In five days the Queen died. The
+Whiggish Elector was to become George I. Marlborough,
+returning from the Continent, entered London
+with two hundred men on horseback, drums, and
+fifty coaches.</p>
+
+<p>Swift, in a letter to Oxford, said farewell to such
+power as he had had. “In your public capacity,” he
+told him, “you have often angered me to the heart,
+but as a private man, never once.... I will never<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>
+write to you, if I can help it, otherwise than as to a
+private person, nor allow myself to have been obliged
+by you in any other capacity. The memory of one
+great instance of your candour and justice I will carry
+to my grave: that having been in a manner domestic
+with you for almost four years, it was never in the
+power of any public or concealed enemy to make you
+think ill of me, though malice and envy were often
+employed to that end. If I live, posterity shall know
+that and more, which ... is all the return I can
+make you. Will you give me leave to say how I would
+desire to stand in your memory: as one who was truly
+sensible of the honour you did him, though he was
+too proud to be vain upon it; as one who was neither
+assuming, officious, nor teasing, who never wilfully
+misrepresented persons or facts to you, nor consulted
+his passions when he gave a character; and lastly, as
+one whose indiscretions proceeded altogether from a
+weak head, and not an ill heart? I will add one thing
+more, which is the highest compliment I can make:
+that I was never afraid of offending you, nor am I now
+in any pain for the manner I write to you in. I have
+said enough; and, like one at your levee, having made
+my bow, I shrink back into the crowd.”</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">3</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had Swift reached London in 1710 when he
+sat four hours one morning to the fashionable Charles<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span>
+Jervas, who, having begun a portrait on Swift’s previous
+visit to England, now gave the picture “quite
+another turn.” Perhaps he put the gleam of higher
+prospects into those eyes which in their extreme moods
+ranged from fire to stone. Full-lidded, bold even under
+the dark and heavy brows, humorously but not secretively
+averted, they seemed in the portrait to glance at
+something and to stare at everything. Swift’s periwig
+did not conceal his proud, arched forehead. His clerical
+bands plumped out his well-nourished, worldly
+chin, double and dimpled. His nose was both inquiring
+and commanding, ready to be contemptuous at
+the first excuse. But about his mouth there were the
+signs of another nature, sensitive, nervous, never calm.
+The corners would twitch easily, the lips tremble: the
+lower disciplined to a counterfeit of straightness, but
+the upper, short and friendly, indisciplinably sweet.</p>
+
+<p>This was the face of a man whom nothing on earth
+could over-awe, yet who would assert himself too much
+out of mere touchiness. He would frighten others yet
+would hold them, fascinated, dangerously near him.
+He would give and receive much love and little
+happiness. This was the face that was to be among the
+best known in London for four years, this stout body
+somewhat taller than most men’s, this mind more restless
+than any man’s.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f5">
+<img src="images/fig5.jpg" alt="oxford">
+<p class="caption">Jonathan Swift</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>During the Oxford Ministry</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Jervas portrait was but the notation of a few
+hours. The true likeness of Swift in his days of power
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>he drew himself, in the journal-letters to Stella which
+he posted whenever his sheet of paper was full. Before
+he left his bed in the morning, after he got into it at
+night, at any time during the day, Swift set down,
+with minor interruptions, a continuous account of all,
+or almost all, he did. He took it for granted that Stella
+was interested in whatever concerned him. His journal
+was partly news sent from the great world to a friend
+waiting in a small one, but it was partly, also, a detailed
+memorandum written as for his other self. He
+could be confiding, indiscreet, coarse, boastful, hilarious,
+tender, admonitory, savage, absurd, pouring out
+what came to him as it came. He wrote now as if this
+were a letter to Stella and Rebecca Dingley both, or
+to either of them; now as if it were a conversation with
+himself, in the knowledge that they, and only they,
+would hear.</p>
+
+<p>The journal was so intimate that he fell often into a
+foolish “little language,” like a giant talking to a baby
+with what he imagined was the baby’s vocabulary
+and pronunciation—or like a lover using silly words
+in despair of finding any that were serious enough.
+Swift’s baby-talk was a joke kept up between him and
+Stella, a note of tenderness struck in this way for want
+of a chance to sound it with a voice. But he did not
+talk down to her. He told her his life.</p>
+
+<p>“I was this morning at ten at the rehearsal of
+Mr. Addison’s play, called <i>Cato</i>, which is to be acted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>
+on Friday. There were not above half-a-score of us to
+see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough
+to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet
+directing them; and the drab that acts Cato’s daughter
+out in the midst of a passionate part and then calling
+out ‘What’s next?’ The Bishop of Clogher was there
+too, but he stood privately in a gallery. I went to dine
+with Lord Treasurer, but he was gone to Wimbledon,
+his daughter Carmarthen’s country seat, seven miles
+off. So I went back and dined privately with Mr. Addison,
+whom I had left to go to Lord Treasurer. I keep
+fires yet; I am very extravagant. I sat this evening
+with Sir Andrew Fountaine.... It is rainy weather
+again; nevle saw ze rike [never saw the like]. This
+letter shall go tomorrow. Remember, ung oomens, it
+is seven weeks since your last, and I allow oo but five
+weeks. But oo have been galloping in the country.”</p>
+
+<p>The variety of Swift’s days was in the persons he met
+and talked with. His habits had the regularity which
+goes with being virtuous and poor. He made, however,
+no virtue of his poverty. “I love these shabby difficulties
+when they are over; but I hate them, because
+they arise from not having a thousand pounds a year.”</p>
+
+<p>Though he liked best to make his own meal of a
+single dish, he despised a skimpy table. Though he
+liked to walk, and took a chair or coach only in bad
+weather, he minded the expense when he had to ride,
+not his loss of an opportunity to trudge like a hero. He<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>
+thought he was extravagant about fires, but when he
+shivered in his lodgings it was because coal cost money,
+not because shivering exalted his spirit. He avoided
+fruit, he more or less gave up snuff, he put water in his
+wine. All these asceticisms were for the sake of his
+treacherous health, as was the brandy that he drank,
+as were the pills and purges, the drops and ointments
+with which he fought his many attacks of giddiness.
+But never once did he rejoice in the endurance of a
+saint or the glory of a martyr. He did not relish even
+the fasts of his Church. “I hate Lent. I hate different
+diets, and furmity and butter, and herb porridge, and
+sour devout faces of people who only put on religion
+for seven weeks.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift was a man of his world in his frank admiration
+for power, station, wealth, comfort, elegance, urbanity,
+learning, wit, manners. He had come to England to
+seek a better society than there was in Laracor or
+Dublin. His natural handicaps—passion, intensity,
+genius—were enough. He would not pretend that his
+lack of fortune was a merit. He complained of it, desired
+to mend it, and kept the best company he could.</p>
+
+<p>Each morning in his various London lodgings
+Patrick, the servant whom Swift had brought over
+from Ireland, woke his master early, not always the
+first time he called. Swift’s sleep was heavy but disturbed.
+“I was dreaming the most melancholy things
+of poor Ppt [Poppet], and was grieving and crying all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>
+night.” Awake, he was likely to stay in bed till the
+room was warm, writing, often still by candlelight, as
+if Stella and Dingley were beside him. “Morning. I am
+going this morning to see Prior, who dines with me at
+Mr. Harley’s; so I can’t stay fiddling and talking with
+dear little brats in a morning, and ’tis terribly cold. I
+wish my cold hand was in the warmest place about
+you, young women. I’d give ten guineas upon that
+account with all my heart, faith. Oh, it starves my
+thigh. So I’ll rise and bid you good morrow, my ladies
+both, good morrow. Come, stand away, let me rise.
+Patrick, take away the candle. Is there a good fire?
+So—up adazy.”</p>
+
+<p>Shaving, every second or third day; brandy, on
+days when he was giddy; breakfast of milk porridge or
+a cake Stella’s mother had made him: these got Swift
+ready for his day. He might write at home, all day
+when he was busiest, sending out for a chop and a pot
+of ale for his dinner. But usually he put on periwig,
+boots, and black gown with pudding-sleeves, and left
+the house, walking, about his pleasure or his affairs.
+Perhaps he had morning tea or chocolate with some of
+the ladies who delighted in his fame and insolence.
+Perhaps he conferred with his printers in the City.
+Perhaps he waited on one of the lords of his political
+fellowship. There were many amusements in London.
+“Lady Kerry, Mrs. Pratt, Mrs. Cadogan, and I in one
+coach, Lady Kerry’s son and his governor and two<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>
+gentlemen in another, maids and misses and little
+master (Lord Shelburne’s children) in a third, all
+hackneys, set out at ten o’clock this morning from Lord
+Shelburne’s house in Piccadilly to the Tower, and saw
+all the sights, lions, etc., then to Bedlam; then dined
+at the chop-house behind the Exchange; then to
+Gresham College (but the keeper was not at home);
+and concluded the night at the puppet-show, whence
+we came home safe at eight.”</p>
+
+<p>The pivot of Swift’s day was dinner, usually at three.
+First with Whigs, then with Tories, he dined through
+the town and out of it. “That’s something charms me
+mightily about London, that you go dine a dozen miles
+off in October, stay all day, and return so quickly.
+You cannot do anything like this in Dublin.” Within
+a month after the Whigs clutched at him he had more
+invitations than he had afternoons. He was a wit and
+scholar; he was a man of influence with the Ministry.
+Noblemen with axes to grind begged him to come to
+their tables. Men less interested in his power no less
+eagerly took up the fashion. Obliging hosts urged him
+to make his own terms.</p>
+
+<p>“I dined today with a lady of my acquaintance, who
+was sick, in her bedchamber, upon three herrings and
+a chicken; the dinner was my bespeaking.” “Dr.
+Arbuthnot ... yesterday gave me my choice of place,
+persons, and victuals for today. So I chose to dine with
+Mrs. Hill ... Mrs. Masham’s sister; no company<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>
+but us three, and to have a shoulder of mutton, a small
+one; which was exactly, only there was too much victuals
+besides, and the Doctor’s wife was of the company.”
+Nor did Swift make terms only with friends
+of his own level. Bolingbroke “showed me his bill
+of fare to tempt me to dine with him. Poh, said I, I
+value not your bill of fare. Give me your bill of company.”
+About both the food and the other diners
+Swift was firm. At the Earl of Abingdon’s “we had
+nothing but fish.... Our wine was poison.... His
+carps were raw, and his candles tallow. He shall not
+catch me in haste again.” And again: “I left a friend’s
+house today where I was invited, just when dinner was
+setting on, and pretended I was engaged, because I
+saw some fellows I did not know.”</p>
+
+<p>Better a slice of mutton in his lodgings than indifferent
+or too numerous dishes; better his own company
+than that of “persons unknown, as bad, for aught I
+know, as your deans, parsons, and curates.” Swift rode
+high, and all Tory London encouraged him.</p>
+
+<p>At many houses where he dined the guests stayed on
+for the evening. Swift chose generally to leave at six,
+to walk in Hyde Park, to visit other friends, to sit in a
+coffee house—though after a few months of his influence
+with Oxford he gave up coffee houses as too
+public. Many of his evenings he went home to write,
+at first an occasional <i>Tatler</i>, then his weekly <i>Examiner</i>,
+afterwards his pamphlets, at any time his stinging<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>
+verses. In his lodgings he might find that Patrick had
+forgotten the fire or had neglected to buy coal or had
+gone off with the key with which Swift’s papers were
+locked up. There would be abuse and apology, neither
+of which meant anything. The most regular interruptions
+of Swift’s evenings came from Oxford, who kept
+“cursed hours,” sometimes did not dine till five, and
+liked Swift to be with him at supper. “I hate these
+suppers mortally, but I seldom eat anything.” Such
+evenings with Oxford were likely to be long and convivial,
+and wearing to Swift, who drank little, ate less,
+liked as well to sit beside card-players as to play himself,
+and was soon bored by ordinary conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when he had reached his bed and had put on
+his nightgown and velvet nightcap—the fur-trimmed
+one which Dingley sent was “too little and too hot”—he
+remembered, no matter how late it was, the journal.
+“Pshaw, I must be writing to those dear saucy brats
+every night, whether I will or no, let me have what
+business I will, or come home ever so late, or be ever so
+sleepy; but an old saying and a true one,</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“‘<i>Be you lords or be you earls,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>You must write to naughty girls.</i>’”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Widely as Swift dined, three days a week were for
+much of the year given to his special friends. On
+Sunday, after going to Court, which he said served him
+“as a coffee house,” he usually dined with Bolingbroke.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>
+“Mr. Secretary had too much company with
+him today; so I came away soon after dinner. I give no
+man liberty to swear or talk bawdy, and I found some
+of them were in constraint, so I left them to themselves.”
+On Saturday Swift dined with Oxford for
+what the first minister called his “whipping day”—the
+day, that is, when the informal cabinet reviewed
+the past week and designed the next. “This company,
+at first, consisted only of the Lord Keeper Harcourt,
+the Earl Rivers, the Earl of Peterborough, Mr. Secretary
+St. John, and myself; and here, after dinner, they
+used to discourse and settle matters of great importance.
+Several lords were afterwards, by degrees,
+admitted.... These meetings were always continued
+except when the Queen was at Windsor; but, as they
+grew more numerous, became of less consequence, and
+ended only in drinking and general conversation.” The
+matters of great importance were the Ministry’s policies
+and intrigues. The general conversation has been lost.</p>
+
+<p>Swift told Stella only that he and his friends had
+talked, seldom what they had said. Once, not on a
+Saturday, when he had opposed the appointment of a
+certain commissioner to Spain because he was a “most
+covetous cur,” Swift reported the argument with
+Oxford. “I went on and said it was a shame to send
+him; to which he agreed, but desired I would name
+some who understood business and do not love money,
+for he could not find them. I said there was something<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>
+in a treasurer different from other men; that we ought
+not to make a man a bishop who does not love divinity,
+or a general who does not love war; and I wondered
+why the Queen would make a man lord treasurer who
+does not love money.... Is it not silly to write all
+this? But it gives you an idea what our conversation is
+with mixed company.” When the Earl of Nottingham
+had deserted to the Whig side “Lord Treasurer was
+hinting as if he wished a ballad was made on him, and
+I will get up one against tomorrow.... I was this
+morning making the ballad, two degrees above Grub
+Street ... and then went to dine with our Society....
+The printer came before we parted, and brought
+the ballad, which made them laugh very heartily a
+dozen times.”</p>
+
+<p>The Society which laughed at the ballad claimed
+the third fixed dinner of Swift’s week, Thursday,
+though only during the session of Parliament. Bolingbroke
+seems to have planned the club in June 1711,
+when Swift was in the country with Lord Shelburne.
+It was to be small, weighty, and decent, without the
+extravagance of the Kit-Cat or the drunkenness of the
+Beef-Steak, was to be made up of men of wit and men
+of influence, and was to have for its two great ends
+“the improvement of friendship and the encouragement
+of letters.” Swift, back in town, found himself
+among the original twelve members and at once the
+eagerest. “If we go on as we begin,” he wrote to Stella,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>
+“no other club in this town will be worth talking of.”
+The men of wit were Swift, Prior, and John Arbuthnot,
+the Queen’s physician. There were three times as
+many men of influence. Oxford and Harcourt were
+excluded, since the club meant to appeal to them for
+patronage. But their sons were chosen, and Oxford’s
+son-in-law, Viscount Dupplin, and Samuel Masham,
+the husband of Oxford’s whispering cousin. There
+were, also, Bolingbroke, Sir Robert Raymond, Solicitor
+General, Allen Bathurst, George Granville, Secretary
+at War, and Sir William Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>The members, putting off their titles when they
+dined, called each other “Brother.” Each in turn was
+president of the dinner and paid the bill until all had
+had turns, after which the charges of each dinner were
+divided among them. They dined sometimes at the
+houses of the members, more often at taverns. The
+dozen or so brothers added after the first twelve were
+all on the side of influence rather than of wit. The
+richer members, who were men of influence, ran up
+the cost of their dinners so that the poorer, who were
+men of wit, could not afford it. Yet Swift, though he
+winced at his bill for seven guineas, for a year and a
+half was happy. Power and learning had sat down in
+an equal brotherhood. When the Duke of Ormond
+brought his brother the Earl of Arran, who was not a
+member, to a meeting against all order, Swift opposed
+his election to the face of the Earl and the Duke. But
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>Swift was exultant when four of his brothers were
+among the twelve peers whom Oxford packed into the
+House of Lords: the son-in-law Dupplin, the cousin-in-law
+Masham, Bathurst, and Granville.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f6">
+<img src="images/fig6.jpg" alt="vanessa">
+<p class="caption">Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa)</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>In Ireland</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It took Swift a year and a half to realize how much
+more skill than he the men of influence had at getting
+what they wanted. Having odd wells of enthusiasm in
+him, he had imagined that a club of politicians could
+be as much interested in the encouragement of letters
+as in the improvement of friendship.</p>
+
+<p>The day after the first meeting in June 1711 he
+urged Oxford to leave Congreve, though a Whig, in
+his post. Oxford said he would. Swift hurried off to
+Congreve with the news. “So I have made a worthy
+man happy, and that is a good day’s work.” And
+Swift that same day had larger plans. “I am proposing
+to my Lord to erect a society or academy for correcting
+and settling our language, that we may not perpetually
+be changing as we do. He enters mightily into it.” The
+pamphlet on “correcting, ascertaining, and improving
+the English tongue” was the only piece of writing
+Swift ever published with his name. He wrote again
+like a governor, demanding that the language be
+orderly and stable, regulated by a lawful academy. He
+wrote, no less, like a brother of the Society, appealing
+to Oxford to become the patron of worthy, needy men
+of letters. Nothing came of these proposals, though
+Oxford brimmed with promises.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p>
+
+<p>Swift undertook to raise money among the members.
+In February 1713 he had collected sixty guineas
+and was “to give them away to two authors tomorrow;
+and Lord Treasurer has promised us a hundred pounds
+to reward some others.” The sixty pounds went to the
+two authors, but there was another in worse need.
+That was “little Harrison,” a young Oxford poet for
+whom Swift had one of his profound, inexplicable
+tendernesses. “I went in the morning, and found him
+mighty ill, and got ... an order for a hundred
+pounds from the Treasury to be paid him tomorrow;
+and I have got him removed to Knightsbridge for
+air.” The next day: “I ... desired a friend to receive
+the hundred pounds for poor Harrison, and will
+carry it to him tomorrow morning.” The day after
+that: “I took Parnell this morning, and we walked to
+see poor Harrison. I had the hundred pounds in my
+pocket. I told Parnell I was afraid to knock at the
+door; my mind misgave me. I knocked, and his man
+in tears told me his master was dead an hour before....
+Lord Treasurer was much concerned when I
+told him. I could not dine with Lord Treasurer nor
+anywhere else, but got a bit of meat toward evening.”</p>
+
+<p>This pathetic episode, hardly more than a touch of
+melodrama in the general drama of Swift’s venture,
+cut him more sharply than his own mounting disappointment.
+He had thought that though he might
+not help himself he might at least help others. Now it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>
+seemed he could not do even that. He had only kept a
+few Whig poets in their places. His scheme for an
+academy which was to honour and establish letters
+among the English was still a mere scheme somewhere
+on the wind. The Ministry which he had served was
+not, after all, to be renowned for its patronage to
+learning. The man of wit had looked vainly to the men
+of influence.</p>
+
+<p>What Swift, whose pride played tricks with his
+vision, did not see was that he had exploited his wit
+much as Oxford had exploited all the wit at his command.
+Oxford had used such men of letters as could
+be bent to his political concerns. Swift had bent his
+talents to pamphlets and lampoons about the most
+temporary matters. From Prior he had learned to
+write verse more lightly as from Addison he had
+learned to write more smoothly. Swift had poured his
+tremendous prose on the ground, careless what became
+of it. Obsessed with the desire for power, he had tried
+to win it by such force as politicians use, not by the art
+natural to him; among his pretended brothers the
+Dupplins and Mashams, not among his true friends
+the Arbuthnots and Popes.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">4</p>
+
+<p>During his final winter in England Swift turned to
+his true friends. It was not because he had found where
+he belonged. It was because he knew he had failed to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>
+belong elsewhere. He was not a bishop. He was not
+even an English dean. He was only a great writer,
+author of a great satire, making his first plans for the
+greatest of satires, meditating a revenge. But his revenge
+hardly went, that year, beyond a prospectus.
+He and Arbuthnot had taken up the rising young
+poets Parnell, Gay, and Pope. All five met Saturday
+evenings at Arbuthnot’s rooms in St. James’s Palace,
+where the Scriblerus Club, as they called themselves,
+plotted a burlesque biography which was to ridicule
+false learning.</p>
+
+<p>Oxford had called Swift Dr. Martin, “because
+martin is a sort of a swallow, and so is a swift.” From
+that had come the name of Martinus Scriblerus, a
+phantom pedant whose career the Club was to trace
+through all his foolish blunders. The leader seems to
+have been Arbuthnot. “To talk of Martin in any hands
+but yours,” Swift wrote to him, “is a folly. You every
+day give better hints than all of us together could do
+in a twelvemonth.... Pope, who first thought of the
+hint, has no genius at all to it, in my mind. Gay is too
+young. Parnell has some ideas of it, but is idle. I could
+put together, and lard, and strike out well enough.
+But all that relates to the sciences must be from you.”
+Arbuthnot wrote the history of Martin’s youth and
+education so wittily that Sterne later pilfered from
+it for his history of Tristram Shandy. Pope, hunting
+among contemporary poets for examples of bathos,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>
+“the art of sinking in poetry,” took the first steps in
+his war upon the dunces. Swift was to exhibit Martin
+on his travels, and had already thought of taking
+him among pigmies, among giants, among fantastic
+scientists.</p>
+
+<p>The break in the Ministry and the death of the
+Queen scattered the Scriblerus Club. Though the
+members often spoke of it in their letters, the treatise
+remained fragments. “I must be a little easy in my
+mind before I can think of Scriblerus,” Swift wrote to
+Pope. It was not merely an uneasy mind which kept
+Swift from going on with the project. Whether or not
+he was yet aware of it, the scheme was too small for
+him. He could no longer be content, as he might have
+been in the days of the <i>Tale of a Tub</i>, to ridicule
+pedants.</p>
+
+<p>Swift certainly was not aware, at the Saturday
+meetings of the Club, that his friends had by nature a
+better art than he could ever learn: the art of valuing
+their best gifts most, the art of being satisfied to be
+themselves. What he did with them he thought of as
+play. His work, he thought, was his efforts, vain as
+they were, in behalf of Oxford and Bolingbroke. He
+stood between the ministers and the poets, eager to be
+generous. “Of all the world,” Pope wrote, “you are
+the man, without flattery, who serve your friends with
+the least ostentation. It is almost ingratitude to thank
+you, considering your temper.” Swift introduced<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>
+Parnell to the ministers and interested Bolingbroke in
+Parnell’s poetry. Swift helped Gay to his post as secretary
+with the envoy to Hanover. Swift got for Pope’s
+translation of Homer such a list of subscribers as no
+book had ever had in England. Swift struck the vein
+which in Arbuthnot “lay like a mine in the earth,
+which the owner for a long time never knew of.” But
+Swift did not take a benefit from their examples.</p>
+
+<p>How could he? Parnell was humble and drifting.
+Gay was sensual and lazy, ready to be any man’s dependent,
+troubled only because patrons were too few.
+Pope was first and last a poet who schemed, fought,
+and lived for his art, as Swift for action. Arbuthnot
+was a man of learning and judgment, of whom Swift
+said that he had “more wit than we all have” and
+Pope said that in wit and humour he was “superior to
+all mankind”; but Arbuthnot was not ambitious or
+misanthropic. He might scorn the world, but he amply
+took it as it came. Of all the patterns by which these
+others shaped their lives, not a single pattern fitted
+Swift.</p>
+
+<p>When, after a summer spent in dejected, furious
+retirement at Letcombe in Berkshire, writing various
+apologias for the fallen Ministry, Swift went back to
+Ireland in September 1714, he was beaten but not
+reconciled. His impulse was still towards the central
+fountains of honour and profit and power. His obsessive
+desire to master and direct had not, after all his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>
+disappointments, left him in even a sullen peace.
+Having been beaten, and not reconciled, he could not
+study his failure in a clear light. He did not understand
+that with his gifts, wit and learning, passion and intensity
+and genius, he had been at a disadvantage with
+men who had wealth and office, and that though he
+could pass them in the long run, he could not be immediately
+equal with them. The fault, as he explained
+it to himself, did not lie in his passion to do what he
+was not chiefly designed to do, nor in the incompetence
+and deviousness of his political associates, nor in the
+catastrophe of the Queen’s death. It lay, he somehow
+concluded, in the very constitution of human life.</p>
+
+<p>Let virtue work and sweat as it would to bring order
+out of the dirty chaos, nothing permanent could come
+of it. For a time a few resolute men might hold up the
+dreadful weight with their shoulders. But if there
+should be one tremor, the momentary pattern would
+collapse and the parts of it return to their obstinate
+disorder. There was no hope. Scorn and hate were all
+that any virtuous or reasonable man could feel towards
+mankind.</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c5">V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c xlarge sp">DEAN AND PATRIOT</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">1</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">J</span>eers</span> followed Swift out of England, and jeers
+greeted him in Ireland. Dublin was full of Whigs.
+Laracor, which he had kept along with his deanery,
+was desolate. “I would retire too, if I could,” he wrote
+after a month to Bolingbroke, “but my country seat,
+where I have an acre of ground, is gone to ruin. The
+wall of my own apartment is fallen down, and I want
+mud to rebuild it and straw to thatch it. Besides, a
+spiteful neighbour has seized on six feet of ground,
+carried off my trees, and spoiled my grove.... I
+have not fortitude enough to go and see those devastations.
+But, in return, I live a country life in town, 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.”
+So a banished general might have said it was not so
+bad to spend his time drilling a squad of militia in a
+distant province.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You are to understand,” Swift wrote after ten
+months to Pope, “that I live in the corner of a vast unfurnished
+house. My family consists of a steward, a
+groom, a helper in the stables, 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.” So a deposed prime minister
+might have turned his hand to the government of a
+village.</p>
+
+<p>Swift did not neglect his chores. He set to work to
+subdue the “three and twenty dignitaries and prebendaries”
+who made up his chapter at St. Patrick’s.
+The chapter yielded. He began to resist his superiors,
+particularly the bishops who had deprived him of
+credit for the grant of the First Fruits. The bishops
+became wary. Even in Laracor, where Swift was only
+vicar, he demanded better manners from the Welsh
+bishop of the diocese, and, somewhat later, wrote to
+him as vicars seldom write to bishops: “I am only sorry
+that you, who are of a country famed for good nature,
+have found a way to unite the hasty passion of your
+own countrymen with the long, sedate resentment of a
+Spaniard; but I have an honourable hope that this
+proceeding has been more owing to party than complexion.”
+Though Swift refused for half a dozen years<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>
+to mix in the business of the world which had defeated
+him, he was, from the first, gigantic and ominous in
+his exile.</p>
+
+<p>There was need of caution. During his stay in England
+he had got out of touch with Irish affairs, as well
+as out of sympathy. London had run him into debt.
+As dean and vicar he was to have about six or seven
+hundred pounds a year when he could get them: an
+income which made him, he said, the poorest man in
+Ireland who dined off plate and the richest who did
+not drive his carriage. But the installation at St.
+Patrick’s cost a thousand pounds and several stringent
+years. The Whigs suspected Swift, like the late ministers,
+of disloyalty to George I. The suspicion was
+absurd. “I look upon the coming of the Pretender,”
+Swift said, “as a greater evil than any we are likely to
+suffer under the worst Whig ministry that can be
+found.” Yet when Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond—“three
+persons from among the rest of mankind on
+whose friendship and protection I might depend,
+whose conversation I most valued and chiefly confined
+myself to”—were charged with the treason of plotting
+to bring the Pretender in, when Ormond and Bolingbroke
+escaped to France and Oxford went to the
+Tower, Swift shared their odium.</p>
+
+<p>The authorities, intercepting letters sent to him, had
+a chance to read nothing more treasonable than these
+words from Ormond: “We have no new favourite, nor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>
+never can. You have left so sweet a relish by your conversation
+upon all our pleasures that we cannot bear
+the thoughts of intimacy with any person.” With the
+wives of Bolingbroke and Ormond Swift carried on a
+guarded correspondence. To Oxford, in the Tower, he
+wrote without reserve, making him “the humblest
+offers of my poor service and attendance”—attendance,
+that is, in prison if Oxford would permit it. “It
+is the first time I ever solicited you in my own behalf,
+and if I am refused I think it will be the first request
+you ever refused me. I do not conceive myself obliged
+to regulate my opinions by the proceedings of a House
+of Lords or Commons; and therefore, however they
+may acquit themselves in your Lordship’s case, I shall
+take the liberty of thinking and calling you the ablest
+and faithfulest minister, the truest lover of your country,
+that this age hath produced.” Oxford’s son kept
+the letter “as a family monument.” Oxford himself
+acknowledged it two years later.</p>
+
+<p>While the Jacobite odium hung over Swift he declared,
+not quite in earnest, that he would hide himself
+away in Guernsey or Wales for the rest of his life. The
+world was too hateful to live in. Yet what most distressed
+him was his grief over the friends with whom
+he could no longer be “familiar and customary.”
+“When I leave a country without a probability of returning,”
+he wrote to Pope, “I think as seldom as I
+can of what I loved or esteemed in it, to avoid the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>
+<i>desiderium</i> which of all things makes life most uneasy.”
+And to Arbuthnot he wrote: “Writing to you would
+make me stark mad. Judge his condition who has
+nothing to keep him from being miserable but endeavouring
+to forget those for whom he has the greatest
+value, love, and friendship.”</p>
+
+<p>His friends would not let him sink into such a gulf.
+“Never,” Arbuthnot answered him, “repeat that melancholy,
+tender word, that you will endeavour to
+forget me. I am sure I never can forget you till I meet
+with, what is impossible, another whose conversation
+I can delight so much in as Dr. Swift’s.... That
+hearty, sincere friendship, that plain and open ingenuity
+in all your commerce, is what I am sure I can
+never find in another man. I shall want often a faithful
+monitor, one that would vindicate me behind my back
+and tell me my faults to my face.” Pope wrote to him
+of “the constant esteem and affection I am both
+obliged and inclined to have for you,” and said he
+regarded him “as a friend in another world,” much
+as he regarded his patron saint. Bolingbroke wrote
+that for a half hour’s conversation with Swift he would
+“barter whole hours of life.” For a year or more Swift
+could hardly bring himself to reply. Then, however,
+the rigour of his despair began to leave him, his wit to
+come out of the lair where it had sulked.</p>
+
+<p>To Pope, in 1716, Swift pointed out the use of fools,
+who, in his opinion, were “as necessary for a good<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>
+writer as pen, ink, and paper.” He could take enough
+interest in wit to propose to Gay the subject of another
+pastoral. “What think you of a Newgate pastoral,
+among the whores and thieves there?” In 1717 he
+wrote once more to Addison, now Secretary of State,
+congratulating Addison upon his post and the Whigs
+for having chosen one man on his merits. In 1718
+Swift wrote to Oxford’s son that time had sweetened
+him. “My servants tell all our neighbourhood that I
+grow gentler every day, and am content only to call
+my footman a fool for that which when you knew me
+first I would have broke his head.” And in December
+1719 Swift wrote to Bolingbroke a letter in which his
+humour played again over his passion.</p>
+
+<p>“I can now express in a hundred words what would
+formerly have cost me ten. I can write epigrams of
+fifty distichs which might be squeezed into one. I have
+gone the round of all my stories three or four times
+with the younger people, and begin them again. I give
+hints how significant a person I have been, and nobody
+believes me. I pretend to pity them, but am inwardly
+angry.... If I boast of having been valued three
+hundred miles off, it is of no more use than if I told
+how handsome I was when I was young.... If I
+can prevail on any one to personate a hearer and
+admirer, you would wonder what a favourite he grows.
+He is sure to have the first glass out of the bottle and
+the best bit I can carve. Nothing has convinced me so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>
+much that I am of a little subaltern spirit, <i>inopis atque
+pusilli animi</i>, as to reflect how I am forced into the most
+trifling amusements to divert the vexation of former
+thoughts and present objects.”</p>
+
+<p>In another man this might have sounded like humility.
+In Swift it has, somehow, the imagined sound of a
+searchlight falling into a dark corner.</p>
+
+<p>He was now almost Swift again. Looking back over
+his career as a wit he wrote an ironic letter of advice to
+a young poet, assuring him that poetry did not demand
+religion or learning or even sense of those who practised
+it. Ireland, he argued, must have a Grub Street.
+Ireland must have a poet laureate, a professor of
+poetry, a city bard for Dublin, a poet in fee for every
+parish. It might have more. “What if every one so
+qualified were obliged to add one more than usual to
+the number of his domestics, and besides a fool and a
+chaplain (which are often united in one person) would
+retain a poet in his family?” Looking back over his
+career as a parson Swift wrote a sober letter of advice
+to a young clergyman. To him, not to the poet, Swift
+said that “proper words in proper places make the
+true definition of a style.”</p>
+
+<p>Both these letters dealt with what for Swift was play.
+He resumed his work in a pamphlet urging all the
+Irish, as a protest against the ruinous export laws, to
+make a “universal use of Irish manufacture,” “utterly
+rejecting and renouncing everything wearable that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>
+comes from England.” Officials fumed. He was, they
+claimed, trying to divide the two kingdoms. The
+printer was brought to trial. When the jury acquitted
+him the Lord Chief Justice sent them back nine times,
+till they were willing to leave the verdict to the mercy
+of the judge. Though the case was dropped when the
+next Lord Lieutenant came over, the damage was
+done. Swift, having once more tasted Whig blood, was
+on his way to becoming an Irish patriot.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">2</p>
+
+<p>But before he gathered all his forces he had to go
+through his final conflict with Stella’s rival. The drama
+reaching its climax was already much too long.</p>
+
+<p>He had met Vanessa (Esther Vanhomrigh) early in
+1708 in London, where her mother was living with her
+children. It pleased the mother to call the daughter
+younger than she was, and it did not displease the
+daughter. She was a sleepy girl, still, at twenty, undecided
+between the nursery and the drawing-room,
+moody, idle, intelligent. Swift, at first considering her
+a child, discovered in her a mind, and was irresistibly,
+humorously impelled to shape it. “She had good principles,”
+he wrote three years later, “and I have corrected
+all her faults.” She had, however, the passion
+of sleepy women, not the obedience of Stella.</p>
+
+<p>To that passion Swift was blind, first carelessly, then
+deliberately. No doubt he felt it. He had put his entire<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>
+energy into his pride. His senses, no matter how cold
+towards women, must have learned that the relationship
+with Stella, no matter how close and kind, was
+sometimes dry and mild. She was nearly a wife,
+and some routine had got into their companionship.
+Vanessa was younger. Vanessa was new. Swift, for all
+his prudence, enjoyed the tumult in her disposition.
+Because he held her, as he seems always to have done,
+at a safe arm’s-length, he was obtuse to her eagerness.
+Obtuse and insufficiently concerned. Being forty, he
+could not quite resist such warmth from a girl, did not
+have quite the courage to put out such a fire or leave it.
+Too scrupulous or too temperate to make the full use
+of Vanessa’s passion, he went on idling within its
+perilous range. He was surprised when he found that
+he had on his hands a mistress as extraordinary as the
+wife he had in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Stella the extraordinary wife. Vanessa the extraordinary
+mistress. Swift the extraordinary husband and
+lover. No other terms will bound the extraordinary
+triangle. Gossip then and gossip since has wasted its
+strength in trying to find out whether Swift was
+technically lover or husband to either of the women.
+What if he was? What if he was not? The drama remains
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>Stella was for nearly forty years, child and woman,
+“the truest, most virtuous and valuable friend that
+I,” Swift said, “or perhaps any other person, ever was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span>
+blessed with.” Call Stella his wife or be pedantic.
+Vanessa was for fifteen years his occasional companion,
+his delight, his torment, to whom he wrote—in bad
+French—that there was no merit nor any proof of his
+good taste in his finding in her all that nature had
+given any mortal in the way of honour, virtue, sense,
+wit, tenderness, agreeableness, and firmness of spirit.
+Call Vanessa his mistress or be pedantic. One side of
+Swift looked towards a wife, one towards a mistress. He
+maintained between them a singular course, but it was
+no more singular than his character. He was, after all,
+only one man loved by two women.</p>
+
+<p>The friendship begun in 1708 between Swift and
+Vanessa, anxious to be possessed but willing to be
+taught, was kept up during that stay in England and,
+by letters, during his next absence in Ireland. When
+he returned to become a Tory in 1710 he had so lavish
+a welcome from the Vanhomrighs that their house
+became almost his. He lived near them, dined with
+them often and then more often, and had a small room
+there in which to read and write.</p>
+
+<p>Stella, hearing about them, seems to have sniffed.
+“You say they are of no consequence,” he answered
+her. “Why, they keep as good female company as I do
+male. I see all the drabs of quality at this end of the
+town with them.” He spoke in his journal rather of
+the mother or of the whole family than of Vanessa.</p>
+
+<p>When, having taken to Chelsea in the spring of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>
+1711, he walked more or less daily to London and
+back, he kept his best gown and periwig at the Vanhomrigh
+house, and called twice a day to change.
+Vanessa, with the family, possibly visited him in
+Chelsea, as she probably did at Kensington in the
+summer of the year after. The Vanhomrighs certainly
+visited Swift at Windsor in September 1712, and
+Vanessa was on some score disappointed. “Why then,”
+he wrote, “you should not have come, and I knew that
+as well as you.”</p>
+
+<p>So far any strong feelings there may have been in
+either of them had not risen into words. He teased her
+for her dawdling, for her chiding, for her jealousy of
+her younger sister, for her habit of coaxing him for
+political secrets. She complained, rather childishly, of
+his neglect of her when he was out of London. Their
+letters might have been between Swift and any young
+woman of his acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>But when he went to Ireland in June 1713, sick of
+England, Vanessa could not endure the stern break
+which suited him. The four letters she wrote before
+she got an answer were disconsolate. “I find no conversation
+on earth comparable but yours.” She had
+heard of his illness. “Oh! what would I give to know
+how you do at this instant. My fortune is too hard.
+Your absence was enough, without this cruel addition.”
+“How could you be so cruel, to defer telling me
+the thing of the world I wished most to know? If you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>
+think I write too much, your only way is to tell me so,
+or at least to write to me again, that I may know you
+don’t quite forget me; for I very much fear that I
+never employ a thought of yours now, except when
+you are reading my letters, which makes me ply you
+with them.... If you are very happy it is ill-natured
+of you not to tell me, except ’tis what is inconsistent
+with mine.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift could not mistake this last clause. In seven
+words Vanessa made plain that she was wondering
+whether he could be happy without her, asking
+whether he was by any dreadful chance happy with
+some one else, announcing that she thought of him
+and her as having their happiness in common. His
+answer put cold oceans between them.</p>
+
+<p>“I had your last spleenatic letter. I told you when I
+left England I would endeavour to forget everything
+there, and would write as seldom as I could. I did
+indeed design one general round of letters to my
+friends, but my health has not yet suffered me. I design
+to pass the greatest part of the time I stay in Ireland
+here in the cabin where I am now writing; neither will
+I leave the kingdom till I am called for; and if they
+have no further service for me I will never see England
+again. At my first coming 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. My river walk is extremely pretty,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>
+and my canal in great beauty, and I see trouts playing
+in it.”</p>
+
+<p>Her ardour, that is, he saw as spleen. He meant to
+forget her along with all the others. If he were to go
+back it would be to politics. He was dull but not melancholy.
+Vanessa would be glad to know that there
+were fish in his canal.</p>
+
+<p>Politics called Swift back in September, to London
+and to Vanessa. There are no letters belonging to that
+winter, but there is the poem, apparently written then,
+in which Swift told the story of Cadenus (that is
+<i>Decanus</i>, dean) and Vanessa.</p>
+
+<p>He began lightly, with the graces of a contemporary
+wit. The shepherds and the nymphs, he said, had gone
+to law before the court of Venus, the nymphs accusing
+the shepherds of resisting love, the shepherds defending
+themselves by the counter-accusation that, thanks
+to the nymphs, “modern love” was no longer</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>A fire celestial, chaste, refined,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Conceived and kindled in the mind,</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>but had become a “gross desire,” moving through
+caprice and folly. Venus, unable to decide the suit, had
+undertaken an experiment, and had endowed Vanessa,
+happily new-born, with all the virtues which the
+Queen of Love—or Swift—thought most “lovely in
+the female kind”: “a sweetness above all perfumes,” a
+cleanliness “incapable of outward stains,” a mind as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>
+modest as “the speech of prudes,” and a “gentle, soft,
+engaging air.” Not yet satisfied, Venus had fooled
+Pallas into thinking that the baby was a boy, and had
+obtained for her the other virtues “for manly bosoms
+chiefly fit”: “knowledge, judgment, wit,” “justice,
+truth, and fortitude,” “honour which no breath can
+stain,” “open heart and bounteous hand,” and, since
+“meat must be with money bought,” as Pallas knew,
+“some small regard for state and wealth” and a useful
+fortune of five thousand pounds.</p>
+
+<p>The romantic Venus, when all this was done, had
+looked for the restoration of her power. The realistic
+Pallas—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>For how can heavenly wisdom prove</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>An instrument to earthly love?</i>”—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>had, though enraged by the deceit, left “all things to
+their natural course.” And Pallas was justified. The
+beaux, when Vanessa came to town, listened to her
+hermaphroditic discourses—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Through nature and through art she ranged,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And gracefully her subject changed</i>”—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>and thought her tiresome. The belles, disgusted by her
+lack of interest in clothes and gossip, thought her old-fashioned.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>To copy her few nymphs aspired;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Her virtues fewer swains admired.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span></p>
+<p>Vanessa hardened her heart and turned her back on
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Was the actual Vanessa, when she had read this far,
+pleased with the figure she cut in the fable? Or did the
+actual Cadenus, if he read it to her, notice that she
+twisted in her chair?</p>
+
+<p>The verses went on. Cupid, zealous for his mother’s
+credit, resolved to conquer the adamant Vanessa. At
+first he wasted shaft after shaft. Cadenus, the girl’s
+tutor, protected her by “placing still some book betwixt”
+her and the mischievous god. Cupid saw he
+must include the tutor in his revenge. At a time when
+Cadenus—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Grown old in politics and wit,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Caressed by ministers of state,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Of half mankind the dread and hate</i>”—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>was reading to her, on her demand, from his “poetic
+works,” Cupid shot a dart of such length that it
+pierced the volume and, carrying with it “some lines
+more moving than the rest,” reached Vanessa’s heart.
+Unlucky Vanessa.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Cadenus, common forms apart,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In every scene had kept his heart,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>For pastime, or to shew his wit,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But books and time and state affairs</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Had spoiled his fashionable airs.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He now could praise, esteem, approve,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But understood not what was love.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>His conduct might have made him styled</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>A father, and the nymph his child.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>That innocent delight he took</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To see the virgin mind her book</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Was but the master’s secret joy</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In school to hear the finest boy.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Not having seen the malevolent arrow, he was
+amazed at the sudden change in his pupil. She seemed
+to listen more than ever but she could not keep her
+mind on what he said. Modestly he conjectured that
+he had bored her with studies too grave for her “tender
+sex and age.” He should have known better. “Nature
+must be nature still.” If she would excuse him, he
+would take his leave. But Vanessa, it soon appeared,
+had learned what he had taught her.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Now, said the nymph, to let you see</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>My actions with your rules agree,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>That I can vulgar forms despise,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And have no secrets to disguise ...</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Your lessons found the weakest part,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Aimed at the head but reached the heart.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Cadenus was overwhelmed with “shame, disappointment,
+guilt, surprise.” He could not doubt her
+words, but he thought he must pretend to, out of
+policy. The difference in their ages was too great. Love<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>
+between them would be a scandal. He told her she
+must not seem so tragic when, as he knew, she was only
+joking.</p>
+
+<p>Vanessa was too good a disputant to be put off.
+Reason, she insisted, was her guide in love. In loving
+him she was only loving the virtues and merits which
+she had observed in him and had made her own. Her
+love was as strong as self-love, for it was that. She had
+seen him full of “love, esteem, and awe” for dead geniuses.
+Surely he would have felt the same emotions if
+he had lived when they did. Then consider her case.
+She lived in the same age with a great genius. It was as
+much her duty as her instinct to adore him.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Cadenus answers every end,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The book, the author, and the friend.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The utmost her desires will reach</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Is but to learn what he can teach.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>His converse is a system fit</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Alone to fill up all her wit,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>While every passion of her mind</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In him is centred and confined.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In that flood of reasons Cadenus wavered. They
+were his own reasons, thrown back at him with his
+skill. He could not think them bad reasons. He was
+proud of his pupil for her eloquence. His pride, called
+up by her, stayed to caress him. If he had been preferred
+to all the “colonels, lords, and beaux” by “so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>
+bright a nymph” whom he had never thought of courting,
+he must have the qualities which she saw in him.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>’Tis an old maxim in the schools</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>That flattery’s the food of fools,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Yet now and then your men of wit</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Will condescend to take a bit.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Cadenus could not withstand her tribute. Love, of
+course, was out of the question.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Love why do we one passion call</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>When ’tis a compound of them all?</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In all their equipages meet,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Where pleasure mixed with pains appear,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Wherein his dignity and age</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Forbid Cadenus to engage.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>But he could offer friendship, “a constant, rational
+delight,” which was rooted in virtue and so could last,
+as shifting love could not. “Gratitude, respect, esteem”:
+those she could have to make up for his want
+of passion. He talked high about friendship.</p>
+
+<p>Vanessa brought him down. If he was to give her
+“devotion, duty, and respect,” their rôles would be
+changed. She would, however, take him at his word.
+He could be pupil and she be tutor, though she could
+see already that he would have a hard time with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>
+science she had in mind for him. Any fool knew more
+than Cadenus about love.</p>
+
+<p>The actual Vanessa, reading or listening, must have
+nodded, not with sleep. Did she stamp when the poem
+broke off?</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>But what success Vanessa met</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Is to the world a secret yet.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whether the nymph to please her swain</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Talks in a high romantic strain,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or whether he at last descends</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To act with less seraphic ends,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or, to compound the business, whether</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>They temper love and books together,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Must never to mankind be told,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Did the reader or the listener follow the last lines of the
+fable, in which, with another flourish of contemporary
+grace, Venus decided against the shepherds, said her
+experiment had failed, left the world in the hands of
+her son, “harnessed her doves, and flew to heaven”?</p>
+
+<p>The tragedy of Vanessa was that Swift saw their
+drama as a comedy. Experience had fortified him
+against this scene. With Stella—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>When men began to call me fair</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>You interposed your timely care</i>”—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Swift had already played Cadenus. If his temper had
+ever inclined him to love, or if his years had left him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>
+more audacity, or if he had been less absorbed in the
+great campaign of his pride, he might have responded
+to Vanessa—or if, of course, he had felt for her that
+kind of passion which makes the sun, or the moon, of a
+fresh love seem to shine on an earth just created. He
+met none of these conditions. He had an impulse to
+regulate her mind, but not to possess her person. He
+even believed that the desire he had was more important
+than the one he lacked. Cold towards Vanessa as
+flesh and blood, he was warm only towards the idea of
+being loved by her.</p>
+
+<p>It was his pride which glowed. If, at the declaration,
+he had either loved or hated Vanessa he would have
+known what to do. He would have taken her or he
+would have gone from her, in the storm of any consequences.
+As it was, he let his pride seduce him as she
+could not. Its device was simple. It argued with him,
+as no doubt Vanessa did, that her fiery need of him
+obliged him to be kind. He hesitated. She was quick to
+snatch at her advantage. Give her the present, and she
+would not worry about the future. Give her what he
+could give, and she would not ask for more. These
+were promises which no shrewd man would have
+trusted. He would have seen through them to what
+lay behind: the hope that if he could be held he could
+be won: the assurance that any kindness he might show
+would be more than kindness, would be the selfishness
+which she longed to find in him. Swift was not shrewd.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>
+Moved if not convinced, he agreed to do what he could
+to please her, not realizing how much it was to indulge
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Then, almost as if to clear himself of a last annoying
+suspicion, he told the story of Cadenus and Vanessa in
+the bold but humorous light in which he saw it. Such
+lucidity as his would have overpowered a stronger
+woman than Vanessa. Whether his version was at all
+points accurate or not, she had to fall into the place
+which his comedy had assigned her.</p>
+
+<p>But she could struggle. The rest of her life was largely
+taken up by her efforts to get out of the poem and
+nearer to the poet. Swift, having made the blunder of
+undertaking to meet love with kindness, could never
+undo it. Vanessa pursued him like the ghost of his
+blunder. In August 1714, when he had sullenly retired
+to Berkshire, she surprised him with a visit. “You
+should not have come by Wantage for a thousand
+pound. You used to brag you were very discreet. Where
+is it gone?” As soon as he had settled in Ireland,
+Vanessa followed. Her mother, having died, had left
+the daughters something of a fortune, including a
+handsome house at Celbridge eleven miles out of
+Dublin. From her house in the country or from occasional
+lodgings in town Vanessa implored him.</p>
+
+<p>“Once I had a friend that would see me sometimes,
+and either commend what I did or advise me what to
+do, which banished all my uneasiness. But now, when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>
+my misfortunes are increased by being in a disagreeable
+place, amongst strange, prying, deceitful people,
+whose company is so far from an amusement that it is
+a very great punishment, you fly me, and give me no
+reason but that we are amongst fools and must submit.
+I am very well satisfied that we are amongst such, but
+know no reason for having my happiness sacrificed to
+their caprice. You once had a maxim, which was to
+act what was right and not mind what the world said.
+I wish you would keep to it now. Pray what can be
+wrong in seeing and advising an unhappy young
+woman? I can’t imagine. You can’t but know that
+your frowns make my life insupportable. You have
+taught me to distinguish and then you leave me miserable.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift answered only that he had “ever feared the
+tattle of this nasty town, and told you so.” He begged
+her to be easy if he saw her still less often. “These are
+accidents in life that are necessary and must be submitted
+to.”</p>
+
+<p>Vanessa was not so frantic that she could mistake
+disinclination for discretion. “You bid me be easy, and
+you’d see me as often as you could. You had better said
+as often as you could get the better of your inclinations
+so much, or as often as you remembered that there was
+such a one in the world. If you continue to treat me as
+you do you will not be made uneasy by me long. ’Tis
+impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>
+you last. I am sure I could have bore the rack better
+than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I
+have resolved to die without seeing you more; but
+those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long....
+The reason I write to you is because I cannot
+tell it you, should I see you. For when I begin to complain,
+then you are angry, and there is something in
+your look so awful that it strikes me dumb.... I say
+as little as ever I can. Did you but know what I thought
+I am sure it would move you. Forgive me, and believe
+I cannot help telling you this and live.”</p>
+
+<p>There are ways to get rid of importunate Vanessas,
+but they are ways unknown to men who can try to be
+kind to women desperately in love with them. Swift,
+with his variations of temper, was the worst man in the
+world for this Vanessa. In one letter he could write:
+“A fig for your letters and messages”; and in another:
+“I cannot see you, I fear, today, having affairs of my
+place to do; but pray think it not want of friendship
+or tenderness, which I will always continue to the
+utmost.” Vanessa, prying into every sentence to see
+what might be hidden in it, turning every word over
+and over with a lover’s feverish research, could arrive
+at the security neither of hope nor of despair.</p>
+
+<p>The affair dragged on, irresistible passion matched
+with immovable affection. Swift was Dean of St.
+Patrick’s, known to be the friend, and by some gossips
+thought to be the husband, of Stella, who, though she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>
+did not live at the deanery, was the centre of such life
+as it had. He refused to give the world the least excuse
+for regarding Vanessa as his mistress. He smothered
+her with discretion, hating it yet unable to take a final
+stand at one extremity or another. When he had
+snubbed her long enough to put an end to any ordinary
+suit, he would turn kind, would insist upon his esteem
+and admiration, and so would once more rouse her.
+He could or would not learn that her love and his
+kindness were oil and water.</p>
+
+<p>During the half-dozen dark years after he left the
+Court for Ireland he perversely relished the secret
+drama, whatever form it took, and let himself be
+drawn into various cautious meetings with Vanessa.
+When, towards the end of that eclipse, he began to be
+more thoroughly himself, he became less cautious. His
+whole nature, as if by some rejuvenation, expanded.
+He took up the cause of Ireland against the Whigs. He
+wrote verses, tender, intimate, teasing, to Stella. As
+if he thought the conflict between him and Vanessa
+was settled, he tried to get back to the old footing.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly her desire flared up. “I here tell you,” she
+wrote to him, “that I have determined to try all manner
+of human arts to reclaim you.” He did what he
+could to laugh off her seriousness, even to praising the
+art with which she wrote. Nothing would now quiet
+her. His least kindness intoxicated her. When he told
+her to use assumed names in her letters, which he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>
+afraid might be opened, and dashes for “everything that
+may be said to Cad—— at beginning or conclusion,”
+she was suddenly in raptures over sharing secrets with
+him. “—— —— —— —— Cad——, you are good beyond expression,
+and I will never quarrel again if I can help it.”
+Swift did not take warning.</p>
+
+<p>“What would you give,” he asked her in August
+1720, “to have the history of Cad—— and —— exactly
+written, through all its steps, from the beginning to
+this time? I believe it would do well in verse, and be
+as long as the other. I hope it will be done. It ought
+to be an exact chronicle of twelve years, from the
+time of spilling the coffee to drinking of coffee, from
+Dunstable to Dublin, with every single passage since.
+There would be the chapter of the blister; the chapter
+of Madam going to Kensington; the chapter of the
+Colonel’s going to France; the chapter of the wedding,
+with the adventure of the lost key; of the strain; of the
+joyful return; two hundred chapters of madness; the
+chapter of long walks; the Berkshire surprise; fifty
+chapters of little times; the chapter of Chelsea; the
+chapter of swallow and cluster; a hundred whole books
+of myself and so low; the chapter of hide and whisper;
+the chapter of Who made it so? My sister’s money.”</p>
+
+<p>Vanessa, answering that “it would be too much
+once to hope for such a history,” asked him “did those
+circumstances crowd on you, or did you recollect them
+to make me happy?” But, though she might suspect<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>
+that he had meant to please her, she could not help
+exulting that he had remembered. She was not sure
+friendship had such a memory. She knew love had.</p>
+
+<p>Swift had suggested that he might, for the first time,
+visit her at Celbridge. “Is it possible you will come and
+see me? I beg for God sake you will.” He did visit her.
+Back in Dublin he advised her to take more exercise,
+be cheerful, “read pleasant things that will make you
+laugh, and not sit moping with your elbows on your
+knees on a little stool by the fire.”</p>
+
+<p>Vanessa was out of hand. “I ... here declare that
+’tis not in the power of art, time, or accident to lessen
+the unexpressible passion which I have for — — —.
+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 ever 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.... For heaven’s sake tell me what has caused this
+prodigious change in you which I have found of late.
+If you have the least remains of pity for me left, tell me
+tenderly. No, don’t tell it so that it may cause my
+present death; and don’t suffer me to lead a life like a
+languishing death, which is the only life I can lead if
+you have lost any of your tenderness for me.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift did not reply. The death of Vanessa’s sister
+revived the correspondence, which went on with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>
+same disparity. “The worst thing in you and me,” he
+wrote, “is that we are too hard to please, and whether
+we have not made ourselves is the question.... We
+differ prodigiously in one point: I fly from the spleen
+to the world’s end, you run out of your way to meet
+it.” He urged her—Swift of all men—to accept what
+came and be pleased with it. She did her best to be the
+kind of philosopher he specified, but “I find the more
+I think the more unhappy I am.”</p>
+
+<p>In his last surviving letter to her he reminded her
+of the pleasant episodes “of Windsor, Cleveland Row,
+Ryder Street, St. James’s, Kensington, the Sluttery,
+the Colonel in France.... Cad thinks often of these,
+especially on horseback, as I am assured. What a
+foolish thing is time, and how foolish is man who would
+be as angry if time stopped as if it passed.” This was in
+August 1722. Vanessa died in June 1723.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the story is all gossip. It says that Vanessa,
+unable to endure her jealousy, wrote to Swift, or
+to Stella, asking if it were true that Stella was Swift’s
+wife. It says in one account that Stella answered that
+she was, in another that she sent the letter to Swift to
+answer. It says that Swift took the letter from Vanessa
+to Stella, or to him, and with it rode savagely to
+Celbridge, entered the room where Vanessa was, threw
+down the letter, gave Vanessa a look which for the
+last time struck her dumb and, without one of his
+“killing, killing words,” left the house. It says that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>
+Vanessa thereupon changed her will, leaving her fortune
+to strangers, not to Swift, and died.</p>
+
+<p>All gossip, any of it true, or none. Vanessa did
+leave her fortune to strangers and did not mention
+Swift among the friends to whom she gave small
+legacies to buy mourning rings. Something had parted
+Cadenus and Vanessa before she died. The parting was
+natural, but tragically late. She had loved a man
+whose thoughts, she said, “no human creature is capable
+of guessing at, because never any one living
+thought like you.” She had spent her life trying to win
+him, and he had let her spend it. Dying, she planned
+what revenge was left to her, the publication of his
+poem about Cadenus and Vanessa and of the letters
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>When the poem, though not the letters, appeared in
+1726 to the comfort of his enemies, Swift kept silence.
+It had been, he told a friend, a “cavalier business,”
+“a private humoursome thing which by an accident
+inevitable and the baseness of particular malice” had
+been made public. “I never saw it since I writ it.” He
+refused to “use shifts or arts” to justify himself, “let
+people think of me as they please.... I have borne
+a great deal more.” He had gone through what was
+comedy for him and tragedy for Vanessa. Others must
+make up their own minds, if they had them, about
+who was to blame, if there must be blame, when a
+universal Héloïse encountered a special Abélard.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">3</p>
+
+<p>With whatever remorse, with whatever relief, with
+whatever concern for scandal, Swift the day after
+Vanessa’s death left Dublin for the south of Ireland.
+Stella and Dingley were to spend the summer in the
+country at a friend’s house. About Vanessa, so far as
+any record shows, Swift was silent, except to refer in a
+letter to her “incontinence in keeping secrets.” And
+Stella was silent, except to remark, when she heard
+her rival praised, that the Dean could write finely
+about a broomstick. If there was between Swift and
+Stella such silence about Vanessa as they kept towards
+the world it was a silence beyond conjecture. The facts
+are drama enough. Stella went noiselessly in one
+direction. Swift went restlessly in another.</p>
+
+<p>By the end of June he had made his way past Cork
+and had written a Latin poem on the rocks at Carbery
+where the ocean tore at the cliffs. By the beginning of
+August he had come up the west to Galway, still a
+hundred miles from home and “half weary of the four
+hundred I have rid.” Late in September he was back
+in Dublin. Stella returned to town. Swift greeted her
+with his old raillery. She had been spoiled, he said, by
+the “generous wines and costly cheer” of Wood Park,
+and tried to ape them on her income.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Thus for a week the farce went on;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>When, all her country savings gone,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>She fell into her former scene,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Small beer, a herring, and the Dean.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f7">
+<img src="images/fig7.jpg" alt="stella">
+<p class="caption">Esther Johnson (Stella)</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>Painted probably after Vanessa’s death</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It happened that during his absence from Dublin
+both Pope and Bolingbroke, and a little later Arbuthnot,
+took up the correspondence which they, and
+Swift more than they, had recently neglected. Fresh
+memories of England stirred in him. He exchanged
+affectionate letters with the Duchess of Ormond and
+Lady Masham. He wrote to Oxford demanding the
+bribe of a letter and a picture, “for who else knows
+how to deliver you down to posterity?” Bolingbroke
+had written: “I have vowed to read no history of our
+own country till that body of it which you promise to
+finish appears.” Swift thought often of making himself
+the real historiographer of those buried, unforgotten
+years, in spite of the dullard who had the title. But he
+was not yet ready for history. He was still alive to the
+events passing under his bitter eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Swift hated Ireland because it was his place of
+banishment: “the whole kingdom a bare face of nature,
+without houses or plantations; filthy cabins,
+miserable, tattered, half-starved creatures, scarce in
+human shape; one insolent, ignorant, oppressive squire
+to be found in twenty miles riding; a parish church to
+be found only in a summer day’s journey, in comparison
+with which an English farmer’s barn is a
+cathedral; a bog of fifteen miles round; every meadow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>
+a slough, and every hill a mixture of rock, heath, and
+marsh; and every male and female, from the farmer
+inclusive to the day-labourer, infallibly a thief and
+consequently a beggar, which in this island are terms
+convertible.” “The old seats of the nobility and gentry
+all in ruins, and no new ones in their stead.” “The
+wretched merchants, instead of being dealers, are
+dwindled to pedlars and cheats.” As to trade, “nothing
+worth mentioning except the linen of the north, a trade
+casual, corrupted, and at mercy, and some butter
+from Cork.” The ports and harbours were of no more
+use “than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a
+dungeon.” Travellers never came to Ireland, since
+they might expect to find there nothing but misery and
+desolation. Whoever could leave the kingdom left at
+the first chance and stayed away till the last excuse.
+Dublin was a “beggarly city,” one-seventh of its houses
+falling in ruins, its populace hungry, idle, dissolute,
+dirty, and noisy. Though it was the capital of an
+ancient kingdom, the government was wholly in the
+hands of Englishmen who, blind to every interest but
+their own, lived there as little as they could manage.</p>
+
+<p>No theoretical doctrine of liberty moved Swift to
+take up the Irish cause. “I do profess without affectation,”
+he explained to Pope, “that your kind opinion
+of me as a patriot, since you call it so, is what I do not
+deserve; because what I do is owing to perfect rage and
+resentment, and the mortifying sight of slavery, folly,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>
+and baseness about me, among which I am forced to
+live.”</p>
+
+<p>On the Catholic majority, those “savage old Irish,”
+he spent little sympathy. They might be above the
+vermin of the island but they were below the voters.
+He had no patience with the Dissenters. They were
+outside the Church and to that extent outside his
+Ireland. Ireland for him was the English settled there,
+the noblemen, the landlords, the clergy, the lawyers,
+the merchants. Their ancestors had come to rule the
+conquered province. They themselves ought now to
+rule it. Instead, they were called Irish, which they
+were not, and in turn were ruled by the newest English,
+a changing garrison of place-men. Men born in
+Ireland could not hope for posts at home. They had
+either to rot on their estates or to go abroad while
+their tenants were racked to support them in a dingy
+splendour. The Irish Parliament had no power. The
+laws, all made in England, condemned Ireland to
+poverty. Cattle could not be shipped to England,
+woollen goods could not be shipped anywhere. Without
+a free hand in agriculture, manufacture, or trade,
+Ireland from being so long bound was numb or
+sodden.</p>
+
+<p>Mortified by finding himself in exile among slaves,
+Swift first despised them and then hated their tyrants.
+The tyrants were the Whigs who had driven him out
+of power. He could not become a slave. He could not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>
+endure a tyrant. Everything in his nature urged him
+to rouse the slaves and resist the tyrants. But he had
+the advantage, when he turned his fury loose, of a long
+experience in hating the party to which his enemies
+belonged.</p>
+
+<p>Where his whole cause was so good Swift did not
+need to be fastidious about his particular occasion
+for attack. William Wood, an English ironmonger, in
+1722 obtained a patent from the King to coin halfpence
+and farthings for Ireland for fourteen years. The
+Irish were not agreed that they needed new copper
+coins, certainly not to the amount of a hundred
+thousand pounds. The Irish were not consulted, nor
+even the Lord Lieutenant. Higher interests were involved.
+The patent had really been granted to the
+Duchess of Kendal, the King’s mistress, who sold it to
+Wood for ten thousand pounds. Walpole, Lord Treasurer,
+did not object. The Duchess had been loyal. The
+King was grateful. Through the method of the patent
+she could be rewarded, not by the King directly but
+indirectly by his Irish subjects, who already, if they
+had known it, contributed three thousand annually in
+pensions to the loyal lady. Since there was some risk,
+Wood deserved a profit for his trouble. The necessary
+copper would cost him sixty thousand pounds. When
+he had satisfied the Duchess he would still have thirty
+thousand, of which perhaps one-fifth would pay for
+the coinage and about one-seventh go to fees required<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span>
+by the patent. As jobs went in the government of
+Ireland under Walpole, the profit was not unheard of.</p>
+
+<p>But the failure to consult the Irish had angered
+them. Their Parliament protested to the Treasury.
+Lord Carteret, a friend of Swift and now Secretary of
+State, was at odds with Walpole. Walpole, persisting,
+got Carteret appointed Lord Lieutenant early in 1724,
+to get rid of him in London. By the time he reached
+Dublin the whole country was in a passion.</p>
+
+<p>The passion was led and guided by Swift. Walpole’s
+scheme, shabby, cynical, insulting, brought the satirist
+with a roar out of his long silence. He was as crafty as
+he was furious. Pretending to be a small tradesman
+named Drapier, he addressed, between April and
+November 1724, a series of letters to the shopkeepers,
+tradesmen, farmers, and common people, to his
+printer, to the nobility and gentry, to the whole
+people of Ireland. He was as furious as he was crafty.
+Wood was a “single, diminutive, insignificant mechanic.”
+He and his agents, trying to force upon the
+Irish the coins which the patent did not oblige them to
+accept, were “enemies to God and this kingdom.” “I
+will shoot Mr. Wood and his deputies through the
+head, like highwaymen or housebreakers, if they dare
+to force one farthing of their coin upon me in the payment
+of an hundred pounds. It is no loss of honour to
+submit to the lion, but who, with the figure of a man,
+can think with patience of being devoured alive by a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>
+rat.” “I entreat you, my dear countrymen, not to be
+under the least concern upon these and the like
+rumours, which are no more than the last howls of a
+dog dissected alive, as I hope he hath sufficiently
+been.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift did not dare to accuse the King, and he only
+hinted at the honorarium to the Duchess. It was the
+ministers who had planned this contemptuous oppression.
+It was Wood who was to his own advantage
+carrying it out at the expense of Ireland. If Wood’s
+copper became current every Irishman who received a
+coin, even in the smallest transaction, would get less
+than he gave, and every Irishman who paid out a coin
+would give less than he got. While Wood prospered
+“we should live together as merry and sociable as
+beggars, only with this one abatement, that we should
+have neither meat to feed nor manufactures to clothe
+us, unless we could be content to prance about in
+coats of mail or eat brass as ostriches do iron.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift must have known that his arguments were
+false, must have known that the intrinsic value of such
+small coins did not matter and that they would be as
+good as any if they were used. He who gave and he
+who got could not be equally losers. But Swift did not
+boggle over economic niceties. Here was a principle.
+To accept the coins would be to surrender to tyrants
+and become slaves. As soon as he had stirred the
+public to a fear of losing money and had assured them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span>
+they could lawfully refuse the new halfpence and
+farthings, he moved towards a general position.</p>
+
+<p>“Were not the people of Ireland born as free as
+those of England? How have they forfeited their freedom?
+Is not their Parliament as fair a representative
+of the people as that of England?... Are they not
+subjects of the same king? Does not the same sun shine
+upon them? And have they not the same God for their
+protector? Am I a freeman in England, and do I
+become a slave in six hours by crossing the channel?”
+“I have looked over all the English and Irish statutes
+without finding any law that makes Ireland depend
+upon England any more than England does upon
+Ireland. We have indeed obliged ourselves to have the
+same king with them, and consequently they are
+obliged to have the same king with us. For the law was
+made by our own ancestors, and our ancestors then
+were not such fools (whatever they were in the preceding
+reign) to bring themselves under I know not
+what dependence which is now talked of without any
+ground of law, reason, or common sense.” “All government
+without the consent of the governed is the very
+definition of slavery.” “The remedy is wholly in your
+own hands.... 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.”</p>
+
+<p>No voice like this had ever been raised by an Englishman
+in Ireland. All the Irish heard it. Never again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>
+were its echoes to be long silent in that country.
+“Money,” Swift said, “the great divider of the world,
+hath by a strange revolution been the great uniter of a
+most divided people.”</p>
+
+<p>On the day Carteret landed in October the fourth
+and most thorough-going of the Drapier letters was
+issued. Hawkers crying it through the streets met the
+Lord Lieutenant when he arrived in Dublin. Much as
+Carteret admired “that genius which has outshone
+most of this age and when you will display it again can
+convince us that its lustre and strength are still the
+same,” he could not, in his station, overlook the
+Drapier. He offered a reward of three hundred pounds
+for information leading to the discovery of the author
+within six months. All Dublin, including the Lord
+Lieutenant, knew that Swift had written the dangerous
+letters. But there was no legal proof, even if there was
+anywhere an informer. During the six months Swift
+dined at the Castle and entertained Lady Carteret at
+a party in his garden. When Carteret heard that Swift
+had “some thoughts of declaring himself” he advised
+against it. Their friendship, however, was not tested
+to the utmost. Walpole, seeing that the case was hopeless
+in such a tumult, gave it up. The patent was
+withdrawn in 1725 as an instance of royal favour and
+condescension. Wood was compensated with a pension
+of three thousand pounds a year for twelve years.
+Carteret later summed up his administration: “The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>
+people ask me how I governed Ireland. I say that I
+pleased Dr. Swift.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift, writing to Oxford’s son, apologized for his
+mention of the Irish brawl. “This is just of as much
+consequence to your Lordship as the news of a skirmish
+between two petty states in Greece was to Alexander
+while he was conquering Persia, but even a knot of
+beggars are of importance among themselves.” Yet
+Swift was too much a soldier not to enjoy a battle after
+a stupid peace. Though there were others in the field,
+he unmistakably commanded. The Grand Jury and
+the Liberty of St. Patrick’s, that part of Dublin over
+which he as Dean had civil jurisdiction, formally resolved
+against the hated coins, as did the butchers, the
+brewers, the newsboys or “flying stationers,” and the
+Black Guard. There were broadsheets on every corner,
+songs in every tavern, some of them written by Swift,
+all of them in support of the Drapier. While the furor
+lasted no jury would find anything seditious in any
+pamphlet or lampoon if Wood were mentioned. After
+the victory medals were struck in the Drapier’s honour,
+shops and taverns were named for him, women
+carried handkerchiefs with his picture woven on them.
+Something legendary began to enlarge Swift’s fame.</p>
+
+<p>Irishmen who could barely spell out his arguments
+and knew only by hearsay that he was a man of learning
+who had been great in London were roused to
+veneration. They had thought of him as one of their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>
+rulers sent from England, yet he had joined their
+cause against the English. He was not a tyrant but a
+patriot. Standing superbly against the dread, incalculable
+ministers, he had defended men and women
+to whom halfpence and farthings were important.
+They stood uncovered when he passed in the streets.</p>
+
+<p>They could not know that he had acted, at least at
+first, out of hate for their slavery and folly and baseness,
+out of a fierce unwillingness to be slavish and
+foolish and base along with them. He who had had a
+hand in ruling an empire would not submit to being
+counted among the docile subjects of the province to
+which he had been banished. Private resentment had
+stirred him to public rebellion. He could not help it
+if what he had done for hate was the same as if he had
+done it for love. Such an outcome was only another
+proof that the world was wrong. Like Gulliver in
+Lilliput, wading home with the Blefuscudian fleet at
+the end of a packthread, Swift decently exulted. But
+he would not let himself forget that the adventure had
+taken place among the pigmies. Whatever he accomplished
+was a small affair. Great affairs were always
+maddeningly beyond him, or, he remembered his
+days with Oxford, behind him.</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c6">VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c xlarge sp">TRAVELLER</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">1</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">S</span>wift</span> never set a foot outside Ireland or England
+except when he hurried across Wales on his restless
+journeys between London, the bright centre of his
+world, and Dublin, the dreary margin. Though he
+constantly diverted himself with books of travel, he
+found in them nothing which convinced him that he
+would anywhere meet more wisdom or less folly than
+he everywhere observed. The Scotch were a “poor,
+fierce northern people,” the Dutch grasping and
+shifty, the French frivolous and Catholic. If he had
+some liking for the Swedes it was because he was
+fascinated by Charles XII, that sudden, terrific king
+who had burst upon Europe from his cold peninsula
+and stirred philosophers to admiration by such a
+career as Swift would have chosen for himself. But
+dividing mankind into nations was little more than
+drawing lines on a map. The whole earth was inhabited
+by the human race.</p>
+
+<p>Once Swift had hopes of going to Austria, once to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>
+Sweden, once to France. Each time prevented, he
+hardly grumbled. If he thought of other countries it
+was for their better climate, which might, he said,
+have kept his wit and humour lively, as Ireland’s had
+not. “I imagine,” he wrote in 1724, “France would be
+proper for me now, and Italy ten years hence.” But
+he could not rouse himself from thinking about the
+world to travel far to look at it. There was his giddiness,
+which might at any time make him reel and fall.
+There was his deafness, which forced him to live
+“among those whom I can govern and make them
+comply with my infirmities.” There was the prospect
+of blindness. “My eyes will not suffer me to read small
+prints, nor anything by candlelight, and if I grow
+blind, as well as deaf, I must needs become very grave
+and wise and insignificant.” He was caged in Ireland,
+with nothing to do but pace his cage.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, however, Swift was not confined to the
+cramped cottage at Laracor or to the hollow deanery
+in Dublin. During the twelve unbroken years of his
+banishment after 1714 he often visited other houses.
+His hosts could never have enough of him. Near
+Laracor were the houses of Peter Ludlow, George
+Rochfort, and Knightley Chetwoode. Near Dublin
+were the houses of the Grattans and Patrick Delaney
+and Charles Ford, with whom Stella spent a summer.
+Forty miles from Dublin was Thomas Sheridan’s ramshackle
+house which Swift could sometimes have to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span>
+himself. He is said to have visited an ancestor of the
+Earls of Llandaff in Tipperary. He visited the Ashes—St.
+George Ashe had been Swift’s college tutor—at
+Clogher in Tyrone, Robert Cope in Armagh, the
+Bishop of Dromore in Down. And during the summers
+of 1722 and 1723, when banishment had become
+almost unendurable, Swift made long, lonely journeys
+to the north and to the south. “I have shifted scenes,”
+he told Vanessa in July 1722, “oftener than I ever did
+in my life, and I believe I have lain in thirty beds since
+I left the town.”</p>
+
+<p>Six hundred miles in the north, five hundred in the
+south the year following, all solitary and speculative.
+But these were not merely random travels in search of
+change and health. Though Swift was still incorrigibly
+Swift, he was also Gulliver, now with a purpose
+studying the despicable ways of men.</p>
+
+<p>Gulliver’s travels were Swift’s travels, disguised with
+Swift’s wit, loaded with Swift’s hate. He gave years to
+them, as to nothing else he ever wrote about, five
+or six years thinking of them as Martin Scriblerus’s
+travels, nearly as long thinking of them as Gulliver’s
+or his own. “I am now writing a History of my
+Travels,” Swift told Ford in April 1721, “which will
+be a large volume, and gives account of countries
+hitherto unknown; but they go on slowly for want of
+health and humour.” By December of that year Bolingbroke
+knew about them. “I long to see your<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>
+Travels; for, take it as you will, I do not retract what
+I said, and will undertake to find in two pages of your
+bagatelles more good sense, useful knowledge, and
+true religion than you can show me in the works of
+nineteen in twenty of the profound divines and philosophers
+of the age.” In June 1722 Vanessa had read
+something about the giants. In January 1724 Swift
+was near the end. “I have left the Country of Horses,”
+he wrote to Ford, “and am in the Flying Island, where
+I shall not stay long, and my two last journeys will soon
+be over.” In July 1725 Bolingbroke referred to the
+pigmies and giants of which he had heard. In August,
+Swift wrote to Ford: “I have finished my Travels, and
+am now transcribing them. They are admirable things,
+and will wonderfully mend the world.”</p>
+
+<p>In September, after a summer at Sheridan’s house
+in the country, Swift wrote to Pope: “I have employed
+my time, besides ditching, in finishing, correcting,
+amending, and transcribing my Travels, in four parts
+complete, newly augmented, and intended for the
+press when the world shall deserve them, or rather
+when a printer shall be found brave enough to venture
+his ears.” Thereafter all Swift’s friends waited to see
+how he would, as he said, “vex the world rather than
+divert it.” They could be sure he had written more
+than a story of imaginary voyages in a book. This
+would be Swift’s revenge.</p>
+
+<p>In the days of the Scriblerus Club it had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>
+planned that Martin on his first voyage should be
+carried “by a prosperous storm to a discovery of the
+ancient Pygmean empire”; on his second should be
+“happily shipwrecked on the land of the giants, the
+most humane people in the world”; on his third should
+reach a “kingdom of philosophers who govern by
+the mathematics”; and on his fourth should, among
+beings not yet named, “display a vein of melancholy
+proceeding almost to a disgust of his species.” These
+plans had broken up with the Club. Returning to this
+theme, Swift saw that the bungling Martin would no
+longer serve. If he were to be the traveller, much of
+the folly of the narrative would have to appear in his
+misadventures. Better to let the traveller be a plain,
+reasonable, unimaginative man who would report
+what he had seen in the language of common sense.</p>
+
+<p>Swift’s nature included such a Gulliver. It included,
+too, an observer as alien to what went on around him
+as Gulliver could be on his most distant, most surprising
+island. “My disaffection to the world ... has
+never varied from the twenty-first ... year of my
+life.” Disaffection, singularity, had driven Swift, no
+less than most men, to think of himself as playing various
+rôles. At Kilkenny and Trinity he had been a
+tragic hero, neglected and abused by fortune. At
+Moor Park he had been a scholar in a garden, despising
+the rabble of wits and pedants. At Laracor he had
+been a soldier in a garrison, when there were wars<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>
+elsewhere. In London he had been the conscience and
+voice of ministers, insisting upon order and virtue in
+the state. In Dublin, exiled, he had turned from governing
+to resisting and had made himself the hammer
+of tyrants. Now he was a creature of a different race,
+thrown among men, full of antipathy for them, but full
+also of a scornful curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>It was the best rôle he ever found. Without once
+taking ship to the corners of the earth as Gulliver did,
+Swift had moved about at home too large for the
+pigmies, too small for the giants, too sensible for the
+philosophers, too human for the animals. He had
+never been able quite to adjust himself to the scale of
+life as other men lived it. Other men, even when they
+had the pride of distinction, could submit. Swift could
+not. As if he were really an alien to the race, he had
+been obliged, whether he chose or not, to feel and act
+alien. Only once in more than fifty years had he found
+an occupation which truly involved him, and that
+only while a short delusion lasted. He had been unwilling
+to take a wife, though women desired and loved
+him. He had compromised so far as to have friends,
+but he was always conscious of the exceptions he was
+making. “I have ever hated all nations, professions,
+and communities, and all my love is towards individuals....
+But principally I hate and detest that
+animal called man, although I heartily love John,
+Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span>
+which I have governed myself many years.... Upon
+this great foundation of misanthropy ... the whole
+building of my Travels is erected; and I will never
+have peace of mind till all honest men are of my
+opinion.”</p>
+
+<p>If he had been fully alien he would not have troubled
+himself to be a missionary. He was a man to the extent
+that he was a moralist as well as a misanthrope. He
+would cure if he could. If not, he would punish.
+“Drown the world! I am not content with despising
+it, but I would anger it if I could with safety.” Here
+was the flaw in his misanthropy. Here was the strain
+of humanity through which he could be fretted and
+hurt. Here was the deep source of his fury. But he was
+alien enough to feel, dramatically, that he was only a
+traveller in strange lands.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Swift was not a Timon, bawling and railing.
+Swift’s misanthropy was in his constitution, not in his
+disposition. His friends spoke always of his sweetness,
+his charm, his delightful temper, his hearty affections,
+his honest generosity. He had about him a magic
+almost like beauty’s magic. Nor did they think of him
+as morose and surly, whatever he said about himself.
+“Gulliver is a happy man,” said the experienced
+Arbuthnot, “that at his age can write such a merry
+work.” Swift on his travels could no more help the wit
+on his tongue than he could help the detestation in his
+heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span></p>
+
+<p>He was as ingenious as he was grave. He took pains,
+with a few slips, to draw his pigmies and giants to
+scale, the pigmies an inch to a human foot, the giants
+a foot to a human inch. He deftly commandeered the
+inventions of earlier writers: Philostratus, Lucian,
+Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, Perrot d’Ablancourt,
+Tom Brown. The nautical terms paraded in the voyage
+to Brobdingnag were copied almost word for
+word from a mariner’s handbook. Swift did not disdain
+to parody contemporary travellers. Whereas a
+mere misanthrope would have clamoured, a mere
+moralist would have scolded, Swift, being a wit, was
+satisfied to tell a story, pretending that he was a
+spectator who had no share in what he told. There
+were the characters, there were the incidents. They
+could be understood by anybody who had an understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Consider the insectile people of Lilliput. Swift, in
+the guise of Gulliver, was at first received with dread,
+then with wonder, then with hospitality. Though they
+kept him a prisoner, they let him into the secrets of
+the Court and of the government, which were preposterously
+like England’s. The Lilliputian ministers
+to commend themselves to the king capered before him
+on a tight-rope. Gulliver, whose mind was part of
+Swift’s, remembered larger ministers. Flimnap, who
+could caper an inch higher than any other lord in the
+empire, seemed remarkably like Walpole. The great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>
+men of Lilliput who sought honours from their king
+competed, by jumping over a stick held in his hand,
+for silken threads six inches long, one blue, one red,
+one green, which reminded Gulliver of the Order of
+the Garter, of the Bath, and of the Thistle.</p>
+
+<p>Lilliput and the neighbouring Blefuscu had long
+been at war. A Lilliputian schism was the cause.
+Formerly all the people had broken their eggs at the
+larger end. One of their kings, having cut his finger
+on the larger end of one of his eggs, had by royal edict
+made the smaller end orthodox. There had been a
+civil war. Some of the defeated conservatives had fled
+to Blefuscu and had there found refuge and favour at
+the court. England, Gulliver reflected, had been entirely
+Catholic before Henry VIII. The Catholic
+Pretender had fled to France, and France had long
+been at war with England.</p>
+
+<p>Grateful for the kindness shown him, Gulliver aided
+Lilliput in its war by capturing the Blefuscudian fleet
+and bringing it as a gift to his royal host. But the
+Lilliputians were no more grateful in return than the
+English had been to the Oxford ministry for ending the
+war with France. One party among the pigmies insisted
+that Blefuscu be subjugated to a province with a
+viceroy, as some of the Whigs had insisted France
+might be. The sourest of the tiny ministers became
+Gulliver’s enemy, as the dismal Nottingham had become
+Swift’s.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span></p>
+
+<p>Gulliver’s chief offence was that, when a fire broke
+out in the queen’s apartment at the palace, he extinguished
+it in a manner more natural to him than
+agreeable to the queen. Had not Queen Anne implacably
+resented the spattering ridicule which Swift
+had let fall upon what he thought was menacing the
+Church and State? Thereafter the position of Gulliver
+in Lilliput was hopeless. The cabinet decided he must
+die. The friendly minister Reldresal, who may have
+stood for Carteret, thought it would be enough to
+blind Gulliver and allow him to starve to death.</p>
+
+<p>From that compromise Gulliver escaped to Blefuscu,
+and back to England, knowing that the smallest
+people in the world had all the familiar follies and
+vices of mankind in general.</p>
+
+<p>Next Swift, as Gulliver, was blown to the giants of
+Brobdingnag, that humane people. It was his turn
+to be insectile. He was exhibited as a toy freak by the
+kind, greedy farmer who had found him. Scientists
+wondered what species he could belong to. The king,
+being a philosopher, supposed that such creatures as
+Gulliver “have their titles and distinctions of honour;
+they contrive little nests and burrows that they call
+houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and
+equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they
+cheat, they betray.” And when Gulliver had defended
+his species by an account of their government and
+politics, their wars and luxuries, the king, being a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>
+humane philosopher, concluded “your natives to be
+the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that
+nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the
+earth.”</p>
+
+<p>He himself abominated mystery, refinement, and
+intrigue in governors. He limited government “to
+common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the
+speedy determination of civil and criminal causes.”
+He held that “whoever could make two ears of corn or
+two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where
+only one grew before would deserve better of mankind
+... than the whole race of politicians put together.”
+Gulliver, or Swift, sardonically despaired of
+such a monarch. His people were no better. Their
+learning was only in morality, history, poetry, and
+useful mathematics. They were unable to form conceptions
+of what Gulliver meant by “entities, abstractions,
+and transcendentals.” They were dull with
+virtue and peace.</p>
+
+<p>Gulliver found in their habits less to remind him of
+England than he had found in Lilliput. His story was
+taken up with the ingenious shifts by which he got
+along among them. But after the giants he could not
+so easily return to the old scale of life as he could after
+the pigmies. His own people seemed contemptible by
+their smallness. He was twice as far from mankind as
+he had been before.</p>
+
+<p>Swift’s, Gulliver’s, third voyage seems to have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>
+to the Country of Horses, but when he told the story
+he saved that for the venomous conclusion and in the
+third place put the account of the Flying Island and
+the continent which was topsy-turvy with philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, as in Lilliput, he was often reminded of
+Europe. The name of Laputa was like the Spanish for
+harlot. The island, when its rulers wished, could hover
+over stubborn cities and shut out the sun, as England
+shut out the sun from Ireland. Whether aloft or on
+land the people were rapt in abstruse speculations or
+abandoned to fantastic projects. Among the islanders
+nobody spoke sense except, possibly, the tradesmen,
+women, and children. The others were so many
+pedants exaggerated from the breed that Swift had
+detested in his earliest satires. The Academy of Lagado
+was a Bedlam of Science, where men wore out their
+lives trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, to
+build houses downward from the roofs in the fashion
+of the bees and spiders, to plow fields only with the
+snouts of hogs, to make silk from spider webs, to cure
+colic with a pair of bellows, to soften marble for pincushions,
+to propagate naked sheep, to write books by
+a mechanical device, to discover painless methods of
+taxation.</p>
+
+<p>Gulliver grew dizzy. He lacked the head, as Swift
+did, for this whirling universe. It did not steady him
+when, on the neighbouring island of Glubbdubdrib,
+he was allowed to call up the spirits of the famous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>
+dead and found how falsely they had been presented
+in history. It did not steady him when in Luggnagg
+he learned of the immortal struldbrugs, for whom immortality
+was only human life prolonged to an infinity
+of horrible old age. “I ... thought,” said Gulliver, for
+Swift, “that no tyrant could invent a death into which
+I would not run with pleasure from such a life.” When
+he was out of the mad lands of Laputa, Balnibarbi,
+Glubbdubdrib, and Luggnagg, he was nearly upside
+down, giddy, and three times as far from mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Now for the antipodes of misanthropy. Among the
+Houyhnhnms Gulliver was almost undisguisedly Swift.
+The day on which Gulliver set sail from Portsmouth
+was the precise day of September 1710 on which
+Swift had arrived in London to make his fortune with
+the new men in power. Gulliver’s discovery of an
+island where the horses were as much wiser and nobler
+as they were stronger than the men was such a discovery
+as Swift may have made as he rode through
+desolate, beggarly Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to guess, though only to guess, that the
+device came to his mind on that dark expedition to
+the south in the summer of 1723 after Vanessa’s death.
+Everywhere he saw the “savage old Irish,” “miserable,
+tattered, half-starved creatures, scarce in human
+shape,” living “in the utmost ignorance, barbarity,
+and poverty, giving themselves wholly up to idleness,
+nastiness, and thievery,” “brought up to steal or beg<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span>
+for want of work,” so that to them “death would be
+the best thing to be wished for both on account of
+themselves and the public.” Swift had not yet reached
+the point where he could take up the cause of these
+miserable victims. He felt chiefly a sick repulsion. He
+would not admit that they and he were of the same
+kind. At least they must belong to a tribe which had
+degenerated till they were less than beasts.</p>
+
+<p>Less than beasts? Compare them with his horse,
+healthy, patient, without follies or vices, incapable of
+pride. Horses, the animals Swift had most to do with
+and knew best, were more fit to rule than degraded
+men. Suppose some traveller should find a country
+where the horses did rule. Suppose Gulliver were to
+find it. The Scriblerus Club had not decided what
+race Martin was to visit on his fourth voyage, only that
+he was to “display a vein of melancholy proceeding
+almost to a disgust of his species.” Nothing could disgust
+a traveller, even wholesome Gulliver, more than
+to study the horrid antics of a debased human tribe
+in the company of utopian horses who could see little
+difference between him and those apish copies. Gulliver
+had been disgusted among the giants when the
+maids of honour laid him against their terrible breasts.
+That had been only a shrinking of his senses. Now his
+soul itself must shrink with an absolute antipathy from
+which he could not recover. When he came back he
+would prefer the horses of England to the men.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span></p>
+
+<p>With something like these gathering plans, though
+they must be guessed at, in something like this mood,
+which is certain enough, Swift rode through the south
+and west. In September he was in Dublin again. By
+the next January he had “left the Country of Horses.”</p>
+
+<p>On his icy, fiery travels among the Houyhnhnms
+Swift (why call him Gulliver?) did not bother to observe
+such stinging likenesses to particular English
+persons and episodes as he observed among the pigmies
+and the philosophers. The last of his adventures
+was the simplest, as it was the most deadly. All actual
+fantasy, all apparent fact.</p>
+
+<p>He came upon his first Yahoos without realizing that
+they were inferior men and upon his first Houyhnhnms
+without realizing that they were superior horses. When
+he found himself taken for a Yahoo he hurried to
+tell his Houyhnhnm master about Europe. He told
+him of wars, their causes, means, and ends; of litigation
+and the arts of lawyers; of money, and of poverty
+and riches; of luxury and dissipation; of diseases and
+their remedies; of ministers of state and noblemen.
+The reasonable Houyhnhnm said he had noticed the
+rudiments of all these human ways of life among the
+Yahoos.</p>
+
+<p>They had their tribal and civil wars. They hoarded
+shining stones which they could not use, fought over
+them, and sometimes lost them to bystanders who
+snatched them away as expertly as any lawyer. They<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>
+gorged themselves with food and sucked a root that
+made them drunk. They had the only diseases in the
+country, because of their gluttony and filth. They had
+in most herds a sort of ruling Yahoo, always deformed
+in body and mischievous in disposition, who continued
+in office till a worse could be found. They were lewd
+and promiscuous. They were invariably dirty and
+sometimes splenetic. They had, it appeared, all the
+human vices except unnatural appetites, these “politer
+pleasures” not having occurred to them. They were
+unteachable because they were perverse and restive,
+but they had the brains to be cunning, malicious,
+treacherous, revengeful, insolent, abject, and cruel. It
+was plain to the Houyhnhnm who talked with Swift
+that the visitor was a Yahoo after all. That “small
+pittance of reason” which by some accident had been
+given to the European Yahoos they used only to
+multiply their natural corruptions and to acquire new
+ones not supplied by nature.</p>
+
+<p>To be fully reasonable was to be like the Houyhnhnms.
+They did not know what lying was. They
+affirmed or denied only when they were certain. Their
+two principal virtues were friendship and benevolence,
+felt towards the whole species without partiality except
+where there were special virtues to attract them. In
+marriage they were without jealousy, fondness, quarrelling,
+or discontent. The young of both sexes were
+brought up in moderation, industry, exercise, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span>
+cleanliness. Their only government was an annual
+council of the entire nation. They had no literature
+except poems composed, not written down, in praise
+of virtue. They were skilful workmen in the necessary
+arts, but wasted no time on superfluity or show. Reasonably
+born and bred, they lived reasonably without
+passions and died reasonably without sickness or fear.</p>
+
+<p>“At first, indeed, I did not feel that natural awe
+which the Yahoos and all other animals bear towards
+them; but it grew upon me by degrees, much sooner
+than I imagined, and was mingled with a respectful
+love and gratitude that they would condescend to
+distinguish me from the rest of my species. When I
+thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or
+human race in general, I considered them as they
+really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition.” Swift
+would have remained with the Houyhnhnms for ever
+if they had not sent him away. The beasts could not
+tolerate a man. Nor could a man who had lived among
+the beasts ever again live among men without disgust.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth voyage marked the peak of Swift’s fury
+and of his art. Great as that art was, it could not quite
+conceal that fury. The narrative might seem, however
+fantastic, to be the very mathematics of misanthropy,
+never looser than a syllogism. But the cold tread of
+intellect was repeatedly broken by the rush of nerves.
+The most reasonable sentence might suddenly throb
+with words of a shuddering hate. “Imagine twenty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>
+thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European
+army, confounding the ranks, overturning the
+carriages, battering the warriors’ faces into mummy
+by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs.” Intellect
+would have been satisfied with beating the European
+Yahoos down; nerves, furious and yet frightened at
+their own desperation, must imagine battering the
+noisome faces into mummy. Nothing less than an
+agonized antipathy could have made Swift remark
+that the female Yahoo who embraced Gulliver was
+not red-haired, “which might have been some excuse
+for an appetite a little irregular,” but “black as a
+sloe”—or as Stella. Hate possessed him as love possesses
+some other men.</p>
+
+<p>If he had been a lover of his kind he might have
+been hot with praises for the lofty merits which he
+found in them, and might have seen the world smirk
+at his tribute. Instead, he was a hater. Was there not
+as good an excuse for hating as for loving? Was it any
+less accurate to perceive ugliness, deformity, vice,
+stupidity, loathsomeness in the human race than to
+perceive beauty, grace, virtue, wit, charm? Swift
+would have known that these were absurd questions,
+asked to no purpose. Mankind would always answer
+them for its own comfort, which demands that love
+must be, in moral arguments, preferred to hate. The
+crowded tribes of the earth lived too precariously to
+welcome the hate, however instinctive, which might<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span>
+come among them to separate man from man, tribe
+from tribe, man from tribe. Only in the warmth of
+love could they live together. If the Swifts of the
+world must hate they must live alone, even if what
+they hated, as with Swift, was hate itself, along with
+cruelty, avarice, oppression, filth, intemperance, presumption.</p>
+
+<p>All this Swift had learned. But he had no choice.
+His nature insisted upon taking its revenge as a coiled
+spring insists upon uncoiling as soon as it is free. He
+had travelled through the world. He would tell the
+whole truth about his travels.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">2</p>
+
+<p>A man who had been around the world and under
+it might after twelve years of banishment venture from
+Ireland to London. Swift’s friends had never ceased
+urging him to visit them again. He would only now
+and then allow himself to think of it.</p>
+
+<p>“What can be the design of your letter but malice,”
+he wrote to Gay in January 1723, “to wake me out of
+a scurvy sleep, which however is better than none?...
+I shall not be able to relish my wine, my parsons,
+my horses, nor my garden for three months, until
+the spirit you have raised shall be dispossessed. I have
+sometimes wondered that I have not visited you, but
+I have been stopped by too many reasons, besides
+years and laziness, and yet these are very good ones.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span>
+Upon my return after half a year amongst you there
+would be to me <i>desiderio nec pudor nec modus</i>. I was three
+years reconciling myself to the scene and the business
+to which fortune has condemned me, and stupidity
+was what I had recourse to. Besides, what a figure
+should I make in London, while my friends are in
+poverty, exile, distress, or imprisonment, and my
+enemies with rods of iron? Yet I often threaten myself
+with the journey, and am every summer practising to
+ride and get health to bear it. The only inconvenience
+is that I grow old in the experiment.”</p>
+
+<p>But in November 1724, Oxford having died,
+Oxford’s son invited Swift to come to England to
+write the biography which he had proposed. “There
+would be nobody more welcome to me than yourself.
+You should live in your own way and do just what
+was most agreeable to you. I have houses enough; you
+shall take your choice.” By September 1725 Swift
+had his Travels ready to be printed. With two such
+reasons for going he had no excuse for staying. His
+friends urged him with fresh tenderness and wit.</p>
+
+<p>“I have often imagined to myself,” Pope wrote in
+October, “that if ever all of us met again, after so
+many varieties and changes, after so much of the old
+world and of the old man in each of us has been altered,
+after there has been such a new heaven and a new
+earth in our minds and bodies that scarce a single
+thought of the one, any more than a single atom of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>
+the other, remains just the same—I have fancied, I
+say, that we should meet like the righteous in the
+millennium, quite in peace, divested of all our former
+passions, smiling at all our own designs, and content
+to enjoy the kingdom of the just in tranquillity.”</p>
+
+<p>Arbuthnot, just recovering from a nearly fatal illness,
+had intended to add a postscript to Pope’s letter.
+He was so moved by what Swift had said—“Oh! if
+the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it I would
+burn my Travels”—that he wrote a letter of his own.
+“For God’s sake do not tantalize your friends any
+more. I can prove by twenty unanswerable arguments
+that it is absolutely necessary you should come over to
+England; that it would be committing the greatest absurdity
+that ever was not to do it the next approaching
+winter. I believe, indeed, it is just possible to save
+your soul without it, and that is all.”</p>
+
+<p>Some feverish disorder kept Swift “sitting like a toad
+in a corner of his great house” for a part of that winter,
+but he had set his mind on England for the spring.
+“If you do not know me when we meet,” he told Pope,
+“you need only keep one of my letters and compare it
+with my face, for my face and letters are counterparts
+of my heart.” About the middle of March he was in
+London, in the best of health and spirits, Pope said,
+and “the joy of all here who know him, as he was
+eleven years ago.”</p>
+
+<p>There were two weeks of joyful, leisurely reunion.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span>
+Pope left his villa for Swift’s lodgings. Arbuthnot “led
+him a course through the town” with such new men
+of fashion as Lord Chesterfield and William Pulteney
+(later the Earl of Bath). Harcourt and Peterborough
+made plans to introduce him to Walpole; Pope, though
+Arbuthnot got ahead of him, to the household of the
+Prince of Wales through Mrs. Howard, the Princess’s
+confidante. Swift visited Bolingbroke and Pope in the
+country, and by the first of April was ready, with
+Pope, “to ramble to Lord Oxford’s and Lord Bathurst’s
+and other places.” Pope found his guest “the
+best-natured and most indulgent man I know.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift had come into a world as strange to him as
+the world he had found in 1710. Though the Whigs
+were in power, they were not the Whigs he had known.
+Somers, Halifax, Wharton, and Addison were dead.
+Congreve was alive, but gouty and almost blind.
+Steele was alive, but in Wales and paralyzed. The
+Tories Swift had known were scattered. Oxford had
+died, Ormond had settled in Spain, Bolingbroke,
+though pardoned and again in England, was excluded
+from the House of Lords. The Society of Brothers no
+longer dined together, men of influence with men of
+wit. Prior was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Only in what had once been the Scriblerus Club
+was London much the same as Swift had left it, except
+that Parnell too was dead. Bolingbroke, formerly a
+kind of honorary member, now gave his time to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>
+philosophizing near Uxbridge about the uses of retirement
+and scheming how to get back in power.
+Pope, having made a fortune out of Homer, had
+retired to his house and grotto at Twickenham and
+was brewing poison for the dunces. Gay, with a small
+sinecure and lodgings in the palace at Whitehall, was
+completing the fables which he wrote for Prince
+William, son of the Prince of Wales. Arbuthnot, still
+as always a man of learning, virtue, sense, and wit,
+called his house in London Martin’s office, though the
+Scriblerus Club had given up its regular meetings.</p>
+
+<p>Swift, being Swift, could not withhold himself from
+politics. The authorities in Ireland warned the authorities
+in England to watch out for him. Walpole, who
+may have wanted to win Swift over and who may have
+wanted merely to learn about Irish affairs, invited
+Swift to dine with him at Chelsea and later to call on
+him in London. First and last they were at deadlock,
+however, though scandal buzzed about a treaty between
+them. Walpole’s opinions concerning Ireland,
+Swift said, “I could not reconcile to the notions I had
+of liberty.” “I was neither offered nor would have
+received” any promotion “except upon conditions
+which would never be granted.” By the end of April
+he was “weary of being among ministers whom I
+cannot govern, who are all rank Tories in government
+and worse than Whigs in Church, whereas I was the
+first man who taught and practised the direct contrary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>
+principle.” If he had any hope it was in the opposition
+being organized by Pulteney and Sir William Wyndham,
+with the help and advice of Bolingbroke, and
+with the name of the Patriots. But Swift’s old zest,
+perhaps his old delusion, had gone.</p>
+
+<p>“This is the first time I was ever weary of England
+and longed to be in Ireland,” he wrote to Sheridan.
+“But it is because go I must, for I do not love Ireland
+better nor England, as England, worse. In short, you
+all live in a wretched, dirty doghole and prison, but
+it is a place good enough to die in. I can tell you one
+thing, that I have had the fairest offer made me of a
+settlement here that one can imagine, which if I were
+ten years younger I would gladly accept, within ten
+miles of London and in the midst of my friends. But I
+am too old for new schemes, and especially such as
+would bridle my freedoms and liberalities.”</p>
+
+<p>This was Swift’s way of saying that though some
+unknown patron had offered him a pleasant living in
+England, and it tempted him, he actually preferred
+Ireland, where he could be, as Dean, independent and
+liberal. He was closer to Ireland than he would admit.
+He did not during his stay in England even find time
+to go through the Oxford papers among which he had
+once thought he wanted to live over the days of his
+power, writing the history of the minister he had
+served and loved.</p>
+
+<p>But if public affairs were disappointing, friendship<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>
+and wit, for which Swift had his genius, were all he
+had looked forward to. His friends would not take his
+politics too seriously. “I hope,” Bolingbroke wrote to
+“the three Yahoos of Twickenham, Jonathan, Alexander,
+John,” “Jonathan’s imagination of business
+will be succeeded by some imagination more becoming
+a professor of the divine science <i>la bagatelle</i>.” During
+May and June Swift was as cheerful as he ever urged
+others to be. He was at Twickenham with Gay and
+Pope, content to let the world go its way if they could
+laugh at it. “Mr. Pope ... prescribes all our visits
+without our knowledge, and Mr. Gay and I find ourselves
+often engaged for three or four days to come, and
+we neither of us dare dispute his pleasure.” Bolingbroke
+and Bathurst were not far away. Congreve came
+out to dinner. Mrs. Howard had a house at Marble
+Hill. The Prince of Wales’s court left London for
+Richmond where Swift made it his habit, as he put it,
+“to sponge a breakfast once a week.”</p>
+
+<p>The days were as busy, if not as weighty, as they
+had been for Swift when he spent them with the Ministry,
+but in the evenings he played backgammon with
+Pope’s mother. Pope, Gay, and Swift went off for two
+weeks on horseback, to Lord Cobham’s house at
+Stowe, to Bathurst’s house at Cirencester, probably to
+Windsor Forest. Pope and Swift seem to have helped
+Gay with a ballad which he wrote at the inn at Wokingham.
+All three of them agreed upon a volume or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span>
+volumes of miscellanies in which, as Pope described it,
+they were to “look like friends, side by side, serious
+and merry by turns, not in the stiff forms of learned
+authors, flattering each other and setting the rest of
+mankind at naught, but in a free, unimportant,
+natural, easy manner, diverting others just as we
+diverted ourselves.”</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Twickenham saw them working
+upon bigger schemes. Gay had his fables, taking from
+the behaviour of animals the rules for human conduct
+which he wittily versified for the little prince. Pope,
+angry at the spiteful dunces who had envied his success,
+was paying them off in a satire. Swift at first had
+thought they hardly deserved it. “Take care the bad
+poets do not outwit you, as they have served the good
+ones in every age, whom they have provoked to transmit
+their names to posterity.” Swift himself almost
+never mentioned fools by name when he slaughtered
+them in prose or verse, unless the slaughter were
+political. But when he read Pope’s satire he changed
+his mind, as Pope had now changed his. Pope was
+going to burn the verses. Swift saved them from the
+fire. When three such wits had come together they
+might as well all whip the world. Let Gay have his
+moral animals, and Pope his dunces. Swift would take
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>They read and discussed his Travels. Pope and
+Swift thought of means of publishing the book so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>
+stealthily that there would be no danger of prosecution.
+The printer, having seen a quarter of it, agreed
+to pay within six months the two hundred pounds
+which Pope made Swift demand. Only after Swift had
+left England the middle of August did the printer
+receive the manuscript, “he knew not whence, nor
+from whom, dropped at his house in the dark from a
+hackney coach” in which it is likely that the mystifying
+Pope enjoyed his subterfuge.</p>
+
+<p>Secret enough, but not half as secret as Swift was
+about something dearer to him than any book. From
+the beginning of his visit he was worried about Stella,
+who was very sick at home but tried to keep the news
+from him. “I have these two months seen through
+Mrs. Dingley’s disguises,” Swift wrote in July. Early
+in that month he heard that Stella was in danger.
+Though it destroyed his peace, he said nothing to his
+friends in England. Bolingbroke knew that Swift had
+a friend called Stella and gallantly assumed she was
+his mistress. To Pope and Gay and Arbuthnot she was
+at most only a vague shape in Ireland. Neither at
+Twickenham nor at Whitehall, where Swift later lived
+with Gay, was she more than that. Swift, so long used
+to discretion where Stella was concerned, showed them
+a wit’s face, not a lover’s heart. But his letters to his
+friends in Ireland made plain how his grief had shaken
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“What you tell me of Mrs. Johnson I have long expected,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span>
+with great oppression and heaviness of heart.
+We have been perfect friends these thirty-five years.
+Upon my advice they both came to Ireland and have
+been ever since my constant companions; and the
+remainder of my life will be a very melancholy scene
+when one of them is gone whom I most esteemed upon
+the score of every good quality than can possibly
+recommend a human creature.... My heart has
+been so sunk that I have not been the same man, nor
+ever shall be again, but drag on a wretched life till it
+shall please God to call me away.... I wish it could
+be brought about that she might make her will....</p>
+
+<p>“Think how I am disposed while I write this, and
+forgive the inconsistencies. I would not for the universe
+be present at such a trial of seeing her depart.
+She will be among friends that upon her account and
+great worth will tend her with all possible care, where
+I should be a trouble to her and the greatest torment
+to myself. In case the matter should be desperate I
+would have you advise, if they come to town, that they
+should be lodged in some airy, healthy part and not
+in the deanery, which besides, you know, cannot but
+be a very improper thing for that house to breathe her
+last in. This I leave to your discretion, and I conjure
+you to burn this letter immediately, without telling the
+contents of it to any person alive.</p>
+
+<p>“Pray write me every week, that I may know what
+steps to take; for I am determined not to go to Ireland<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>
+to find her just dead or dying. Nothing but extremity
+could make me familiar with those terrible words,
+applied to such a dear friend. Let her know I have
+bought her a repeating gold watch, for her ease in
+winter nights. I designed to have surprised her with it,
+but now I would have her know it, that she may see
+how my thoughts were always to make her easy. I am
+of opinion that there is not a greater folly than to contract
+too great and intimate a friendship, which must
+always leave the survivor miserable.... When you
+have read this letter twice, and retain what I desire,
+pray burn it and let all I have said lie only in your
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>“Pray write every week.... I would rather have
+good news from you than Canterbury, though it were
+given me upon my own terms.”</p>
+
+<p>What other lover who ever lived could, staggering
+with grief and dread, have talked about the terms of
+his lover’s will, measured her loss against the gain of
+an archbishopric, remembered that she must not die
+in his house, hesitated to go to her, and commanded
+that his anguish be kept secret?</p>
+
+<p>“One of the two oldest and dearest friends I have in
+the world is in so desperate a condition of health as
+makes me expect every post to hear of her death. It is
+the younger of the two with whom I have lived in the
+greatest friendship for thirty-three years.... For my
+part, as I value life very little, so the poor casual remains<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span>
+of it, after such a loss, would be a burden that
+I must heartily beg God Almighty to enable me to
+bear; and I think there is not a greater folly than that
+of entering into too strict and particular a friendship,
+with the loss of which a man must be absolutely miserable,
+but especially at an age when it is too late to
+engage in a new friendship. Besides, this was a person
+of my own rearing and instructing, from childhood,
+who excelled in every good quality that can possibly
+accomplish a human creature.... Pardon me, I
+know not what I am saying. But believe me that
+violent friendship is much more lasting and as much
+engaging as violent love.”</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of July, Swift, at Twickenham, was
+one day answering a letter from Sheridan. “The account
+you give me is nothing but what I have some
+time expected with the utmost agonies, and there is one
+aggravation of constraint, that where I am I am forced
+to put on an easy countenance. It was at this time the
+best office your friendship could do, not to deceive
+me.... I look upon this as the greatest event that
+can ever happen to me, but all my preparations will
+not suffice to make me bear it like a philosopher, nor
+altogether like a Christian. There hath been the most
+intimate friendship between us from her childhood,
+and the greatest merit, on her side, that ever was in
+one human creature towards another. Nay, if I were
+now near her I would not see her. I could not behave<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>
+myself tolerably, and should redouble her sorrow.
+Judge in what a temper of mind I write this. The very
+time I am writing I conclude the fairest soul in the
+world hath left its body.”</p>
+
+<p>Just then Swift was interrupted. “Confusion! that
+I am this moment called down to a visitor, when I am
+in the country and not in my power to deny myself.”</p>
+
+<p>He came back to his unfinished letter. “I have
+passed a very constrained hour, and now return to say
+I know not what. I have been long weary of the world,
+and shall for my small remainder of years be weary of
+life, having for ever lost that conversation which alone
+could make it tolerable. I fear while you are reading
+this you will be shedding tears at her funeral.”</p>
+
+<p>In a week Swift knew that, no matter what he faced,
+he must go to Ireland. Pope, ignorant of the full
+reason, was so unwilling to lose his friend that he
+travelled with him to Chester. “I felt the extreme heat
+of the weather,” Pope said, “the inns, the roads, the
+confinement and closeness of the uneasy coach, and
+wished a hundred times I had either a deanery or a
+horse in my gift” to keep Swift in England or to make
+his journey more comfortable. But there were no
+words between them about Stella, as there were no
+words about her in any of the letters he wrote back to
+his English friends. Swift, so copious and eloquent
+about most of his passions, about this one was as quiet
+as a stone. Pope, who suspected something, risked only<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span>
+a hint in his wish that “you may find every friend you
+have there in the state you wish him or her.” Talking
+about everything else in the world the two great wits
+rode in the uneasy coach to Chester, where Swift was
+prepared to find mortal news waiting for him. The
+only word from him about her is in a letter to an
+Irish friend two months later. “Mrs. Johnson is much
+recovered since I saw her first, but still very lean
+and low.”</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">3</p>
+
+<p>Pope wished “that your visits to us may have no
+other effect than the progress of a rich man to a remote
+estate, which he finds greater than he expected,
+which knowledge only serves to make him happier
+where he is, with no disagreeable prospect if ever he
+should choose to remove.” And Swift, coming home
+from his rich estate in London, was received, Arbuthnot
+said, like a Lord Lieutenant. When the ship was
+sighted in Dublin Bay the bells of the city were set to
+ringing. The Corporation, with less official citizens,
+went out in wherries to meet the “Dean, Drapier,
+Bickerstaff, or Gulliver.” The docks had bunting,
+every street a bonfire. The populace cheered their
+defender as he landed and rode to his gloomy house.</p>
+
+<p>If Swift was human, as well as Swift, he was warmed
+by this loud affection. But they were the people who
+had hooted him when he came over to be Dean, before<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>
+he had fought for them about their copper farthings.
+“I have often reflected in how few hours, with a swift
+horse or a strong gale, a man may come among a
+people as unknown to him as the antipodes.” Between
+Swift and the Irish, or between him and any body of
+men, it was too late for reconciliation. He had been
+an alien all his life, and he had proved it in his Travels.
+There the world would soon have a chance to study
+its disgusting face.</p>
+
+<p><i>Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World</i>, published
+28 October 1726 to vex the world rather than
+divert it, diverted it. Nobody spoke or apparently even
+thought of prosecution. “The politicians to a man
+agree,” Pope and Gay wrote to Swift, “that it is
+free from particular reflections, but that the satire on
+general societies of men is too severe.” Politicians were
+no more disposed than they were obliged to defend
+the human race against a libel. Mankind, invincibly
+abstract, invulnerably obtuse to general assaults,
+laughed. “From the highest to the lowest” the book
+was read, “from the cabinet council to the nursery.”
+The Princess of Wales did not care, probably did not
+know, that she was supposed to have sat for the Queen
+of Brobdingnag. She was delighted. The Duchess of
+Marlborough was “in raptures” and willing to forgive
+her old enemy. Arbuthnot saw that the book was to be
+a classic, and forecast for it “as great a run as John
+Bunyan.” The first impression was sold within a week.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span>
+There were Dublin editions, and translations into
+French and Dutch within a year.</p>
+
+<p>The third voyage, with its multiplied ridicule of
+pedants, pleased the least. That satire was too limited.
+Readers preferred to see all mankind in the refracting
+glass. Monkeys before a mirror, Swift might have said.
+They accepted the likenesses which they recognized,
+but they did not recognize those which might have
+vexed them. At least they did not take such likenesses to
+themselves. Untroubled by the satire, they enjoyed the
+story, so marvellous yet so circumstantial, so ingenious
+yet so simple. “Such a merry work,” Arbuthnot called
+it. Who was there who could fail to be diverted by
+these adventures among pigmies and giants, on an
+island that moved through the air, in a land where
+horses used men as beasts? Who minded that the traveller
+was a misanthrope? Misanthropy did not hurt its
+objects, so long as it confined itself to words.</p>
+
+<p>Swift, accusing mankind of every vice and folly, had
+thought of it as more sensitive or less frivolous than it
+was. He let drive with all his pitiless force, and the
+world applauded his witty marksmanship.</p>
+
+<p>Stella having for the time recovered, Swift went
+again the next April to England, where the Earl of
+Peterborough thought the Dean ran the risk of becoming
+a bishop. The second visit was an anticlimax. Swift
+made no progress with the life of Oxford. He was completely
+out of favour with Walpole. Twickenham,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span>
+happily as Pope welcomed Swift there, was not what
+it had seemed before. It was pleasant to talk with Pope
+about his dunces. It was pleasant to read the verses of
+the opera which Gay, to whom Swift had said that “a
+Newgate pastoral might make an odd, pretty sort of
+thing,” was writing about rogues and beggars. It was
+pleasant to concoct their miscellanies, in which the
+poems to Stella were to appear. But it was unpleasant
+for Swift to be so deaf that he could hardly hear
+Pope’s feeble voice or have a share in the conversation
+of the friends who came to see them. Swift
+began to feel that he was a burden. He would go to
+London.</p>
+
+<p>He would go to France. Voltaire gave him letters
+of introduction. Swift exchanged opinions with his
+French translator, telling him, in his French, that if
+the Travels were calculated only for the British Isles
+then the traveller was a pitiable writer. The same vices
+and the same follies, he said, reigned everywhere, at
+least in all the civilized countries of Europe; and the
+author who wrote only for one city, one province, one
+kingdom, or even one age so little deserved to be translated
+that he did not deserve to be read.</p>
+
+<p>The death of George I and the accession to the
+throne of the Prince and Princess of Wales, who were
+the only royal friends Swift ever had, held him in
+England. Once more, and for the last time, he was
+disappointed. Walpole, after a fluttering interval, retained<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span>
+his power. Wit alone could not make a man a
+bishop.</p>
+
+<p>Stella, it turned out, could not be well without
+Swift. He had left her settled in the deanery for the
+summer. In August Sheridan wrote that she was once
+more in danger. Swift, at the house of a kinsman in
+London, was helpless with his own malady.</p>
+
+<p>“I walk like a drunken man, and am deafer than
+ever you knew me. If I had any tolerable health I
+would go this moment to Ireland. Yet I think I would
+not, considering the news I daily expect to hear from
+you.... I kept it [Sheridan’s letter] an hour in my
+pocket with all the suspense of a man who expected to
+hear the worst news that fortune could give him, and
+at the same time was not able to hold up my head....
+I know not whether it be an addition to my grief
+or not, that I am now extremely ill; for it would have
+been a reproach to me to be in perfect health when
+such a friend is desperate. I do profess upon my salvation
+that the distressed and desperate condition of our
+friend makes life so indifferent to me, who by course
+of nature have so little left, that I do not think it worth
+the time to struggle. Yet I should think, according to
+what hath been formerly, that I may happen to overcome
+this present disorder. And to what advantage?
+Why, to see the loss of that person for whose sake only
+life was worth preserving.... What have I to do in
+the world? I never was in such agonies as when I received<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>
+your letter and had it in my pocket. I am able
+to hold up my head no longer.”</p>
+
+<p>Still Swift would not tell his English friends about
+Stella. His secret had been buried in him too long to
+be dug up now. Too much of his heart would have
+come with it. Suddenly leaving London in September
+he lurched across England to Chester. Offered a passage
+from Parkgate in the official yacht, he refused,
+thinking he would be in Ireland sooner if he rode
+through Wales and shipped from Holyhead. There
+the winds delayed him for a week, spent in the smoky
+rooms of an inn which had no decent wine to drink, no
+books to read, no customers who could speak English.</p>
+
+<p>Morning and afternoon he walked in the wind on
+the rocks. “I was so cunning these three last days that
+whenever I began to rage and storm at the weather I
+took special care to turn my face towards Ireland, in
+hopes by my breath to push the wind forward. But
+now I give up.” Every night he dined alone, and had
+five dreary hours ahead of him before he went to bed.
+Sleep was no relief. He had fantastic dreams, such as
+that Bolingbroke was preaching in St. Patrick’s and
+quoting Wycherley in his sermon. Morning was no
+restoration. Swift looked for the wind to change, and
+it would not change. “I live in suspense, which is
+the worst circumstance of human nature.” There was
+nothing to do but “scribble or sit humdrum.” He
+scribbled prose and verse.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>I never was in haste before</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To reach that slavish hateful shore.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Before I always found the wind</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To me was most malicious kind.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But now the danger of a friend</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>On whom my fears and hopes depend,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Absent from whom all climes are curst,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>With whom I’m happy in the worst,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>With rage impatient makes me wait</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>A passage to the land I hate.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>And when he finally got away the wind was so near a
+tempest that he was forced to land at Carlingford,
+sixty miles from Dublin, and complete his journey with
+“lazy dull horses.”</p>
+
+<p>This time Stella, though comforted by his return,
+was dying. Swift would not say so to Pope, to whom
+Sheridan had secretly written the truth. Again Pope
+hinted his sympathy. “To your bad health I fear there
+was added some disagreeable news from Ireland which
+might occasion your so sudden departure.” Swift met
+the sympathy with a shield. His health, he said, had
+driven him home. “Here is my maintenance, and here
+my convenience.” He invited Pope to Dublin. “I have
+a race of orderly elderly people of both sexes at command
+who are of no consequence and have gifts proper
+for attending us, who can bawl when I am deaf and
+tread softly when I am only giddy and would sleep.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>
+Six weeks later he repeated his invitation. “You may
+find about six rational, good, civil, learned, easy companions
+of the males; fewer of the females, but
+many civil, hospitable, and ready to admire and
+adore.”</p>
+
+<p>Nothing about Stella, who had admired and adored
+beyond almost any woman who ever lived. Nothing
+about Stella to any man during the four months left to
+her. But Swift in October and November wrote three
+prayers which he used in her last sickness.</p>
+
+<p>“Give her grace to continue sincerely thankful to
+Thee for the many favours Thou hast bestowed upon
+her: the ability and inclination and practice to do
+good, and those virtues which have procured the
+esteem and love of her friends and a most unspotted
+name in the world.... We beseech Thee likewise to
+compose her thoughts and preserve to her the use of
+her memory and reason during the course of her sickness.
+Give her a true conception of the vanity, folly,
+and insignificancy of all human things.... Let not
+our grief afflict her mind and thereby have an effect on
+her present distempers. Forgive the sorrow and weakness
+of those among us who sink under the grief and
+terror of losing so dear and useful a friend.”</p>
+
+<p>On a Sunday in January, when Swift had guests at
+his house, “about eight o’clock at night a servant
+brought me a note with an account of the death of the
+truest, most virtuous and valuable friend that I, or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>
+perhaps any other person, ever was blessed with....
+As soon as I am left alone, which is about eleven at
+night, I resolve, for my own satisfaction, to say something
+of her life and character.” He wrote of her
+parentage and girlhood, her intelligence and beauty
+(“only a little too fat”), her reasons for leaving England
+for Ireland. “Thus far I writ the same night
+between eleven and twelve.”</p>
+
+<p>The next day he wrote of her memory and judgment
+and gracefulness, “somewhat more than human,” of
+her “civility, freedom, easiness, and sincerity.” “All
+of us who had the happiness of her friendship agreed
+unanimously that in an afternoon or evening’s conversation
+she never failed, before we parted, of delivering
+the best thing that was said in the company.” He
+wrote of the love her servants felt for her. “My head
+aches, and I can write no more.”</p>
+
+<p>Tuesday was the day of the funeral at St. Patrick’s.
+“My sickness will not suffer me to attend. It is now
+nine at night, and I am removed into another apartment
+that I may not see the light in the church, which
+is just over against the window of my bed-chamber.”
+He wrote of her courage. She had once shot a burglar,
+trying to enter her house, and had killed him. She was
+never known to cry out with fear or weakness or affectation.
+He wrote of her manners, her reading in history,
+books of travel, the philosophers. “She had a
+true taste of wit and good sense, both in poetry and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span>
+prose, and was a perfect good critic of style.” He wrote
+of her fortune and her management of it.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards he wrote as he found time. He wrote of
+her charity, her tact, her modesty. “She rather chose
+men for her companions, the usual topics of ladies’
+discourse being such as she had little knowledge of,
+and less relish. Yet no man was upon the rack to
+entertain her, for she easily descended to anything that
+was innocent and diverting.” She loved Ireland more
+than most natives, and detested “the tyranny and
+injustice of England in their treatment of this kingdom.
+She had indeed reason to love a country where she had
+the esteem and friendship of all who knew her, and
+the universal good report of all who ever heard of her.”</p>
+
+<p>This is as strange a language as love ever used, but
+it is a language of love, Swift’s language, Swift’s love.
+After he had written this he set down some of her
+sayings, which only a lover could have found as witty
+as Swift found them. After that he wrote not a word
+about her in any letter that survives. He is said never
+again to have spoken her name. He destroyed all her
+letters to him and all his letters to her except the
+journal which he had sent home from London. He
+would be as silent as Stella, the most silent of all
+famous lovers. But he could not quite equal her silence.
+On a paper containing some of her hair he wrote, it is
+said, the words “Only a woman’s hair.” A giant’s sentimentality
+and a devil’s contempt for it. Fire and ice.</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c7">VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c xlarge sp">KING OF TRIFLERS</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">1</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">O</span>n</span> the day after Stella died the <i>Beggar’s Opera</i> was
+first given in London, the Duke of Argyll starting
+the applause which in the end became a delighted
+clamour. Swift, who had been doubtful about the dramatic
+form which Gay had chosen, said the opera would
+do “more public service than all the ministers of state
+from Adam to Walpole.” When it came to Dublin,
+and the Lord Lieutenant approved of it, so did the
+Dean of St. Patrick’s. Though Swift, who never went
+to the theatre, seems now to have made no exception,
+he spoke as from the Cathedral. Such humour would
+probably, he said with another moral comparison, “do
+more good than a thousand sermons of so stupid, so
+injudicious, and so prostitute a divine” as the court
+chaplain, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who had
+preached against the opera in London. Humour, Swift
+explained, was a “happy talent,” “fixed to the very
+nature of man.” Satire was public spirit “prompting
+men of genius and virtue to mend the world as far as
+they are able.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span></p>
+
+<p>The defence of Gay became a defence of Swift. “I
+demand whether I have not as good a title to laugh as
+men have to be ridiculous, and to expose vice as another
+hath to be vicious. If I ridicule the follies and
+corruptions of a court, a ministry, or a senate, are they
+not amply paid by pensions, titles, and power, while
+I expect and desire no other reward than that of laughing
+with a few friends in a corner?” Surely the objects
+of satire were as well off as the satirist. “If those who
+take offence think me in the wrong I am ready to
+change the scene with them whenever they please.”</p>
+
+<p>In March 1728 Swift impartially observed that “the
+<i>Beggar’s Opera</i> has knocked down Gulliver; I hope
+to see Pope’s Dulness knock down the <i>Beggar’s Opera</i>.”
+The <i>Dunciad</i> appeared in May. It was then without the
+inscription to Swift which, included the next year,
+made him feel “abstracted from everybody in the
+happiness of being recorded your friend while wit and
+humour and politeness shall have any memorial among
+us.” But Swift had already seen the brilliant lines in
+which Pope named his friend with the greatest wits
+and complimented him with having driven Dulness
+out of Ireland, to settle, safe from him, in England.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>O thou! whatever title please thine ear,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whether thou choose Cervantes’ serious air,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or laugh and shake in Rabelais’ easy chair,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or praise the Court, or magnify Mankind,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or thy grieved country’s copper chains unbind;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>From thy Bœotia though her power retires,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mourn not, my Swift, at aught our realm acquires.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Here pleased behold her mighty wings outspread</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Swift’s Travels, Gay’s Opera, Pope’s Dunces: Twickenham
+had borne its satiric fruits. “Pope, Gay, and I,”
+Swift later wrote, had done their best “to make folks
+merry and wise,” acknowledging “no enemies except
+knaves and fools.” But that episode had ended. Swift
+was never to see his friends again. Year after year they
+urged him to come back, and for a few years he often
+planned to go. Sickness and pride kept him in Ireland.
+The Court had no favours for him. Walpole was hopelessly
+in power. Bolingbroke, spinning out a slipshod
+philosophy for Pope to versify in his moral essays, tried
+to entice Swift to a living in Berkshire, half a day’s
+journey from Uxbridge and Twickenham. Swift, relatively
+a rich man in Ireland, declined to become relatively
+a poor man in England. Letters would have to
+keep their friendship alive.</p>
+
+<p>Half his life he lived in his letters to and from his
+English friends. Yet he wrote fitfully, fewer letters than
+he received. Much as he loved Arbuthnot, Swift was
+slow in writing to him. Gay might have to write twice
+or three times to draw an answer. When he could, Swift<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>
+wrote to two of his friends at once: Bolingbroke and
+Pope, Arbuthnot and Pope, Pope and Gay, Gay and
+the Duchess of Queensberry, Gay’s lively patron. “It
+is a very cold scent to continue a correspondence with
+one whom we never expect to see.... Mr. Pope and
+my Lord Bolingbroke themselves,” Swift wrote in 1734,
+“begin to fail me.”</p>
+
+<p>The fellowship was mortal. Gay died in 1732. When
+the news came in a letter from Arbuthnot and Pope,
+Swift did not open it for five days, “by an impulse foreboding
+some misfortune.” Arbuthnot died in 1735.
+“The death of Mr. Gay and the Doctor,” Swift wrote
+to Pope, “have been terrible wounds near my heart.
+Their living would have been a great comfort to me,
+although I should never have seen them, like a sum of
+money in a bank from which I should at least receive
+annual interest, as I do from you and have done from
+my Lord Bolingbroke.” Bolingbroke after 1735 spent
+most of his time in France. Only Pope and Swift were
+left, Pope’s mind to outlast Swift’s, Swift’s body to outlast
+Pope’s.</p>
+
+<p>There was no change in the affection which Swift
+felt for his friends, but he could not help getting out of
+touch with them. England was soon years away. Despairing
+of English politics, in the interminable hands
+of Walpole, Swift gave up his old concern for government,
+except where Ireland was touched. He saw
+London as the stage of a political melodrama, with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span>
+countless Whigs as the villain, and with no hero except
+Pulteney and his Patriots. Swift ceased to follow, even
+as much as he had done before, the turns and changes
+of wit. London had Pope, and London had dunces. In
+Ireland it was impossible to tell whom Pope was slashing
+unless he spelled out the names of his victims. When
+Swift read such writers, he was “out of all patience to
+the present set of whifflers.” England, London, the
+Court might still be visible enough to Swift’s memory,
+but they no longer stirred with the life which had been
+his passion and his magnet. They had stiffened to a
+picture, and the years had set them in a frame.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">2</p>
+
+<p>It was time for Swift to learn, if he could learn, how
+to live in Ireland without raging. For a year or so after
+Stella’s death he tried to learn. “Except absence from
+friends,” he wrote to Pope in May 1728, “I confess
+freely that I have no discontent at living here, beside
+what arises from a silly spirit of liberty, which as it
+neither sours my drink nor hurts my meat nor spoils
+my stomach farther than in imagination, so I resolve
+to throw it off.”</p>
+
+<p>Sheridan, who of Swift’s Irish friends had known
+Stella best, plotted diversions. He took Swift south to
+Wexford about Easter of that year. Together they
+began in May to write the <i>Intelligencer</i>. This was meant
+to be a weekly paper “to inform or divert or correct or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>
+vex the town” of Dublin. The two contributors, who
+had no editor to keep them going, did not lose interest
+till after a dozen issues and did not stop till after
+twenty. Sheridan got Swift invited in June to the house
+of Sir Arthur Acheson at Market Hill near Armagh.
+There from June to the next January, and during the
+summers of 1729 and 1730, Swift lived with friends,
+away from Dublin and the solitude of his deanery.</p>
+
+<p>“I lived very easily in the country,” he wrote to
+Pope after the first visit. “Sir Arthur is a man of sense,
+has a good voice, and my Lady a better. She is perfectly
+well bred and desirous to improve her understanding,
+which is very good, but cultivated too much
+like a fine lady. She was my pupil there, and severely
+chid when she read wrong. With that, and walking
+and making twenty little amusing improvements, and
+writing family verses of mirth by way of libels on my
+Lady, my time passed very well and in very good order.”</p>
+
+<p>Swift might have said more. Though his host was a
+member of the Irish Parliament and high sheriff of his
+county, and his wife was daughter of a man who had
+been for twenty years Chancellor of the Exchequer in
+Ireland, Swift with them was like an emperor on a
+friendly visit. They seem hardly to have questioned his
+imperial attitudes. The Dean might cut down one of
+the baronet’s favourite trees or have his own way with
+such “little amusing improvements” as “zigzags and
+walks,” “cradles and caves,” “grottos and seats”—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>A hole where a rabbit</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Would scorn to inhabit,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dug out in an hour:</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He calls it a bower.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The Dean might tease the lady for her lack of flesh,
+calling her Skinnybonia, or for her lack of learning—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>He loves to be bitter at</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>A lady illiterate.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The Dean might condemn her to “dull Bacon’s Essays”
+or “poor Milton” while he, not at study or at prayer,
+amused himself with grooms and labourers. The Dean
+might insist that he, not the dairymaid, should shake
+cream in a bottle till, after three hours, there was butter
+for breakfast. The Dean might take it upon himself to
+build “two temples of magnific size” for the “gentle
+goddess Cloacine.” The Dean might come down to
+dinner when he chose, no matter who the guests. But
+he was still the Dean, the greatest man in Ireland,
+great politician, great wit. To say nothing of his company,
+his verses, spirited and various, were ten times a
+return for his entertainment. They would, Swift declared,
+make Market Hill as famous as Penshurst.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f8">
+<img src="images/fig8.jpg" alt="dean">
+<p class="caption">Jonathan Swift</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>As Dean of St. Patrick’s</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Swift was king enough in Ireland, if he wanted to be
+king. When he went back to Dublin in October 1729
+after his second visit to Market Hill, he was received, a
+newspaper said, “with great joy by many of our principal
+citizens, who also on the same occasion caused
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span>the bells to ring in our cathedrals and had bonfires and
+other illuminations.” Both candidates in an election
+then being held claimed the support of the Drapier,
+though it is not certain that either had it. One of them
+to win needed only to give out a letter which he said
+Swift had written to him. Early the next year the
+Dean, because he had been, as he now admitted, the
+Drapier, was given the freedom of the city in a gold
+box brought to him by the Lord Mayor and some of
+the aldermen. It was an honour usually reserved for
+“chief governors or persons in very high employment.”</p>
+
+<p>It was an honour, and Swift was gratified. Yet in a
+few weeks he was writing to Bolingbroke: “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.” His resolve to throw off his
+discontent had not been kept. Such cheerfulness as he
+had felt at Market Hill had not survived his return to
+his solitary house. No sooner was he back than he
+wrote, or at least published, the most savage of all his
+pamphlets, the most terrible outcry of his misanthropy.</p>
+
+<p>It was, he called it, a modest proposal. Everybody
+knew that Ireland was starving and nobody knew
+what to do about it. The problem was not so difficult.
+Put simply, it came to this: too little food, too many
+mouths. Swift had thought of a way to make more food
+and fewer mouths.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I have been assured by a very knowing American
+of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy
+child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious,
+nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed,
+roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it
+will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.” Of the
+children annually born in Ireland perhaps thirty
+thousand could be taken care of by their parents.
+Twenty thousand others might be kept “for breed,
+whereof only one fourth part to be males, which is
+more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine.”
+That would leave, he calculated, about a hundred
+thousand every year “to be offered in sale to the persons
+of quality and fortune through the kingdom....
+A child will make two dishes in an entertainment for
+friends, and when the family dines alone the fore or
+hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned
+with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on
+the fourth day, especially in winter.” Such food would
+be expensive, but within the reach of landlords, who,
+“as they have already devoured most of the parents,
+seem to have the best title to the children.”</p>
+
+<p>One of his friends, Swift said, argued that in the
+present want of venison it might be well to supply it
+with boys and girls of twelve to fourteen. He himself
+could not agree. The boys of that age from much exercise
+would be thin and tough. The girls were too near
+the age when they might bear children themselves.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span>
+“And besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous
+people might be apt to censure such a practice
+(although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering
+upon cruelty, which, I confess, hath always been with
+me the strongest objection against any project, however
+well intended.” It would be enough to limit the
+proposal to children a year old. The older poor were
+already “dying and rotting, by cold and famine and
+filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.”</p>
+
+<p>Plausibly, statistically, Swift went over the advantages
+and disadvantages of his scheme. The only real
+objection he could think of was that it would reduce
+the number of people in the kingdom. The best thing
+that could happen. It was Ireland he was writing
+about, not any other country “that ever was, is, or, I
+think, ever can be upon earth.” Let no man talk of
+taxing absentees, or using Irish manufactures only, or
+going without luxuries, or forcing landlords to be
+generous and shopkeepers honest—as Swift himself
+had so long and often talked. None of those expedients
+had worked, or been tried. They were “vain, idle,
+visionary.” This new proposal was “solid and real, of
+no expense and little trouble, full in our power.” It
+would not even disoblige England. Ireland had hit
+upon a foodstuff which could not be exported because
+it could not stand much salt. Perhaps, however, “I
+could name a country which would be glad to eat up
+our whole nation without it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span></p>
+
+<p>Few of Swift’s readers seem to have shuddered at his
+proposal. Lord Bathurst wrote from England that he
+had almost brought his wife round to the opinion that
+the youngest of their children should help provide for
+the eldest. After all, any sensible reader knew that the
+Irish children would not be eaten, at least in this forthright,
+economical way, just as he knew that there were
+no Houyhnhnms and no Yahoos. Swift, sensible
+readers said, was only joking, as the Irish bishop had
+said that Gulliver was only lying. Once more the
+misanthrope had run against mankind in the abstract.</p>
+
+<p>For Swift there was nothing abstract about it. There
+was the actual disease. Here was the only sufficient
+cure. What if his flesh did creep when he recommended
+“buying the children alive, and dressing them hot
+from the knife”? What if his nerves did rage when he
+advised that the mothers of the children “let them
+suck plentifully in the last month so as to render them
+plump and fat for a good table”? So had his flesh crept
+and his nerves raged all over Ireland at the starved
+desert that England had made of it. If his cure violated
+the profoundest human instincts, so did the disease.
+Ask the parents if they would not have been better off
+if they had been sold for food at a year old instead of
+growing up to life in Ireland. Of course the proposal
+would not be carried out. Nothing so logical, nothing
+so mad and merciful, would ever be carried out. That
+was mankind. That was mankind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span></p>
+
+<p>Except for a few hints, a few urgings, a few arguments,
+a few accusations, all scattered and occasional,
+Swift after his modest proposal wrote no more prose
+about Ireland. “Looking upon this kingdom as absolutely
+desperate,” he said in 1731, “I would not prescribe
+a dose to the dead.”</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">3</p>
+
+<p>All his life Swift had been alien, but he had never
+been so solitary as he now became. His misanthropy,
+however rooted in his constitution, however confirmed
+by his experience, however fortified by his
+blunt metaphysics, was not complete. He had had to
+be perverse to be so thorough. He had had to deny
+himself things that he wanted in order to round out his
+desolation. Even in his desolation, perverse but not
+altogether voluntary, he had needed habitual friends.
+He was not a man who could do without women.
+Stella, in his worst hours, had been friends and women.
+After her death he lacked what only a friend who was
+also a woman could give him. Without her to consider
+he settled into a dark preoccupation with himself.
+Without her to stir him to variety he sank into a
+tedious, disheartening, cold routine, hard and harder
+to break through.</p>
+
+<p>At first he dined alone, or with his housekeeper, five
+nights out of seven. By 1736 he could say, with a grim
+flash, “nine days every week I dine at home.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I awake so indifferent to anything which may pass
+either in the world or my own little domestic,” he
+wrote in 1731, “that I hardly think it worth my time to
+rise, and would certainly lie all day a-bed if decency
+and dread of sickness did not drive me thence.” His
+breakfast was dull gruel. “I am wholly a stranger to
+tea and coffee, the companions of bread and butter.”
+When his health allowed him he was “constantly at
+morning prayers by nine.” But in 1735: “I very seldom
+go to church for fear of being seized with a fit of giddiness
+in the midst of the service.” “In a morning I am
+so pestered by impertinent people and impertinent
+business which my station exposes me to that the
+former part of the day is wholly lost.” As Dean of
+St. Patrick’s, as civil governor of the Cathedral neighbourhood,
+Swift had duties which he would not shirk,
+even to the least detail. Yet they were all minor duties,
+too easy to be interesting. And of course he would not
+think them important.</p>
+
+<p>Much of Swift’s day was given to walking and riding,
+“at which, however, I repine, and would not do it
+merely to lengthen life, because it would be ill husbandry,
+for I should save time by sitting still though I
+should die seven years sooner. But the dread of pain
+and torture makes me toil to preserve health from
+hand to mouth as much as a labourer to support life.”
+Swift’s exercise, however, was not wholly deliberate.
+He had still a fierce energy which kept his body restless<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>
+as well as his mind. Writing to Pope, younger by
+twenty years, and referring to Bolingbroke, younger
+by ten, Swift said: “At your or his time of life I could
+have leaped over the moon.” And in 1730 he was, he
+told Gay, “reputed the best walker in this town and
+five miles around.” “Twice a day in fair weather and
+once in foul” was the remedy Swift prescribed himself—“I
+mean exercise ... the cheapest of all drugs.”</p>
+
+<p>This treatment he varied but would not give up. In
+1731: “I can walk eight or ten miles a day and ride
+thirty Irish ones.” In 1733: “I am almost every second
+day on horseback for about a dozen miles.” In 1735:
+“I ride a dozen miles as often as I can, and always
+walk the streets except in the night, which my head
+will not suffer me to do.” In 1736: “I have not an
+ounce of flesh about me, and cannot ride above a dozen
+miles in a day without being sore and bruised and
+spent.” Later that same year: “I can neither read nor
+write nor remember nor converse. All I have left is to
+walk and ride.” In 1738: “I seldom walk less than four
+miles, sometimes six, eight, ten, or more, never beyond
+my own limits; or, if it rains, I walk as much through
+the house, up and down stairs.” By 1740, though
+Swift’s energy was chiefly in his nerves, they would not
+let him stop walking back and forth at home for hours
+a day.</p>
+
+<p>Swift might look eccentric on horseback, with his
+short gown and his gambadoes, large boots fastened to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>
+the saddle to protect his legs from wet and cold, but he
+rode out with a touch of state. Two servants, “for fear
+of accidents,” always went with him. Street and road
+were his. “I am one of the governors of all the hackney
+coaches, carts, and carriages round this town, who
+dare not insult me like your [English] rascally wagoners
+or coachmen, but give me the way; nor is there
+one lord or squire for a hundred of yours, to turn me
+out of the road or run over me with their coaches and
+six.” When, once, as he rode on the strand, some careless
+hunter fired his gun and frightened the Dean’s
+horse, it got into the newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>It was Swift’s habit to take with him, whenever he
+meant to stop for dinner with anybody on his ride, his
+own wine, bread, and chicken in a basket which one of
+the servants carried. It was his habit to send word of
+his coming with commands. Humorously and arrogantly
+he announced to one of his prebendaries, who
+lived at Wicklow and was almost unknown to Swift,
+that the Dean would like to spend Christmas there.</p>
+
+<p>“There is an inhabitant of this city,” Swift wrote,
+“of whom I suppose you have often heard. I remember
+him from my very infancy, but confess I am not so well
+acquainted with him as in prudence I ought to be, yet
+I constantly pretend to converse with him, being seldom
+out of his company, but I do not find that our
+conversation is very pleasing to either of us.” This
+person, to shorten Swift’s account of himself, had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span>
+recommended to Wicklow for its nearness to Dublin
+and the fine riding thereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>“By these incitements he seems determined to quarter
+himself upon you for three weeks at least, if he can
+have your consent, or rather that of your lady, although
+I find he never had the honour to see her. He travels
+with two servants, and consequently three horses; but
+these latter are at hack and the former at board-wages,
+so that neither of them will trouble you. As to the
+person himself, he every day drinks a pint of wine at
+noon and another at night, and for the trouble he gives
+the house he will allow one bottle more every day for
+the table, but not one drop for foreigners, who are to
+drink on your account. He will further allow one
+shilling and sixpence English for his commons, ale and
+small beer included. But you are to direct how the
+wine can be found, and whether he must send it by a
+Wicklow carrier. But the bottles, when empty, he must
+be paid for. These are the conditions, only adding that
+the family, during his residence, must be regulated by
+his own model, and you are to answer the very next
+post. He travels with his own sheets, so that he makes
+no allowance for that article. Whether you do or do not
+approve of these proposals, you are to give me an account,
+directed to the D—— of St. P——’s house. And
+the D——, after conferring with your future guest, will
+either return you an answer or send the gentleman.”</p>
+
+<p>The threatened host saw the humour behind the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span>
+arrogance, and at once sent a “kind friendly letter”
+with a “generous invitation.” When a fit of giddiness
+kept Swift from going, he wrote in another tone.
+“Pray God protect you and your family. I know not
+whether you have children, nor did I ever see your
+lady or your house; so that I never did beg an invitation
+so much against the rules of common good manners,
+to one so much a stranger as you have been,
+against my will, to me. I am therefore bound in gratitude
+and by inclination to assure [you] that I am with
+much esteem and truth, Sir, your most obedient humble
+servant.”</p>
+
+<p>In Dublin, on the two evenings a week when Swift
+did not dine alone, he limited himself to friends with
+whom he could use this same insolence, with or without
+apology. “I am hated mortally by every creature in
+power,” he wrote to Oxford’s son, “and by all their
+followers.... I do not visit one lord either temporal
+or spiritual, nor am acquainted with above three
+squires and half-a-dozen parsons.” “There is another
+race which I prefer before them, as beef and mutton
+for constant diet before partridges. I mean a middle
+kind both for understanding and fortune, who are perfectly
+easy, never impertinent, complying in everything,
+ready to do a hundred little offices that ... I
+may often want, who dine and sit with me five times
+for once that I go with them, and whom I can tell without
+offence that I am otherwise engaged at present.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span></p>
+
+<p>Writing, as in these instances, to his English friends,
+Swift exaggerated his isolation, at least for the first few
+years after Stella’s death. He saw more friends than he
+acknowledged. There was Patrick Delaney, fellow and
+then professor at Trinity College, whose marriage to a
+rich widow—“See,” Swift wrote to Gay, “what it is to
+write godly books!”—enabled the lucky man even in
+destitute Ireland to have seven or eight guests to dinner
+once a week. The guests were so often the same that
+they were thought of as a kind of club. Swift was one of
+them. But he remembered the Society of Brothers and
+the Scriblerus Club. There was Thomas Sheridan,
+perhaps Swift’s closest friend, “the best scholar in both
+kingdoms” Swift called him: schoolmaster, parson,
+friend of Stella, blunderer, wit.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>The Dean and Sheridan, I hope,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Will half supply a Gay and Pope</i>,”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Swift said. But he knew that Delaney’s house, with no
+matter how many Sheridans, was a long way from
+Pope’s villa at Twickenham. There were Richard
+Helsham, Swift’s Dublin physician, and George Faulkner,
+Swift’s Dublin printer. There were such older
+friends as Charles Ford and the brothers Grattan.
+There were the little poets and wits who rose from
+time to time in Ireland and asked for Swift’s encouragement:
+Matthew and Letitia Pilkington, Mrs.
+Barber, Mrs. Grierson, Mrs. Sican, William Dunkin.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>
+All eager, and none good. Swift had to be too kind to
+them to be kind at all. Dublin was less like London
+than like Lilliput.</p>
+
+<p>He would not admit that the little people who
+swarmed to his house on Sunday evenings came for
+anything but his wine. Yet, in spite of his growing
+avarice, he permitted himself and them the luxury of
+six, seven, eight hogsheads of wine a year, and gave
+dinners, when he gave dinners, off one of the finest
+services of plate in Dublin. In 1736, inviting Lord
+Castle-Durrow to dine with him, Swift told about his
+household economy.</p>
+
+<p>“When I would have a friend eat with me I direct
+him in general to send in the morning and inquire
+whether I dine at home, and alone. I add a fowl to my
+commons, and something else if the company be more,
+but I never mingle company, nor multiply dishes. I
+give a reasonable price for my wine.... I am seldom
+without eight or nine hogsheads.... If your Lordship
+will do me the honour when you come to town,
+you must submit to the same method. Only perhaps I
+will order the butler to see whether, by chance, he can
+find out an odd bottle of a particular choice wine
+which is all spent, although there may be a dozen or
+two remaining.... As to puddings, my Lord, I am
+not only the best but the sole perfect maker of them in
+this kingdom. They are universally known and esteemed
+under the name of the deanery puddings. Suet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>
+and plumbs are three-fourth of the ingredients. I had
+them from my ‘Aunt Giffard’ [Lady Giffard, Castle-Durrow’s
+aunt] who preserved the succession from the
+time of Sir W. Temple.”</p>
+
+<p>The “Sunday spongers,” who did not come till
+evening, found Swift as a rule more amiable than he
+let on to the English friends. More amiable than he
+generally let on to the spongers. He wrangled with his
+servants, who nevertheless adored him. He said cutting,
+bruising things to his visitors, and then offset his
+words by outbursts of tenderness. He might be violent,
+but he was seldom depressed, apparently, and never
+flat. “Swift is a very odd companion,” a visitor to
+Dublin in 1733 wrote to a friend, “if that expression is
+not too familiar for so extraordinary a genius. He
+talks a great deal and does not require many answers.
+He has infinite spirits, and says abundance of good
+things in his common way of discourse.”</p>
+
+<p>His high spirits extended at times to horseplay and
+complicated hoaxes. He introduced Mrs. Pilkington,
+she said, as a wench whom her husband had brought
+to a party, and insisted that the game be played all
+evening. Swift got up a mock trial, again according to
+Mrs. Pilkington, to try his servants for killing a favourite
+hen. His friends were the jury, he was the judge. As
+if his usual solitude were more than he could bear,
+although he made himself bear it for five nights a week,
+he ran to extravagances when he escaped from it. “I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>
+believe the best part of the reason why men are said to
+grow children when they are old,” he wrote to Pope,
+“is because they cannot entertain themselves with
+thinking; which is the very case of little boys and girls,
+who love to be noisy among their playfellows.”</p>
+
+<p>Not until 1736, and then not without relapses, did
+Swift “forbid the Sunday spongers, whom in the lump
+I never loved to see, and cared less to hear when I
+could not hear at all.”</p>
+
+<p>Mortified by his deafness, and bored by much of
+what was shouted in the treble voices which were the
+only ones he could hear, he spent his nine evenings a
+week alone. With his restless imagination he had to
+make drama out of his circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>“I often reflect on my present life as the exact burlesque
+of my middle age, which passed among ministers....
+I am now acting the same things in miniature,
+but in a higher station as first minister, nay sometimes
+as a prince, in which last quality my housekeeper,
+a grave elderly woman, is called at home and in the
+neighbourhood Sir Robert [Walpole]. My butler is
+secretary, and has no other defect for that office but
+that he cannot write. Yet that is not singular, for I
+have known three Secretaries of State upon the same
+level, and who were too old to mend, which mine is
+not. My realm extends a hundred and twenty houses,
+whose inhabitants constitute the bulk of my subjects.
+My grand jury is my House of Commons, and my<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>
+Chapter the House of Lords. I must proceed no
+further, because my arts of governing are secrets of
+state.”</p>
+
+<p>This was written with Swift’s hard smile, but he
+returned often to his image of dining alone like a king.
+He was king in his nutshell. Though he sometimes
+claimed to be in danger, he was actually safe. The
+government would not have dared to touch him. When
+he stung the ministers in one of his poems, and Walpole
+talked of arrest and punishment, he was told, it is said,
+that nothing less than an army of ten thousand men
+could fetch Swift out of Ireland. When in 1737 it was
+proposed to lower the value of the Irish guinea, and
+the Primate of Ireland, Walpole’s real lieutenant,
+accused Swift of raising the mob, the Dean said that if
+he had lifted a finger the people would have torn the
+Archbishop to pieces. Swift, when the measure was put
+into effect, ran up a black flag over his Cathedral and
+had the bells toll all day. The authorities thought it as
+irritating and useless as it was, but they let the Dean
+alone. He was intrenched in the Cathedral, with the
+Kevin Bail, the rabble of the Liberty, for his bodyguard.
+He was intrenched in the affections of all
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>This was forty years after that time at Moor Park
+when Temple had first had the chance to notice, as
+he read the <i>Tale of a Tub</i>, that he had a tiger in his
+garden. The tiger was older now, and less deadly to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>
+the fools and knaves who had always been his prey. He
+had lived through many wounds. Scars covered him.
+Sickness crippled him. Incapable of the great raids of
+his hungry, angry youth, he kept to his lair. But he
+roared with the same voice, glared with the same eyes.
+Caging had not tamed him or reconciled him to the
+fate of gentler creatures. The bitter world had not
+taught him to be sweet, or to purr with the soft reverberations
+of philosophy, or to move with some friendly
+pack. Even if he were willing to submit and make a
+final peace, he could not do it. He had been born a
+tiger. At seventy he was a tiger still.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c large">4</p>
+
+<p>“I am in my chamber at five, there sit alone till
+eleven, and then to bed. I write pamphlets and follies
+merely for amusement, and when they are finished, or
+I grow weary in the middle, I cast them into the fire,
+partly out of dislike, and chiefly because I know they
+will signify nothing.” “Finding it troublesome to read
+at night, and the bad company here growing tasteless,
+I am always writing bad prose, or worse verses, either
+of rage or raillery, whereof some few escape to give
+offence, or mirth, and the rest are burnt.... I am
+forced to play at small game, to set the beasts here
+a-madding, merely for want of better game.” “I grow
+gradually so dry that a rhyme with me is almost as
+hard to find as a guinea.” “I can as easily write a poem<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>
+in the Chinese language as my own. I am as fit for
+matrimony as invention. And yet I have daily schemes
+for innumerable essays in prose, and proceed sometimes
+to no less than half a dozen lines, which the next
+morning become waste paper.”</p>
+
+<p>Now and then Swift wrote a brief pamphlet concerned
+with Irish, and particularly with Church,
+politics. Many of his verse lampoons or “libels” were
+printed as broadsides in Dublin, where they raised
+their laugh or their welt and went by with the news.
+He spent a good deal of time on his partisan history of
+the Oxford Ministry, which his English friends had to
+work hard to keep him from publishing. He read the
+books of other historians and wrote fierce marginal
+notes which have become as famous as the books
+themselves. When a new edition of his Travels was
+issued in Ireland he interested himself only enough to
+“strike out the hash” which the English printer had
+put in to pacify the English ministers. Swift allowed
+Pope to add another volume to their miscellanies, the
+contents being mostly Swift’s. He allowed his Dublin
+publisher and his Dublin friends to bring out his collected
+works, but he was willing to give little help and
+would at first hardly look at the books when they were
+published.</p>
+
+<p>Swift, who cared so little for literary fame, would
+neither trouble himself to bring his writings together
+nor rouse himself to produce others of any bulk. His<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>
+restlessness made him hurry from scheme to scheme.
+This was the only action possible to him. Though he
+was king of his Cathedral and his Kevin Bail, it was
+too small a realm to occupy or satisfy him. If he must
+be confined to trifles, he would confine himself to
+trifles.</p>
+
+<p>He turned often to his anthology of conversation,
+which was to sum up the platitudes of fashionable
+circles as he remembered them from London; and to
+his directions to servants, ironically advising them to
+do the most stupid and sluttish things they could.
+Trifles, yet written with a genius’s sweep of observation,
+scruple for detail, variety of thrust and touch.
+More than all the novels of his century these two
+fragments show how gentlemen and ladies talked and
+how their households were managed and mismanaged.
+Swift when he trifled was as thorough as other men in
+earnest.</p>
+
+<p>Much of what he wrote, at least of what he saved,
+was in verse. Years of verse-making had brought him
+to absolute ease in metre. When he chose he could play
+almost any tune but the sublime, which he never chose.
+He could write “a love song in the modern taste.”</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Melancholy smooth Meander,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Swiftly purling in a round,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>On thy margin lovers wander,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span>With thy flowery chaplets crowned.</i></div>
+    </div><div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Thus while Philomela drooping</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Softly seeks her silent mate,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>See the bird of Juno stooping;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Melody resigns to fate.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>He could make an ode which was all rhetoric.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>So when Amphion bade the lyre</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To more majestic sound aspire,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>Behold the madding throng,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In wonder and oblivion drowned,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To sculpture turned by magic sound</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>And petrifying song.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>He could prattle namby-pamby as long as his ink held
+out.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>With thy utmost skill express</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Nature in her richest dress:</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Limpid rivers smoothly flowing,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Orchards by those rivers blowing;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Curling woodbine, myrtle shade,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And the gay enamelled mead,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Where the linnets sit and sing,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Little sportlings of the spring;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Where the breathing field and grove</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Soothe the heart and kindle love.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>He could set rolling words to popular airs:</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>What care we how high runs his passion or pride?</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Though his soul he despises he values his hide.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Then fear not his tongue or his sword or his knife;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He’ll take his revenge on his innocent wife.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Knock him down, down, down, keep him down.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>But he preferred to write in the plain, brisk, flexible
+couplets, four stresses to a line, to which he had turned
+from his Pindarics and in which he could join the neatness
+of verse to the naturalness of prose. In couplets he
+wrote the best poems he had written since his story of
+Cadenus and Vanessa and his Horatian poems to
+Oxford. These poems, Swift’s trifles, were about love
+and poetry and death.</p>
+
+<p>The poems on love, if they are on it, were written
+during the two or three years after Stella’s death. They
+made even the eighteenth century squirm. Swift had
+never hid his meaning behind periphrasis. His tongue
+was as rough as a cat’s.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Great folks are of a finer mould.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Lord! how politely they can scold!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>While a coarse English tongue will itch</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>For whore and rogue and dog and bitch.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>But Swift had never before spoken with such candour
+as he now itched to use, and used.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sick candour. All of these poems on love, or
+against it, strummed the same chord. Women, they
+pointed out, had cosmetic secrets, soiled linen, and
+made full use of their alimentary canals. Swift tried to
+laugh at his heroes for their shock at the unromantic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>
+discovery. He loathed while he laughed. The poems
+were the clearest proof that he was the victim of a
+pathological fastidiousness. What a healthier man
+would have taken for granted, or would have thought
+of and forgotten, sickened Swift.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>For fine ideas vanish fast,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>While all the gross and filthy last.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>He had already, by his seasonable and unseasonable
+emphasis on cleanliness, betrayed his obsession. Now
+his antipathy had suddenly got beyond control. It
+held up, for the world to see, the things which had
+made him shrink from women. Celia, Corinna, Chloe:
+in their dressing-rooms were all the deterrents to love.</p>
+
+<p>These poems, ordinarily dismissed as nasty, and
+unquestionably that, mark one of the most terrible
+episodes in Swift’s life. Swift sitting deaf in his silent
+house, past sixty, remembering the women he had
+loved, the woman he had loved most. Swift asking
+himself, possibly, whether with less fastidiousness or
+with more effort to overcome it he might not have had
+something he had missed. Swift, in a rush of old disgust,
+telling himself that what he had missed was something
+he was better off without, a horror under an
+illusion. Swift, to make sure, putting his nauseous
+images into brutal words. Swift saying to his Strephon
+that if he had known what Swift knew, then</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Your heart had been as whole as mine.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span></p>
+
+<p>Swift wondering about “rash mortals,”</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Since beauty scarce endures a day,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And youth so swiftly glides away,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Why will you make yourself a bubble,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To build on sand with hay and stubble?</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Swift convinced that his way with Stella had been the
+way of wisdom. Or Swift, following no such thought
+to its conclusion, obtusely dramatizing his antipathies,
+unaware what they had cost him. There is terror in the
+episode, no matter how it is understood. A sick heart
+is a pit without a bottom. A stony heart is a blank
+mirror to beauty and chaos both.</p>
+
+<p>As Swift wrote against love, so he wrote against
+poetry. No ambition, he said in what he called his
+rhapsody, required such “heavenly influence” as the
+ambition to be a poet. Yet</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Not beggar’s brat on bulk begot;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not bastard of a pedlar Scot;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The spawn of Bridewell or the stews;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not infants dropped, the spurious pledges</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Of gipsies littered under hedges;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Are so disqualified by fate</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To rise in church or law or state</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>As he whom Phœbus in his ire</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Has blasted with poetic fire.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span></p>
+
+<p>To be a poet was as insane as to be a lover. There was
+no market and no use for poetry.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Court, city, country want you not:</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>You cannot bribe, betray, or plot.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It took as long to make a poem as to fatten a chicken.
+It took no longer to dispose of the chicken than of the
+poem.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Then hear an old experienced sinner</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Instructing thus a young beginner.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Swift went on to tell whoever in spite of his warning
+was bound to be a poet how to go about it. He was to
+chose his subject according to his gifts, write his poem,
+have it printed, and wait for it to be damned. After
+three such ventures it would be time to “spring more
+profitable game” and become a writer for a party.
+Walpole would pay well and promptly. Or if poetry
+failed, the poet could turn critic. Even beyond that
+were hordes “of jobbers in the poet’s art”: poets who
+lived by nagging their betters, poets who won fame by
+writing worse than any of their rivals. And always the
+worst poets could write about the royal family. The
+King could stomach any praise.</p>
+
+<p>Swift mauled George and his Court with nearly a
+hundred lines of irony, and then, losing interest, broke
+off. He would not give himself the bother of finishing
+his satire, though it was a passion which he had suffered
+from and hated. His poem was only another trifle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span></p>
+
+<p>With one of his trifles he did take pains. It was his
+poem on his death. “I was forty-seven years old,” he
+wrote in October 1729, “when I began to think of
+death, and the reflections upon it now begin when I
+wake in the morning and end when I am going to
+sleep.” In December 1731 he told Gay: “I have been
+several months writing near five hundred lines on a
+pleasant subject, only to tell what my friends and
+enemies will say on me after I am dead. I shall finish
+it soon, for I add two lines every week, and blot out
+four, and alter eight.”</p>
+
+<p>When he wrote the poem Swift did not intend to let
+it be published while he was alive. He would keep it
+by him and enjoy his secret. He read it to some of his
+friends, and then to others. It became a little legend.
+The legend amused him. He went to the length of
+writing another version, between an abridgment and a
+burlesque, dating it All Fools’ Day 1733, and contriving
+to have it come out in London. Then, to perfect
+the hoax, he claimed that somebody had partly
+memorized his original and played a trick on him.
+“But even this trick shall not provoke me to print the
+true one, which indeed is not proper to be seen till I
+can be seen no more.”</p>
+
+<p>He changed his mind. In 1739, when he had become
+tired even of his trifles, he published the most surprising
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>He took for his text a maxim of La Rochefoucauld:<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>
+“In the adversities of our best friends we always find
+something that does not displease us.”</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>From nature I believe ’em true.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>They argue no corrupted mind</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In him; the fault is in mankind.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>This maxim was thought baser than all the rest, but
+it could be proved, Swift said, by both reason and
+experience. He himself was full of envy.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>In Pope I cannot read a line<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But with a sigh I wish it mine.<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>When he can in one couplet fix<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>More sense than I can do in six,<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>It gives me such a jealous fit<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I cry: ‘Pox take him and his wit!’<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I grieve to be outdone by Gay<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In my own humorous biting way.<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Arbuthnot is no more my friend,<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who dares to irony pretend,<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Which I was born to introduce,<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Refined it first, and showed its use....<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To all my foes, dear Fortune, send<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Thy gifts, but never to my friend.<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I tamely can endure the first,<br></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But this with envy makes me burst.</i>”<br></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Swift was being hard on himself to prepare for what
+came after. He had never by a word shown any envy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span>
+whatever towards Pope, who could not pack more sense
+in a couplet than Swift in six; or towards Gay, who
+could not outdo Swift in his humorous biting way; or
+towards Arbuthnot, whose use of irony had taken nothing
+from Swift’s. But Swift, inverted hypocrite as
+Bolingbroke called him, must put on as bad a face as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>His text announced and defended, he told his story.
+As he grew older his friends would talk behind his back
+about his failing body and mind. They would seem to
+be concerned, but they would at least be pleased that
+they were better off than he. Once they had said he
+soon must die, they would rather see him die than have
+their predictions turn out wrong.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he was dead, Dublin would buzz with
+gossip, chiefly about what was to become of his money.
+The news would spread to London. The Queen would
+be glad, now, that she had never sent him the presents
+she had promised. Walpole would wish it had been
+some more important man who had died. Curll the
+piratical bookseller would hastily get out three volumes
+of rubbish and call it Swift’s.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent2">“<i>Here shift the scene to represent</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>How those I love my death lament.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>A week, and Arbuthnot a day.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>St. John himself will scarce forbear</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To bite his pen and drop a tear.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The rest will give a shrug and cry:<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>‘I’m sorry--but we all must die.’</i>”</div>
+  </div><div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent2">“<i>My female friends, whose tender hearts,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Have better learned to act their parts,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Receive the news in doleful dumps:</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>‘The Dean is dead (and what is trumps?)’</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The Dean’s writings would be unobtainable at the
+bookshops, in case any country reader inquired for
+“Swift in Verse and Prose.” In the clubs and coffee
+houses, however, there would be some discussion.
+Swift imagined the arguments between his supporters
+and his defamers. Nearly half his poem was given to
+what he thought the worst and the best things that
+could be said about him. The worst:</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Alas, poor Dean! his only scope</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Was to be held a misanthrope.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>This into general odium drew him,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Which if he liked much good may’t do him.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>His zeal was not to lash our crimes,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But discontent against the times;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>For had we made him timely offers</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To raise his post or fill his coffers,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Perhaps he might have truckled down,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Like other brethren of the gown.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The best:</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Had he but spared his tongue and pen</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He might have rose like other men.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span></i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But power was never in his thought,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And wealth he valued not a groat.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ingratitude he often found,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And pitied those who meant the wound,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But kept the tenor of his mind</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To merit well of human kind....</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Yet malice never was his aim,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He lashed the vice but spared the name.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>No individual could resent</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Where thousands equally were meant.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>His satire points at no defect</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But what all mortals may correct.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Swift’s analysis of his character was not too accurate.
+He had suffered from disappointments. He had taken
+revenges. He had aimed to hurt as well as to mend.
+But accuracy was not his purpose. This was the last
+and greatest of his hoaxes. There was more irony
+about it in 1739 than there had been when he wrote it.
+He had outlived Gay and Arbuthnot, who in the poem
+grieved a week or a day. There was more irony about
+it than he knew. Pope, credited in the poem with the
+longest grief over his friend, had by 1739 deceived
+Swift about the publication of the letters between
+them. Swift could not keep his hoax to himself. It was
+too good to be left for any man’s survivors. Swift had put
+all his cynicism and all his intensity into his lines on his
+death. But he could not miss the chance, by publishing
+them, to amuse himself, in his way, at his own funeral.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f9">
+<img src="images/fig9.jpg" alt="old">
+<p class="caption">Jonathan Swift</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>In old age</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c8">VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c xlarge sp">CONJURED SPIRIT</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><span class="dropcap">L</span>ife</span> is a tragedy,” Swift said, “wherein we sit as
+spectators awhile, and then act our own part in
+it.” But Swift had never waited for tragedy to come to
+him. He had always run to meet it. He had, dramatic
+and perverse, insisted upon playing the most tragic
+parts. He had, whether quite consciously or not,
+identified himself with that “conjured spirit” which a
+“person of great honour in Ireland” had seen in him
+when he was young.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose some such spirit had been conjured up by an
+experiment of nature, by a hoax of nature, and had
+been let loose among men. The spirit’s course would
+have been like Swift’s. The spirit would have brought
+with it enough angelic light, enough diabolic pride, to
+make it restless in its human flesh. It would expect to
+command the inferior beings it outwardly resembled.
+It would fret when it saw that its flesh condemned it
+to be mistaken for a creature that was merely flesh.
+Learning that most men knew nothing beyond mankind,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span>
+the spirit would regard them as a wilderness of
+fools. Learning that the few who ruled the many were
+not much less foolish, the spirit would regard the few as
+knaves. Both fools and knaves would be repulsive
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>But the spirit itself, with its burden and disguise of
+flesh, must be more or less a man in whatever it did.
+Too much a spirit to become easy among men, it
+would be too much a man to resist some human beings:
+men to be friends with, women to love or be loved by.
+Too much a spirit to be willing to take its contented
+stand with the fools ruled by the knaves, or with the
+knaves, it would be too much a man to stand altogether
+aside and ridicule the world lumbering or raving
+by. The spirit would, as Swift did, try to make its
+way by something which was neither the authority of
+a spirit nor the arts of a man. Divided within itself,
+it could not trust its instincts to know just what force,
+what craft was needed at what times. The spirit could
+be hoodwinked through the man. The man could be
+deluded through the spirit. Even if the spirit rose to
+power, it could get only a man’s reward, and only the
+reward of a man handicapped by what the spirit had
+done to alienate other men.</p>
+
+<p>That reward would never satisfy the spirit. Sent to
+govern a province, the spirit would still think of the
+empire. The respect, the love, the veneration of the
+province might reward the man. The spirit would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span>
+despise them. To accept them and be satisfied would
+be to agree too well with the flesh which the spirit had
+been conjured to put on. It would not agree. It could
+not. It must, helplessly a spirit, endure its burden
+and disguise till they were worn out. It could hardly
+wear out its flesh. It would have tainted its mortal
+body with a dark immortality. It would outlive
+the men and women whose love had made it less
+wretched than it might have been. In the end it
+would escape only with fearful convulsions of its heavy
+carcass.</p>
+
+<p>Swift’s lifelong metaphor of the conjured spirit was
+mythological, but only a metaphor could give reality
+to a man whose spirit so rode his flesh.</p>
+
+<p>An extraordinary man, with a boundless appetite
+for power, must master or please ordinary men, or else
+go hungry. Swift was born without the rank and fortune
+which are such a man’s natural advantages.
+Worse, Swift was born without the hide of brass and
+bowels of iron which would have been nearly as good
+for him as rank and fortune. He could not climb without
+caring what he set his feet on. He was clumsy with
+scruples. He could not take snubs and kicks and stabs
+as incidental, hardly personal to him, and unimportant
+so long as he could survive them. He was sensitive
+to every scratch and had quick, ungovernable impulses
+to strike back. He could not centre his energies
+without mercy even for himself. No man is so extraordinary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>
+that he can, starting below many of his
+fellows, scramble past them all without a stubborn,
+insolent devotion to the main path. Swift was not
+single-minded enough to master his world.</p>
+
+<p>Nor would Swift rise, as some men do, by pleasing.
+He would have had to be more supple than he was to
+wriggle far. Even in an age when it was still barely a
+disgrace to court a lord, Swift could not court one long.
+He was more ready to bully than to flatter. And with
+his equals and inferiors he could or would not assure
+them that their shortcomings were virtues, their
+prejudices wisdom. He used a winter speech in the
+most comfortable summers. Above all, he had no zeal
+to please, and felt small delight in his small successes.
+He was half ashamed when he pleased, as if he were a
+tragedian who had raised a laugh. This was not his
+part. This was for mountebanks.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing about Swift was more extraordinary than
+his blindness to the part which he played so well while
+he was failing in the one on which he had fixed his
+desire. Still in his twenties, or just out of them, he
+raged at Moor Park because he had no chance to
+command. Yet in those same years he flung off a prose
+satire such as no Englishman had ever written before
+and such as no Englishman but Swift ever wrote again.
+In London, scheming to rule among the Whigs or
+Tories, half winning, and then disappointed after his
+spell of power, Swift, almost without effort or concern,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span>
+ruled the wits. In Ireland, where he thought of himself
+as a despairing exile, he wrote pamphlets that are
+monuments, poems that added to poetry what was
+almost a new species. He wrote his Travels in a vain
+fury of revenge, and entertained the world. On the
+other side of every failure was a triumph.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of all his hatreds were loves.
+Swift was a misanthropist, but he is famous for his
+friendships. He shrank from women, but he made two
+women famous. He detested Ireland, but he has
+the eternal affection of the Irish. He loathed the
+human race, but he has been a delight to it for two
+centuries. It was his extraordinary fortune to draw an
+interest of love from a principal of hate.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt Swift should have measured his gifts
+more exactly and should have put himself into more
+fitting rôles, like any ordinary man of talent. Swift
+was outside the shrewd discipline of talent. He could
+not sit down and write prose and verse as if they were
+sufficient ends. Prose and verse were the weapons he
+found in his fists, scarcely realizing how they came
+there. He used them in his tragic rôle, in the war of
+his ambition, not because he valued them but because
+they were the only weapons he had. After he had lost
+his war, and had—singularly like Temple—given it
+up as hopeless when he was only forty-five, Swift
+would never again allow himself to be consoled. He
+would not see that he had been winning, and still was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span>
+winning, a great war while he was losing a small one.
+His pride blinded him.</p>
+
+<p>A few years reverse many verdicts. While Swift was
+still alive, king of Ireland but pretending to be king of
+triflers, he had good reasons for foreseeing the true
+verdict upon him. In the long run, he might have
+guessed, he would be remembered for what he had
+written at Moor Park, before he had even tried the
+world, or for what he had written and done in Ireland,
+after he had bitterly renounced his expectations. What
+he had thought his glorious episode, the years with
+Oxford and Bolingbroke, would look a little shabby.
+In time Swift would seem to have been most splendid
+when he had been most himself, and not the satellite of
+politicians.</p>
+
+<p>Still, Swift might also have understood, if he had
+been without his blindness, that simple formulas would
+not explain him. To do what he had done he had
+needed the blind obsession of his will. As a lover who
+does nothing but love is seldom the best lover, so the
+writer who desires only to write is seldom the best
+writer. What had raised Swift, scattered and random
+as most of his writing was, to the first rank among
+writers, had been the high reach of his pride, the
+magnificence of his scorn. He had won the war in
+which he hardly noticed that he was fighting because
+he had fought with so much passion in a war
+which was not worth it. It was his passion that had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span>
+mattered, and not his long illusion. Nature, when
+it demands prose and verse of its creatures, cares
+no more whether they are begotten in illusion than
+it cares whether children are begotten in moods of
+unreason.</p>
+
+<p>If there had been in Dublin some subtle expert able
+to pry into Swift’s mind and point out how he could
+resolve his conflicts, how he could make his will submit
+and take what it could get in place of what it wanted,
+it might have made Swift happier. Happier and duller.
+As it was, he went on in his own way of life to his own
+way of death.</p>
+
+<p>In April 1740 he wrote his cousin that he had been
+“these two days in so miserable a way, and so cruelly
+tortured, that it can hardly be conceived. The whole
+of last night I was equally struck as if I had been in
+Phalaris’s brazen bull, and roared as loud for eight or
+nine hours.” After three months he wrote her again.
+“I have been very miserable all night, and today
+extremely deaf and full of pain. I am so stupid and
+confounded that I cannot express the mortification I
+am under both in 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; few and miserable they must
+be.... If I do not blunder, it is Saturday, July 26,
+1740.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span></p>
+
+<p>He had still five years, two of torture and three of
+a dreadful peace, in which to keep on outliving his
+friends. He made his will. Accustomed to giving a
+third of his income to charity, he now became more
+avaricious than ever, to have more money to give. He
+shut out the world. His house was his dungeon. His
+deafness was almost complete, his giddiness almost
+unceasing.</p>
+
+<p>Blood seeped through the membranes which his sly
+fate had made too thin, into the labyrinth of his ear.
+A drop there was enough to overpower him with the
+din of water-mills, with the thunder of oceans. What
+was all his pride, what was all his intellect, against this
+everlasting tumult? It had been beating upon his
+nerves for half a century. It now beat louder and
+louder, with fewer intervals in which he might recover
+his patience. He had never had any patience. What
+he had had was lost in floods of irritation. His reason
+was clear, when he could rest from the insensate drums
+that sounded in his head, but his memory was dull and
+thick. He could not remember the words which he had
+started to say. In torment and the fear of torment, he
+could not even tell what was hurting him. He could not
+bear to see the few friends that remained. They might
+pity him. They could not help him. His old habits
+drove him to a furious activity, wearing out his
+strength. He was all agony and all rebellion. Once he
+was found threatening his reflection in a mirror. His<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span>
+misanthropy had given up the last exception. He hated
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Yet out of this murk could come an occasional glare
+that was still Swift. As late as January 1742 he wrote
+an exhortation to his Chapter. “Whereas my infirmities
+of age and ill health have prevented me to preside
+in the chapters held for the good order and government
+of my Cathedral Church of St. Patrick’s,
+Dublin,” he began. He had heard that various members
+of the choir had assisted at public musical performances.
+He would not have it. “And whereas it
+hath been reported that I gave a licence to certain
+vicars to assist at a club of fiddlers in Fishamble Street,
+I hereby declare that I remember no such licence to
+have been ever signed or sealed by me; and that if
+ever such pretended licence should be produced, I do
+hereby annul and vacate the said licence: entreating
+my said Sub-Dean and Chapter to punish such vicars
+as shall ever appear there, as songsters, fiddlers, pipers,
+trumpeters, drummers, drum-majors, or in any sonal
+quality, according to the flagitious aggravations of
+their respective disobedience, rebellion, perfidy, and
+ingratitude. I require my said Sub-Dean to proceed to
+the extremity of expulsion if the said vicars should be
+found ungovernable, impenitent, or self-sufficient....
+My resolution is to preserve the dignity of my station
+and the honour of my Chapter; and, gentlemen,
+it is incumbent upon you to aid me, and to show<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span>
+who and what the Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick’s
+are.”</p>
+
+<p>These are the last words, except in the Cathedral
+accounts, which Swift is known to have written. The
+Chapter could have no doubt who the Dean of St.
+Patrick’s was, though he was as old and desolate as
+Lear. In February, when Walpole lost his office,
+Swift, who had vowed to buy a coach if ever that
+should happen, bought a coach. He might have little
+time left in which to use it, but he would ride through
+the streets of Dublin exulting over Walpole’s followers.
+All Dublin should know who the Dean of St. Patrick’s
+was.</p>
+
+<p>He fell like a tower, first a rush of warning stones,
+then a vast collapse. In March guardians were assigned
+to him by the Court of Chancery. In August a commission
+inquired into his sanity and found that he was
+“of unsound mind and memory, and not capable of
+taking care of his person or fortune, and that he hath
+been so since the twentieth day of May last past.”
+From being irritable he became violent. He raged
+if anybody, besides his servants, looked at him. “He
+walked ten hours a day,” his cousin said, “would not
+eat or drink if his servant stayed in the room. His meat
+was served up ready cut, and sometimes it would lie
+an hour on the table before he would touch it, and then
+eat it walking.”</p>
+
+<p>In September and October his torment reached its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span>
+horrible peak, beyond what even he had imagined
+in his ruthless account of the struldbrugs. A sudden
+tumor forced his left eye almost out of its socket. He
+had as many boils as Job. “The torture he was in,” his
+cousin said, “is not to be described. Five persons could
+scarce hold him, for a week, from tearing out his own
+eyes, and for near a month he did not sleep two hours
+in twenty-four.” He had a quiet day or two. When his
+pain left him his understanding came back, as if his
+madness had been only agony. Nothing less than a
+cataclysm could subdue that burning mind. A cataclysm
+or a stroke of paralysis.</p>
+
+<p>Paralysis brought him the relief of apathy. Swift had
+submitted. It took him three years to die, but he lived
+without rebellion. He no longer paced his cage. He
+would hardly leave his chair. His body got back its
+flesh. His face lost its wrinkles. His expression was now
+benign or childlike. He recognized the few persons
+whom he saw, but he seldom spoke. When he tried to
+speak, he could not always find words. What he said
+seemed to come by chance to his tongue, though it was
+never nonsense. Once, when his housekeeper took a
+knife out of his reach, “he shrugged his shoulders and,
+rocking himself, said ‘I am what I am, I am what I
+am,’ and about six minutes afterwards repeated the
+same words two or three times over.”</p>
+
+<p>Hundreds of stories were invented during those
+three years about the great mad Dean. One story, not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span>
+true, was that he sat all day cursing in his chair.
+Another, probably not true, was that his servants
+exhibited him for money—“And Swift expires a
+driveller and a show.” The stories, however, are proof
+enough of the vigour of the legend which had gathered
+around Swift and which still lives in Ireland. The
+Irish would not believe that he had hated them as he
+claimed. His abuse had been affectionate scolding, no
+rougher than they could enjoy. He had stood between
+them and England. He was a patriot, a man of learning,
+very near a saint. There must be magic in him.
+When he died, 19 October 1745, the people crowded
+to the deanery to see his body. They came in reverence.
+One of them, when nobody was looking, cut
+off some of his hair, which “was like flax on the
+pillow.”</p>
+
+<p>He was buried in the Cathedral beside Stella, as his
+will directed, “as privately as possible, and at twelve
+o’clock at night.” His will was published as a sixpenny
+pamphlet almost as soon as he was dead. The people
+would be curious, he had said in his poem on his death,
+about his will. He left his fortune, about eleven thousand
+pounds, to build a hospital for idiots and lunatics.—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>He left the little wealth he had</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To build a house for fools and mad;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And showed by one satiric touch</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>No nation wanted it so much.</i>”—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span></p>
+
+<p>He left the tithes of the parish of Effernock to the vicars
+of Laracor “for the time being, that is to say, so long as
+the present Episcopal religion shall continue to be the
+national established faith and profession of this kingdom.”
+After that, the tithes should go, “while Christianity
+under any shape shall be tolerated among us,”
+to the poor of Laracor, “still excepting professed Jews,
+atheists, and infidels.”</p>
+
+<p>To various friends and relatives he left legacies, some
+of which were his final jests. To Robert Grattan: “my
+strong box, on condition of his giving the sole use of the
+said box to his brother Dr. James Grattan, who hath
+more occasion for it, and the second best beaver hat
+I shall die possessed of.” To John Grattan: “my silver
+box in which the freedom of the city of Cork was
+presented to me; in which I desire the said John to
+keep the tobacco he usually cheweth, called pigtail.”
+To John Jackson: “my third best beaver hat.” To
+John Worrall: “my best beaver hat.”</p>
+
+<p>In the same document with these dry bequests he
+left to the world his aching epitaph. It was to say to
+any traveller who came to see it that the body of
+Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral, was buried
+here in a place where his furious indignation could no
+longer lacerate his heart. It was to tell the traveller to
+go and imitate, if he could, this strenuous defender of
+manly liberty. The inscription was to be on black
+marble, “in large letters, deeply cut and strongly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span>
+gilded,” and in the stately language of the Church
+and of the ancient Romans.</p>
+
+<p class="c large">
+HIC DEPOSITUM EST CORPUS<br>
+JONATHAN SWIFT S.T.P.<br>
+HUJUS ECCLESIAE CATHEDRALIS<br>
+DECANI<br>
+UBI SAEVA INDIGNATIO<br>
+ULTERIUS COR LACERARE NEQUIT<br>
+ABI VIATOR<br>
+ET IMITARE SI POTERIS<br>
+STRENUUM PRO VIRILI LIBERTATIS VINDICEM
+</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c9">Bibliographical Note</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Swift has here been allowed, so far as possible, to tell
+his own story in his own words. They are to be found in
+his <i>Correspondence</i>, magnificently edited by F. Elrington
+Ball (6 vols., 1910-1914), in his <i>Prose Works</i>, competently
+edited by Temple Scott (12 vols., 1897-1908),
+and in his <i>Poems</i>, inadequately edited by W. E. Browning
+(2 vols., 1910) to accompany the <i>Prose Works</i>. These
+sources furnish the text wherever Swift speaks in the
+biography, except in the letters to Vanessa which, like
+her letters to him, are quoted from the originals lately
+discovered and edited by A. Martin Freeman in
+<i>Vanessa and Her Correspondence with Jonathan Swift</i> (1921).
+The text has been modernized. Since so little of what
+Swift wrote survives in actual manuscript or in printed
+versions to which he gave much care, to reproduce his
+spelling and punctuation from first or early editions
+would be only to perpetuate the vagaries of his different
+editors and printers.</p>
+
+<p>Swift’s eighteenth-century biographers, with their
+passion for gossip, were all superseded by Sir Walter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span>
+Scott, who included in his <i>Works of Jonathan Swift</i>
+(19 vols., 1814) a memoir written with curiosity and
+vigor, if not with exact knowledge. Scott in turn was
+superseded by John Forster, whose <i>Life of Jonathan
+Swift</i> (1875) unfortunately was carried through only
+one of the three proposed volumes. The earliest, and
+latest, extended, documented, exhaustive biography
+was Sir Henry Craik’s <i>Life of Jonathan Swift</i> (1882;
+2d edition in 2 vols., 1894), which remains the best detailed
+account of Swift’s life. Sir Leslie Stephen’s <i>Swift</i>
+(1882) is a masterly critical narrative. Compared to it
+the study of Swift in Johnson’s <i>Lives of the Poets</i> (1781)
+seems full of Johnsonian wrong-headedness, and that in
+Thackeray’s <i>English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century</i>
+(1853) full of Thackerayan whimper and sniffle. The
+only recent biographical studies of Swift which are not
+negligible are Emile Pons’s <i>La Jeunesse de Swift et le
+Conte du Tonneau</i> (1925) and F. Elrington Ball’s <i>Swift’s
+Verse</i> (1929), which are both excellent.</p>
+
+<p>Of Swift’s various works the best edited is <i>A Tale of a
+Tub: To Which is Added The Battle of the Books and the
+Mechanical Operation of the Spirit</i>, by A. C. Guthkelch
+and D. Nichol Smith (1920), followed by <i>Swift: Selections
+from his Works</i> edited by Sir Henry Craik (1892-1893).
+As a rule the introductions and notes in
+Temple Scott’s <i>Prose Works</i> are as good as any. <i>The
+Journal to Stella</i> is there edited by Frederick Ryland,
+and <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i> by G. R. Dennis. <i>Gulliver’s</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span>
+<i>Travels</i>, one of the greatest books of the world, has never
+been satisfactorily edited. When it has the editor it deserves
+he will be saved a good deal of work by C. H.
+Firth’s acute <i>Political Significance of Gulliver’s Travels</i>
+(<i>Proceedings of the British Academy</i>, Vol. IX, 1919) and
+by William A. Eddy’s lubberly but learned <i>Gulliver’s
+Travels: A Critical Study</i> (1923).</p>
+
+<p>A bibliography of the writings of Swift is given in
+Vol. XII of Temple Scott’s <i>Prose Works</i>, and a bibliography
+of writings by and about him in Vol. IX (1912)
+of <i>The Cambridge History of English Literature</i>. The present
+biography says in the text little more about the
+specific works than Swift says himself. Titles and dates,
+however, are listed in the Index in the entry “Swift,
+Jonathan,” which amounts to a precise chronological
+survey of his life and of those writings which throw
+light on it.</p>
+
+<p>To cite all the general histories of Swift’s age, all the
+biographies of his contemporaries, all the memoirs and
+diaries and letters and special studies and collateral
+sources which have contributed to this narrative would
+be mere ostentation. But all such sources have been
+scrupulously consulted during the period of almost
+twenty years since the book was first projected.</p>
+
+<p>Most of Swift’s previous biographers have devoted
+much of their energy to debating the many points of
+gossip which have arisen about him, particularly about
+his malady, about his relations to Stella and Vanessa,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span>
+and about his eccentricities in Ireland. His latest biographer
+has preferred to examine the entire evidence, to
+select what he believes to be the truth, to tell it, and to
+leave gossip where gossip belongs. He has considered
+it hardly fair to ask his readers not only to read his
+story but also to choose which one of several stories
+they would like to believe. His difficulties belong with
+the secrets of his trade.</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c10">Index</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="ifrst">Abingdon, Earl of, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Acheson, Sir Arthur, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Acheson, Lady, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_48">48-49</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92-93</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Agher, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ancients and moderns, <a href="#Page_38">38-40</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Anne, Queen, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Arbuthnot, John, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Argyll, Duke of, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Armagh, Archbishop of. <i>See</i> Boulter, Hugh</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Arran, Earl of, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ashe, St. George (Bishop of Clogher), <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Bach, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bacon, Lord, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Balliol College, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Balnibarbi, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Barber, Mary, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bath, Earl of, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bathurst, Lord (Allen Bathurst), <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Battle of the Books, The</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40-41</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Baucis and Philemon, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Beef-Steak Club, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Beggar’s Opera, The</i>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Berkeley, Countess of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Berkeley, Earl of, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bickerstaff, Isaac (pseudonym), <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Blefuscu, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Blenheim, Battle of, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bolingbroke, Viscount, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104-105</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108-110</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115-116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bolingbroke, Viscountess, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Boulter, Hugh (Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh), <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brobdingnag, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188-189</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brothers, Society of, <a href="#Page_131">131-135</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brown, Tom, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bunyan, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Cadenus (pseudonym), <a href="#Page_152">152-167</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Carmarthen, Lady (daughter of Robert Harley), <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Carteret, Lady, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Carteret, Lord, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Castle-Durrow, Lord, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Cato</i>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cervantes, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles I, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles II, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles XII, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chetwoode, Knightley, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clogher, Bishop of. <i>See</i> Ashe, St. George</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cobham, Lord, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Congreve, William, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cope, Robert, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Country of Horses, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cowley, Abraham, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Curll, Edmund, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cyrano de Bergerac, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">d’Ablancourt, Perrot, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Davenant, Henry Molins, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Davenant, Sir William, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Delaney, Patrick, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Descartes, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dingley, Rebecca, <a href="#Page_58">58-59</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Drapier, M. B. (pseudonym), <a href="#Page_173">173-177</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dromore, Bishop of (John Stearne), <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dryden, Sir Erasmus, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dublin, Archbishop of. <i>See</i> King, William</li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Dunciad, The</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dunkin, William, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dupplin, Viscount (son-in-law of Robert Harley), <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Eglinton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Evans, John (Bishop of Meath), <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Examiner, The</i>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Faulkner, George, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Feilding, Robert, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fiddes, Richard, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">First Fruits, <a href="#Page_80">80-81</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Flying Island, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ford, Charles, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fountaine, Sir Andrew, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Gay, John, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">George I, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">George II, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Giffard, Lady, <a href="#Page_22">22-23</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Glubbdubdribb, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Godolphin, Earl of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grand Alliance, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Granville, Lord (George Granville), <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grattan, the brothers, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grattan, James, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grattan, John, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grattan, Robert, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grierson, Mrs. George, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186-196</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211-212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gwynne, Francis, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Halifax, Earl of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hanover, Elector of. <i>See</i> George I</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Harcourt, Lord (Sir Simon Harcourt), <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Harley, Robert. <i>See</i> Oxford, Earl of</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Harrison, William, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hart Hall, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Harvey, George, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Helsham, Richard, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Henry VIII, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hertford College (Hart Hall), <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hill, Abigail. <i>See</i> Masham, Lady</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hobbes, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Homer, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Howard, Henrietta, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Houyhnhnms, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193-196</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hunter, Robert, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Intelligencer, The</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Jackson, John, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jervas, Charles, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Johnson, Bridget (mother of Stella), <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Johnson, Edward (father of Stella), <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Johnson, Esther (Hester), <a href="#Page_23">23-24</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58-66</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205-210</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214-219</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jones, Betty, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Kendal, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kerry, Lady, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kevin Bail, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kilkenny School, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kilroot, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">King, William (Archbishop of Dublin), <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kit-Cat Club, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Lagado, Academy of, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Laputa, <a href="#Page_190">190-191</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Laracor, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">La Rochefoucauld, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Leicester, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lewis, Erasmus, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lilliput, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186-188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Llandaff, Earls of, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Long, Anne, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lucian, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ludlow, Peter, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Luggnagg, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Marlborough, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Marlborough, Duke of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Marsh, Narcissus (Primate of Ireland), <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Martin (Martinus) Scriblerus, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mary, Queen, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Masham, Lady (Abigail Hill), <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Masham, Lord (Samuel Masham), <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Meath, Bishop of (John Evans), <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Milton, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Molière, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Montague, Charles. <i>See</i> Halifax, Earl of</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moor Park, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Newton, Sir Isaac, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nottingham, Earl of, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Orford, Earl of, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ormond, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ormond, Duke of, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ormond family, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ormond, Marchioness of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Oxford, 1st Earl of (Robert Harley), <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_101">101-102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103-105</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107-110</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Oxford, 2d Earl of (son of Robert Harley), <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Oxford, University of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Parnell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Partridge, John, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Patrick (Swift’s servant), <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Patriots, The, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pembroke, Earl of, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Penn, William, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Peterborough, Earl of, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Philips, Ambrose, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Philostratus, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pilkington, Letitia, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pilkington, Matthew, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pope, Alexander, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pope, Edith (mother of Alexander Pope), <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Portland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pratt, Mrs. John, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pretender, the (James Stuart), <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Primate of Ireland. <i>See</i> Marsh, Narcissus, and Boulter, Hugh</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Prior, Matthew, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pug (Stella’s dog), <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pulteney, William. <i>See</i> Bath, Earl of</li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Queensberry, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Rabelais, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rathbeggan, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Raymond, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rembrandt, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rivers, Earl, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rochfort, George, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Romney, Earl of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">St. Francis, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">St. James’s coffee house, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">St. John, Henry. <i>See</i> Bolingbroke, Viscount</li>
+
+<li class="indx">St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">St. Patrick’s, Liberty of, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sacramental Test, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Salisbury, bishop of (Gilbert Burnet), <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Scriblerus Club, <a href="#Page_136">136-138</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shandy, Tristram, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shelburne, Lord, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sheridan, Thomas, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sican, Mrs. E., <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Somers, Lord, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Somerset, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">South, Robert, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Southwell, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Spectator, The</i>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Steele, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stella. <i>See</i> Johnson, Esther (Hester)</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sterne, Laurence, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stratford, Francis, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sunderland, 2d Earl of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sunderland, 3d Earl of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Abigail Erick (mother of Jonathan Swift), <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Abraham, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Adam, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Barnam, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Dryden, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Godwin, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Jonathan (father of Jonathan Swift), <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Jonathan (30 November 1667-19 October 1745):</li>
+<li class="isub1">ancestry, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">family connections, <a href="#Page_5">5-7</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">born in Dublin a posthumous child, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">taken to England in infancy for almost three years, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">dependent on Godwin Swift, <a href="#Page_7">7-15</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">at Kilkenny School from six to fourteen, <a href="#Page_8">8-9</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">associates at school, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">at Trinity College, Dublin, 1682 to 1689, <a href="#Page_9">9-11</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">bachelor’s degree 1686, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">discontent at Trinity, <a href="#Page_10">10-15</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">reading, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">academic irregularities, <a href="#Page_12">12-13</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">health, <a href="#Page_15">15-16</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">leaves Ireland for his mother’s lodgings in Leicester at the Revolution, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">flirtations in Leicester, <a href="#Page_17">17-18</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">joins household of Sir William Temple as secretary near end of 1689, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">relations with Temple, <a href="#Page_18">18-22</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">position as dependent, <a href="#Page_21">21-22</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">returns to Ireland in summer of 1690 for year, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">visits Oxford in 1691, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">relations with other members of Temple household, <a href="#Page_22">22-24</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">with Esther Johnson (Stella), <a href="#Page_23">23-24</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">writes poetry in the Pindaric fashion, <a href="#Page_25">25-27</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">renounces it, <a href="#Page_26">26-27</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Occasioned by Sir William Temple’s Late Illness and Recovery</i> (1693), <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">master’s degree from Hart Hall (Hertford College), Oxford, July 1692, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">sent by Temple on errand to William III, spring 1693, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">becomes conscious of misanthropy, <a href="#Page_28">28-29</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>To Mr. Congreve</i> (1693), <a href="#Page_28">28-29</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">walking, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">desire for independence, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">to Ireland May 1694, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">ordained deacon October 1694,</li>
+<li class="isub1">priest January 1695, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">prebendary of Kilroot 1695-1696, <a href="#Page_30">30-35</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">attitude towards the Church, <a href="#Page_31">31-32</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">discontent at Kilroot, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">flirtation with Jane Waring, <a href="#Page_32">32-35</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">returns to Temple late in 1696, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">improved position at Moor Park, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s aims in writing, <a href="#Page_36">36-37</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">is drawn by Temple into the controversy over the ancients and the moderns, <a href="#Page_38">38-40</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">writes <i>The Battle of the Books</i> and <i>A Tale of a Tub</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40-44</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">attitude towards mankind established by thirty, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">leaves Moor Park on Temple’s death January 1699, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">resolutions <i>When I Come to Be Old</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46-47</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">goes to London but fails to find preferment at Court, <a href="#Page_49">49-50</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">to Ireland June 1699 as chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">vicar of Laracor February 1700, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">prebendary of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">doctor of divinity of Trinity College, February 1701, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">ends flirtation with Jane Waring, <a href="#Page_50">50-54</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">attitude towards marriage, <a href="#Page_54">54-57</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">loneliness at Laracor, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">returns to England for April-September 1701, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">persuades Stella and Rebecca Dingley to settle in Ireland in 1701, <a href="#Page_58">58-59</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">relations with Stella in Ireland, <a href="#Page_59">59-66</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift is willing for her to marry William Tisdall, April 1704, <a href="#Page_60">60-63</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">verses exchanged between Swift and Stella (1720-1721), <a href="#Page_64">64-66</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s life in Ireland 1700-1710, <a href="#Page_66">66-67</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">chaplain to Ormond and Pembroke, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">publishes letters, essays, and memoirs of Temple (1701-1709), <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift among the wits in London, <a href="#Page_67">67-68</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Discourse on the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome</i> (1701), <a href="#Page_68">68-72</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">thereby commends himself to the leading Whigs, <a href="#Page_72">72-74</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">in England the winter of 1703-1704, <a href="#Page_74">74-75</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">publishes <i>A Tale of a Tub</i> (1704), <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">reception of the book, <a href="#Page_75">75-77</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">rouses suspicion of his orthodoxy, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift at the St. James’s coffee house, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">in Ireland from 1704 to 1707, <a href="#Page_78">78-79</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">in England November 1707-June 1709, <a href="#Page_80">80-93</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">lobbyist for the First Fruits</li>
+<li class="isub1">for the Irish Church, <a href="#Page_80">80-81</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">hates the Earl of Wharton, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">fails to obtain promotion in the Church, <a href="#Page_81">81-83</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">relations with the Earl of Halifax, <a href="#Page_83">83-85</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">with other Whigs, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>A Letter ... Concerning the Sacramental Test</i> (1708), <a href="#Page_85">85-86</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">displeases the Whigs, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Sentiments of a Church of England Man</i> (1708), <i>Project for the Advancement of Religion</i> (1708), <i>An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity</i>
+    (1708), <a href="#Page_86">86-88</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">wins hearing from the coffee houses by his hoaxes on Partridge, <a href="#Page_89">89-90</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Meditation on a Broomstick</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89-90</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">life and associates in England during 1707-1709, <a href="#Page_90">90-91</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">meets the Vanhomrighs, <a href="#Page_90">90-91</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Stella in London, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s relations with Addison and Steele, <a href="#Page_92">92-93</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">revises <i>Baucis and Philemon</i>, <a href="#Page_92">92-93</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">returns to Ireland and hardly leaves Laracor from June 1709 to September 1710, <a href="#Page_93">93-94</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">goes to London on the fall of the Whigs, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">looks towards the Tories, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">is won over to the Tory side by Harley, <a href="#Page_96">96-100</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>The Examiner</i> (1710-1711), <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">is estranged from Addison, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s Toryism, <a href="#Page_100">100-101</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his relations with Harley (afterwards the Earl of Oxford) and St. John (afterwards Viscount Bolingbroke), <a href="#Page_101">101-102</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his polemic against Marlborough, <a href="#Page_105">105-106</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">against the Whigs, <a href="#Page_106">106-108</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his love for his associates, <a href="#Page_108">108-110</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his hate for his enemies, <a href="#Page_111">111-114</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>A Short Character of Thomas Earl of Wharton</i> (1710), <a href="#Page_111">111-114</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">lampoons the Duchess of Somerset in <i>The Windsor Prophecy</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s defects as a politician, <a href="#Page_114">114-116</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">master of requests, <a href="#Page_116">116-117</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">made Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, April 1713, <a href="#Page_118">118-119</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">summer of 1713 in Ireland, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">back for winter of 1713-1714 in England, <a href="#Page_119">119-120</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">farewell to Oxford, <a href="#Page_120">120-121</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">portrait painted by Charles Jervas, September 1710, <a href="#Page_121">121-122</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Journal to Stella</i> (2 September 1710-6 June 1713), <a href="#Page_123">123-124</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">a typical day as revealed in the <i>Journal</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125-129</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">weekly dinners with Bolingbroke, <a href="#Page_129">129-130</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">with Oxford, <a href="#Page_130">130-131</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">with the Society of Brothers, <a href="#Page_131">131-135</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">the Scriblerus Club organized early in 1714, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus, <a href="#Page_136">136-137</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s relations with Arbuthnot, Pope, Gay, Parnell, <a href="#Page_137">137-138</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">returns to Ireland, September 1714, not to leave it for twelve years, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">lives in morose retirement for five or six years, <a href="#Page_140">140-146</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">offers to join Oxford in the Tower of London, 1715, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">letters between Swift and his Scriblerus friends, <a href="#Page_143">143-146</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet</i> (1721), <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>A Letter to a Young Clergyman</i> (published 1721 but written 1720), <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture</i> (1720), <a href="#Page_146">146-147</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">printer of the <i>Proposal</i> prosecuted, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">relations with Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa), <a href="#Page_147">147-167</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">meets her in 1708 in London, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">undertakes to educate her, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">a friend of the Vanhomrigh family, <a href="#Page_149">149-150</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">letters between Swift and Vanessa during his visit to Ireland in 1713, <a href="#Page_150">150-152</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Cadenus and Vanessa</i> (apparently written 1713-1714, published 1726), <a href="#Page_152">152-158</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Vanessa follows Swift to Ireland 1714, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">her pursuit and his discretion, <a href="#Page_160">160-163</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift proposes a sequel to <i>Cadenus and Vanessa</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164-165</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">visits Vanessa at Celbridge in 1720, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">break between them, after August 1722, <a href="#Page_166">166-167</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">her death, June 1723, <a href="#Page_166">166-167</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift leaves for the south of Ireland the next day, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">returns in September and resumes relationship with Stella, <a href="#Page_168">168-169</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Stella at Wood Park</i>, <a href="#Page_168">168-169</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">renews correspondence with English friends, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">hatred of Ireland, <a href="#Page_169">169-171</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">nevertheless becomes a champion of Irish freedom against the Whigs in England, <a href="#Page_171">171-172</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Wood’s copper coins, <a href="#Page_172">172-173</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">the <i>Drapier</i> letters (1724), <a href="#Page_173">173-176</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift becomes the idol of Ireland, <a href="#Page_176">176-178</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">travels in Ireland, <a href="#Page_180">180-181</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">writing <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i> (1721-1725), <a href="#Page_181">181-182</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Gulliver one of Swift’s rôles, <a href="#Page_183">183-184</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his misanthropy matured, <a href="#Page_184">184-185</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his ingenuity in the <i>Travels</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Lilliput, <a href="#Page_186">186-188</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Brobdingnag, <a href="#Page_188">188-189</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Laputa, <a href="#Page_190">190-191</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Houyhnhnms and Yahoos, <a href="#Page_191">191-195</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">thinks of returning to England, <a href="#Page_197">197-199</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">plans to write life of Oxford, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">spends summer of 1726 in England, <a href="#Page_199">199-210</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">disagrees with Walpole about the government of Ireland, <a href="#Page_201">201-202</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">happy with Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Gay, <a href="#Page_202">202-203</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">with Pope and Gay at Twickenham, <a href="#Page_203">203-205</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Stella’s illness, <a href="#Page_205">205-210</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s letters about her to his Irish friends, <a href="#Page_205">205-209</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">returns to Ireland in August, <a href="#Page_209">209-210</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">received in Ireland like a Lord Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">publishes <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i> (28 October 1726), <a href="#Page_211">211</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">immediate success, <a href="#Page_211">211-212</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">again in England for the summer of 1727, <a href="#Page_212">212-213</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Miscellanies in Prose and Verse</i> (3 vols., 1727), <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">plans to go to France, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">writes to French translator of <i>Gulliver</i>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">disappointed on the accession of George II, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">returns to Ireland in September, <a href="#Page_215">215-216</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Stella’s last months and death (January 1728), <a href="#Page_216">216-219</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>On the Death of Mrs. Johnson</i> (begun the night of her death, published after his death), <a href="#Page_217">217-219</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift defends <i>The Beggar’s Opera</i> (1728), <a href="#Page_220">220-221</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">pleased with Pope’s lines on Swift in <i>The Dunciad</i> (1729), <a href="#Page_221">221-222</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">continues his correspondence with his English friends but gets out of touch with England, <a href="#Page_222">222-224</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">diversions in Ireland, <a href="#Page_224">224-226</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">three visits to Sir Arthur Acheson during 1728-1730, <a href="#Page_225">225-226</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">given the freedom of the City of Dublin in 1730, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>A Modest Proposal</i> (1729), <a href="#Page_227">227-230</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">increasing solitariness, <a href="#Page_231">231-232</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">walking and riding, <a href="#Page_232">232-234</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">eccentricity and eminence, <a href="#Page_233">233-236</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Dublin associates, <a href="#Page_236">236-240</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">king in a nutshell, <a href="#Page_240">240-241</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s later literary activity, <a href="#Page_242">242-244</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>The History of the Four Last Years of the Queen</i> (posthumous), <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Miscellanies</i> (1732), <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>The Works of J. S.</i> (4 vols., 1735), <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation</i> (published 1738 but written before over a long interval), <a href="#Page_244">244</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Directions to Servants</i> (posthumous), <a href="#Page_244">244</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">experiments and parodies in verse, <a href="#Page_244">244-246</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>The Lady’s Dressing Room</i>, <i>A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed</i>, <i>Strephon and Chloe</i>, <i>Cassinus and Peter</i>
+    (published 1732, 1734, but written during 1730-1731), <a href="#Page_246">246-248</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>On Poetry--A Rhapsody</i> (published 1733), <a href="#Page_248">248-249</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>The Life and Genuine Character of Doctor Swift</i> (1733), <i>Verses on the Death of Doctor Swift</i> (1739), <a href="#Page_250">250-254</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Swift’s rôle of conjured spirit, <a href="#Page_255">255-257</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his misjudgment of his gifts, <a href="#Page_257">257-261</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his sufferings after 1740, <a href="#Page_261">261-265</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his last written words (1742), <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">guardians assigned him in the Court of Chancery in March 1742, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">found by a commission to be of unsound mind and memory in August, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">climax of his malady, September-October, <a href="#Page_264">264-265</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">paralysis and apathy until his death, <a href="#Page_265">265-266</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">death, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">provisions and jests of his will, <a href="#Page_266">266-267</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">epitaph, <a href="#Page_267">267-268</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Thomas, vicar of Goodrich, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Thomas, son of the vicar of Goodrich, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, Thomas, grandson of the vicar of Goodrich, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Swift, William, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Tale of a Tub, A</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43-45</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75-78</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Tatler, The</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Temple, Sir John (father of Sir William Temple), <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Temple, John (nephew of Sir William Temple), <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Temple, Lady (Dorothy Osborne), <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Temple, Sir William, <a href="#Page_18">18-22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Timon, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tisdall, William, <a href="#Page_60">60-63</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tonson, Jacob, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trinity College, Dublin, <a href="#Page_9">9-13</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Twickenham, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Utrecht, Treaty of, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Vanessa. <i>See</i> Vanhomrigh, Esther (Hester)</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Vanhomrigh, Esther (Hester), <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147-167</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Vanhomrigh, Mrs. Hester (mother of Vanessa), <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Vanhomrigh, Mary (sister of Vanessa), <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Varina. <i>See</i> Waring, Jane</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Velasquez, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Virgil, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Voltaire, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Wales, Prince of (George II), <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wales, Princess of (Queen Caroline), <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Walpole, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Waring, Jane, <a href="#Page_32">32-35</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50-54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wharton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111-113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Whitshed, William (Lord Chief Justice), <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">William III (Prince of Orange), <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">William, Prince (son of George II), <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Will’s coffee house, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wood, William, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Worrall, John, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wycherley, William, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wyndham, Sir William, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Yahoos, <a href="#Page_193">193-196</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">York, Archbishop of (John Sharp), <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="transnote">
+
+<p class="c">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>
+
+<p>Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.</p>
+
+<p>Perceived typographical errors have been changed.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78641 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-05-09 08:22:42 -0700
committer	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-05-09 08:22:42 -0700
commit	1b485272a4982127360371f7bede3bca50383151 (patch)
tree	f729e6e35c6739d00920ccbd7fb489f286173560 /78641-h