INTRODUCTION

JOHN FORSTER, who lived to complete but one of the three volumes in which he had planned to write the Life of Jonathan Swift, speaks in his preface of his hero's correspondence "with his friend Knightley Chetwode, of Woodbrook, during the seventeen years (1714-1731) which followed his appointment to the deanery of St. Patrick's. Of these letters," Forster goes on to say, "the richest addition to the correspondence of this most masterly of English letter-writers since it was first collected, more does not need to be said here; but of the late representative of the Chetwode family I crave permission to add a word. His rare talents and taste suffered from his delicate health and fastidious temperament, but in my life I have seen few things more delightful than his pride in the connection of his race and name with the companionship of Swift. Such was the jealous care with which he preserved the letters, treasuring them as an heirloom of honour, that he would never allow them to be moved from his family seat; and when, with his own hand, he had

made careful transcript of them for me, I had to visit him at Woodbrooke to collate his copy with the originals. There I walked with him through avenues of trees which Swift was said to have planted."

As Forster's untimely death brought his Life of Swift to an abrupt close, when he had not reached by three years and more the date of the first of these letters, he made scarcely any use of the correspondence. He refers to it twice, and twice only. On his death the copy of the originals with the corrections he had made was returned to Woodbrook. It has lately come into my possession. What wonder would have seized on Swift's mind had it been foretold to him that these letters of his, after lying hidden nearly two hundred years, were first to see the light of day in an American magazine! I America, to borrow the words of Edmund Burke, "served for little more than to amuse him with stories of savage men and uncouth manners.' For him "the angel did not draw up the curtain, and unfold the rising glories of the country." He rarely mentions the settlements in his writings, and when he does it is for the most part with ignorance and contempt. He regrets that England's long and ruinous war with France had kept "Queen Anne's care of religion from reaching to her American

I Most of these letters and some few of the notes were first published in the Atlantic Monthly, for August, September, November, and December, 1897.