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CHAPTER XIII.

SWIFT AND THE ESSAYISTS.

Coarseness of Manners in the 17th and 18th centuries-Jonathan Swift Battle of the Books-Tale of a Tub-Pamphlets - Stella and VenessaDrapier's Letters-Voyages of Gulliver-Minor Works-Poems-Steele and Addison-Cato - Tatler-Spectator-Samuel Johnson-Prose Style Satires of London' and 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' - Rasselas --Journey to the Hebrides-Lives of the Poets-Edition of Shakspeare Dictionary-Rambler and Idler.

Ir can hardly, we think, be denied, that the Revolution of 1688 either produced or was accompanied by certain social effects at least temporarily injurious to society in England, and lowering the tone of sentiment, not only in political matters, but also, which is of much more importance to our subject, in the literary character of the times. Something of the old courtesy, something of the romantic and ideal in social intercourse between man and man, and still more preceptibly between man and woman, the Revolution appears to have annihilated; a more selfish, calculating, and material spirit begins to be perceptible in society, and consequently to be reflected in books. Language becomes a little ruder, more disputative, and more combative intellect now plays a more prominent part than either the fancy or the sensibility -the head has overbalanced the heart.

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Of the general prevalence of such a tone of society there can be no more conclusive proof than the personal and literary character of Jonathan Swift; a man of robust and mighty intellect, of great and ready acquirements, of an indomitable will, activity, and perseverance, but equally deficient in heart as a man and in disinterestedness as a patriot. The Dean of St. Patrick's was indeed a rarely-gifted, prompt, and vigorous intellect: in his particular line of satire he is unequalled in literature; he did more and more readily what few beside him could have attempted; he played during his life a prominent and important part in the political drama of his country, and established himself by his writings among the prose classics of the world but he was, as a man, heartless, selfish, unloving, and unsympathising; as a writer, he degraded and lowered our reverence for the divinity of our nature; and as a statesman, he appears to have felt no nobler spur to the exertion of his gigantic powers than the sting of personal pique and the pang of discontented ambition.

He was born in Dublin in the year 1667; a posthumous child, left dependent upon the uncertain charity of relations for support, and the not less precarious favour of the great for protection. This

more advantage. His hagginesses of Ection are innpang :able

What

can be finer either in images or in sound than his pharters of past glory and power!

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What triumpos is gera, ars ¿vine,

In vier i in gabe before my sige!

What jengs ré-med ages, i'd igi
WI atac acog

la substances fr

The melancholy gins of dead renown.

Waspering hit echoes of the world's applause;
With peatrear aspect, as they pass.

A pot at earth, and his at himan pride"

or that noble and yet familiar image, so justly praised by CampbellWhere Seal Rain fercely drives

Her ploughstare o'er creation

or the bold impersonation of Death, who is introduced

“To tread out empires and to quench the stars."

On the other hand, what can be in worse taste than the comparison of the celestial orbs with diamonds set in a ring to adorn the finger of Omnipotence, which ring, by a supererogation of absurdity, is afterwards called a seal-ring?

"A constellation of ten thousand gems,

Set in one signet, flames on the right hand
Of Majesty Divine; the blazing seal,

That deeply stamps, on all created mind,
Indelible, his sovereign attributes."

ntain a fable or 1

But perhaps the most easily perceived defect in this extraordinary work is the want of a plan and interest pervading the whole, and producing a natural connection or dependence between the various parts of the poem. Of course it would be too much to expect that a meditative or contemplative composition should narrative of progressive interest; right in every work consisting of degree of dependence and mu assuredly not fulfilled by the 'N have no necessary connection, a without any injury to the effect haps to a certain degree inevita the fragmentary and paroxysm ducing effect upon the read ther by short abrupt thought or steady

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at the Refor...d shoulderAve simplicity tian religion). y and graduhimself to a - of imagination ble light the served that he stic pranks of bows how richly Bus lampooning. which are interAgressions," and ries of droll allunon learning. found writing as is new patrons as He now published The title of 'Sentithe Application of for Christianity. Te irony, he shows abolition of the ving what a loss sprit fort to be afforded by the

humorous jeux i persons at that oss ignorance of Tre quacks, who vellous. amphlet, entitled on the Duke of became acquainted

se real name was ineasure ed

unfortunate entrance into life appears to have tinged with a darker shade of misanthropic gloom a temperament naturally saturnine, and to have inspired something of that morbid melancholy which ultimately deepened into hypochondria, and terminated so terribly in madness and idiotcy. Swift at the beginning of his career received the aid and protection of Sir William Temple, who enabled him to complete his education at Oxford, and in whose house he made that acquaintance with Mrs. Johnson (the daughter of Temple's steward) which became the source, to Swift, of a signal instance of retributive justice, and to the unfortunate lady of such a sad celebrity under the name of Stella. Swift did not begin to write until he had reached the tolerably mature age of thirty-four; and this circumstance will not only account for the extraordinary force and mastery which his style from the first exhibited, but it will prove the absence in Swift's mind of any of that purely literary ambition which incites the student

"To scorn delights, and live laborious days."

Throughout the whole of his literary career Swift never appears to have cared to obtain the reputation of a mere writer: his works (the greater number of which were political pamphlets, referring to temporary events, and composed for the purpose of attaining temporary objects) seem never to have been considered by him otherwise than as means, instruments, or engines for the securing of their particular object. The ruling passion of his mind was an intense and arrogant desire for political power and notoriety; or, as he says himself, "All my endeavours, from a boy, to distinguish myself, were only for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts-whether right or wrong, it is no great matter." This was indeed but a low and creeping ambition; and the fruit—at least as far as any augmentation of human happiness is concerned · is worthy of the tree.

The protégé of Temple, Swift was naturally, at the beginning of his public life, a Whig; and his first achievements in the warfare of party were made under the Whig banner. He also exhibited his

attachment to his patron by taking part in the famous controversy respecting the comparative superiority of the ancients or the moderns; a controversy of which Temple was the most distinguished champion. Swift wrote the 'Battle of the Books,' a short satirical pamphlet, full of that coarse invective and savage personality which afterwards rendered him so famous and so formidable. Some of the incidents of the battle are worthy of the hand which painted the Yahoos or the Projectors' College of Laputa. The principal object of attack in this fierce and brutal piece of drollery was Bentley.

In 1704 appeared Swift's extraordinary satiric allegory, entitled 'The Tale of a Tub,' in which the author pretends to give an account

of the rise and policy of the three most important sects into which Christendom has unhappily been divided the Romanist, Lutheran (with which he identifies the Church of England,) and Calvinistic Churches.

These events are recounted in the broadest, boldest, most unreserved language of farcical extravagance; the three religions being typified by three brothers, Peter (the Church of Rome, or St. Peter), Martin (that of Luther), and Jack (John Calvin). The corruptions of the Romish Church, and the renunciation of those errors at the Reformation, are allegorised by a number of tassels, fringes, and shoulderknots, which the three brothers superadd to the primitive simplicity of their coats (the practice and belief of the Christian religion). These extraneous ornaments Martin strips off cautiously and gradually; but poor Jack, in his eagerness, nearly reduces himself to a state of nature. Nothing can exceed the richness of imagination with which Swift places in a ridiculous or contemptible light the extravagances of the three brothers. It must be observed that he invariably sides with Martin, and pursues the fantastic pranks of Jack with a pitiless and envenomed malignity that shows how richly nature had gifted him for the trade of political and religious lampooning. This strange work is divided into chapters, between which are interposed an equal number of what the author calls "digressions," and which latter, like the main work, are absolute treasuries of droll allusion and ingenious adaptation of obscure and uncommon learning.

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In 1708 Swift turned Tory; and he was soon found writing as nervously, fluently, and vigorously on the side of his new patrons as ever he had done in support of his former one. He now published successively a number of able pamphlets, under the title of 'Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man,' Letters on the Application of the Sacramental Test,' and the admirable Apology for Christianity. In this last production, under his usual veil of grave irony, he shows the ill consequences which would result from an abolition of the Christian religion: among the rest, for example, proving what a loss it would be to the freethinker and scoffer and esprit fort to be deprived of so fertile a subject of ridicule as is now afforded by the principles and practice of our religion.

About the same time, Swift, in a succession of humorous jeux d'esprit, ridiculed the credulity of many classes of persons at that time as to the predictions of astrology, and the gross ignorance of the almanac-makers and other needy and obscure quacks, who administered food to the public appetite for the marvellous.

In 1712 he wrote a species of half-history, half-pamphlet, entitled 'The Conduct of the Allies,' severely reflecting upon the Duke of Marlborough; and nearly at the same time he became acquainted with the beautiful and most unhappy Vanessa, whose real name was Vanhomrigh. This young lady had been in some measure educated

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