THIS book contains a good deal that is new to the public. It corrects some mistakes as to Swift; it adds something to our means of judging of him, and is, on the whole, creditable to the diligence and the intelligence of its distinguished author. Mr. Wilde is the editor of the Dublin Medical Journal, and this volume is an enlargement of a professional essay, published in that useful periodical, in reply to some inquiries addressed to him by Dr. M'Kenzie of Glasgow, as to the character of the disease which clouded so many years of Dean Swift's life, and which exhibited its true character in the extinction of all mental power, long before the period of his actual death.

It was impossible for Mr. Wilde to examine the case of Swift as a mere medical question, without his being led to look into forgotten pamphlets and old repositories of the thousand trifles which the interest about a great man led fanciful people to preserve. VOL. XVIII. NO. II.

From these sources he has revived some old recollections of Stella, and others connected with Swift, and has been fortunate enough to recover what we are inclined to think a genuine portrait of that lady, which is engraved for his volume. He has been also fortunate enough to find an old almanack with verses in Swift's hand-writing bound up within the same cover, and has, in this way, added a few poems of no great merit, and of doubtful authenticity, to the mass of Swift's works, already too large-for each successive editor has increased the bulk of what he was bringing before the public, by every trifle, which, whether written by Swift or by any of his acquaintances, could by any pretense be connected with his name. The book, however, is of great value. An obscure disease which clouded with mystery much of Swift's life, which, while men forbore to call it insanity, perplexed every one of his friends with strange misgivings, and

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suggested to himself, with painful distinctness, its inevitable termination, is here traced with great distinctness, chiefly from such records as Swift's own letters afford. The inferences from the statements made by him, from time to time, through a period of full fifty years, are compared with those which an examination of his mortal remains, strangely exposed to observation a century after his death, suggested to competent observers. The chief value of Mr. Wilde's book is as a medical tract, but it incidentally illustrates some of the topics of Swift's domestic life which have been the subject of dispute; and this is of the more moment, as Scott's Life of Swift, an exceedingly entertaining volume, is framed on the principle of combining into one narrative all that had been told of Swift by witnesses, many of whom were far from being quite faithworthy. It is really a curious thing to observe how accidentally mistakes arise. How the ambiguous language of one biographer being misunderstood by the next, the whole color of the narrative becomes insensibly changed. In Swift's case there is really little that can be depended on in the statements of any of his biographers, which is not directly affirmed in his own letters.

Of his early life, nothing whatever is known, except what he has himself told. Every addition to his record is demonstrably false; and every statement of his own, susceptible of confirmation from external evidence, has been abundantly confirmed. Swift's stern and uncompromising veracity has been tested in every conceivable way. The vanity of his own relatives, anxious to be supposed capable of adding something to what the public already knew of a great man, has been rebuked by accidental circumstances, disproving all that they stated about the Dean. Mr. Deane Swift's book is for the most part worthless. Lord Orrery's Biography of Swift, a book not without some interesting matter, is chiefly valuable as showing the sort of calumnies that prevailed during the latter years of Swift's life, and which were all reproduced in this weak and mischievous work. The book has all the appearance of having been dictated by malevolent feeling; and as its author had for a while a doubtful intimacy with Swift, it is probable that resentment for real or imagin

ary slights was not unconnected with the tone of depreciation manifested throughout. Lord Orrery was anxious to come before the public in the character of an author. Without any original powers, his only course was translation or criticism. He translated Pliny's Epistles, but Melmoth distanced him there. He then remembered that there was no life of Swift, and he set about supplying the want. His acquaintance with Swift, which was the chief excuse for selecting this subject, had, however, been formed at a time when Swift was scarce himself-when his temper was soured with disappointment and utter hopelessness, and when his bodily and mental health was already greatly impaired. In fact, Lord Orrery had nothing to tell of Swift from his own knowledge; and to make a book there was no way open to him except to heap together whatever he could collect of hearsay among the few who then remembered "the Dean." The peculiar relation of Swift to the late ministry of Queen Anne, and the part he had afterwards taken in Irish politics, had made him the object of hatred and suspicion to the party who, when Lord Orrery wrote, possessed the whole power and patronage of the State. The libels published against him had thus a life more enduring than such things ordinarily have. All those were imbodied in Lord Orrery's work. The work became very generally circulated, and was the text-book from which everything calculated to lower the Dean's character has been derived. Lord Orrery's book was answered, and, for the most part, shown to be utterly unworthy of credit, by Delany, a surviving friend of Swift; but Delany's "Observations," we are told by Sheridan, had but little circulation. Delany's Answer was followed by another from Deane Swift. Then came a formal life by Hawkesworth; and then Johnson's. We are obliged to mention these successive publications, as each materially influenced the more modern lives of Swift, and as every one of them originated errors which we hope to remove.

Johnson's, published in his Lives of the Poets, opens with an assertion which we must notice, as it is calculated to affect our whole estimate of Swift:

"Jonathan Swift was, according to an account said to be written by himself, the son of Jonathan Swift, an attorney, and was born at Dublin on St. Andrew's day, 1667. According to his own report, as delivered by Pope to Spence, he was born at Leicester, the son of a clergyman, who was min

ister of a parish in Herefordshire. During his life, the place of his birth was undetermined. He was contented to be called an Irishman by the Irish, but would occasionally call himself an Englishman."

Swift was wholly incapable of the deception and falsehood which this narrative implies. Of himself, as of others similarly circumstanced, he was in the habit of speaking as of an Englishman accidentally born in Ireland; and as both his parents were English, and as no one of his progenitors was Irish, there does not seem anything unreasonable in his stating the fact as it was. The account, which states his birth to have been in Dublin, is in his own handwriting, and is preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Of the authenticity of that document, and of the truth of that statement, there can be no doubt. The passage Johnson quotes from Spence, no doubt exists in Spence's Anecdotes; but Spence made the mistake of confusing what Swift said of his grandfather, as if it had been said of his father. His grandfather, who was born in Leicester, was vicar of Goodrich in Herefordshire, and this Pope perfectly knew, as is proved by his amusing verses on Swift's putting up a monument to him, and presenting a cup to the church at Goodrich. On a pencilled elevation of the proposed monument, which Swift sent to Mrs. Howard, Pope wrote the following lines, which are preserved with an endorsement in Swift's hand, "Model of a monument for my grandfather, with Mr. Pope's roguery:"

JONATHAN SWIFT
Had the gift

By fatheridge, motheridge,
And by brotheridge,
To come from Gutheridge;
But now is spoiled clean,
And an Irish Dean;
In this church he has put
A stone of two foot,
With a cup and a can, sir,
In respect to his grandsire, &c.

In a letter from Pope to Swift, the former telling a story of an Irishman to Swift, calls the hero of the tale Swift's countryman. In a letter from Swift to Pope, (July 1737,) we have the following passage, which exhibits the sense which Swift gave to the word, if at any time he called himself an Englishman, and which negatives Johnson's ungenerous and unwarranted inference-" Some of those who highly esteem you, and a few who know you personally, are grieved to find

you make no distinction between the English gentlemen of this kingdom" (he is writing from Dublin) "and the savage old Irish, (who are only the vulgar, and some gentlemen who live in the Irish parts of the kingdom;) but the English colonies, who are three parts in four, are much more civilized than many counties in England, and speak better English, and are much better bred; and they think it very hard that an American, who is of the fifth generation from England, should be allowed to preserve that title, only because we have been told by some of them that their names are entered in some parish in London. I have three or four cousins here who were born in Portugal, whose parents took the same care, and they are all of them Londoners." In a letter from Pope, speaking of Rundle, then sent over as a bishop to Ireland, we find him saying to Swift. "He will be an honor to the bishops, but what you will like more particularly, he will be a friend and benefactor to your unfriended and unbenefitted nation." In the dedication of the Dunciad, where Pope brought together whatever was likely to please Swift, he does not shrink from calling Ireland his country:

* * *

"Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair, Or praise the court, or magnify mankind, Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind," &c.

In the fourth Drapier's letter, Swift speaks of Molyneux as "an English gentleman born here," i. e., in Ireland. Swift's feeling was that no right of an Englishman ought to have been lost by location or by birth in Ireland. This thought, and this alone, was what he expressed in very natural and very forcible. language. The mistake of his meaning, for it does not appear to have been misrepresentation, has given a false coloring to every part of Johnson's narrative.

The first three years of Swift's life were past in England. His nurse, an Englishwoman, had some temptation to return to her own country, and she took the child with her. "At five years old he could read any chapter of the Bible; at six he was sent to school at hilkenny in Ireland, and at fourteen he was admitted into the University of Dublin, where, by the ill-treatment of his nearest relations, he was so much discouraged and sunk in his spirits, that he too much neglected some parts of his academic studies, for 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, although he had lived with great regularity and due observance of the statutes, he was stopped of his degree for dullness and insufficiency, and at last hardly admitted, in a manner little to his credit, which is called in that college speciali gratia. And this discreditable mark, as I am told," we are transcribing his own statement, "stands upon record in their college registry."

The mark still exists. Swift entered college in April, 1682, and became one of a class which had for the most part entered in the October or November previous. As far as we can ascertain there was at this period but little attention paid to classics in the course of education at Dublin University. It was ascertained by an examination at entrance, that the pupil had read some prescribed books in Latin and Greek. The temptation of a scholarship in the third year of his course, which was the reward of proficiency in classics, was the sole inducement to make him continue this study, while all the permanent honors and emoluments which the college could bestow were given to what was then called Arts. For a period of four years education was conducted by prelections on Aristotelic logic, and in physics and ethics Aristotle was also the text-book. The college statutes did not allow any deviation from the course, and even the books to be used by the lecturer in instructing his pupils were rigorously fixed by statute. It was only in the reign of George the Third that an inconvenience felt almost since the foundation of the college was remedied, and power given to the governing part of the body, in conjuncton with the visitors, to make such changes in the course of study as circumstances might require. Swift was a boy of fourteen. At his school not one word of science had been taught. The Irish schools never invaded the proper province of the university. He found himself in a class that for six months before had been exercised in the subtleties of a formal system altogether new to him. There is reason, too, to think that Swift's talents were of slow development. It is scarce possible to imagine circumstances in which less was likely to be learned. His tutor's attention would, in the circumstances, be given to the more advanced pupils, and it cannot surprise us if the neg

lected boy was satisfied with formal attendance, and lived in a world of his own thoughts and dreams. At that time the test of proficiency afforded by quarterly examinations of the students did not exist, and the logical disputations for an academic degree, which have become a mere form, were then a serious thing. Swift's failure seems to have been regarded by him with deep humiliation; and though it did not lead him to leave college for three years afterwards, it probably was among his motives for taking his higher degrees at Oxford. Some confusion has arisen in examining Swift's early career, from the fact of a cousin of his of the same surname having entered college on the same day with him, and the college entries respecting the two being so made as to render it impossible in all cases to determine to whom they refer. His biographer, Deane Swift, has built a strange story out of the way in which Swift's degree was given. He says that Swift himself told him that the words were misunderstood at Oxford; and that the introduction of them into the testimonial given by Dublin College, was regarded by the Oxford men as a proof of the high regard with which Swift was honored in his parent university. The testimonium has been since produced. It contains no such words, nor are such ever inserted in a document of the kind. This disposes of Mr. Deane Swift as a witness, and, in disposing of him, a good deal of biographical rubbish is cleared away.

Swift's support at school and in college was derived from an uncle, Godwin Swift. Godwin Swift, the first of the family that came to Ireland, was connected through one of his four wives with the Ormond family, and the Duke made him his attorney-general of the Palatinate of Tipperary. "Godwin," says Swift, "was an ill pleader, but perhaps dextrous in the subtle parts of the law." În the manuscript from which these words are taken, is an interlineation before the word "dextrous" of the emphatic words "a little too." Swift did not think of his uncle Godwin with love. There is no trace, we believe, of any kindly intimacy between the family of the successful barrister and the retired student.

Swift's was a nature not unlikely to fancy neglect, and to resent it. There can be no doubt that at all times selfwill and caprice were among the original elements of his character, and that from the first he was ambitious. The appearance of forts of such an establishment as his uncle's, wealth, and the reality of some of the commust have now and then met the eye of the