Ah, Doll! all mortals must resign their breath, The cracking crystal yields; she sinks; she dies, Then there is the ballad, always quoted when critics would show what John Gay could do, and which the Duchess of Queensberry (who greatly befriended him) thought charming; I give the two final verselets only: "How can they say that nature Has nothing made in vain ; Why then beneath the water No eyes the rocks discover, That lurk beneath the deep, "All melancholy lying, Thus wailed she for her dear; Each billow with a tear; His floating corpse she spied; Then, like a lily drooping, She bowed her head, and died!" I think I have shown the best side of him; and it is not very imposing. A man to be petted; one for confections and for valentines, rather than for those lifts of poetic thought which buoy us into the regions of enduring song. Yet Swift says in a letter, "The Beggar's Opera' hath knocked down Gulliver!" This joyous poet lies in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by Alexander Pope. How, then, can we pass him by? Jonathan Swift. But Dean Swift* does not lie in Westminster Abbey. We must go to St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, to find his tomb, and that bust of him which looks out upon the main aisle of the old church. He was born in Dublin, at a house that might have been seen only a few years ago, in Hoey's *Jonathan Swift, b. 1667; d. 1745. Most noticeable biographies are those by Scott, Craik, and Stephen; the latter not minute, but having judicial repose, and quite delightful. Scott's edition of his works (originally published in 1814) is still the fullest and best. Court. His father, however, was English, dying before Swift was born; his mother, too, was English, and so poor that it was only through the charity of an uncle the lad came to have schooling and a place at Trinity College - the charity being so doled out that Swift groaned under it; and groaned under the memory of it all his life. He took his degree there, under difficulties; squabbling with the teachers of logic and metaphysics, and turning his back upon them and upon what they taught. After some brief stay with his mother in Leicestershire, he goes, at her instance, and in recognition of certain remote kinship with the family of Sir William Temple, to seek that diplomat's patronage. He was received charitably-to be cordial was not Temple's manner - at the beautiful home of Sheen; and thereafter, on Temple's change of res * Sir William Temple did not finally abandon his home at Sheen where he had beautiful gardens - until the year 1689. A stretch of Richmond Park, with its deer-fed turf, now covers all traces of Temple's old home; the name however is kept most pleasantly alive by the pretty Sheen cottage (Professor Owen's home), with its carp-pond in front, and its charming, sequestered bit of wild garden in the rear. idence, was for many years an inmate of the house at Moor Park. There he eats the bread of dependence sulkily at times, and grudgingly always. Another protégée of the house was a sparkling-eyed little girl, Hester Johnson - she scarce ten when he was twenty-three- and who, doubtless, looked admiringly upon the keen, growling, masculine graduate of Dublin, who taught her to write. Swift becomes secretary to Sir William; through his influence secures a degree at Oxford (1692);. pushes forward his studies, with the Moor Park library at his hand; takes his own measure may be sure we of the stately, fine diplomat; meas ures King William too-who, odd times, visits Temple at his country home, telling him how to cut his asparagus · measures him admiringly, yet scornfully; as hard-working, subtle-thoughted, ambitious, dependent students are apt to measure those whose consequence is inherited and factitious. Then, with the bread of this Temple charity irking his lusty manhood, he swears (he is overfond of swearing) that he will do for himself. So he tempestuously quits Moor Park and goes back to Ire land, where he takes orders, and has a little parish with a stipend of £100 a year. It is in a dismal country-looking east on the turbid Irish Sea, and west on bog-lands- no friends, no scholars, no poets, no diplomats, no Moor-Park gardens. Tired of this waste, and with new and better proposals from Temple-who misses his labors - Swift throws up his curacy (or whatever it may be) and turns again toward England. There is record of a certain early flurry of feeling at date of this departure from his first Irish parish a tender, yet incisive, and tumultuous letter to one "Varina," * for whom he promises to "forego all;" Varina, it would seem, discounted his imperious rapture, without wishing to cut off ulterior hopes. But ulteriors were never in the lexicon of Swift; and he broke away for his old cover at Moor Park. Sir William welcomes, almost with warmth, the returned secretary, who resumes "Varina" was a Miss Waring, sister of a college mate. Years after, when Swift came by better church appointments, Varina wrote to him a letter calculated to fan the flame of a constant lover; but she received such reply at once disdainful and acquiescent- as was met only with contemptuous silence. |