ural wilderness of heath and furze. Intion; but at Moor Park, for the first time, the centre of this wilderness Sir William he entered a secure haven, where, rehad created a sort of Dutch paradise,- leased from the stress of the storm, he had planted his tulips, had dug his canals, had leisure to look about him, and to preand filled his fish-pond. The somewhat pare himself for action. ponderous affability of the retired diplo- It was not for some years after Temmatist was looked upon as rather old-ple's death that Swift became a noticeable fashioned, even by his contemporaries; figure in the metropolis. He was mostly and it is not difficult to believe that the in Ireland. He had become a clergyman relations between him and the raw and before he finally left Moor Park; and he inexperienced Irish secretary must have now held one or two inconsiderable livbeen, at first at least, a trifle strained and ings in the Irish Church. The congregadifficult. But we are rather inclined to tions were small; the duties were light; think that the residence with Temple was and he had a good deal of spare time on not the least happy period of Swift's life. his hands. All his life he was a great He was in his early manhood; he spent walker (Mr. Leslie Stephen, himself an much of his time in the open air; he had eminent mountaineer, is ready to fratera plentiful store of books to fall back upon nize with this possible member of the Alduring rainy weather; the first promptings pine Club) — the sound mind in the sound of genius and ambition were making them- body being with Swift largely dependent selves felt; he saw on occasion the great upon constant and even violent exercise. men who were moving the world; and At this period—indeed during his whole after some inevitable misunderstandings career, but more especially at this time — he became indispensable to Temple, who these long, sclitary rambles are a noticea"often trusted him," as he says, "with ble feature in Swift's life. He walks from affairs of great importance." Then there London to Leicester, from Leicester to was little Esther Johnson, the delicate Holyhead, from Dublin to Laracor, pupil who had already found a soft place sleeping at roadside taverns, hobnobbing in her master's heart, and whose childish with wandering tinkers and incurious rusprattle has been immortalized in words tics, watching the men at their work, the that are as fresh and sweet to-day as the women at their cottage doors. He had a day they were written. If it is true that great liking for this kind of life, and he "A Tale of a Tub" as well as "The Bat loved the country after a fashion of his tle of the Books was composed at Moor own: he recalls through the smoke of Park, the stories of his vulgar servitude London the willows of Laracor, and when and wearing misery are finally disposed he is too moody in spirit to consort with of. The glow, the animation, the bright- his fellow-mortals, he goes down to the ness of the narrative, are characteristic vicarage and shuts himself up in his garof a period of fine and true happiness-den. the happiness of the creative intellect in It was in London, however, that his its earliest and least mechanical exercise. true life was passed. There the great When Swift left Moor Park in 1699, game was being played in which he his education was complete. He was longed to join. He soon acquired celebfitted by nature to play a great part in rity celebrity that in one sense cost great affairs; and besides his unique nat-him dear. From the day that "A Tale of ural gifts, he was now in every sense a a Tub" was published, he was a famous man of culture and accomplishment. The man. But it was a fame that rather scandiscipline at Moor Park had been alto- dalized Queen Anne and the orthodox gether salutary; and we have no reason school of Churchmen; and Swift could to suppose that he felt himself degraded never get himself made a bishop, a digby the position which he had occupied nity which he mainly coveted, it is prob and the duties he had discharged. A able, because it implied secular and polit bitter and dreary childhood had been suc ical as well as spiritual lordship. There ceeded by years of dependence and priva- is no doubt that Swift was a sincere be liever in what he held to be the main | ous cause feel that there is danger in truths of Christianity; * but his ridicule accepting such an alliance." But Eraswas terribly keen, and the mere trappings mus, who contrived to get the laughers on of religion fared ill at his hands. There his side, had nearly as much to do with is no saying now how far this destructive the reformation of ecclesiastical abuses in logic might have been carried; there the sixteenth century as Luther or Calvin seems indeed to be a general consent had. Swift's ridicule may have had a among experts that it would have spared wider sweep, and may have involved even little. For our own part, we are not pre-graver issues; but we do not see that it pared to admit that the corruptions of was destructive — that is, inimical to and religion superstition and fanaticism inconsistent with a rational conception of cannot be assailed except by the sceptic Christianity in the sense at least that or the unbeliever. Swift did not attack David Hume's was destructive. the Church of England; but that, it is Addison's " "Travels were published in said, was only an accident. "Martin is 1705, and he sent a copy to Swift with not ridiculed; but with the attacks on these words written upon the fly-leaf: "To Peter and John before us, it is is impossi- Dr. Jonathan Swift, The most Agreeble not to see that the same sort of things able Companion, the Truest Friend, and might be said of him as are said of them, the Greatest Genius of his Age, This and with the same sort of justice. What Book is presented by his most Humble a chapter Swift might have written on the Servant, the Author." So that even thus way in which Martin made his fortune by early Swift's literary pre-eminence must bribing the lawyers to divorce the squire have been freely recognized at least when he wanted to marry his wife's maid; among the Whigs, of whom Addison was how he might have revelled in description the mouthpiece. Swift at this time was of the skill with which Martin forged a held to be a Whig; but in truth he cared new will in thirty-nine clauses, and tried little for party. He had, indeed, a pasto trip up Peter, and actually did crop sionate and deeply-rooted love of libJack's ears, because they each preferred erty, their own forgery to his!" Well, but suppose Swift had said all this, would he have said anything more than Pusey, Keble, and a crowd of Church of England dignitaries have been saying now for many years past, without any suspicion of irreligion, or scepticism, or even of dangerous logical insight? In short, the substance of religion is independent of its accidents, which are often mean and grotesque; and the mean and the grotesque, in whatever shape, are fit subjects for satire - which in the hands of a Cervantes, a Rabelais, an Erasmus, or a Swift, may undoubtedly become the most effective of all weapons in the cause of truth and common sense. 666 A Tale of a Tub,'" Sir Walter Scott remarked very truly, "succeeded in rendering the High Church party most important services; for what is so important to a party in Britain as to gain the laughers to their side?" Mr. Leslie Stephen, with unlooked-for and unaccustomed timidity, replies, "The condition of having the laughers on your side is to be on the side of the laughers. Advocates of any seri The prayers composed by Swift for Mrs. Esther Johnson on her deathbed are very interesting. in this Connection, and should be read attentively. They seem to us to show, along with much else, that whatever speculative difficulties he may have experienced, he had accepted Christianity, as a rule of life and faith, with sincere and even intense conviction. Better we all were in our graves, but the right divine of the oligarchy to a But when the victories of Marlborough had restored them to office, it they thought the whole art of government consisted in the importation of nutmegs and the curing of herrings. But God be thanked," he adds, "they and their schemes are vanished, and their place shall know them no more." This is not the language of a deserter who, from interested motives, has gone over to the enemy: there is, on the contrary, the energy of entire conviction. cannot be said that Somers and Halifax what the sæva indignatio may have beexerted themselves very strenuously in gun. The ill-concealed antagonisms, the behalf of their protégé. So late as the long-suppressed resentments, burst out spring of 1709 he was able to tell the lat- with full force in "The Examiner." Noter, that the copy of the "Poésies Chré- where have the narrow traditions of the tiennes "which he had begged of him on Whigs been more trenchantly exposed. parting was the only favor he ever re- "They impose a hundred tests; they narceived from him or his party. There were row the terms of communion; they proobstacles in the way, no doubt; but it is dif- nounce nine parts in ten of the country ficult to suppose that if they had pressed heretics, and shut them out of the pale of his claims, they could not have made him their Church. These very men, who talk an Irish bishop or an English dean. The so much of a comprehension in religion rewards of letters in that age were splen- among us, how come they to allow so did; and Swift's fame was rivalled only little of it in politics, which is their sole by Addison's. But the truth is, that there religion?" "They come," he exclaims was from the first little sympathy between in another place, "they come with the the oligarchy which governed England spirits of shopkeepers to frame rules for and this strong and trenchant intellect. the administration of kingdoms; as if Swift, moreover, was an ardent Churchman, who hated fanaticism and the fanatical sects; whereas the Whigs were lukewarm Churchmen, and rather addicted to Dissent. Macaulay says that when Harley and St. John succeeded in displacing Godolphin, Swift "ratted." The charge appears to us to be unfounded. Swift had shaken the dust of Whiggery off his feet before the prosecution of Sacheverell had been commenced. The alienation was even then virtually if not nominally complete. The leaders of the party had treated him badly, and were ready, he believed, to treat the Church badly if they dared. So that for some time before the Tories returned to office in 1710, he had been slowly but surely drifting into Toryism. Harley and St. John were resolved to have him at any price, he was the only man they feared; but they would hardly have ventured to approach him if his Whiggery had been very pronounced. The unconventional habits of the new ministers were delightful to one who detested convention. They were weighted with great affairs; but he always found them, he declared, as easy and disengaged as schoolboys on a holiday. He was charmed by the easy familiarity of the lord treasurer; he was captivated by the adventurous genius of the secretary; and affection and admiration completed * "I think Mr. St. John the greatest young man I ever knew: wit, capacity, beauty, quickness of apprehension, good learning, and an excellent taste; the best orator in the House of Commons, admirable conversa tion, good nature, and good manners; generous, and a despiser of money." Swift to Stella. We do not enter here into the merits of the political measures advocated by Swift, and carried out by St. John and Harley; but we cannot say that Mr. Craik does anything like justice to St. John, whose immense capacity has foreign policy was approved by Macaulay, and whose "free and noble style was praised by Jeffrey. extorted the admiration of his bitterest critics, whose From 1710 to 1714 St. John and Harley were in office. These were Swift's golden years. He enjoyed the consciousness of power; and now he had the substance of it, if not the show. He was by nature a ruler of men; and now his authority was acknowledged and undisputed. It must be confessed as even Dr. Johnson is forced to confess that during these years Swift formed the political opinions of the English nation. He was still in his prime. When Harley became lord treasurer, Swift had not completed his forty-third year, and his bodily and mental vigor was unimpaired. The man who had hitherto led a life of penury and dependence, had found himself of a sudden in possession of a most wonderful weapon the sword of sharpness or the coat of darkness of the fairytale which made him a match for the greatest and the strongest. It was an in. toxicating position; but upon the whole, he bore himself not ignobly. That there was always a certain masterfulness about him need not be doubted; but the roughness of his manner and the brusqueness of his humor have certainly been exaggerated. The reports come to us from those who saw him in later and evil days, when he was suffering from bodily pain and the irritability of incipient madness. But in 1710 the "imperious and moody exile" was the most delightful company 66 in the world. The "conjured spirit" had been exorcised by the spell of congenial work, and its owner was bright, ardent, and unwearied in the pursuit of business and pleasure. Swift had unquestionably that personal charm which is so potent in public life. Men were drawn to him as by a magnet; for women - for more than one woman at least — he had an irresistible attraction. He was not tall; but his figure was certainly not "ungainly," and his face was at once powerful and refined. There was a delicate curve of scorn about the lips; though he was never known to laugh, his eyes were bright with mirth and mockery, azure as the heavens," said Pope, and with a charming archness in them." Poor Vanessa found that there was something awful in them besides; but that was later. Altogether he must have been, so far as we can figure him now, a very noticeable man, the blue eyes shining archly under the black and bushy eyebrows, the massive forehead, the dimpled chin, the aquiline nose, the easy and confident address, the flow of ready mother-wit, the force of a most trenchant logic; except St. John, there was probably no man in England at the time who, taken all round, was quite a match for the famous Irish vicar. 66 66 The death of Queen Anne was nearly as mortal a blow to Swift as to St. John. It meant banishment for both. Yet the great qualities of the men were accentu ated by evil fortune. "What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us!" St. John exclaimed on the day he fell; and a week later he wrote to Swift, Adieu; love me, and love me better, because after a greater blow than most men ever felt I keep up my spirit-am neither dejected at what is past, nor apprehensive at what is to come. Mea virtute me involvo." "Swift," said Arbuthnot, "keeps up his noble spirit; and though like a man knocked down, you may behold him still with a stern countenance, and aiming a blow at his adversaries." Swift returned to Ireland in 1714. He had been appointed to the Deanery of St. Patrick's by his Tory friends; and he ap. plied himself, on his return, with zeal and assiduity to the duties of his charge. But though he bore himself stoutly, he was in truth a soured and disappointed man. The company of great friends had been scattered. He was remote from St. John, Pope, and Gay. He detested Ireland, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell," he had said to Oxford not long before. But the irony of fate had been too strong for him, and the rest of his life was to be spent among a people whom he despised. He came back under a cloud of unpopularity. He was mobbed more than once in the streets of Dublin. But nature had made him a ruler of men in Ireland as elsewhere. Soon he rose to be its foremost citizen. The English Whigs had treated Ireland with gross injustice; and the wrongs of Ireland were a ready theme for the patriot and the satirist. The Irish people were not ungrateful. "Come over to us," he had once written in his grand way to Addison, "and we will raise an army, and make you king of Ireland." He himself for many years was its virtual ruler. "When they ask me," said the accomplished Carteret, who had been lord lieutenant, "how I governed Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift." Walpole would have been glad more than once to punish the audacious Churchman, but the risk was too great. During the prosecution of the printer of the "Drapier Let ters," the popular determination found appropriate expression in a well-known passage of Holy Writ: "Shall JONATHAN die, who hath wrought this great salvation in Israel? God forbid: as the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground; for he hath wrought with God this day. So the people rescued JONATHAN, that he died not." And when, at a later period, exasperated by a peculiarly bitter taunt, the minister threatened to arrest the dean, he was dissuaded by prudent friends. The messengers of the law would require to be protected by the military could he spare ten thousand men for the purpose? "Had I held up my little finger," Swift said to Walpole's ally, the primate Boulter, who had been expostulating with him on his violence - had I held up my little finger, they would have torn you to pieces."* Bonfires blazed on his birthday. In every town of Ireland that he visited, he was received "as a sovereign prince." When he went from Dublin to the provinces, it was like a royal progress. On his return in 1727 from the last visit he paid to England, the vessel in which he crossed the Channel was signalled in Dublin Bay. "The corporation met the ship in wherries, the quays were decked with bunting, the bells were rung, and the city received in gala fashion her most beloved citizen." On another occasion, a great crowd having assembled to witness an eclipse of the sun, Swift sent round the bell-man to intimate that the eclipse had been post poned by the dean's orders, and the crowd forthwith dispersed. stated somewhat thus: he was parsimonious and avaricious, a self-seeker and a cynic, brutal to the weak and abject to the strong, a factious Churchman, a faithless politician, coarse in language and overbearing in manner. Some of these allegations have been disposed of by what has been already said: that there was an es sential consistency, for instance, in his political opinions, that he did not "rat " in any base or vulgar sense, seems to us to be incontestable; and it will be found, we think, that most of the other charges rest on an equally slender basis of fact, on equally palpable misconstructions. Indeed, the more we examine the dean's life, the more obvious does it become that his vices leant to virtue's side, and that the greatness of his nature asserted itself strongly and unequivocally in his very weaknesses. But all was unavailing. The gloomy shadows gathered more closely round him. Vanessa was dead; Stella was dead; one by one the great friends had dropped away. He was tortured by a profound misanthropy the misanthropy of the man who sees too clearly and feels too keenly. For many years before his death he read on his birthday that chapter of Job in which the patriarch curses the day on which it was said in his father's house that a man child was born. "Gulliver is one of the great books of the world; but the hopeless rage against the race of mortals in the closing chapters is almost too terrible. For many years Swift was one of the most wretched of men. The gloom never lightened the clouds never broke. It must have been almost a relief when total darkness came — - if such it was. But that is the worst of madness- we cannot tell if the uncon- One initial difficulty there is - Swift sciousness, the oblivion, is absolute. Be- had a habit of putting his worst foot forehind the veil the tortured spirit may prey most. He detested hypocritical pretence upon itself. He had asked to be taken of every kind; and in speaking of himself away from the evil to come; but his he often went to the other extreme. A prayer was not granted. He would have subtle vein of self-mockery runs through rejoiced exceedingly to find the grave; his letters, which incapacity and dulness but he was forced to drink the cup to the may easily misconstrue. Pope underdregs. For the thing which I greatly stood it; Bolingbroke understood it; but feared is come upon me, and that which I the solemn badinage of his own actions was afraid of is come unto me.* During and motives, in which he liked to indulge, the last four years of his life this famous when taken as a serious element by seriwit, this prodigious intellect, was utterly ous biographers, has been apt to lead prostrated. Only a broken sentence came them astray. Swift, in short, was a sinat long intervals from his lips. "Go, gularly reticent man, who spoke as little "Poor old man!" "I am what I as possible about his deeper convictions, The picture is darker than any he and who, when taxed with amiability, or has drawn, it is a more bitter commen-kind-heartedness, or generosity, or piety, tary on the irony of human life than any thing that Gulliver witnessed in all his travels. The end came on the 19th of October, 1745. go! am." preferred to reply with an ambiguous jest. The dean's alleged meanness in money matters is easily explained. The iron had entered into his soul. He had known Such is a brief sketch of the chief inci- at school and college what penury meant; dents of Swift's life, - brief, but sufficient and he deliberately resolved that by no perhaps to enable us to follow with sym- act of his own would he again expose pathy and understanding some of the himself to the miseries of dependence. questions on which controversy has arisen. But he was not avaricious, from a very Without sympathy," as Mr. Craik has early period he gave away one-tenth of well said, "few passages of Swift's life his narrow income in charity. He saved, are fairly to be judged." There are a good as some one has said, not that he might many side issues that come up inciden- be rich, but that he might be liberal. tally for judgment; but the main contro-Such thrift cannot be condemned; on the versy, out of which the others emerge, is concerned with the relations which the dean maintained with Stella and Vanessa. If we examine with any care the indict. ment that has been prepared by Jeffrey, Macaulay, Thackeray, and others, we find that the charges against Swift may be * Job. iii. 25. contrary, it is virtue of a high order - the virtue which the strenuous Roman extolled. Magnum vectigal est parsimonia. He went out of his way to help others. His temper was naturally generous. It may be said, quite truly, that he valued power mainly because it enabled him to push the fortunes of his friends. He ex'cused himself indeed in his characteristic |