his own. He has met Congreve, an old school-fellow, and Prior and Gay; he has found the way to Will's Coffee-house and to Button's; * has some day seen Dryden just tottering to the grave; has certainly dined with Addison, and finished a bottle with Steele. They call him the mad parson at Button's; they have seen The Tale of a Tub; his epigrams are floating from mouth to mouth; his irony cuts like a tiger's claw; he feels the power of his genius tingling to his fingertips-he, a poor Irish parson! why, the whole atmosphere around him, whether at London or at Dublin, is charged and surcharged with Satan's own lightning of worldly promises. And Hester Johnson, and Moor Park? Well, she has not forgotten him; ah! no; and he has by no means forgotten her. For she, with a good womanly friend, Mrs. Dingley, has gone to live in Ire *Button's was another favorite Coffee-house in Russell Street on the opposite side from Will's and nearer Covent Garden. I must express my frequent obligations, in respect of London Topography, to the interesting Literary Landmarks of Mr. Laurence Hutton. land; Swift thinks they can live more economically there. These two ladies set up their homestead near to Swift's vicarage; he goes to see them; they come to see him. He is thirty-three, and past; and she twenty, and described as beautiful. Is there any scandalous talking? Scarce one word, it would seem. He is as considerate as ice; and she as coy as summer clouds. It does not appear that Swift had literary ambition, as commonly reckoned. That Tale of a Tub lay by him six or seven years before it came to print. He wrote for Steele's Tatler, and for the Spectator-not with any understanding that his name was to appear, or that he was to be spoken admiringly of. Many of his best things were addressed to friends or acquaintances, and never saw the light through any instigation or privity of his own. - some When there was some purpose to effect wrong to lash -some puppet to knock down some tow-head to set on fire- some public drowsiness to wake - he rushed into print with a vengeance. Was it benevolence that provoked him to this? was it public spirit? Who can tell? I think there were many times when he thought as much; but I believe that never a man more often deceived himself than did Swift; and that over and over he mistook the incentives of his own fiery and smarting spirit for the leadings of an angel of light. The journey was not, as When we think of the infrequency and awkwardness of travel in that day, we are not a little amazed to find him going back and forth as he did from Ireland to London. now, a mere skip over to Holyhead, and then a five hours' whirl to town, but a long, uncertain sail in some lugger of a vessel-blown as the winds blew - till a landing was made at Bristol or Swansea ; and then the four to seven days of coaching (as the roads might be) through Bath to London. Sometimes it is some interest of the poor Irish Church that takes him over, for which we must give him due credit; but oftener it is his own unrest. His energies and his unsatisfied mind starve if not roused and bolstered and chafed by contact with minds as keen and hard, from which will come the fiery disputation that he loves. Great cities, where great interests are astir and great schemes fomenting, are magnets whose drawing power such intellects cannot resist. He is in London five or six months in 1701, six or eight the next year, six or eight the next, and so on. Swift's Politics. He is in politics, too, which ran at high tide all through Anne's time and the previous reign; you will read no history or biography stretching into that period but you may be confounded (at least I am) with talk of Whigs and Tories; and of what Somers did, and of what Harley did, and of what Ormond might do; and it is worth sparing a few moments to say something of the great parties. In a large way Whiggism represented progress and the new impulses which had come in with William III., and Toryism represented what we call conservatism. Thus, in Old Mortality, young Henry Morton is the Whig, and her ladyship of Tillietudlem is a starched embodiment of Toryism. Those who favored the Stuart family, and made a martyr of Charles I.— those whỏ leaned to Romanism and rituals, or faith in tradition, were, in general, Tories; and those who brought over William of Orange, or who were dissenters or freethinkers, were apt to be Whigs. So the scars which came of sword-cuts by Cromwellian soldiers were apt to mark an excellent Tory; and the cropped ears of Puritans, that told of the savageness of Prince Rupert's dragoons, were pretty sure to brand a man a Whig for life. But these distinctions were not steady and constant; thus, the elegant and fastidious Sir William Temple was a Whig; and old Dryden, clinking mugs with good fellows at Will's coffee-house, was a Tory. Again, the courtly and quiet Mr. Addison, with his De Coverley reverences, was a good Whig; and Pope, with his Essay on Man, and fellowship with freethinkers, was Toryish. Swift began with being a Whig, to which side his slapdash wilfulness, his fellowship with Temple, and his scorn of tradition drew him; but he ended with veering over to the Tory ranks, where his hate of Presbyterianism and his eager thrusts at canting radicals gave him credit and vogue. Addison and others counted him a turncoat, and grew cold to him; for party hates were most hot in those days; Swift himself says-the politicians wrangle like cats. He was tired, too, of waiting on |