sible that, at the last moment, the caprice, the malice, the folly of one man might frustrate the whole design? And was it certain that the law which so grievously restricted both the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought, had really added to the security of the State? Had not recent experience proved that the licenser might himself be an enemy of their Majesties, or, worse still, an absurd and perverse friend; that he might suppress a book of which it would be for their interest that every house in the country should have a copy, and that he might readily give his sanction to a libel which tended to make them hateful to their people, and which deserved to be torn and burned by the hand of Ketch? Had the government gained much by establishing a literary police which prevented Englishmen from having the History of the Bloody Circuit, and allowed them, by way of compensation, to read tracts which represented King William and Queen Mary as conquerors?

In that age, persons who were not specially interested in a public bill very seldom petitioned Parliament against it or for it. The only petitions, therefore, which were at this conjuncture presented to the two Houses against the censorship, came from booksellers, bookbinders, and printers. *But the opinion which these classes expressed was certainly not confined to them.

The law which was about to expire had lasted eight years. It was renewed for only two years. It appears, from an entry in the Journals of the Commons, which unfor tunately is defective, that a division took place on an amendment about the nature of which we are left entirely in the dark. The votes were ninety-nine to eighty. In the Lords it was proposed, according to the suggestion offered fifty years before by Milton, and stolen from him by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser every book which bore the name of an author or publisher. This amendment was rejected; and the bill passed, but not without a protest signed by eleven peers, who declared that they could not think it for the public interest to subject all learning and true information to the arbitrary will and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps ignorant licenser. Among those who protested were Halifax, Shrewsbury, and Mulgrave, three noblemen belonging to different political parties, but all distinguished by their literary attainments. It is to be lamented that the signatures of Tillotson and Burnet, who

*Commons' Journals, Feb. 27, 1692-3; Lords' Journals, March 4.

were both present on that day, should be wanting. Dorset was absent.*

Blount, by whose exertions and machinations the opposition to the censorship had been raised, did not live to see that opposition successful. Though not a very young man, he was possessed by an insane passion for the sister of his deceased wife. Having long labored in vain to convince the object of his love that she might lawfully marry him, he at last, whether from weariness of life, or in the hope of touching her heart, inflicted on himself a wound of which, after languishing long, he died. He has often been mentioned as a blasphemer and self-murderer. But the important service which, by means doubtless most immoral and dishonorable, he rendered to his country, has passed almost unnoticed.†

DEAN SWIFT.

THE prorogation drew nigh; and still the fate of the Triennial Bill was uncertain. Some of the ablest ministers thought the bill a good one; and, even had they thought it a bad one, they would probably have tried to dissuade their master from rejecting it. It was impossible, however, to remove from his mind the impression that a concession on this point would seriously impair his authority. Not relying on the judgment of his ordinary advisers, he sent Portland to ask the opinion of Sir William Temple. Temple had made a retreat for himself at a place called Moor Park, in the neighborhood of Farnham. The country round his

Lords' Journals, March 8, 1692–3.

In the article on Blount in the Biographia Britannica he is extolled as having borne a principal share in the emancipation of the press. But the writer was very imperfectly informed as to the facts.

It is strange that the circumstances of Blount's death should be so uncertain. That he died of a wound inflicted by his own hand, and that he languished long, are undisputed facts. The common story was that he shot himself; and Narcissus Luttrell, at the time, made an entry to this effect in his diary. On the other hand, Pope, who had the very best opportunities of obtaining accurate information, asserts that Blount, "being in love with a near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died."-Note on the Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I. Warburton, who had lived first with the heroes of the Dunciad, and then with the most eminent men of letters of his time, ought to have known the truth; and Warburton, by his silence, confirms Pope's assertion. Gildon's rhapsody about the death of his friend will suit either story equally.

dwelling was almost a wilderness. His amusement during some years had been to create in the waste what those Dutch burgomasters, among whom he had passed some of the best years of his life, would have considered as a paradise. His hermitage had been occasionally honored by the pres ence of the King, who had from a boy known and esteemed the author of the Triple Alliance, and who was well pleased to find, among the heath and furze of the wilds of Surrey, a spot which seemed to be part of Holland, a straight canal, a terrace, rows of clipped trees, and rectangular beds of flowers and pot-herbs.

Portland now repaired to this secluded abode and consulted the oracle. Temple was decidedly of opinion that the bill ought to pass. He was apprehensive that the reasons which led him to form this opinion might not be fully and correctly reported to the King by Portland, who was indeed as brave a soldier and as trusty a friend as ever lived, whose natural abilities were not inconsiderable, and who, in some departments of business, had great experience, but who was very imperfectly acquainted with the history and constitu tion of England. As the state of Sir William's health made it impossible for him to go himself to Kensington, he determined to send his secretary thither. The secretary was a poor scholar of four or five and twenty, under whose plain garb and ungainly deportment were concealed some of the choicest gifts that have ever been bestowed on any of the children of men; rare powers of observation, brilliant wit, grotesque invention, humor of the most austere flavor, yet exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure, manly and perspicuous. This young man was named Jonathan Swift. He was born in Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he had been called an Irishman. He was of unmixed English blood, and, through life, regarded the aboriginal population of the island in which he first drew breath as an alien and a servile caste. He had in the late reign kept terms at the University of Dublin, but had been distinguished there only by his irregularities, and had with difficulty obtained his degree. At the time of the Revolation, he had, with many thousands of his fellow colonists, taken refuge in the mother country from the violence of Tyrconnel, and had thought himself fortunate in being able to obtain shelter at Moor Park.* For that shelter, however, As to Swift's extraction and early life, see the Anecdotes written by him

self.

he had to pay a heavy price. He was thought to be suffi ciently remunerated for his services with twenty pounds a year and his board. He dined at the second table. Sometimes, indeed, when better company was not to be had, he was honored by being invited to play at cards with his patron; and on such occasions Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a little silver to begin with.* The humble student would not have dared to raise his eyes to a lady of family: but, when he had become a clergyman, he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of that generation, to make love to a pretty waiting-maid who was the chief ornament of the servants' hall, and whose name is inseparably associated with his in a sad and mysterious history.

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when he found himself on his way to Court. His spirit had been bowed down, and might seem to have been broken, by calamities and humiliations. The language which he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far as we can judge from the specimens which still remain, was that of a lacquey, or rather of a beggar.† A sharp word or a cold look of the master sufficed to make the servant miserable during several days. But this tameness was merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, caged and starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humble menial was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the most vindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at length a great, a boundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was already slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host was confined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by the secretary about the grounds. His Majesty had condescended to teach his companion the Dutch way of cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously asked whether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's commission in a cavalry regiment. But now for the first time the young man was to stand in the royal presence as a counsellor. He was admitted into the closet, delivered a letter from Temple, and explained and enforced the arguments which that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless with clearness and ability. There was, he said, no reason to think that short Parliaments would be more disposed then long Parliaments to encroach on the just prerogatives of the Crown. In fact, the Parliament which had, in the

⚫ Journal to Stella, Letter liii.

† See Swift's Letter to Temple of Oct. 6, 1694.
↑ Journal to Stella, Letter xix.

preceding generation, waged war against a King, led him captive, sent him to prison, to the bar, to the scaffold, was known in our annals as emphatically the long Parliament. Never would such disasters have befallen the monarchy, but for the fatal law which secured that assembly from dissolution.* There was, it must be owned, a flaw in this reasoning, which a man less shrewd than William might easily detect. That one restriction of the royal prerogative had been mischievous did not prove that another restriction would be salutary. It by no means followed, because one sovereign had been ruined by being unable to get rid of a hostile Parliament, that another sovereign might not be ruined by being forced to part with a friendly Parliament. To the great mortification of the ambassador, his arguments failed to shake the King's resolution. On the fourteenth of March, the Commons were summoned to the Upper House: the title of the Triennial Bill was read: and it was announced, after the ancient form, that the King and Queen would take the matter into their consideration. The Parliament was then prorogued.

THE LORD KEEPER SOMERS.

ANOTHER Whig of far higher character was called at the same time to a far higher place in the administration. The Great Seal had now been four years in commission. Since Maynard's retirement, the constitution of the Court of Chancery had commanded little respect. Trevor, who was the First Commissioner, wanted neither parts nor learning: but his integrity was with good reason suspected; and the duties which, as Speaker of the House of Commons, he had to perform during four or five months in the busiest part of every year, made it impossible for him to be an efficient judge in equity. Every suitor complained that he had to wait a most unreasonable time for a judgment, and that, when at length a judgment had been pronounced, it was very likely to be reversed on appeal. Meanwhile, there was no efficient minister of justice, no great functionary to whom it especi ally belonged to advise the King touching the appointment

Swift's Anecdotes.