MEL OF LE'
Edited by
JOHN
T Tr f
s C,j r^
Presented to the
LIBRARIES of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
by
C. K. MATHEWS
Mtn of
EDITED BY JOHN MOELEY
SWIFT
SWIFT
BY
LESLIE STEPHEN
Bonbon : MACMiLLAN AND CO.
1882.
~i'
The Sight of Translation and Reproduction it Rrtnvea
PREFACE.
THE chief materials for a life of Swift are to be found in his writings and correspondence. The best edition is the second of the two edited by Scott (1814 and 1824).
In 1751 Lord Orrery published Remarks upon the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift. Orrery, born 1707, had known Swift from about 1732. His remarks give the views of a person of quality of more ambition than capacity, and more anxious to exhibit his own taste than to give full or accurate information.
In 1754, Dr. Delany published Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks, intended to vindicate Swift against some of Orrery's severe judgments. Delany, born about 1685, became intimate with Swift soon after the dean's final settlement in Ireland. He was then one of the authorities of Trinity College, Dublin. He is the best contemporary authority, so far as he goes.
In 1756 Deane Swift, grandson of Swift's uncle God win, and son-in-law to Swift's cousin and faithful guar dian, Mrs. "Whiteway, published an Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character of Dr. Jonathan Swift, in which he attacks both his predecessors. Deane Swift, born about 1708, had seen little or nothing of his cousin till the year 1738, when the dean's faculties were decaying. His book is foolish and discursive. Deane Swift's son, Theophilus,
vi PREFACE.
communicated a good deal of doubtful matter to Scott, on the authority of family tradition.
In 1765 Hawkesworth, who had no personal knowledge, prefixed a life of Swift to an edition of the works which adds nothing to our information. In 1781 Johnson, when publishing a very perfunctory life of Swift as one of the poets, excused its shortcomings on the ground of having already communicated his thoughts to Hawkesworth. The life is not only meagre but injured by one of Johnson's strong prejudices.
In 1785 Thomas Sheridan produced a pompous and dull life of Swift. He was the son of Swift's most inti mate companion during the whole period subsequent to the final settlement in Ireland. The elder Sheridan, how ever, died in 1738; and the younger, born in 1721, was still a boy when Swift was becoming imbecile.
Contemporary writers, except Delany, have thus littlo authority ; and a number of more or less palpably fictitious anecdotes accumulated round their hero. Scott's life, originally published in 1814, is defective in point of accuracy. Scott did not investigate the evidence minutely, and liked a good story too well to be very particular about its authenticity. The book, however, shows his strong sense and genial appreciation of character ; and remains, till this day, by far the best account of Swift's career.
A life which supplies Scott's defects in great measure was given by "William Monck Mason, in 1819, in his History and Antiquities of the Church of St. Patrick. Monck Mason was an indiscriminate admirer, and has a provoking method of expanding undigested information into mon strous notes, after the precedent of Bayle. But he examined facts with the utmost care, and every biographer must respect his authority.
PREFACE. vii
In 1875 Mr. Forster published the first instalment of a Life of Swift. This book, which contains the results of patient and thorough inquiry, was unfortunately inter rupted by Mr. Forster's death, and ends at the beginning of 1711. A complete Life by Mr. Henry Craik is an nounced as about to appear.
Besides these books, I ought to mention an Essay upon the Earlier Part of the Life of Swift, by the Eev. John Barrett, B.D. and Yice-Provost of Trin. Coll. Dublin (London, 1808) ; and The Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life, by W. R Wilde, M.K.I.A., F.RC.S. (Dublin, 1849). This last is a very interesting study of the medical aspects of Swift's life. An essay by Dr. Bucknill, in Brain for Jan. 1882, is a remarkable contribution to the same subject.
CONTENTS,
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
EARLY YEARS 1
CHAPTER II. MOOR PARK AND KILROOT 12
CHAPTER III. EARLY WRITINGS . . 32
CHAPTER IV. LARACOR AND LONDON 51
CHAPTER V. THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION 77
CHAPTER VI. STELLA AND VANESSA „ 118
CHAPTER VII. WOOD'S HALFPENCE . 147
r CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
PAOl
GULLIVER'S THAVBLS 168
CHAPTER IX.
DECLINE
SWIFT
SWIFT.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS.
JONATHAN SWIFT, the famous Dean of St. Patrick's, was the descendant of an old Yorkshire family. One branch had migrated southwards, and in the time of Charles I., Thomas Swift, Jonathan's grandfather, was Vicar of Good rich, near Eoss, in Herefordshire, a fact commemorated by the sweetest singer of Queen Ann's reign in the remark able lines —
Jonathan Swift
Had the gift
By fatherige, motherige,
And by brotherige,
To come from Gotheridge.
Thomas Swift married Elizabeth Dryden, niece of Sir Erasmus, the grandfather of the poet Dryden. By her he became the father of ten sons and four daughters. In the great rebellion he distinguished himself by a loyalty which was the cause of obvious complacency to his de scendant. On one occasion he came to the governor of a town held for the king, and being asked what he could do for his Majesty, laid down his coat as an offering. The
B
2 SWIFT. [CHAP.
governor remarked that his coat was worth little. " Then,"' said Swift, " take my waistcoat." The waistcoat was lined with three hundred broad pieces — a handsome offering from a poor and plundered clergyman. On another occasion he armed a ford, through which rebel cavalry were to pass, by certain pieces of iron with four spikes, so contrived that one spike must always be uppermost (caltrops, in short). Two hundred of the enemy were destroyed by this stratagem. The success of the rebels naturally led to the ruin of this cavalier clergyman; and the record of his calamities forms a conspicuous article in Walker's Suffer ings of the Clergy. He died in 1658, before the advent of the better times in which he might have been rewarded for his loyal services. His numerous family had to struggle for a living. The eldest son, Godwin Swift, was a barrister of Gray's Inn at the time of the Restoration : he was married four times, and three times to women of fortune ; his first wife had been related to the Ormond family ; and this connexion induced him to seek his for tune in Ireland — a kingdom which at that time suffered, amongst other less endurable grievances, from a deficient supply of lawyers.1 Godwin Swift was made Attorney- General in the palatinate of Tipperary by the Duke of Ormond. He prospered in his profession, in the subtle parts of which, says his nephew, he was " perhaps a little too dexterous ;" and he engaged in various speculations, having at one time what was then the very large income of 3000Z. a year. Four brothers accompanied this successful Godwin, and shared to some extent in his prosperity. In January, 1666, one of these, Jonathan, married to Abigail Erick, of Leicester, was appointed to the stewardship of the King's Inns, Dublin, partly in consideration of the
* Deane Swift, p. 15.
r.] EARLY YEARS. 3
loyalty and suffering of his family. Some fifteen months later, in April, 1667, he died, leaving his widow with an infant daughter, and seven months after her husband's death, November 30, 1667, she gave birth to Jonathan, the younger, at 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin.
The Dean " hath often been heard to say " (I quote his fragment of autobiography) " that he felt the consequences of that (his parents') marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greater part of his life." This quaint assumption that a man's parentage is a kind of removable accident to which may be attributed a limited part of his subsequent career, betrays a charac teristic sentiment. Swift cherished a vague resentment against the fates which had mixed bitter ingredients in his lot. He felt the place as well as the circumstances of his birth to be a grievance. It gave a plausibility to the offensive imputation that he was of Irish blood. " I hap pened," he said, with a bitterness born of later sufferings, " by a perfect accident to be born here, and thus I am a Teague, or an Irishman, or what people please." Else where he claims England as properly his own country ; " although I happened to be dropped here, and was a year old before I left it (Ireland) , and to my sorrow did not die before I came back to it." His infancy brought fresh griev ances. He was, it seems, a precocious and delicate child, and his nurse became so much attached to him, that having to return to her native Whitehaven, she kidnapped the year- old infant out of pure affection. When his mother knew her loss, she was afraid to hazard a return voyage until the child was stronger; and he thus remained nearly three years at Whitehaven, where the nurse took such care of his education, that he could read any chapter in the Bible before he was three years old. His return must B 2
4 SWIFT. [CHAP.
have been speedily followed by his mother's departure for her native Leicester. Her sole dependence, it seems, was an annuity of 20/. a year, which had been bought for her by her husband upon their marriage. Some of the Swift family seem also to have helped her ; but for reasons not now discoverable, she found Leicester preferable to Dublin, even at the price of parting from the little Jonathan. Godwin took him off her hands and sent him to Kil kenny School at the age of six, and from that early period the child had to grow up as virtually an orphan. His mother through several years to come can have been little more than a name to him . Kilkenny School, called the " Eton of Ireland,'' enjoyed a high reputation. Two of Swift's most famous contemporaries were educated there. Congreve, two years his junior, was one of his schoolfellows, and a warm friendship remained when both had become famous. Fourteen years after Swift had left the school it was entered by George Berkeley, destined to win a fame of the purest and highest kind, and to come into a strange relationship to Swift. It would be vain to ask what credit may be claimed by Kilkenny School for thus " producing " (it is the word used on such occasions) the greatest satirist, the most brilliant writer of comedies, and the subtlest metaphysician in the English language. Our knowledge of Swift's experiences at this period is almost confined to a single anecdote. " I remember," he says incidentally in a letter to Lord Bolingbroke, " when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my lino, which I drew up almost on the ground ; but it dropped in, and the disappointment vexes me to this very day, and I believe it was the type of all my future disappointments." 5
2 Readers may remember a clever adaptation of this incident in Lord Lytton's My Novel.
i.] EAELT YBAES. 5
SAvift, indeed, was still in the schoolboy stage, according to modern ideas, when he was entered at Trinity College, Dublin, on the same day, April 24, 1682, with a cousin, Thomas Swift. Swift clearly found Dublin uncongenial; though there is still a wide margin for uncertainty as to precise facts. His own account gives a short summary of his academic history : —
" By the ill-treatment of his nearest relations" (he says) " he was so discouraged and sunk in his spirits that he too much neglected his academic studies, for some parts of which he had no great relish by nature, and turned him self to reading history and poetry, so that when the time came for taking his degree of Bachelor of Arts, although he had lived with great regularity and due observance of the statutes, he was stopped of his degree for dulness and insufficiency; and at last hardly admitted in a manner little to his credit, which is called in that college speciali gratia." In a report of one of the college examinations, discovered by Mr. Forster, he receives a bene for his Greek and Latin, a male for his " philo sophy," and a negligenter for his theology. The " philo sophy " was still based upon the old scholasticism, and proficiency was tested by skill in the arts of syllo gistic argumentation. Sheridan, son of Swift's intimate friend, was a student at Dublin shortly before the Dean's loss of intellectual power ; the old gentleman would natu rally talk to the lad about his university recollections ; and, according to his hearer, remembered with singular accuracy the questions upon which he had disputed, and repeated the arguments which had been used, " in syllogistic form." Swift at the same time declared, if the report be accurate, that he never had the patience to read the pages of Smiglecius, Burgersdicius, and the other old-fashioned logi-
C SWIFT. [CHAP.
cal treatises. When told that they taught the art of reason ing, he declared that he could reason very well without it. He acted upon this principle in his exercises, and left the Proctor to reduce his argument to the proper form. In this there is probably a substratum of truth. Swift can hardly be credited, as Berkeley might have been, with a precocious perception of the weakness of the accepted system. When young gentlemen are plucked for their degree, it is not generally because they are in advance of their age. But the aversion to metaphysics was characteristic of Swift through life. Like many other people who have no turn for such speculations, he felt for them a contempt which may perhaps be not the less justified because it does not arise from familiarity. The bent of his mind was already sufficiently marked to make him revolt against the kind of mental food which was most in favour at Dublin ; though he seems to have obtained a fair know ledge of the classics.
Swift cherished through life a resentment against most of his relations. His uncle Godwin had under taken his education, and had sent him, as we see, to the best places of education in Ireland. If the supplies became scanty, it must be admitted that poor Godwin had a sufficient excuse. Each of his four wives had brought him a family — the last leaving him seven sons ; his fortunes had been dissipated, chiefly, it seems, by means of a speculation in iron- works ; and the poor man himself seems to have been failing, for he "fell into a lethargy" in 1688, surviving some five years, like his famous nephew, in a state of imbecility. Decay of mind and fortune coinciding with the demands of a rising family might certainly be some apology for the neglect of one amongst many nephews. Swift did not consider it suffi cient. " Was it not your uncle Godwin," he was asked
I.] EARLY YEAES. 7
" who educated you ? " '" Yes," said Swift, after a pause ; " he gave me the education of a dog." " Then," answered the intrepid inquirer, " you have not the gratitude of a dog." And perhaps that is our natural impression. Yet we do not know enough of the facts to judge with con fidence. Swift, whatever his faults, was always a warm and faithful friend ; and perhaps it is the most probable conjecture that Godwin Swift bestowed his charity coldly and in such a way as to hurt the pride of the recipient. In any case, it appears that Swift showed his resentment in a manner more natural than reasonable. The child is tempted to revenge himself by knocking his head against the rock which has broken his shins ; and with equal wisdom the youth who fancies that the world is not his friend, tries to get satisfaction by defying its laws. Till the time of his degree (February, 1686), Swift had been at least regular in his conduct, and if the neglect of his relations had dis couraged his industrj'. it had not provoked him to rebel- lion. During the three years which followed he became more reckless. He was still a mere lad, just eighteen at the time of his degree, when he fell into more or less irregular courses. In rather less than two years he was under censure for seventy weeks. The offences con sisted chiefly in neglect to attend chapel and in " town- haunting" or absence from the nightly roll-call. Such offences perhaps appear to be more flagrant than they really are in the eyes of college authorities. Twice he got into more serious scrapes. He was censured (March 165
1687) along with his cousin, Thomas Swift, and several others for "notorious neglect of duties and frequenting ' the town.' " And on his twenty-first birthday (ISTov. 30,
1688) he 3 was punished, along with several others, for
3 Possibly this was his cousin Thomas, but the probabilities are clearly in favour of Jonathan.
8 SWIFT. [CHAP.
exciting domestic dissensions, despising the warnings of the junior dean, and insulting that official by con temptuous words. The offenders were suspended from their degrees, and inasmuch as Swift and another were the worst offenders (adhuc intolei-abilius se gesserant), they were sentenced to ask pardon of the dean upon their knees publicly in the hall. Twenty years later4 Swift revenged himself upon Owen Lloyd, the junior dean, by accusing him of infamous servility. For the present Swift was probably reckoned amongst the black sheep of the academic flock.5
This censure came at the end of Swift's university career. The three last years had doubtless been years of dis couragement and recklessness. That they were also years of vice in the usual sense of the word is not proved ; nor, from all that we know of Swift's later history, does it seem to be probable. There is no trace of anything like licentious behaviour in his whole career. It is easier to believe with Scott that Swift's conduct at this period might be fairly described in the words of Johnson when speaking of his own university experience : "Ah, sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness that they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit ; so I disregarded all power and all authority." Swift learnt another and a more profitable lesson in these years. It is indicated in
4 In the Short Character of Thomas, Earl of Wharton, 6 It will be seen that I accept Dr. Barrett's statements, Earlier Part of the Life of Swift, pp. 13, 14. His arguments seem to me sufficiently clear and conclusive, and they are accepted by Monck Mason, though treated contemptuously by Mr. Forster, p. 34. On the other hand, I agree with Mr. Forster that Swift's complicity in the Terra Filius oration is not proved, though it is not altogether improbable.
i.] EARLY YEARS. 9
an anecdote which rests upon tolerable authority. One day, as he was gazing in melancholy mood from his window, his pockets at their lowest ebb, he saw a sailor staring about in the college courts. How happy should I be, he thought, if that man was inquiring for me with a present from my cousin Willoughby ! The dream came true. The sailor came to his rooms and produced a leather bag, sent by his cousin from Lisbon, with more money than poor Jonathan had ever possessed in his life. The sailor refused to take a part of it for his trouble, and Jonathan hastily crammed the money into his pocket, lest the man should repent of his generosity. From that time forward, he added, he became a better economist.
The Willoughby Swift here mentioned was the eldest son of Godwin, and now settled in the English factory at Lisbon. Swift speaks warmly of his " goodness and generosity " in a letter written to another cousin in 1694. Some help, too, was given by his uncle "William, Avho was settled at Dublin, and whom he calls the "best of his relations." In one way or another he was able to keep his head above water ; and he was receiving an impression which grew with his growth. The misery of dependence was burnt into his soul. To secure independence became his most cherished wish ; and the first condition of inde pendence was a rigid practice of economy. We shall see hereafter how deeply this principle became rooted in his mind; here I need only notice that it is the lesson which poverty teaches to none but men of strong character.
A catastrophe meanwhile was approaching, which in volved the fortunes of Swift along with those of nations. James II. had been on the throne for a year when Swift took his degree. At the time Avhen Swift was ordered to kneel to the junior dean, William was in England, and
10 SWIFT. [CHAP.
James preparing to fly from Whitehall. The revolution of 1688 meant a breaking up of the very foundations of political and social order in Ireland. At the end of 1688 a stream of fugitives was pouring into England, whilst the English in Ireland were gathering into strong places, abandoning their property to the bands of insurgent peasants.
Swift fled with his fellows. Any prospects which he may have had in Ireland were ruined with the ruin of his race. The loyalty of his grandfather to a king who pro tected the national church was no precedent for loyalty to a king who was its deadliest enemy. Swift, a Church man to the backbone, never shared the leaning of many Anglicans to the exiled Stuarts ; and his early experience was a pretty strong dissuasive from Jacobitism. He took refuge with his mother at Leicester. Of that mother we hear less than we could wish ; for all that we hear sug gests a brisk, wholesome, motherly body. She lived cheerfully and frugally on her pittance ; rose early, worked with her needle, read her book, and deemed herself to bo " rich and happy " — on twenty pounds a year. A touch of her son's humour appears in the only anecdote about her. She came, it seems, to visit her son in Ireland shortly after he had taken possession of Laracor, and amused herself by persuading the woman with whom, she lodged that Jonathan was not her son but her lover. Her son, though separated from her through the years in which filial affection is generally nourished, loved her with the whole strength of his nature ; he wrote to her frequently, took pains to pay her visits " rarely less than once a year ;" and was deeply affected by her deatli in 1710. "I have now lost," he wrote in his pocket- book, " the last barrier between me and death. God
i.] EARLY YEARS. 11
grant I may be as well prepared for it as I confidently believe her to have been ! If the way to Heaven bo through piety, truth, justice, and charity, she is there."
The good lady had, it would seem, some little anxieties of the common kind about her son. She thought him in danger of falling in love with a certain Betty Jones, who, however, escaped the perils of being wife to a man of genius, and married an innkeeper. Some forty years later, Betty Jones, now Perkins, appealed to Swift to help her in some family difficulties, and Swift was ready to "sacrifice five pounds " for old acquaintance' sake. Other vague reports of Swift's attentions to women seem to have been flying about in Leicester. Swift, in noticing them, tells his correspondent that he values "his own entertainment beyond the obloquy of a parcel of wretched fools," which he " solemnly pronounces " to be a fit description'of the inhabitants of Leicester. He had, he admits, amused himself with flirtation ; but he has learnt enough, " without going half a'rnile beyond the University, :> to refrain from thoughts of matrimony. A " cold temper " and the absence of any settled outlook are sufficient dis- suasives. Another phrase in the same letter is charac teristic. " A person of great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to look into my mind) used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spivit that would do mischief if J did not give it employment." He allowed himself these little liberties, he seems to infer, by way of distraction for his" restless nature. But some more serious work was necessary, if he was to win the independence so earnestly desired, and to cease to be a burden upon his mother. Where was he to look for help?
CHAPTER II.
MOOR PARK AND KILROOT.
How was this "conjured spirit" to find occupation? The proverbial occupation of such beings is to cultivate despair by weaving ropes of sand. Swift felt himself strong ; but he had no task worthy of his strength : nor did he yet know precisely where it lay : he even fancied that it might be in the direction of Pindaric Odes. Hitherto his energy had expended itself in the questionable shape of revolt against constituted authority. But the revolt, whatever its precise nature, had issued in the rooted determination to achieve a genuine independence. The political storm which had for the time crushed the whole social order of Ireland into mere chaotic anarchy, had left him an uprooted waif and stray — a loose fragment without any points of attachment, except the little household in Leicester. His mother might give him temporary shelter, but no permanent home. If, as is probable, he already looked forward to a clerical career, the Church to which he belonged was, for the time, hopelessly ruined, and in danger of being a persecuted sect.
In this crisis a refuge was offered to him. Sir "William Temple was connected, in more ways than one, with the Swifts. He was the son of Sir John Temple, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, who had been a friend of Godwin
CH. 11.] MOOR PARK AND KILROOT. 13
Swift. Temple himself had lived in Ireland, in early days, and had known the Swift family. His wife was in some way related to Swift's mother; and he -was now in a position to help the young man. Temple is a remarkable figure amongst the statesmen of that generation. There is something more modern about him than belongs to his century. A man of cultivated taste and cosmopolitan training, he had the contempt of enlightened persons for the fanaticisms of his times. He was not the man to suffer persecution, with Baxter, for a creed, or even to lose his head, with Eussell, for a party. Yet if he had not the faith which animates enthusiasts, he sincerely held political theories — a fact sufficient to raise him above the thorough-going cynics of the court of the restoration. His sense of honour, or the want of robustness in mind and temperament, kept him aloof from the desperate game in which the politicians of the day staked their lives, and threw away their consciences as an incumbraiice. Good fortune threw him into the comparatively safe line of diplomacy, for which his natural abilities fitted him. Good fortune, aided by discernment, enabled him to identify himself with the most respectable achievements of our foreign policy. He had become famous as the chief author of the Triple Alliance, and the promoter of the marriage of William and Mary. He had ventured far enough into the more troublous element of domestic politics to invent a highly applauded constitutional device for smoothing the relations between the crown and Parlia ment. Like other such devices it went to pieces at the first contact with realities. Temple retired to cultivate his garden and write elegant memoirs and essays, and refused all entreaties to join again in the rough struggles of the day. Associates, made of sterner stuff, probably
14 SWIFT. [CHAP.
despised him ; but from their own, that is, the selfish point of view, he was perhaps entitled to laugh last. He escaped at least with unblemished honour, and enjoyed the cultivated retirement which statesmen so often profess to desire, and so seldom achieve. In private, he had many estimable qualities. He was frank and sensitive ; he had won diplomatic triumphs by disregarding the pedantry of official rules ; and he had an equal, though not an equally intelligent, contempt for the pedantry of the schools. His style, though often slipshod, often anticipates the pure and simple English of the Addison period, and delighted Charles Lamb by its delicate flavour of aristocratic assumption. He had the vanity of a " person of quality," — a lofty, dignified air which became his flowing periwig, and showed itself in his distin guished features. But in youth, a strong vein of romance displayed itself in his courtship of Lady Temple, and he seems to have been correspondingly worshipped by her, and his sister, Lady Giffard.
The personal friendship of William could not induce Temple to return to public life. His only son took office, but soon afterwards killed himself from a morbid sense of responsibility. Temple retired finally to Moor Park, near Farnham, in Surrey; and about the same time received Swift into his family. Long afterwards, John Temple, Sir William's nephew, who had quarrelled with Swift, gave an obviously spiteful account of the terms of tliis engagement. Swift, he said, was hired by Sir William to read to him and be his amanuensis, at the rate of 2QI. a year and his board ; but " Sir William never favoured him with his conversation, nor allowed him to sit down at table with him." The authority is bad, and we must be guided by rather precarious inferences in picturing
ii.] MOOR PARK AND KILROOT. 15
this important period of Swift's career. The raw Irish student was probably awkward, and may have been disagreeable in some matters. Forty years later, we find from his correspondence with Gay and the Duchess of Queensberry, that his views as to the distribution of functions between knives and forks were lamentably unsettled ; and it is probable that he may in his youth have been still more heretical as to social conventions. There were more serious difficulties. The difference which separated Swift from Temple is not easily measurable. How can we exaggerate the distance at which a lad, fresh from college and a remote provincial society, would look up to the distinguished diplomatist of sixty, who had been intimate with the two last kings, and was still the confidential friend of the reigning king, who had been an actor in the greatest scenes, not only of English, but of European history, who had been treated with respect by the ministers of Louis XIV., and in whose honour bells had been rung, and banquets set forth as he passed through the great continental cities 1 Temple might have spoken to him, without shocking proprieties, in terms which, if I may quote the proverbial phrase, would be offensive " from God Almighty to a blackbeetle."
Shall I believe a spirit so divine
Was cast in the same mould with mine ?
is Swift's phrase about Temple, in one of his first crude poems. "We must not infer that circumstances which would now be offensive to an educated man — the seat at the second table, the predestined congeniality to the ladies'-maid of doubtful reputation — would have been equally offensive then. So long as dependence upon patrons was a regular incident of the career of a poor
16 SWIFT. [CHAP.
scholar, the corresponding regulations would be taken as a matter of course. Swift was not necessarily more degraded by being a dependent of Temple's than Locke by a similar position in Shaftesbury's family. But it is true that such a position must always be trying, as many a governess has felt in more modern days. The position of the educated dependent must always have had its specific annoyances. At this period, when the relation of patron and client was being rapidly modified or destroyed, the compact would be more than usually trying to the power of forbearance and mutual kindliness of the parties concerned. The relation between Sir Roger de Coverley and the old college friend who became his chaplain meant good feeling on both sides. When poor parson Supple became chaplain to Squire Western, and was liable to be sent back from London to Basingstoke in search of a forgotten tobacco-box, Supple must have parted with all self-respect. Swift has incidentally given his own view of the case in his Essay on the Fates of Clergy men. It is an application of one of his favourite doctrines — the advantage possessed by mediocrity over genius in a world so largely composed of fools. Eugenic, who represents Jonathan Swift, fails in life because as a wit and a poet he has not the art of winning patronage. Corusodes, in whom we have a partial likeness to Tom Swift, Jonathan's college contemporary, and afterwards the chaplain of Temple, succeeds by servile respectability. He never neglected chapel, or lectures : lie never looked into a poem : never made a jest himself, or laughed at the jests of others : but he managed to insinuate himself into the favour of the noble family where his sister was a waiting-woman; shook hands with the butler, taught the page his catechism ; was sometimes admitted to dine
it.] MOOR PARK AND KILROOT. 17
at the steward's table ; was admitted to read prayers, at ten shillings a month : and, by winking at his patron's attentions to his sister, gradually crept into better appoint ments, married a citizen's widow, and is now fast mounting towards the top of the ladder ecclesiastical.
Temple was not the man to demand or reward services so base as those attributed to Corusodes. Nor does it seem that he would be wanting in the self-respect which prescribes due courtesy to inferiors, though it admits of a strict regard for the ceremonial outworks of social dignity. He would probably neither permit others to take liberties nor take them himself. If Swift's self-esteem suffered, it would not be that he objected to offering up the conven tional incense, but that he might possibly think that, after all, the idol was made of rather inferior clay. Temple, whatever his solid merits, was one of the showiest statesmen of the time ; but there was no man living with a keener eye for realities and a more piercing insight into shams of all kinds than his raw secretary from Ireland. In later life Swift frequently expressed his scorn for the mysteries and the "refinements" (to use his favourite phrase) by which the great men of the world conceal the low passions and small wisdom actually exerted in affairs of State. At times he felt that Temple was not merely claiming the outward show of respect, but setting too high a value upon his real merits. So when Swift was at the full flood of fortune, when prime ministers and secretaries of state were calling him Jonathan, or listening submissively to his lectures on " whipping-day," he reverts to his early experi ence. " I often think," he says, when speaking of his own familiarity with St. John, " what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being secretary of state." And this is a less respectful version of a sentiment expressed a
c
18 SWIFT. [CHAP.
year before, " I am thinking what a veneration we had for Sir \V. Temple because he might have been secretary of state at fifty, and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment." In the interval there is another cha racteristic outburst. " I asked Mr. Secretary (St. John) what the devil ailed him on Sunday," and warned him " that I would never be treated like a schoolboy ; that I had felt too much of that in my life already (meaning Sir W. Temple) ; that I expected every great minister who honoured me with his acquaintance, if he heard and saw anything to my disadvantage, would let me know in plain words, and not put me in pain to guess by the change or coldness of his countenance and behaviour." The day after this effusion, he maintains that he was right in what he said. " Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir W. Temple would look cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used to suspect a hundred reasons 1 I have plucked up my spirits since then ; faith, ho spoiled a fine gentleman." And yet, if Swift some times thought Temple's authority oppressive, he was ready to admit his substantial merits. Temple, he says, in his rough marginalia to Burnet's History, " was a man of sense and virtue ;" and the impromptu utterance pro bably reflects his real feeling.
The year after his first arrival at Temple's, Swift went back to Ireland by advice of physicians, who " weakly imagined that his native air might be of some iise to recover his health." It was at this period, we may note in passing, that Swift began to suffer from a disease which tormented him through life. Temple sent with him a letter of intro duction to Sir Robert Southwell, Secretary of State in Ireland, which gives an interesting account of their pre vious relations. Swift, said Temple, had lived in his
ii.] MOOR PARK AND KILROOT. 19
house, read for him, written for him, and kept his small accounts. He knew Latin and Greek, and a little French : wrote a good hand, and was honest and diligent. His whole family had long been known to Temple, Avho would be glad if Southwell would give him a clerkship, or get him a fellowship in Trinity College. The statement of Swift's qualifications has now a rather comic sound. An applicant for a desk in a merchant's office once com mended himself, it is said, by the statement that his style of writing combined scathing sarcasm with the wildest flights of humour. Swift might have had a better claim to a place for which such qualities were a recommendation ; but there is no reason beyond the supposed agreement of fools to regard genius as a disadvantage in practical life, to suppose that Swift was deficient in humbler attainments. Before long, however, he was back at Moor Park ; and a period followed in which his discontent with the position probably reached its height. Temple, indeed, must have discovered that his young dependent was really a man of capacity. He recommended him to William. In 1692 Swift went to Oxford, to be admitted ad eundem, and received the M.A. degree ; and Swift, writing to thank his uncle for obtaining the necessary testimonials from Dublin, adds that he has been most civilly received at Oxford, on the strength, presumably, of Temple's recom mendation, and that he is not to take orders till the king gives him a prebend. He suspects Temple, however, of being rather backward in the matter, " because (I sup pose) he believes I shall leave him, and (upon some accounts) he thinks me a little necessary to him." Wil liam, it is said, was so far gracious as to offer to make Swift a captain of horse, and instruct him in the Dutch mode of cutting asparagus. By this last phrase hangs an c 2
20 SWIFT. [CHAP.
anecdote of later days. Faulkner, the Dublin printer, was dining with Swift, and on asking for a second supply of asparagus, was told by the Dean to finish what he had on his plate. " What, sir, eat my stalks 1 " " Ay, sir ; King William always ate his stalks." " And were you," asked Faulkner's hearer when he related the story, " were you blockhead enough to obey him 1" " Yes," replied Faulkner, " and if you had dined with Dean Swift tete-a-tete you would have been obliged to eat your stalks too ! " For the present Swift was the recipient not the imposer of stalks ; and was to receive the first shock, as he tells us, that helped to cure him of his vanity. The question of the Triennial Bill was agitating political personages in the early months of 1693. William and his favourite minister, the Earl of Portland, found their Dutch experience insuf ficient to guide them in the mysteries of English constitu tionalism. Portland came down to consult Temple at Moor Park ; and Swift was sent back to explain to the great men that Charles I. had been ruined not by consenting to short Parliaments, but by abandoning the right to dis solve Parliament. Swift says that he was " well versed in English history, though he was under twenty-one years old." (He was really twenty-five, but memory naturally exaggerated his youthf ulness). His arguments, however backed by history, failed to carry conviction, and Swift had to unlearn some of the youthful confidence which assumes that reason is the governing force in this world, and that reason means our own opinions. That so young a man should have been employed on such an errand, shows that Temple must have had a good opinion of his capacities ; but his want of success, however natural, was felt as a grave discouragement.
That his discontent was growing is clear from other
ii.] MOOR PARK AND KILROOT. 21
indications. Swift's early poems, whatever their defects, have one merit common to all his writings — the merit of a thorough, sometimes an appalling, sincerity. Two poems which begin to display his real vigour are dated at the end of 1693. One is an epistle to his schoolfellow, Congreve, expatiating, as some consolation for the cold reception of the Double, Dealer, upon the contemptible nature of town critics. Swift describes, as a type of the whole race, a Farnham lad who had left school a year before, and had just returned a " finished spark " from London.
Stock'd with the latest gibberish of the town,
This wretched little fop came in an evil hour to provoke Swift's hate, —
My hate, whose lash just heaven has long decreed Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed.
And he already applies it with vigour enough to show that with some of the satirist's power he has also the indispensable condition of a considerable accumulation of indignant wrath against the self-appointed arbiters of taste. The other poem is more remarkable in its personal revelation. It begins as a congratulation to Temple on his recovery from an illness. It passes into a description of his own fate, marked by singular bitterness. He addresses his muse as —
Malignant Goddess ! bane to my repose, Thou universal cause of all my woes.
She is, it seems, a mere delusive meteor, with no .real being of her own. But, if real, why does she persecute him ?
22 SWIFT. [CHAT.
Wert thou right woman, thou ehould'st scorn to look On an abaudon'd wretch by hopes forsook : Forsook by hopes, ill fortune's last relief, Aseign'd for life to unremitting grief j For let heaven's wrath enlarge these weary days If hope o'er dawns the smallest of its rays.
And he goes on to declare after somo vigorous lines,
To thee I owe that fatal bent of mind, Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined : To thee what oft I vainly strive to hide, That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride ; From thee whatever virtue takes its rise, Grows a misfortune, or becomes a vice.
The sudden gush as of bitter waters into the dulcet, insipid current of conventional congratulation, gives addi tional point to the sentiment. Swift expands the last couplet into a sentiment which remained with him through life. It is a blending of pride and remorse ; a regretful admission of the loftiness of spirit which has caused his misfortunes ; and we are puzzled to say whether the pride or the remorse be the most genuine. For Swift always unites pride and remorse in his consciousness of his own virtues.
The " restlessness " avowed in these verses took the practical form of a rupture with Temple. In his auto biographical fragment he says that he had a scruple of entering into the church merely for support, and Sir "William, then being Master of the Eolls in Ireland,1 offered him an employ of about 1201. a year in that office ; whereupon Mr. Swift told him that since he had now an opportunity of living without being driven into
1 Temple had the reversion of his father's office.
n.] MOOR PARK AND KILROOT. 23
the church for a maintenance, he was resolved to go to Ireland and take holy orders. If the scruple seems rather finely spun for Swift, the sense of the dignity of his profession is thoroughly characteristic. ^Nothing, however, is more deceptive than our memory of the motives which directed distant actions. In his contemporary letters there is no hint of any scruple against preferment in the church, but a decided objection to insufficient preferment. It is possible that Swift was confusing dates, and that the scruple was quieted when he failed to take advantage of Temple's interest with Southwell. Having declined, he felt that he had made a free choice of a clerical career. In 1692, as we have seen, he expected a prebend from Temple's influence with William. But his doubts of Temple's desire or power to serve him were confirmed. In June, 1694, he tells a cousin at Lisbon, "I have left Sir W. Temple a month ago, just as I foretold it you. ; and everything happened exactly as I guessed. He was extremely angry I left him ; and yet would not oblige himself any further than upon my good behaviour, nor would promise anything firmly to me at all ; so that everybody judged I did best to leave him." He is start ing in four days for Dublin, and intends to be ordained in September. The next letter preserved completes the story, and implies a painful change in this cavalier tone of injured pride. Upon going to Dublin, Swift had found that some recommendation from Temple would be required by the authorities. He tried to evade the requirement, but was forced at last to write a letter to Temple, which nothing but necessity could have extorted. After ex plaining the case, he adds, " the particulars expected of me are what relates to morals and learning, and the reasons of quitting your honour's family, that is whether
24 SWIFT. [CHAP.
the last was occasioned by any ill actions. They are all left entirely to your honour's mercy, though in the past I think I cannot reproach myself any farther than for infinities. This," he adds, "is all I dare beg at present from your honour, under circumstances of life not worth your regard ;" and all that is left him to wish (" next to the health and prosperity of your honour's family ") is that Heaven will show him some day the opportunity of making his acknowledgments at "your honour's" feet. This seems to be the only occasion on which we find Swift confessing to any fault except that of being too virtuous.
The apparent doubt of Temple's magnanimity implied ill the letter was happily not verified. The testimonial seems to have been sent at once. Swift, in any case, was ordained deacon on the 28th of October, 1694, and priest on the 15th of January, 1695. Probably Swift felt that Temple had behaved with magnanimity, and in any case it was not very long before he returned to Moor Park. He had received from Lord Capel, then lord deputy, the small prebend of Kilroot, worth about 100/. a year. Little is known of his life as a remote country clergyman, except that he very soon became tired of it.2 Swift soon resigned his prebend (in March, 1698) and managed to obtain the succession for a friend in the neighbourhood. But before this (in May, 1696) he had returned to Moor Park. He had grown weary of a life in a remote district, and Temple had raised his offers. He was glad to be once more on the edge at least of the great world in which alone could be found employment worthy of his talents.
8 It may be noticed in illustration of the growth of the Swift legend, that two demonstrably false anecdotes— one imputing a monstrous crime, the other a romantic piece of benevolence to Swift — refer to this period.
ii.] MOOR PARK AND KILROOT. 25
One other incident, indeed, of which a fuller account would be interesting, is connected with this departure. On the eve of his departure, he wrote a passionate letter to " Varina," in plain English Miss Waring, sister of an old college chum. He " solemnly offers to forego all" (all his English prospects, that is) " for her sake." He does not Avant her fortune ; she shall live where she pleases ; till he has " pushed his advancement " and is in a position to marry her. The letter is full of true lovers' protesta tions ; reproaches for her coldness ; hints at possible causes of jealousies ; declarations of the worthlessness of ambition as compared with love ; and denunciations of her respect for the little disguises and affected contradictions of her sex, infinitely beneath persons of her pride and his own ; paltry maxims calculated only for the "rabble of humanity." "By heaven, Varina," he exclaims, " you are more experienced, and have less virgin innocence than I." The answer must have been unsatisfactory ; though from expressions in a letter to his successor to the prebend, we see that the affair was still going on in 1699. It will come to light once more.
Swift was thus at Moor Park in the summer of 1696. He remained till Temple's death in January, 1699. We hear no more of any friction between Swift and his patron ; and it seems that the last years of their con nexion passed in harmony. Temple was growing old ; his wife, after forty years of a happy marriage, had died during Swift's absence in the beginning of 1695 ; and Temple, though he seems to have been vigorous, and in spite of gout a brisk walker, was approaching the grave. He occupied himself in preparing, with Swift's help, memoirs and letters, which were left to Swift for post humous publication. Swift's various irritations at Moor Park
26 SWIFT. [CHAP.
have naturally left a stronger impression upon his history than the quieter hours in which worry and anxiety might be forgotten in the placid occupations of a country life. That Swift enjoyed many such hours is tolerably clear. Moor Park is described by a Swiss traveller who visited it about 1691, 3 as the "model of an agreeable retreat." Temple's household was free from the coarse convivialities of the boozing fox-hunting squires ; whilst the recollection of its modest neatness made the " magnificent palace " of Petworth seem pompous and overpowering. Swift him self remembered the Moor Park gardens, the special pride of Temple's retirement, with affection, and tried to imitate them on a small scale in his own garden at Laracor. Moor Park is on the edge of the great heaths which stretch southward to Hindhead, and northwards to Aldershot and Chobham Ridges. Though we can scarcely credit him with a modern taste in scenery, he at least anticipated the modern faith in athletic exercises. According to Deanc Swift, he used to run up a hill near Temple's and back again to his study every two hours, doing the distance of half a mile in six minutes. In later life he preached the duty of walking with admirable perseverance to his friends. He joined other exercises occasionally. "My Lord," he says to Archbishop King in 1721, "I row after health like a waterman, and ride after it like a postboy, and with some little success." But he had the characteristic passion of the good and wise for walking. He mentions incidentally a walk from Farnham to London, thirty-eight miles ; and has some association with the Golden Farmer * — a point on the road from which there is still one of the
8 M. Maralt. See appendix to Courtenay's Life of Temple. 4 The pnblichouae at the point thus named on the ordnance map is now (I regret to say) called the Jolly Farmer.
ii.] MOOE PARK AND KILEOOT. 27
loveliest views in the southern counties, across undulating breadths of heath and meadow, woodland and down, to Windsor Forest, St. George's Hill, and the chalk range from Guildford to Epsom. Perhaps he might have been a mountaineer in more civilized times ; his poem on the Carberry rocks seems to indicate a lover of such scenery ; and he ventured so near the edge of the cliff upon his stomach, that his servants had to drag him back by his heels. We find him proposing to walk to Chester at the rate, I regret to say, of only ten miles a day. In such rambles, we are told, he used to put up at wayside inns, where " lodgings for a penny " were advertised ; bribing the maid with a tester to give him clean sheets and a bed to himself. The love of the rough humour of waggoners and hostlers is supposed to have been his inducement to this practice ; and the refined Orrery associates his coarse ness with this lamentable practice ; but amidst the roar of railways we may think more tolerantly of the humours of the road in the good old days, when each village had its humours and traditions and quaint legends, and when homely maxims of unlettered wisdom were to be picked up at rustic firesides.
Eecreations of this kind were a relief to serious study. In Temple's library Swift found abundant occupation. " I am often," he says, in the first period of his residence, "two or three months without seeing anybody besides the family." In a later fragment, we find him living alone " in great state," the cook coming for his orders for dinner, and the revolutions in the kingdom of the rooks amusing his leisure. The results of his studies will be considered directly. A list of books read in 1697 gives some hint of their general nature. They are chiefly classical and historical. He read Virgil, Homer, Horace,
28 SWIFT. [CHAP.
Lucretius, Cicero's Epistles, Petronius Arbiter, Lucius Floras, Herbert's Henry VIII., Sleidan's Com mentaries, Council of Trent, Camden's Elizabeth, Burnet's History of the Reformation, Voiture, Blackmore's Prince Arthur, Sir J. Davis's poem of The Soul, and two or three travels, besides Cyprian and Irenseus. We may note the absence of any theological reading, except in the form of ecclesiastical history ; nor does Swift study philosophy, of which he seems to have had a sufficient dose in Dublin. History seems always to have been his favourite study, and it would naturally have a large part in Temple's library.
One matter of no small importance to Swift remains to be mentioned. Temple's family included other depen dents besides Swift. The " little parson cousin," Tom Swift, whom his great relation always mentions with contempt, became chaplain to Temple. Jonathan's sister was for some time at Moor Park. But the inmates of the family most interesting to us were a Rebecca Dingley — who was in some way related to the family — and Esther Johnson. Esther Johnson was the daughter of a merchant of respectable family who died young. Her mother was known to Lady Giffard, Temple's attached sister; and after her widowhood, went with her two daughters to live with the Temples. Mrs. Johnson lived as servant or com panion to Lady Giffard for many years after Temple's death ; and little Esther, a remarkably bright and pretty child, was brought up in the family, and received under Temple's will a sufficient legacy for her support. It was of course guessed by a charitable world that she was a natural child of Sir William's ; but there seems to be no real ground for the hypothesis.6 She was born, as Swift
5 The most direct statement to this effect was made in an
ii.] MODE PARK AND KILROOT. 29
tells us, on March 13th, 1681 ; and was therefore a little over eight when Swift first came to Temple, and fifteen when he returned from Kilroot.6 About this age, he tells us, she got over an infantile delicacy, " grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfection." Her conduct and character were equally remarkable, if we may trust the tutor who taught her to write, guided her education, and came to regard her with an affection which was at once the happiness and the misery of his life.
Temple died January 26, 1699 ; and " with him," said Swift at the time, " all that was good and amiable among men." The feeling was doubtless sincere, though Swift, when moved very deeply, used less conventional phrases. He was thrown once more upon the world. The expectations of some settlement in life had not been realized. Temple had left him 100Z., the advantage of publishing bis post humous works, which might ultimately bring in 200Z. more, and a promise of preferment from the king. Swift had lived long enough upon the " chameleon's food." His energies were still running to waste ; and he suffered the misery of a weakness due, not to want of power but want of opportunity. His sister writes to a cousin that her brother had lost his best friend, who had induced him to give up his Irish preferment by promising prefer-
article in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1757. It professes to speak with authority, but includes such palpable blunders as to carry little weight.
6 I am not certain whether this means 1681 or 1681-82. I have assumed the former date in mentioning Stella's age ; but the other is equally possible.
80 SWIFT. [CHAP.
ment in England, and had died before the promise had been f ulnlled. Swift was accused of ingratitude by Lord Palmerston, Temple's nephew, some thirty-five years later. In reply, he acknowledged an obligation to Temple for the recommendation to "William and the legacy of his papers ; but he adds, " I hope you will not charge my living in his family as an obligation ; for I was educated to little purpose if I retired to his house for any other motives than the benefit of his conversation and advice, and the opportunity of pursuing my studies. For, being born to no fortune, I was at his death as far to seek as ever ; and perhaps you will allow that I was of some use to him." Swift seems here to assume that his motives for living with Temple are necessarily to be estimated by the results which he obtained. But if he expected more than he got, he does not suggest any want of goodwill. Temple had done his best ; William's neglect and Temple's death had made goodwill fruitless. The two might cry quits ; and Swift set to work, not exactly with a sense of injury, but probably with a strong feeling that a large portion of his life had been wasted. To Swift, indeed, misfortune and injury seem equally to have meant resentment, whether against the fates or some personal object.
One curious document must be noted before considering the writings which most fully reveal the state of Swift's mind. In the year 1699 he wrote down some resolutions, headed " when I come to be old." They are for the most part pithy and sensible, if it can ever be sensible to make resolutions for behaviour in a distant future. Swift re solves not to marry a young woman, not to keep young company unless they desire it, not to repeat stories, not to listen to knavish, tattling servants, not to be too free of ad vice, not to brag of former beauty and favour with ladies, to desire some good friends to inform him when he breaks
ii.] MOOR PARK AND KILROOT. 31
these resolutions and to reform accordingly ; and finally, not to set up for observing all these rules for fear he should observe none. These resolutions are not very original in substance (few resolutions are), though they suggest some keen observation of his elders ; but one is more remark able. " Not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly" The words in italics are blotted out by a later possessor of the paper, shocked doubtless at the harshness of the sentiment. " We do not fortify ourselves with reso lutions against what we dislike," says a friendly commen tator, " but against what we feel in our weakness we have reason to believe we are really too much inclined to.'' Yet it is strange that a man should regard the purest and kindliest of feelings as a weakness to which he is too much inclined. No man had stronger affections than Swift ; no man suffered more agony when they were wounded; but in his agony he would commit what to most men would seem the treason of cursing the affections instead of simply lamenting the injury, or holding the affection itself to be its own sufficient reward. The in tense personality of the man reveals itself alternately at selfishness and as " altruism." He grappled to his hears those whom he really loved " as with hoops of steel ;" so firmly that they became a part of himself ; and that he considered himself at liberty to regard his love of friends as ho might regard a love of wine, as something to be regretted when it was too strong for his own happiness. The attraction was intense; but implied the absorption of the weaker nature into his own. His friendships were rather annexations than alliances. The strongest instance of this characteristic was in his relations to the charming girl, who must have been in his mind when he wrote this strange, and unconsciously prophetic, resolution.
CHAPTER III,
EARLY WRITINGS.
SWIFT came to Temple's house as a raw student. He left it as the author of one of the most remarkable satires ever written. His first efforts had been unpromising enough- Certain Pindaric Odes, in which the youthful aspirant imitated the still popular model of Cowley, are even comically prosaic. The last of them, dated 1691, is ad dressed to a queer Athenian Society, promoted by a John Dunton, a speculative bookseller, whose Life and Errors is still worth a glance from the curious. The Athenian So ciety was the name of John Dunton himself, and two or threo collaborators who professed in the Athenian Mercury to answer queries ranging over the whole field of human knowledge. Temple was one of their patrons, and Swift sent them a panegyrical ode, the merits of which are sufficiently summed up by Dryden's pithy criticism — " Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet." Swift disliked and abused Dryden ever afterwards, though he may have had better reasons for his enmity than the child's dis like to bitter medicine. Later poems, the Epistle to Congreve and that to Temple already quoted, show symptoms of growing power and a clearer self-recognition. In Swift's last residence with Temple, he proved unmis takably that he had learnt the secret often so slowly re-
CH. in.] EARLY WRITINGS. 33
vealed to great writers, the secret of his real strength. The Tale of a Tub was written about 1696; part of it appears to have been seen at Kilroot by his friend, Waring, Varina's brother; the Battle of the Books was written in 1697. It is a curious proof of Swift's indifference to a literary reputation that both works remained in manu script till 1704. The "little parson cousin" Tom Swift, ventured some kind of claim to a share in the authorship of the Tale of a Tub. Swift treated this claim with the utmost contempt, but never explicitly claimed for himself the authorship of what some readers hold to be his most powerful work.
The jBattle of the Books, to which we may first attend, sprang out of the famous controversy as to the relative merits of the ancients and moderns, which began in France with Perrault and Fontenelle ; which had been set going in England by Sir W. Temple's essay upon ancient and modern learning (1692), and which incidentally led to the warfare between Bentley and Wotton on one side, and Boyle and his Oxford allies on the other. A full account of this celebrated discussion may be found in Professor Jebb's Bentley ; and, as Swift only took the part of a light skirmisher, nothing more need be said of it in this place. One point alone is worth notice. The eagerness of the discussion is characteristic of a time at which the modern spirit was victoriously revolting against the ancient canons of taste and philosophy. At first sight, we might therefore expect the defenders of antiquity to be on the side of authority. In fact, however, the argument, as Swift takes it from Temple, is reversed. Temple's theory, so far as he had any consistent theory, is indicated in the statement that the moderns gathered "all their learning from books in the universities." Learning, he suggests^
D
34 SWIFT. [CHAP.
may weaken invention ; and people who trust to the charity of others will always be poor. Swift accepts and enforces this doctrine. The Battle of the Books is an expression of that contempt for pedants which he had learnt in Dublin, and which is expressed in the ode to the Athenian Society. Philosophy, he tells us in that precious production, "seems to have borrowed some ungrateful taste of doubts, impertinence, and niceties from every age through which it passed" (this, I may observe, is verse), and is now a " medley of all ages," " her face patched over with modem pedantry." The moral finds a more poetical embodiment in the famous apologue of the Bee and the Spider in the Battle of the Books. The bee had got itself en tangled in the spider's web in the library, whilst the books were beginning to wrangle. The two have a sharp dispute, which is summed up by 2Esop as arbitrator. The spider represents the moderns who spin their scholastic pedantry out of their own insides ; whilst the bee, like the ancients, goes direct to nature. The moderns produce nothing but " wrangling and satire, much of a nature with the spider's poison, which however they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves is improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin of the age." We, the ancients, "profess to nothing of our own, beyond our wings and our voice : that is to say, our flights and our language. For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labour and research, and ranging through every corner of nature ; the difference is that, instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are Sweetness and Light."
The Homeric battle which follows is described with infinite spirit. Pallas is the patron of the ancients
m.] EARLY WRITINGS. 35
whilst Momus undertakes the cause of the moderns, and appeals for help to the malignant deity Criticism, who is found in her den at the top of a snowy mountain, ex tended upon the spoils of numberless half-devoured volumes. By her, as she exclaims in the regulation soliloquy, children become wiser than their parents, beaux become politicians, and schoolboys judges of philosophy. She flies to her darling Wotton, gathering up her person into an octavo compass ; her body grows white and arid and splits in pieces with dryness ; a concoction of gall and soot is strewn in the shape of letters upon her person ; and so she joins the moderns, " undistinguishable in shape and dress from the divine Bentley, Wotton's dearest friend." It is needless to follow the fortunes of the fight which follows ; it is enough to observe that Virgil is encountered by his translator Dryden in a helmet " nine times too large for the head, which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even like the lady in the lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state, or like a shrivelled beau within the penthouse of a modern periwig, and the voice was suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote ;" and thjit the book is concluded by an episode, in which Bentley and Wotton try a diversion and steal the armour of Phalaris and ^Esop, but are met by Boyle, clad in a suit of armour given him by all the gods, who transfixes them on his spear like a brace of woodcocks on an iron skewer.
The raillery, if taken in its critical aspect, recoils upon the author. Dryden hardly deserves the scorn of Virgil ; and Bentley, as we know, made short work of Phalaris and Boyle. But Swift probably knew and cared little for the merits of the controversy. He expresses his contempt with characteristic vigour and coarseness ; and our pleasure
D 2
36 SWIFT. [CHAP.
in his display of exuberant satirical power is not injured by his obvious misconception of the merits of the case. The unflagging spirit of the writing, the fertility and inge nuity of the illustrations, do as much as can be done to give lasting vitality to what is radically (to my taste at least) a rather dreary form of wit The Battle of the Books is the best of the travesties. Xor in the brilliant assault upon great names do we at present see anything more than the buoyant consciousness of power, common in the unsparing judgments of youth, nor edged as yet by any real bitterness. Swift has found out that the world is full of humbugs ; and goes forth hewing and hacking with super abundant energy, not yet aware that he too may conceiv ably be a fallible being, and still less that the humbugs may some day prove too strong for him.
The same qualities are more conspicuous in the far greater satire the Tale of a Tub. It is so striking a per formance that Johnson, who cherished one of his stubborn prejudices against Swift, doubted whether Swift could have written it. " There is in it," he said, " such a vigour of mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so much of nature, and art, and life." The doubt is clearly without the least foundation, and the estimate upon which it is based is generally disputed. The Tale of a Tub has certainly not achieved a reputation equal to that of Gulliver's Travels, to the merits of which Johnson was curiously blind. Yet I think that there is this much to be said in favour of Johnson's theory, namely, that Swift's style reaches its highest point in the earlier work. There is less flagging ; a greater fulness and pressure of energetic thought ; a power of hitting the nail on the head at the first blow, which has declined in the work of his maturer years, when life was weary and thought intermittent. Swift seems
in.] EARLY WRITINGS. 37
to have felt this himself. In the twilight of his intellect, he was seen turning over the pages and murmuring to himself, " Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book!" In an apology (dated 1709) he makes a statement which may help to explain this fact. " The author," he says, "was then (1696) young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head. By the assist ance of some thinking and much conversation, he had endeavoured to strip himself of as many prejudices as he could." He resolved, as he adds, " to proceed in a manner entirely new ;" and he afterwards claims in the most positive terms that through the whole book (in cluding both the tale and the battle of the books) he has not borrowed one " single hint from any writer in the world."1 'No writer has ever been more thoroughly original than Swift, for his writings are simply himself.
The Tale of a Tub is another challenge thrown down to pretentious pedantry. The vigorous, self-confident in tellect has found out the emptiness and absurdity of a number of the solemn formulae which pass current in the world, and tears them to pieces with audacious and re joicing energy. He makes a mock of the paper chains with which solemn professors tried to fetter his activity, and scatters the fragments to the four winds of heaven.
1 Wotton first accused Swift of borrowing the idea of the battle from a French book, by one Coutray, called Histoire Podtique de la Guerre nouvellement declwre'e* entre les Anciens et Modernes. Swift declared (I have no doubt truly) that he had never seen or heard of this book. But Coutray, like Swift, uses the scheme of a mock Homeric battle. The book is prose, but begins with a poem. The resemblance is much closer than Mr. Forster's language would imply ; but I agree with him that it does not justify Johnson and Scott in regarding it as more than a natural coincidence. Every detail is different.
38 SWIFT. [CHAP.
In one of the first sections he announces the philosophy afterwards expounded by Herr Teufelsdrockh, according to which " man himself is but a micro-coat ;" if one of the suits of clothes called animals " be trimmed up with a gold chain, and a red gown, and a white rod, and a pert look, it is called a Lord Mayor ; if certain ermines and furs be placed in a certain position, we style them a judge ; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin we entitle a bishop." Though Swift does not himself deve lop this philosophical doctrine, its later form reflects light upon the earlier theory. For, in truth, Swift's teaching comes to this, that the solemn plausibilities of the world are but so many " shams " — elaborate masks used to disguise the passions, for the most part base and earthly, by which mankind is really impelled. The " digressions " which he introduces with the privilege of a humorist, bear chiefly upon the literary sham. He falls foul of the whole population of Grub Street at starting, and (as I may note in passing) incidentally gives a curious hint of his authorship. He describes himself as a worn-out pamphleteer who has worn his quill to the pith in the service of the State. " Fourscore and eleven pamphlets have I writ under the reigns and for the service of six- and-thirty patrons." Porson first noticed that the same numbers are repeated in Gulliver's Travels; Gulliver is fastened with " fourscore and eleven chains " locked to his left leg " with six-and-thirty padlocks." Swift makes the usual onslaught of a young author upon the critics, with more than the usual vigour, and carries on the war against Bentley and his ally by parodying Wotton's re marks upon the ancients. He has discovered many omissions in Homer ; " who seems to have read but very superficially either Sendivogus, Behmen, or Anthroposophia
in.] EAELY WRITINGS. 39
Magia" 2 Homer, too, never mentions a saveall ; and has a still worse fault — his "gross ignorance in the common laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as discipline of the Church of England " — defects, indeed, for which he has been justly censured by Wotton. Per haps the most vigorous and certainly the most striking of these digressions, is that upon " the original use and improvement of madness in a commonwealth." Just in passing, as it were, Swift gives the pith of a whole system of misanthropy, though he as yet seems to be rather in dulging a play of fancy, than expressing a settled conviction. Happiness, he says, is a " perpetual possession of being well deceived." The wisdom which keeps on the surface is better than that which persists in officiously prying into the underlying reality. " Last week I saw a woman flayed," he observes, " and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse." It is best to be content with patching up the outside, and so assuring the "serene, peaceful state " — the sublimest point of felicity — "of being a fool amongst knaves." He goes on to tell us how useful madmen may be made : how Curtius may be regarded equally as a madman and a hero for his leap into the gulf ; how the raging, blaspheming, noisy inmate of Bedlam is fit to have a regiment of dragoons ; and the bustling, sputtering, bawling madman should be sent to Westminster Hall ; and the solemn madman, dreaming dreams and seeing best in the dark, to preside over a congregation of dissenters ; and how elsewhere you
2 Thia was a treatise by Thomas, twin brother of Henry Vaughan, the " Silurist." It led to a controversy with Henry More. Vaughan was a Eosicmcian. Swift' s contempt for mysteries is characteristic. Sendivogus was a famous alchemist (1566 — 1646).
40 SWIFT. [CHAP.
may find the raw material of the merchant, the courtier, or the monarch. We are all madmen, and happy so far as mad : delusion and peace of mind go together ; and the more truth we know, the more shall we recognize that realities are hideous. Swift only plays with his paradoxes. He kughs without troubling himself to decide whether his irony tells against the theories which he ostensibly espouses, or those which he ostensibly attacks. But he has only to adopt in seriousness the fancy with which he is dallying, in order to graduate as a finished pessi mist. These, however, are interruptions to the main thread of the book, which is a daring assault upon that serious kind of pedantry which utters itself in theological systems. The three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, re present, as we all know, the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and the Puritanical varieties of Christianity. They start with a new coat provided for each by their father, and a will to explain the right mode of wearing it ; and after some years of faithful observance, they fall in love with the three ladies of wealth, ambition, and pride, get into terribly bad ways and make wild work of the coats and the will. They excuse themselves for wearing shoulder-knots by picking the separate letters S, H, and so forth, out of separate words in the will, and as K is wanting, dis cover it to be synonymous with C. They reconcile them selves to gold lace by remembering that when they were boys they heard a fellow say that he had heard their father's man say that he would advise his sons to get gold lace when they had money enough to buy it. Then, as the will becomes troublesome in spite of exegetical in genuity, the eldest brother finds a convenient codicil which can be tacked to it, and will sanction a new fashion of flame-coloured satin. The will expressly forbids silver
in.] EABLY WRITINGS. 41
fringe on the coats ; but they discover that the word meaning silver fringe may also signify a broomstick. And by such devices they go on merrily for a time, till Peter sets up to be the sole heir and insists upon the obedience of his brethren. His performances in this position are trying to their temper. " Whenever it happened that any rogue of Newgate was condemned to be hanged, Peter would offer him a pardon for a certain sum of money ; which when the poor caitiff had made all shifts to scrape up and send, his lordship would return a piece of paper in this form.
" ' To all mayors, sheriffs, jailors, constables, bailiffs, hangmen, &c. Whereas we are informed that A. B. remains in the hands of you or some of you, under the sentence of death : We will and command you, upon sight hereof to let the said prisoner depart to his own habitation whether he stands condemned for murder, &c., &c., for which this shall be your sufficient warrant ; and if you fail hereof, God damn you and yours to all eternity ; and so we bid you heartily farewell. Your most humble man's man, Emperor Peter.'
" The wretches, trusting to this, lost their lives and their money too." Peter, however, became outrageously proud. He has been seen to take "three old high- crowned hats and clap them all on his head three-storey high, with a huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and an angling-rod in his hand. In which guise, whoever went to take him by the hand in the way of salutation, Peter, with much grace, like a well-educated spaniel, would present them with his foot ; and if they refused his civility, then he would raise it as high as their chops, and give him a damned kick on the mouth, which has ever since been called a salute."
42 SWIFT. [CHAP.
Peter receives his brothers at dinner, and has nothing served up but a brown loaf. Come, he says, "fall on and spare not ; here is excellent good mutton," and he helps them each to a slice. The brothers remonstrate, and try to point out that they see only bread. They argue for some time, but have to give in to a conclusive argument. " ' Look ye, gentlemen,' cries Peter in a rage, ' to convince you what a couple of blind, positive, ignorant, wilful puppies you are, I will use but this simple argu ment. By G — it is true, good, natural mutton as any in Leadenhall Market ; and G — confound you both eternally, if you offer to believe otherwise.' Such a thundering proof as this left no further room for objection ; the two unbelievers began to gather and pocket up their mistake as hastily as they could," and have to admit besides that another large dry crust is true juice of the grape.
The brothers Jack and Martin afterwards fall out : and Jack is treated to a storm of ridicule much in the same vein as that directed against Peter ; and, if less pointed, certainly not less expressive of contempt I need not further follow the details of what Johnson calls this " wild book," which is in every page brimful of intense satirical power. I must however say a few words upon a matter which is of great importance in forming a clear judgment of Swift's character. The Tale of a Tub was universally attributed to Swift, and led to many doubts of his orthodoxy and even of his Christianity. Sharpe, Arch bishop of York, injured Swift's chances of preferment by insinuating such doubts to Queen Anne. Swift bitterly resented the imputation. He prefixed an apology to a later edition, in which he admitted that he had said some rash things ; but declared that he would forfeit his life if any one opinion contrary to morality or religion could
Hi.] EARLY WETTINGS. 43
be fairly deduced from the book. He pointed out that he had attacked no Anglican doctrine. His ridicule spares Martin, and is pointed at Peter and Jack. Like every satirist who ever wrote, he does not attack the use but the abuse ; and as the Church of England represents for him the purest embodiment of the truth, an attack upon the abuses of religion meant an attack upon other churches only in so far as they diverged from this model. Critics have accepted this apology, and treated poor Queen Anne and her advisers as representing simply the prudery of the tea-table. The question, to my thinking, does not admit of quite so simple an answer.
If, in fact, we ask what is the true object of Swift's audacious satire, the answer will depend partly upon our own estimate of the truth. Clearly it ridicules "abuses;" but one man's use is another's abuse : and a dogma may appear to us venerable or absurd according to our own creed. One test, however, may be suggested, which may guide our decision. Imagine the Tale of a Tub to be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a Rabelais perfectionne. Can any one doubt that the believer would be scandalized and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? Would not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons even though directed against his enemies ? Scott urges that the satire was useful to the high church party because, as he says, it is important for any institution in Britain (or anywhere else, we may add) to have the laughers on its side. But Scott was too sagacious not to indicate the obvious reply. The condition of having the laughers on your side is to be on the side of the laughers. Advocates of any serious cause feel that there is a danger in accepting such an alliance. The laughers who join you in ridiculing your
44 SWIFT. [CHAP.
enemy, are by no means pledged to refrain from laughing in turn at the laugher. When Swift had ridiculed all the Catholic and all the Puritan dogmas in the most unsparing fashion, could he be sure that the Thirty-nine Articles would escape scot free ? The Catholic theory of a church possessing divine authority, the Puritan theory of a divine voice addressing the individual soul, suggested to him, in their concrete embodiments at least, nothing but a horselaugh. Could any one be sure that the Anglican embodiment of the same theories might not be turned to equal account by the scoffer ? Was the true bearing of Swift's satire in fact limited to the deviations from sound Church of England doctrine, or might it not be directed against the very vital principle of the doctrine itself?
Swift's blindness to such criticisms was thoroughly charac teristic. He professes, as we have seen, that he had need to clear his mind of real prejudices. He admits that the process might be pushed too far ; that is, that in abandon ing a prejudice you may be losing a principle. In fact, the prejudices from which Swift had sought to free himself — and no doubt with great success — were the prejudices of other people. For them he felt unlimited contempt. But the prejudice which had grown up in his mind, strengthened with his strength, and become intertwined with all his personal affections and antipathies, was no longer a prejudice in his eyes, but a sacred principle. The intensity of his contempt for the follies of others shut his eyes effectually to any similarity betvreen their tenets and his own. His principles, true or false, were prejudices in the highest degree, if by a prejudice we mean an opinion cherished because it has somehow or other become ours, though the "somehow" may exclude all reference to
in.] EARLY WRITINGS. 45
reason. Swift never troubled himself to assign any philosophical basis for his doctrines ; having, indeed, a hearty contempt for philosophizing in general. He clung to the doctrines of his church, not because he could give abstract reasons for his belief, but simply because the church happened to be his. It is equally true of all his creeds, political or theological, that he loved them as he loved his friends, simply because they had become a part of himself, and were therefore identified with all his hopes, ambitions, and aspirations public or private. We shall see hereafter how fiercely he attacked the dissenters, and how scornfully he repudiated all arguments founded upon the desirability of union amongst Protestants. To a calm outside observer differences might appear to be superficial ; but to him, no difference could be other than radical and profound which in fact divided him from an antagonist. In attacking the Presbyterians, cried more temperate people, you are attacking your brothers and your own opinions. No, replied Swift, I am attacking the corruption of my principles ; hideous caricatures of myself; caricatures the more hateful in proportion to their apparent likeness. And therefore, whether in political or theological warfare, he was sublimely unconscious of the possible reaction of his arguments.
Swift took a characteristic mode of showing that if upon some points he accidentally agreed with the unbeliever, it was not from any covert sympathy. Two of his most vigorous pieces of satire in later days are directed against the deists. In 1708 he published an Argument to prove that the abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps not produce those many good effects proposed thereby. And in 1713, in the midst of his most eager
46 SWIFT. [CHAP.
political warfare, he published Mr. Collins's Discourse of Freethinking, put into plain English, by way of abstract, for use of the poor. No one who reads these pamphlets can deny that the keenest satire may be directed against infidels as well as against Christians. The last is an admirable parody, in which poor Collins's arguments are turned against himself with ingenious and provoking irony. The first is perhaps Swift's cleverest application of the same method. A nominal religion, he urges gravely, is of some use, for if men cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak evil of dignities, and may even come to " reflect upon the ministry." If Christianity were once abolished, the wits would be deprived of their favourite topic. " Who would ever have suspected Asgil for a wit or Toland for a philosopher if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials 1 " The abolition of Christianity moreover may possibly bring the Church into danger, for atheists, deists, and Socinians have little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment ; and if they once get rid of Christianity, they may aim at setting up Presbyterianism. Moreover, as long as we keep to any religion, we do not strike at the root of the evil. The freethinkers consider that all the parts hold together, and that if you pull out one nail the whole fabric will fall Which, he says, was happily expressed by one who heard that a text brought in proof of the Trinity, was differently read in some ancient manuscript ; whereupon he suddenly leaped through a long sorites to the logical conclusion : " Why, if it be as you say, I may safely .... drink on and defy the parson."
A . serious meaning underlies Swift's sarcasms. Collins had argued in defence of the greatest possible
HI.] EARLY WRITINGS. 47
freedom of discussion ; and tacitly assumed that such discussion would lead to disbelief of Christianity. Opponents of the liberal school had answered by claiming his first principle as their own. They argued that religion was based upon reason, and would be strengthened instead of weakened by free inquiry. Swift virtually takes a different position. He objects to freethinking because ordinary minds are totally unfit for such inquiries. "The bulk of mankind," as he puts it, is as "well qualified for flying as thinking ;" and therefore free-thought would lead to anarchy, atheism, and immorality, as liberty to fly would lead to a breaking of necks.
Collins rails at priests as tyrants upheld by imposture. Swift virtually replies that they are the sole guides to truth and guardians of morality, and that theology should be left to them, as medicine to physicians and law to lawyers. The argument against the abolition of Chris tianity takes the same ground. Eeligion, however little regard is paid to it in practice, is in fact the one great security for a decent degree of social order ; and the rash fools who venture to reject what they do not understand, are public enemies as well as ignorant sciolists.
The same view is taken in Swift's sermons. He said of himself that he could only preach political pamphlets. Several of the twelve sermons preserved are in fact directly aimed at some of the political and social grievances which he was habitually denouncing. If not exactly "pam phlets," they are sermons in aid of pamphlets. Others are vigorous and sincere moral discourses. One alone deals with a purely theological topic : the doctrine of the Trinity. His view is simply that " men of wicked lives would be very glad if there were no truth in Christianity at all." They therefore cavil at the mysteries to find some
48 SWIFT. [CHAP.
excuse for giving up the whole. He replies in effect that there most be mystery though not contradiction, every where, and that if we do not accept humbly what is taught in the Scriptures, we must give up Christianity, and con sequently, as he holds, all moral obligation, at once. The cavil is merely the pretext of an evil conscience. Swift's religion thus partook of the directly practical nature of his whole character. He was absolutely indifferent to speculative philosophy. He was even more indifferent to the mystical or imaginative aspects of religion. He loved downright concrete realities, and was not the man to lose himself in an Oh, altitudo I or in any train of thought or emotion not directly bearing upon the actual business of the world. Though no man had more pride in his order or love of its privileges, Swift never emphasized his profes sional character. He wished to be accepted as a man of the world and of business. He despised the unpractical and visionary type, and the kind of religious utterance congenial to men of that type was abhorrent to him. He shrank invariably too from any display of his emotion, and would have felt the heartiest contempt for the senti- mentalism of his day. At once the proudest and most sensitive of men, it was his imperative instinct to hide his emotions as much as possible. In cases of great excitement, he retired into some secluded corner, where, if he was forced to feel, he could be sure of hiding his feelings. He always masks his strongest passions under some ironical veil, and thus practised what his friends regarded as an inverted hypocrisy. Delany tells us that he stayed for six months in Swift's house, before discover ing that the dean always read prayers to his servants at a fixed hour in private. A deep feeling of solemnity showed itself in his manner of performing public religious exercises,
ni.] EARLY WRITINGS. 49
but Delany, a man of a very different temperament, blames his friend for carrying his reserve in all such matters to extremes. In certain respects Swift, was ostentatious enough ; but this intense dislike to wearing his heart upon his sleeve, to laying bare the secrets of his affections before unsympathetic eyes, is one of his most indelible characteristics. Swift could never have felt the slightest sympathy for the kind of preacher who courts applause by a public exhibition of intimate joys and sorrows • and was less afraid of suppressing some genuine emotion than of showing any in the slightest degree unreal.
Although Swift took in the main what may be called the political view of religion, he did not by any means accept that view in its cynical form. He did not, that is, hold, in Gibbon's famous phrase, that all religions were equally false and equally useful.' His religious instincts were as strong and genuine as they were markedly undemonstrative. He came to take (I am anticipating a little) a gloomy view of the world and of human nature. He had the most settled conviction not only of the misery of human life but of the feebleness of the good elements in the world. The bad and the stupid are the best fitted for life, as we find it. Virtue is generally a misfortune ; the more we sympathize, the more cause we have for wretchedness ; our affections give us the purest kind of happiness, and yet our affections expose us to sufferings which more than outweigh the enjoyments. There is no such thing, he said in his decline, as " a fine old gentleman ;" if so and so had had either a mind or a body worth a farthing," they would have worn him out long ago." That became a typical sentiment with Swift. His doctrine was, briefly, that : virtue was the one thing which
E
50 SWIFT. [CH. iii.
deserved lovo and admiration ; and yet that virtue in this hideous chaos of a world, involved misery and decay. What would be the logical result of such a creed, I do not presume to say. Certainly, we should guess, some thing more pessimistic or Manichaean than suits the ordinary interpretation of Christian doctrine. But for Swift this state of mind carried with it the necessity of clinging to some religious creed : not because the creed held out promises of a better hereafter, for Swift was too much absorbed in the present to dwell much upon such beliefs ; but rather because it provided him with some sort of fixed convictions in this strange and disastrous muddle. If it did not give a solution in terms intelligible to the human intellect, it encouraged the belief that some solution existed. It justified him to himself for con tinuing to respect morality, and for going on living, when all the game of life seemed to be decidedly going in favour of the devil, and suicide to be the most reasonable course. At least, it enabled him to associate himself with the causes and principles which he recognized as the most ennobling element in the world's " mad farce ;" and to utter himself in formulae consecrated by the use of such wise and good beings as had hitherto shown themselves amongst a wretched race. Placed in another situation, Swift no doubt might have put his creed — to speak after the Clothes Philosophy — into a different dress. The sub stance could not have been altered, unless his whole character as well as his particular opinions had been profoundly modified.
CHAPTER IV.
LARACOR AND LONDON.
SWIFT at the age of thirty-one had gained a small amount of cash, and a promise from "William. He applied to the king, but the great man in whom he trusted Tailed to deliver his petition ; and, after some delay, he accepted an invitation to become chaplain and secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, just made one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. He acted as secretary on the journey to Ireland : but upon reaching Dublin, Lord Berkeley gave the post to another man, who had persuaded him that it was unfit for a clergyman. Swift next claimed the deanery of Derry, which soon became vacant. The secretary had been bribed by 1000Z. from another candidate, upon whom the deanery was bestowed : but Swift was told that he might still have the preference for an equal bribe. Unable or unwilling to comply, he took leave of Berkeley and the secretary, with the pithy remark, "God confound you both for a couple of scoundrels." He was partly pacified, however (February 1700), by the gift of Laracor, a village near Trim, some twenty miles from Dublin. Two other small livings, and a prebend in the cathedral of St. Patrick, made up a revenue of about 230?. a year.1 The income enabled him to live ; but, in spite of the
1 See Forster, p. 117. E 2
53 SWIFT. [CHAP.
rigid economy which ho always practised, did not enable him to save. Marriage under such circumstances would have meant the abandonment of an ambitious career. A wife and family would have anchored him to his country parsonage.
This may help to explain an unpleasant episode which followed. Poor Varina had resisted Swift's entreaties, on the ground of her own ill-health and Swift's want of fortune. She now, it seems, thought that the economical difficulty was removed by Swift's preferment, and wished the marriage to take place. Swift replied in a letter, which contains all our information : and to which I can apply no other epithet than brutal Some men might feel bound to fulfil a marriage engagement, even when love had grown cold ; others might think it better to break it off in the interests of both parties. Swift's plan Avas to offer to fulfil it on conditions so insulting that no one with a grain of self-respect could accept. In his letter he expresses resentment for Miss Waring's pre vious treatment of him ; he reproaches her bitterly with the company in which she lives — including, as it seems, her mother ; no young woman in the world with her income should " dwindle away her health in such a sink and among such family conversation." He explains that he is still poor ; he doubts the improvement of her own health ; and he then says that if she will submit to be educated so as to be capable of entertaining him : to accept all his likes and dislikes : to soothe his ill-humour, and live cheerfully wherever he pleases: he will take her without inquiring into her looks or her income. " Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the other, is all I look for." Swift could be the most persistent and ardent of friends. But, when any one tried to enforce
iv.] LABACOR AND LONDON. 53
claims no longer congenial to his feelings, the appeal to the galling obligation stung him into ferocity, and brought out the most brutal side of his imperious nature.
It was in the course of the next year that Swift took a step which has sometimes been associated with this. The death of Temple had left Esther Johnson homeless. The small fortune left to her by Temple consisted of an Irish farm. -Swift suggested to her that she and her friend Mrs. Dingley would get better interest for their money, and live more cheaply, in Ireland than in England. This change of abode naturally made people talk. The little parson cousin asked (in 1706) whether Jonathan had been able to resist the charms of the two ladies who had marched from Moor Park to Dublin " with full resolution to engage him." Swift was now (1701) in his thirty-fourth year, and Stella a singularly beautiful and attractive girl of twenty. The anomalous connexion was close, and yet most carefully guarded against scandal. In Swift's absence, the ladies occupied his apartments at Dublin. When he and they were in the same place they took separate lodgings. Twice, it seems, they accompanied him on visits to England. But Swift never saw Esther Johnson except in presence of a third person ; and he incidentally declares in 1726 — near the end of her life — that he had not seen her in a morning " these dozen years, except once or twice in a journey." The relations thus regulated remained unaltered for several years to come. Swift's duties at Laracor were not excessive. He reckons his congregation at fifteen persons, " most of them gentle and all simple." He gave notice, says Orrery, that he would read prayers every Wednesday and Friday. The congregation on the first Wednesday consisted of himself and his clerk, and Swift began the service, "Dearly beloved Eoger, the scripture movethyou
54 SWIFT. [CHAP.
and me," and so forth. This being attributed to Swift, is supposed to be an exquisite piece of facetiousness ; but we may hope that, as Scott gives us reason to think, it was really one of the drifting jests that stuck for a time to the skirts of the famous humorist. What is certain is, that Swift did his best, with narrow means, to improve the living — rebuilt the house, laid out the garden, increased the glebe from one acre to twenty, and endowed the living with tithes bought by himself. He left the tithes on the remarkable condition (suggested probably by his fears of Presbyterian ascendancy) that, if another form of Christian religion should become the established faith in this king dom, they should go to the poor — excluding Jews, Atheists, and infidels. Swift became attached to Laracor, and the gardens which he planted in humble imitation of Moor Park ; he made friends of some of the neighbours ; though he detested Trim, where " the people were as great rascals as the gentlemen ;" but Laracor was rather an occasional retreat than a centre of his interests. During the following years Swift was often at the castle at Dublin, and passed considerable periods in London, leaving a curate in charge of the minute congregation at Laracor.
He kept upon friendly terms with successive Viceroys. He had, as we have seen, extorted a partial concession of his claims from Lord Berkeley. For Lord Berkeley, if we may argue from a very gross lampoon, he can have felt nothing but contempt. But he had a high respect for Lady Berkeley; and one of the daughters, afterwards Lady Betty Germaine, a very sensible and kindly woman, retained his friendship through life, and in letters written long afterwards refers with evident fondness to the old days of familiarity. He was intimate, again, with the family of the Duke of Ormond, who became Lord Lieutenant in
iv.] LARACOR AND LONDON. 55
1703, and, again, was the close friend of one of the daughters. He was deeply grieved by her death a few years later, soon after her marriage to Lord Ashburnham. " I hate life,'? he says characteristically, " when I think it exposed to such accidents ; and to see so many thousand wretches burdening the earth when such as her die, makes me think God did never intend life for a blessing." When Lord Pembroke succeeded Ormond, Swift still con tinued chaplain, and carried on a queer commerce of punning with Pembroke. It is the first indication of a habit which lasted, as we shall see, through life. One might -be tempted to say, were it not for the conclusive evi dence to the contrary, that this love of the most mechanical variety of facetiousness implied an absence of any true sense of humour. Swift, indeed, was giving proofs that he pos sessed a full share of that ambiguous talent. It would be difficult to find a more perfect performance of its kind than the poem by which he amused the Berkeley family in 1700. It is the Petition of Mrs. Frances Harris, a chambermaid, who had lost her purse, and whose peculiar style of language, as well as the unsympathetic comments of her various fellow-servants, are preserved with extraordi nary felicity in a peculiar doggerel invented for the purpose by Swift. One fancies that the famous Mrs. Harris of Mrs. Gamp's reminiscences was a phantasmal descendant of Swift's heroine. He lays bare the workings of the menial intellect with the clearness of a master.
Neither Laracor nor Dublin could keep Swift from London.2 During the ten years succeeding 1700, he must
3 He was in England from April to September in 1701, from April to November in 1702, from November 1703 till May 1704, for an uncertain part of 1705 , and again for over fifteen months from the end of 1707 till the beginning of 1709.
56 SWIFT. [CHAP.
have passed over four in England. In the last period mentioned he was acting as an agent for the Church of Irland. In the others he was attracted by pleasure or ambition. He had already many introductions to London society, through Temple, through the Irish Viceroys, and tlirough Congreve, the most famous of then living wits. A successful pamphlet, to be presently mentioned, helped his rise to fame. London society was easy cf access for a man of Swift's qualities. The divisions of rank were doubtless more strongly marked than now. Yet society was relatively so small, and concentrated in so small a space, that admission into the upper circle meant an easy introduction to every one worth knowing. Any noticeable person became, as it were, member of a club which had a tacit existence, though there was no single place of meeting or recognized organization. Swift soon became known at the coffee-houses, which have been superseded by the clubs of modern times. At one time, according to a story vague as to dates, he got the name of the " mad parson " from Addison and others, by his habit of taking half-an-hour's smart walk to and fro in the coffee-house, and then departing in silence. At last he abruptly accosted a stranger from the country : "Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the world ? " " Yes, sir," was the reply, " I thank God I remember a great deal of good weather in my time." " That," said Swift, u is more than I can say. I never remember any weather that was not too hot, or too cold, or too wet, or too dry : but, however God Almighty con trives it, at the end of the year 'tis all very well ;" with which sentiment he vanished. Whatever his introduction Swift would soon make himself felt. The Tale of a Tub appeared — with a very complimentary dedication to
IT.^] LAEACOE AND LONDON. 57
Somers — in 1704, and revealed powers beyond the rivalry of any living author.
In the year 1705 Swift became intimate with Addison, who wrote in a copy of his Travels in Italy, To Jona than Sivift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age, this ivork is pre sented by his most humble servant the author. Though the word " genius " had scarcely its present strength of meaning, the phrase certainly implies that Addison knew Swift's authorship of the Tale, and with all his decorum was not repelled by its audacious satire. The pair formed a close -friendship, which is honourable to both. For it proves that if Swift was imperious and Addison a little too fond of the adulation of "wits and Templars," each could enjoy the society of an intellectual equal. They met, we may fancy, like absolute kings, accustomed to the incense of courtiers, and not inaccessible to its charms ; and yet glad at times to throw aside state and associate with each other without jealousy. Addison, we know, was most charming when talking to a single companion, and Delany repeats Swift's statement that, often as they spent their evenings together, they never wished for a third. Steele, for a time, was joined in what Swift calls a trium virate ; and though political strife led to a complete breach with Steele and a temporary eclipse of familiarity with Addison, it never diminished Swift's affection for his great rival. " That man," he said once, " has virtue enough to give reputation to an age," and the phrase expresses his settled opinion. Swift, however, had a low opinion of the society of the average " wit." " The worst conversa tion I ever heard in my life," he says, "was that at Wills' coffee-house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble ;" and he speaks with a con-
58 SWIFT. [CHAP.
tempt recalling Pope's satire upon the " little senate," of the absurd self-importance and the foolish adulation of the students and Templars who listened to these oracles. Others have suspected that many famous coteries of which literary people are accustomed to speak with unction, pro bably fell as far short in reality of their traditional pleasant ness. Swift's friendship with Addison was partly due, we may fancy, to the difference in temper and talent which fitted each to be complement of the other. A curious proof of the mutual goodwill is given by the history of Swift's Baucis and Philemon. It is a humorous and agreeable enough travesty of Ovid ; a bit of good-humoured pleasantry, which we may take as it was intended. The performance was in the spirit of the time, and if Swift had not the lightness of touch of his contemporaries, Prior, Gay, Parnell, and Pope, he perhaps makes up for it by greater force and directness. But the piece is mainly remarkable because, as he tells us, Addison made him " blot out four score lines, add four score, and alter four score," though the whole consisted of only 178 verses.3 Swift showed a complete absence of the ordinary touchi ness of authors. His indifference to literary fame as to its pecuniary rewards, was conspicuous. He was too proud, as he truly said, to be vain. His sense of dignity restrained him from petty sensibility. When a clergyman regretted some emendations which had been hastily sug gested by himself and accepted by Swift, Swift replied that it mattered little, and that he would not give grounds by adhering to his own opinion, for an imputation of
3 Mr. Forster found the original MS., and gives MB the exact nunfbers : 96 omitted, 44 added, 22 altered. The whole was 178 lines after the omissions.
IV.] LAEACOB AND LONDON. 59
vanity. If Swift was egotistical, there was nothing petty even in his egotism.
A piece of facetiousness, started by Swift in the last of his visits to London, has become famous. A cobbler called Partridge had set up as an astrologer, and published predictions in the style of ZadkieVs Almanac. Swift amused himself in the beginning of 1708 by publishing a rival prediction under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff. Bickerstaff professed that he would give verifiable and definite predictions, instead of the vague oracular utterances of his rival. The first of these predictions announced the approaching death, at 11 p.m., on March 29th, of Partridge himself. Directly after that day appeared a letter "to a person of honour," announcing the fulfilment of the prediction by the death of Partridge within four hours of the date assigned. Partridge took up the matter seriously, and indignantly declared himself, in a new Almanac, to be alive. Bickerstaff retorted in a humorous Vindication, arguing that Partridge was really dead ; that his con tinuing to write almanacs was no proof to the contrary, and so forth. All the wits, great and small, took part in the joke : the Portuguese inquisition, so it is said, were sufficiently taken in to condemn Bickerstaff to the flames ; and Steele, who started the Tatler, whilst the joke was afoot, adopted the name of Bickerstaff for the imaginary author. Dutiful biographers agree to admire this as a wonderful piece of fun. The joke does not strike me, I will confess, as of very exquisite flavour ; but it is a curious illustration of a peculiarity to which Swift owed some of his power, and which seems to have suggested many of the mythical anecdotes about him. His humour very easily took the form of practical joking. In those days, the mutual understanding of the little clique of wits made it easy to
60 SWIFT. [CHAP.
get a hoax taken up by the whole body. They joined to persecute poor Partridge, as the undergraduates at a modern college might join to tease some obnoxious tradesman. Swift's peculiar irony fitted him to take the load ; for it implied a singular pleasure in realizing the minute consequences of some given hypothesis, and working out in detail some grotesque or striking theory. The love of practical jokes, which seems to have accom panied him through life, is one of the less edifying manifestations of the tendency. It seems as if he could not quite enjoy a jest till it was translated into actual tangible fact. The fancy does not suffice him till it is realized. If the story about " dearly beloved Roger " be true, it is a case in point. Sydney Smith would have been content with suggesting that such a thing might be done. Swift was not satisfied till he had done it. And even if it be not true, it has been accepted because it is like the truth. We could almost fancy that if Swift had thought of Charles Lamb's famous quibble about walking on an empty stomach ("on whose empty stomach ?"), he would have liked to carry it out by an actual promenade on real human flesh and blood.
Swift became intimate with Irish viceroys, and with the most famous wits and statesmen of London. But he received none of the good things bestowed so freely upon contemporary men of letters. In 1705, Addison, his intimate friend, and his junior by five years, had sprung from a garret to a comfortable office. Other men passed Swift in the race. He notes significantly in 1708, that " a young fellow," a friend of his, had just received a sinecure of 400?. a year, as an addition to another of 300Z. Towards the end of 1704 he had already com plained that he got "nothing but the good words and wishes of a decayed ministry, whose lives and mine will
iv.] LARACOR AND LONDON. 61
probably wear out before they can serve either my little hopes, or their own ambition." Swift still remained in his own district, " a hedge-parson," nattered, caressed and neglected. And yet he held,4 that it was easier to provide for ten men in the church, than for one in a civil em ployment. To understand his claims, and the modes by which he used to enforce them, we must advert briefly to the state of English politics. A clear apprehension of Swift's relation to the ministers of the day is essential to any satisfactory estimate of his career.
The reign of Queen Anne was a period of violent party spirit. At the end of 1703, Swift humorously declares that even the cats and dogs were infected with the Whig and Tory animosity. The " very ladies " were divided into high church and low ; and, " out of zeal for religion, had hardly time to say their prayers." The gentle satire of Addison and Steele, in the Spectator, confirms Swift's contemporary lamentations, as to the baneful effects of party zeal upon private friendship. And yet, it has been often said, that the party issues were hopelessly con founded. Lord Stanhope argues — and he is only repeating what Swift frequently said — that Whigs and Tories had •exchanged principles.5 In later years, Swift constantly asserted that he attacked the Whigs in defence of the true Whig faith. He belonged indeed to a party, almost limited to himself : for he avowed himself to be the anomalous hybrid, a High -church Whig. We must there fore inquire a little further into the true meaning of the accepted shibboleths.
Swift had come from Ireland, saturated with the pre-
4 See letter to Peterborough, May 6, 1711.
6 In most of their principles the two parties seem to hava shifted opinions since their institution in the reign of Charles II. Examiner, No. 43. May 31, 1711.
62 SWIFT. [CHAK
prejudices of his caste. The highest Tory in Ireland, as he told William, would make a tolerable Whig in England. For the English colonists in Ireland, the ex pulsion of James was a condition not of party success but of existence. Swift, whose personal and family interests were identified with those of the English in Ireland, could repudiate James with his whole heart, and heartily accepted the revolution ; he was therefore a Whig, so far as attachment to " revolution principles " was the distinctive badge of Whiggism. Swift despised James, and he hated Popery from first to last. Con tempt and hatred with him were never equivocal, and in this case they sprang as much from his energetic sense as from his early prejudices. Jacobitism was becoming a sham, and therefore offensive to men of insight into facts. Its ghost walked the earth for some time longer, and at times aped reality ; but it meant mere sentimentalism or vague discontent. Swift, when asked to explain its persistence, said that when he was in pain and lying on his right side, he naturally turned to his left, though he might have no prospect of benefit from the change.6 The country squire, who drank healths to the king over the water, was tired of the Georges, and shared the fears of the typical Western, that his lands were in danger of being sent to Hanover. The Stuarts had been in exile long enough to win the love of some of their subjects. Sufficient time had elapsed to erase from short memories the true cause of their fall. Squires and parsons did not cherish less warmly the privileges in defence of which they had sent the last Stuart king about his business. Rather the privileges had become so much a matter of
6 Delany, p. 211.
iv.] LARACOK AND LONDON. 63
course that the very fear of any assault seemed visionary. The Jacobitism of later days did not mean any discontent with revolution principles, but dislike to the revolution dynasty. The Whig indeed argued with true party logic, that every Tory must be a Jacobite, and every Jacobite a lover of arbitrary rule. In truth a man might wish to restore the Stuarts without wishing to restore the principles for which the Stuarts had been expelled: he might be a Jacobite without being a lover of arbitrary rule ; and still more easily might he be a Tory without being a Jacobite. Swift constantly asserted — and in a sense with perfect truth — that the revolution had been carried out in defence of the Church of England, and chiefly by attached members of the Church. To be a sound churchman was, so far, to be pledged against the family which had assailed the Church.
Swift's Whiggism would naturally be strengthened by his personal relation with Temple, and with various Whigs whom he came to know through Temple. But Swift, I have said, was a churchman as well as a Whig ; as staunch a churchman as Laud, and as ready, I imagine, to have gone to the block or to prison in defence of his church as any one from the days of Laud to those of Mr. Green. For a time his zeal was not called into play ; the war absorbed all interests. Marlborough and Godolphin, the great heads of the family clique which dominated poor Queen Anne, had begun as Tories and churchmen, supported by a Tory majority. The war had been dictated by a national sentiment : but from the beginning it was really a Whig war : for it was a war against Louis,Popery, and the Pretender. And thus, the great men who were identified with the war, began slowly to edge over to the party whose principles were
64 SWIFT. [CHAP.
the war principles ; who hated the Pope, the Pretender, and the King of France, as their ancestors had hated Phillip of Spain, or as their descendants hated Napoleon. The war meant alliance with the Dutch, who had been the martyrs, and were the enthusiastic defenders of tole ration and free thought ; and it forced English ministers, almost in spite of themselves, into the most successful piece of statesmanship of the century, the Union with Scotland. Now Swift hated the Dutch and hated the Scotch, with a vehemence that becomes almost ludicrous. The margin of his Burnet was scribbled over with execrations against the Scots. " Most damnable Scots," " Scots hell-hounds," " Scotch dogs," " cursed Scots still," " hellish Scottish dogs," are a few of his spon taneous flowers of speech. His prejudices are the prejudices of his class intensified as all passions were intensified in him. Swift regarded Scotchmen as the most virulent and dangerous of all dissenters ; they were represented to him by the Irish Presbyterians, the natural rivals of his church. He reviled the Union, because it implied the recognition by the State of a sect which regarded the Church of England as little better than a manifestation of Antichrist. And, in this sense, Swift's sympathies were with the Tories. For in truth the real contrast between "Whigs and Tories, in respect of which there is a perfect continuity of principle, depended upon the fact that the Whigs reflected the sentiments of the middle classes, the " monied men " and the dissenters ; whilst the Tories reflected the senti ments of the land and the church. Each party might occasionally adopt the commonplaces or accept the measures generally associated with its antagonists ; but at bottom, the distinction was between squire
IV.] LARACOR AND LONDON. 65
and parson on one side, tradesmen and banker on the other.
The domestic politics of the reign of Anne turned upon this difference. The history is a history of the gradual shifting of government to the Whig side, and the growing alienation of the clergy and squires, accelerated by a system which caused the fiscal burden of the war to fall chiefly upon the land. Bearing this in mind, Swift's conduct is perfectly intelligible. His first plunge into politics was in 1701. Poor King William was in the thick of the perplexities caused by the mysterious perverse- ness of English politicians. The king's ministers, sup ported by the House of Lords, had lost the command of the House of Commons. It had not yet come to be under stood that the Cabinet was to be a mere committee of the House of Commons. The personal wishes of the sovereign, and the alliances and jealousies of great courtiers, were still highly important factors in the political situation ; as in deed both the composition and the subsequent behaviour of the Commons could be controlled to a considerable ex tent by legitimate and other influences of the Crown. The Commons, unable to make their will obeyed, pro ceeded to impeach Somers and other ministers. A bitter struggle took place between the two Houses, which was suspended by the summer recess. At this crisis Swift published his Discourse on the Dissensions in Athens and Rome. The abstract political argument is as good or as bad as nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand political treatises — that is to say, a repetition of familiar commonplaces ; and the mode of applying precedents from ancient politics would now strike us as pedantic. The pamphlet, however, is dignified and well-written, and the application to the immediate difficulty is pointed. His
66 SWIFT. [CHAP.
argument is, briefly, that the House of Commons is show ing a factious, tyrannical temper, identical in its nature with that of a single tyrant and as dangerous in its con sequences, that it has therefore ceased to reflect the opinions of its constituents, and has endangered the sacred balance between the three primary elements of our constitution, upon which its safe working depends.
The pamphlet was from beginning to end a remon strance against the impeachments, and therefore a defence of the Whig lords ; for whom sufficiently satisfactory parallels are vaguely indicated in Pericles, Aristides, and so forth. It was " greedily bought ;" it was attributed to Somers and to the great "Whig bishop, Btirnet, who had to disown it for fear of an impeachment. An Irish bishop, it is said, called Swift a " very positive young man " for doubting Burnet's authorship; whereupon Swift had to claim it for himself. Youthful vanity, according to his own account, induced him to make the admission, which would certainly not have been withheld by adult discretion. For the result was that Somers, Halifax, and Sunderland, three of the great Whig junto, took him up, often ad mitted him to their intimacy, and were liberal in pro mising him " the greatest preferments " should they come into power. Before long Swift had another opportunity which was also a temptation. The Tory House of Com mons had passed the bill against occasional conformity. Ardent partisans generally approved this bill, as it was clearly annoying to dissenters. It was directed against the practice of qualifying for office by taking the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England without permanently conforming. It might be fairly argued — as Defoe argued, though with questionable sincerity — that such a temporary compliance would be really in-
iv.] LAEACOR AND LONDON. 67
jurious to dissent. The Church would profit by such an exhibition of the flexibility of its opponents' principles. Passions were too much heated for such arguments ; and in the winter of 1703-4, people, says Swift, talked of nothing else. He was " mightily urged by some great people" to publish his opinion. An argument from a powerful writer, and a clergyman, against the bill would be very useful to his Whig friends. But Swift's high church prejudices made him hesitate. The Whig leaders assured him that nothing should induce them to vote against the bill if they expected its rejection to hurt the church or "do kind ness to the dissenters." But it is precarious to argue from the professed intentions of statesmen to their real motives, and yet more precarious to argue to the consequences of their actions. Swift knew not what to think. He resolved to think no more. At last he made up his mind to write against the bill, but he made it up too late. The bill failed to pass ; and Swift felt a relief in dismissing this delicate subject. He might still call himself a Whig, and exult in the growth of Whiggism. Mean while he persuaded himself that the dissenters and their troubles were beneath his notice.
They were soon to come again to the front Swift came to London at the end of 1707, charged with a mission on behalf of his church. Queen Anne's Bounty was founded in 1704. The crown restored to the church the first-fruits and tenths which Henry VIII. had diverted from the papal into his own treasury, and appropriated them to the augmentation of small livings. It was proposed to get the same boon for the Church of Ireland. The whole sum. amounted to about 1000Z. a year, with a possibility of an additional 2000J. Swift, who had spoken of this to King, the Archbishop of p 2
68 SWIFT. [CHAP.
Dublin, was now to act as solicitor on behalf of the Irish clergy, and hoped to make use of his influence with Somers and Sunderland. The negotiation was to give him more trouble than he foresaw, and initiate him, before he had done with it, into certain secrets of cabinets and councils which he as yet very imperfectly appreciated. His letters to King, continued over a long period, throw much light on his motives. Swift was in England from November, 1707, till March, 1709. The year 1708 was for him, as he says, a year of suspense, a year of vast importance to his career, and marked by some characteristic utterances. He hoped to use his influence with Somers. Somers, though still out of office, was the great oracle of the Whigs, whilst Sun derland was already Secretary of State. In January, 1708, the bishopric of Waterford was vacant, and Somers tried to obtain the see for Swift. The attempt failed, but the political catastrophe of the next month gave hopes that the influence of Somers would soon be paramount. Harley, the prince of wire-pulling and back-stair intrigue, had ex ploded the famous Masham plot. Though this project failed, it was " reckoned," says Swift, " the greatest piece of court skill that has been acted many years." Queen Anne was to take advantage of the growing alienation of the church party to break her bondage to the Marl- boroughs, and change her ministers. But the attempt was premature, and discomfited its devisers. Harley was turned out of office ; Marlborough and Godolphin came into alliance with the Whig junto ; and the queen's bon dage seemed more complete than ever. A cabinet crisis in those days, however, took a long time. It was not till October, 1708, that the Whigs, backed by a new Parliament and strengthened by the victory of Oudenardo, were in full enjoyment of power. Somers at last became President of
iv.] LAKACOR AND LONDON. 69
the Council and Wharton Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Wharton's appointment was specially significant for Swift. He was, as even Whigs admitted, a man of infamous cha racter, redeemed only by energy and unflinching fidelity to his party. He was licentious and a freethinker ; his in fidelity showed itself in the grossest' outrages against common decency. If he had any religious principle it was a preference of Presbyterians, as sharing his an tipathy to the church. No man could be more radically antipathetic to Swift. Meanwhile, the success of the Whigs meant in the first instance the success of the men from whom Swift had promises of preferment. He tried to use his influence as he had proposed. In June he had an interview about the first-fruits with Grodolphin, to whom he had been recommended by Somers and Sunder- land. Godolphin replied in vague officialisms, suggesting with studied vagueness that the Irish clergy must show themselves more grateful than the English. His meaning, as Swift thought, was that the Irish clergy should consent to a repeal of the Test Act, regarded by them and by him as the essential bulwark of the Church. Nothing definite, however, was said ; and meanwhile Swift, though he gave no signs of compliance, continued to hope for his own pre ferment. When the final triumph of the Whigs came he was still hoping, though with obvious qualms as to his position. He begged King (in Nov. 1708) to believe in his fidelity to the church. Offers might be made to him, but " no prospect of making my fortune shall ever prevail on me to go against what becomes a man of conscience and truth, and an entire friend to the established church." He hoped that he might be appointed secretary to a projected embassy to Vienna, a position which would put him beyond the region of domestic politics.
Meanwhile he had published certain tracts which may
70 SWIFT. [CHAP.
be taken as the manifesto of his faith at the time when his principles were being most severely tested. "Would he or would he not sacrifice his churchmanship to the interests of the party with which he was still allied ? There can be no doubt that by an open declaration of Whig principles in church matters — such a declaration, say, as would have satisfied Burnet — he would have qualified himself for pre ferment, and have been in a position to command the fulfilment of the promises made by Somers and Sunderland. The writings in question were the Argument to prove tlte inconvenience of abolishing Christianity ; a Project for the Advancement of Religion; and the Sentiments of a Church of England Man. The first, as I have said, was meant to show that the satirical powers which had given offence in the Tale of a Tub, could be applied without equivocation in defence of Christianity. The Project is a very forcible exposition of a text which is common enough in all ages — namely, that the particular age of the writer is one of unprecedented corruption, It shares, however, with Swift's other writings, the merit of down right sincerity, which convinces us that the author is not repeating platitudes, but giving his own experience and speaking from conviction. His proposals for a reform, though he must have felt them to be chimerical, are conceived in the spirit common in the days before people had begun to talk about the State and the individual. He assumes throughout that a vigorous action of the court and the government will reform the nation. He does not contemplate the now commonplace objection that such a revival of the Puritanical system might simply stimulate hypocrisy. He expressly declares that religion may be brought into fashion " by the power of the administra tion," and assumes that to bring religion into fashion is
iv.] LARACOR AND LONDON. 71
the same thing as to make men religious. This view — suitable enough to Swift's imperious temper — was also the general assumption of the time. A suggestion thrown out in his pamphlet is generally said to have led to the scheme soon afterwards carried out under Harley's administration for building fifty new churches in London. A more personal touch is Swift's complaint that the clergy sacrifice their influence by " sequestering themselves " too much, and forming a separate caste. This reads a little like an implied defence of himself for frequenting London coffee houses, when cavillers might have argued that he should be at Laracor. But like all Swift's utterances, it covered a settled principle. I have already noticed this peculiarity, which he shows elsewhere when describing himself as
A clergyman of special note For shunning others of his coat ; Which made his brethren of the gown Take care betimes to run him down.
The Sentiments of a Cliurcli of England Man is more sig nificant. It is a summary of his unvarying creed. In politics he is a good Whig. He interprets the theory of passive obedi ence as meaning obedience to the "legislative power;" not therefore to the king specially ; and he deliberately accepts the revolution on the plain ground of the salus populi. His leading maxim is that the " administration cannot be placed in too few hands nor the legislature in too many." But this political liberalitj" is associated with unhesitating churchmanship. Sects are mischievous : to say that they are mischievous is to say that they ought to be checked in their beginning ; where they exist they should be tolerated, but not to the injurv of the church. And hence he reaches his leading principle that a " govern-
72 SWIFT. [CHAP.
ment cannot give them (sects) too much ease, nor trust them with too little power." Such doctrines clearly and tersely laid down were little to the taste of the Whigs, who were more anxious than ever to conciliate the dis senters. But it was not till the end of the year that Swift applied his abstract theory to a special case. There had been various symptoms of a disposition to relax the Test Acts in Ireland. The appointment of Wharton to be Lord Lieutenant was enough to alarm Swift, even though his friend Addison was to be Wharton's secretary. In December, 1708, he published a pamphlet, ostensibly a let ter from a member of the Irish to a member of the English House of Commons, in which the necessity of keeping up the Test was vigorously enforced. It is the first of Swift's political writings in which we see his true power. In those just noticed he is forced to take an impartial tone. He is trying to reconcile himself to his alliance with the Whigs, or to reconcile the Whigs to their protection of himself. He speaks as a moderator, and poses as the dignified moralist above all party-feeling. But in this letter he throws the reins upon his humour, and strikes his opponents full in the face. From his own point of view the pamphlet is admirable. He quotes Cowley's verse,
Forbid it, heaven, my life should be Weighed with thy least oonveniency.
The Irish, by which he means the English, and the English exclusively of the Scotch, in Ireland, represent this enthu siastic lover, and are called upon to sacrifice themselves to the political conveniency of the Whig party. Swift expresses his usual wrath against the Scots, who are eating up the land, boasts of the loyalty of the Irish Church, and taunts the Presbyterians with their tyranny
iv.] LARACOR AND LONDON. 73
in former days. Am I to be forced, he asks, " to keep my chaplain disguised like my butler, and steal to prayers in a back room, as my grandfather used in those times when the Church of England was malignant ? " Is not this a ripping up of old quarrels ? Ought not all Pro testants to unite against Papists? N"o, the enemy is the same as ever. "It is agreed among naturalists that a lion is a larger, a stronger, and more dangerous enemy than a cat ; yet if a man were to have his choice, either a lion at his foot fast bound with three or four chains, his teeth drawn out, and his claws pared to the quick, or an angry cat in full liberty at his throat, he would take no long time to determine." The bound lion means the Catholic natives, whom Swift declares to be as "inconsiderable as the women and children."
Meanwhile the long first-fruits negotiation was languidly proceeding. At last it seemed to be achieved. Lord Pembroke, the outgoing Lord Lieutenant, sent Swift word that the grant had been made. Swift reported his success to Archbishop King with a very pardonable touch of complacency at his " very little " merit in the matter. But a bitter disappointment followed. The promise made had never been fulfilled. In March, 1709, Swift had again to write to the Archbishop, recounting his failure, his attempt to remonstrate with "Wharton, the new Lord Lieutenant, and the too certain collapse of the whole business. The failure was complete ; the promised boon was not granted, and Swift's chance of a bishopric had pretty well vanished. Halifax, the great "Whig Maecenas, and the Bufo of Pope, wrote to him in his retirement at Dublin, declaring that he had " entered into a confederacy with Mr. Addison " to xirge Swift's claims upon Govern ment, and speaking of the declining health of South,
74 SWIFT. [CHAP.
then a Prebendary of Westminster. Swift endorsed this " I lock up this letter as a true original of courtiers and court promises," and wrote in a volume he had begged from the same person that it was the only favour " he ever received from him or his party." In the last months of his stay he had suffered cruelly from his old giddiness, and he went to Ireland, after a visit to his mother in Lei cester, in sufficiently gloomy mood; retired to Laracor, and avoided any intercourse with the authorities at the Castle, excepting always Addison.
To this it is necessary to add one remark. Swift's version of the story is substantially that which I have given, and it is everywhere confirmed by contemporary letters. It shows that he separated from the Whig party when at the height of their power, and separated because he thought them opposed to the church principles which he advocated from first to last. It is most unjust, therefore to speak of Swift as a deserter from the Whigs, because he afterwards joined the church party, which shared all his strongest prejudices. I am so far from seeing any ground for such a charge, that I believe that few men have ever adhered more strictly to the principles with whic,h they have started. But such charges have generally an element of truth ; and it is easy here to point out what was the really weak point in Swift's position.
Swift's writings, with one or two trifling exceptions, were originally anonymous. As they were very apt to pro duce warrants for the apprehension of publisher and author, the precaution was natural enough in later years. The mask was often merely ostensible ; a sufficient pro tection against legal prosecution, but in reality covering an open secret. When in the Sentiments of a Church of England Man Swift professes to conceal his name care-
iv.] LAEACOE AND LONDON. 75
fully, it may be doubted how far this is to be taken seriously. But he went much further in the letter on the Test Act. He inserted a passage intended really to blind his adversaries by a suggestion that Dr. Swift was likely to write in favour of abolishing the test ; arid he even complains to King of the unfairness of this treatment. His assault, therefore, upon the supposed Whig policy was clandestine. This may possibly be justified ; he might even urge that he was still a Whig, and was warn ing ministers against measures which they had not yet adopted, and from which, as he thinks, they may still be deterred by an alteration of the real Irish feeling.7 He complained afterwards that he was ruined — that is, as to his chances of preferment from the party — by the suspicion of his authorship of this tract. That is to say, he was " ruined " by the discovery of his true sentiments. This is to admit that he was still ready to accept preferment from the men whose supposed policy he was bitterly at tacking, and that he resented their alienation as a grievance. The resentment indeed was most bitter and pertinacious. He turned savagely upon his old friends because they would not make him a bishop. The answer from their point of view was conclusive. He had made a bitter and covert attack, and he could not at once claim a merit from churchmen for defending the church against the Whigs, and revile the Whigs for not rewarding him. But incon sistency of this kind is characteristic of Swift. He thought the Whigs scoundrels for not patronizing him, and not the less scoundrels because their conduct was consistent with their own scoundrelly principles. People who differ from me must be wicked, argued this consistent
7 Letter to King, Jan. 6th, 1709.
76 SWIFT. [CH. iv.
egotist, and their refusal to reward me is only an additional wickedness. The case appeared to him as though he had been a Nathan sternly warning a David of his sins, and for that reason deprived of honour. David could not have urged his sinful desires as an excuse for ill-treatment of Nathan. And Swift was inclined to class indifference to the welfare of the church as a sin even in an avowed Whig. Yet he had to ordinary minds forfeited any right to make non-fulfilment a grievance, when he ought to have regarded performance as a disgrace.
CHAPTEE Y.
THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION.
IN the autumn of 1710 Swift was approaching the end of his forty-third year. A man may well feel at forty-two that it is high time that a post should have heen assigned to him. Should an opportunity he then, and not till then, put in his way, he feels that he is throwing for heavy stakes ; and that failure, if failure should follow, would he irretrievable. Swift had been longing vainly for an opening. In the remarkable letter (of April, 1722) from which I have quoted the anecdote of the lost fish, he says that, " 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 is no great matter ; and so the reputation of wit or great learning does the office of a blue riband or of a coach and six horses." The phrase betrays Swift's scornful self-mockery; that inverted hypocrisy which led him to call his motives by their worst names, and to disavow what he might have been sorry to see denied by others. But, like all that Swift says of himself, it also expresses a genuine con viction. Swift was ambitious, and his ambition meant an absolute need of imposing his will upon others. He was a man born to rule ; not to affect thought, but to control
78 SWIFT. [CHAP.
conduct He was therefore unable to find full occupation, though he might seek occasional distraction, in literary pursuits. Archbishop King, who had a strange knack of irritating his correspondent — not, it seems, without in tention — annoyed Swift intensely in 1711 by advising him (most superfluously) to get preferment, and with that view to write a serious treatise upon some theological question. Swift, who was in the thick of his great political struggle, answered that it was absurd to ask a man floating at sea what he meant to do when he got ashore. " Let him get there first and rest and dry him self, and then look about him." To find firm footing amidst the welter of political intrigues, was Swift's first object. Once landed in a deanery he might begin to think about writing ; but he never attempted, like many men in his position, to win preferment through literary achieve ments. To a man of such a temperament, his career must so far have been cruelly vexatious. We are generally forced to judge of a man's life by a few leading incidents ; and we may be disposed to infer too hastily that the passions roused on those critical occasions coloured the whole tenor of every-day existence. Doubtless Swift was not always fretting over fruitless prospects. He was often eating his dinner in peace and quiet, and even amusing himself with watching the Moor Park rooks or the Laracor trout. Yet it is true that so far as a man's happiness depends upon the consciousness of a satisfactory employment of his faculties, whether with a view to glory or solid comfort, Swift had abundant causes of discontent. The " conjured spirit " was still weaving ropes of sand. For ten years he had been dependent upon Temple, and his struggles to get upon his own legs had been fruitless : on Temple's death he managed when past thirty to wring
y.] THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 79
from fortune a position of bare independence, not of satisfying activity, he tad not gained a fulcrum from which to move the world, but only a bare starting-point whence he might continue to work. The promises from great men had come to nothing. He might perhaps have realized them, could he have consented to be faithless to his dearest convictions ; the consciousness that he had so far sacrificed his position to his principles gave him no comfort, though it nourished his pride. His enforced reticence produced an irritation -against the ministers whom it had been intended to conciliate, which deepened into bitter resentment for their neglect. The year and a half passed in Ireland during 1709-10 was a period in which his day-dreams must have had a background of dis appointed hopes. " I stayed above half the time," he says, " in one scurvy acre of ground, and I always left it with regret." He shut himself up at Laracor, and nourished a growing indignation against the party represented by Wharton.
Yet events were moving rapidly in England, and open ing a new path for his ambition. The Whigs were in full possession of power, though at the price of a growing alienation of all who were weary of a never-ending war, or hostile to the "Whig policy in Church and State. The leaders, though warned by Somers, fancied that they would strengthen their position by attacking the defeated enemy. The prosecution of Sacheverell in the winter of 1709-10, if not directed by personal spite, was meant to intimidate the high-flying Tories. It enabled the Whig leaders to indulge in a vast quantity of admirable constitutional rhetoric ; but it supplied the High Church party with a martyr and a cry, and gave the needed impetus to the growing discontent. The queen took heart to revolt
80 SWIFT. [CHAP.
against the Marlboroughs ; the Whig Ministry were turned out of office ; Harley became Chancellor of the Exchequer in August ; and the parliament was dissolved in September, 1710, to be replaced in November by one in which the Tories had an overwhelming majority.
"We are left to guess at the feelings with which Swift contemplated these changes. Their effect upon his personal prospects was still problematical In spite of his wrathful retirement, there was no open breach between him and the Whigs. He had no personal relations with the new possessors of power. Harley and St. John, the two chiefs, were unknown to him. And, according to his own state ment, he started for England once more with great reluctance in order again to take up the weary Firstfruits negociation. Wharton, whose hostility had intercepted the proposed bounty, went with his party, and was suc ceeded by the High Church Duke of Ormond. The political aspects were propitious for a renewed application, and Swift's previous employment pointed him out as the most desirable agent.
And now Swift suddenly comes into full light. For two or three years we can trace his movements day by day ; follow the development of his hopes and fears ; and see him more clearly than he could be seen by almost any of his contemporaries. The famous Journal to Stella, a series of letters written to Esther Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, from September, 1710, till April, 1713, is the main and central source of information. Before telling the story, a word or two may be said of the nature of this document, one of the most interesting that ever threw light upon the history of a man of genius. The Journal is one of the very few that were clearly written without the faintest thought of publication. There is no
y.] THE HAKLEY ADMINISTRATION. 81
indication of any such intention in the Journal to Stella. It never occurred to Swift that it could ever be seen by any but the persons primarily interested. The journal rather shuns politics ; they will not interest his corre spondent, and he is afraid of the post-office clerks — then and long afterwards often employed as spies. Inter views with ministers have scarcely more prominence than the petty incidents of his daily life. "We are told that he discussed business, but the discussion is not reported. Much more is omitted which might have been of the highest interest. We hear of meetings with Addison ; not a phrase of Addison's is vouchsafed to us ; we go to the door of Harley or St. John ; we get no distinct vision of the men who were the centres of all observation. Nor, again, are there any of those introspective passages which give to some journals the interest of a confession. What, then, is the interest of the Journal to Stella ? One element of strange and singular fascination, to be con sidered hereafter, is the prattle with his correspondent. For the rest, our interest depends in great measure upon the reflections with which we must ourselves clothe the bare skeleton of facts. In reading the Journal to Stella we may fancy ourselves waiting in a parliamentary lobby during an excited debate. One of the chief actors hurries out at intervals ; pours out a kind of hasty bulletin ; tells of some thrilling incident, or indicates some threatening symptom ; more frequently he seeks to relieve his anxieties by indulging in a little personal gossip, and only interjects such comments upon politics as can be compressed into a hasty ejaculation, often, as may be supposed, of the imprecatory kind. Yet he uncon sciously betrays his hopes and fears ; he is fresh from the thick of the fight, and we perceive that his nerves are
a
82 SWIFT. [CHAP.
still quivering, and that his phrases are glowing with the ardour of the struggle. Hopes and fears are long since faded, and the struggle itself is now but a war of phan toms. Yet with the help of the Journal and contemporary documents, we can revive for the moment the decaying images, and cheat ourselves into the momentary per suasion that the fate of the world depends upon Harley's success, as we now hold it to depend upon Mr. Gladstone's. Swift reached London on September 7th, 1710 ; the political revolution was in full action, though Parliament was not yet dissolved. The Whigs were "ravished to see him ; " they clutched at him, he says, like drowning men at a twig, and the great men made him their "clumsy apologies." Godolphin was "short, dry and morose ; " Soniers tried to make explanations, which Swift received with studied coldness. The ever-courteous Halifax gave him dinners ; and asked him to drink to the resurrection of the Whigs, which Swift refused unless he would add " to their reformation." Halifax persevered in his attentions, and was always entreating him to go down to Hampton Court ; " which will cost me a guinea to his servants, and twelve shillings coach hire, and I will see him hanged first." Swift, however, retained his old friendship with the wits of the party ; dined with Addison at his retreat in Chelsea, and sent a trifle or two to the Tatler. The elections began in October; Swift had to drive through a rabble of Westminster electors, judiciously agreeing with their sentiments to avoid dead cats and broken glasses ; and though Addison was elected (" I believe," says Swift, " if he had a mind to be chosen king, he would hardly be refused"), the Tories were triumphant in every direction. And meanwhile, the Tory leaders were delightfully civil
V.] THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 83
On the 4th of October Swift was introduced to Harley, getting himself described (with undeniable truth) " as a discontented person, who was ill used for not being Whig enough." The poor Whigs lamentably confess, he says, their ill usage of him, " but I mind them not." Their confession came too late. Harley had received him with open arms, and won no.t only Swift's adhesion, but his warm personal attachment. The fact is indisputable, though rather curious. Harley appears to us as a shifty and feeble politician, an inarticulate orator, wanting in principles and resolution, who made it his avowed and almost only rule of conduct that a politician should live from hand to mouth.1 Yet his prolonged influence in Parliament seems to indicate some personal attraction, which was perceptible to his contemporaries, though rather puzzling to us. All Swift's panegyrics leave the secret in obscurity. Harley seems indeed to have been eminently respectable and decorously religious, amiable in personal intercourse, and able to say nothing in such a way as to suggest profundity instead of emptiness. His reputation as a party manager was immense ; and is partly justified by his quick recognition of Swift's extraordinary qualifi cations. He had inferior scribblers in his pay, including, as we remember with regret, the shifty Defoe. But he wanted a man of genuine ability and character. Some months later the ministers told Swift that they had been afraid of none but him ; and resolved to have him.
They got him. Harley had received him " with the greatest kindness and respect imaginable." Three days later (Oct. 7th) the firstfruits business is discussed, and Harley received the proposals as warmly as became a
1 Swift to King, July 12, 1711. o 2
t?
84 SWIFT. [CHAP.
friend of the Church, besides overwhelming Swift with civilities. Swift is to be introduced to St. John ; to dine with Harley next Tuesday ; and after an interview of four hours, the minister sets him down at St. James's Coffee-house in a hackney coach. " All this is odd and comical ! " exclaims Swift ; " he knew my Christian name very well," and, as we hear next day, begged Swift to come to him often, but not to his levee : " that was not a place for friends to meet." On the 10th of October, within a week from the first introduction, Harley promises to get the firstfruits business, over which the Whigs had haggled for years, settled by the following Sunday. Swift's exul tation breaks out. On the 14th he declares that he stands ten times better with the new people than ever he did with the old, and is forty times more caressed. The triumph is sharpened by revenge. Nothing, he says of the sort was ever compassed so soon; "and purely done by my personal credit with Mr. Harley, who is so excessively obliging, that I know not what to make of it, unless to show the rascals of the other side that they used a man unworthily who deserved better." A passage on Nov. 8th sums up his sentiments. " Why," he says in answer to something from Stella, " should the Whigs think I came from Ireland to leave them? Sure my journey was no secret ! I protest sincerely, I did all I could to hinder it, as the dean can tell you, though now I do not repent it. But who the devil cares what they think ? Am I under obligations in the least to any of them all1? Rot them for ungrateful dogs ; I will make them repent their usage before I leave this place." The thirst for vengeance may not be edifying ; the political zeal was clearly not of the purest ; but in truth, Swift's party prejudices and his persoual resentments arc fused into indissoluble unity.
v.] THE HAELEY ADMINISTRATION. 85
Hatred of Whig principles and resentment of Whig *' ill-usage " of himself, are one and the same thing. Meanwhile, Swift was able (on Nov. 4) to announce his triumph to the Archbishop. He was greatly annoyed by an incident, of which he must also have seen the humorous side. The Irish bishops had bethought themselves after Swift's departure that he was too much of a Whig to be an effective solicitor. They proposed therefore to take the matter out of his hands and apply to Ormond, the new Lord Lieutenant. Swift replied indignantly; the thing was done, however, and he took care to let it be known that the whole credit belonged to Harley, and of course, in a subordinate sense, to himself. Official formalities were protracted for months longer, and formed one excuse for Swift's continued absence from Ireland ; but we need not trouble ourselves with the matter further.
Swift's unprecedented leap into favour meant more than a temporary success. The intimacy with Harley and with St. John rapidly developed. Within a few months, Swift had forced his way into the very innermost circle of official authority. A notable quarrel seems to have given the final impulse to his career. In February, 1711, Harley offered him a fifty-pound note. This was virtually to treat him as a hireling instead of an ally. Swift resented the offer as an intolerable affront. He refused to be reconciled without ample apology, and after long entreaties. His pride was not appeased for ten days, when the reconciliation was sealed by an invitation from Harley to a Saturday dinner.2 On Saturdays, the Lord
2 These dinners, it may be noticed, seem to have been held on Thursdays when Harley had to attend the court at Windsor. This may lead to some confusion with the Brothers' Club, which met on Thursdays during the parliamentary session.
86 SWIFT. [CHAP.
Keeper (Harcourt) and the Secretary of State (St. John) dined alone with Harley : " and at last," says Swift, in reporting the event, " they have consented to let me among them on that day." He goes next day, and already cliides Lord Kivers for presuming to intrude into the sacred circle. " They call me nothing but Jonathan," he adds ; " and I said I believed they would leave me Jonathan, as they found me." These dinners were con tinued, though they became less select. Harley called Saturday his " whipping-day ; " and Swift was the heartiest wielder of the lash. From the same February, Swift began to dine regularly with St. John every Sunday ; and we may note it as some indication of the causes of his later preference of Harley, that on one occasion he has to leave St. John early. The company, he says, were in constraint, because he would suffer no man to swear or talk indecently in his presence.
Swift had thus conquered the ministry at a blow. What services did he render in exchange ? His extra ordinary influence seems to have been due in a measure to sheer force of personal ascendency. No man could come into contact with Swift without feeling that magnetic influence. But he was also doing a more tangible service. In thus admitting Swift to their intimacy, Harley and St. John were in fact paying homage to the rising power of the pen. Political writers had hitherto been hirelings, and often little better than spies. No preceding, and, we may add, no succeeding writer ever achieved such a position by such means. The press has become more powerful as a whole : but no particular representative of the press has made such a leap into power. Swift came at the time when the influence of political writing was already great : and when the personal favour of a prominent minister
V.] THE 1IARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 87
could still work miracles. Harley made him a favourite of the old stamp, to reward his supremacy in the use of the new weapon.
Swift had begun in October by avenging himself upon Godolphin's coldness, in a copy of Hudibrastic verses about the virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician's Rod — that is, the treasurer's staff of office — which had a won derful success. He fell savagely upon the hated Wharton not long after, in what he calls " a damned libellous pamphlet," of which 2000 copies were sold in two days. Libellous, indeed, is a faint epithet to describe a pro duction which, if its statements be true, proves that Wharton deserved to be hunted from society. Charges of lying, treachery, atheism, Presbyterianism, debauchery, indecency, shameless indifference to his own reputation and his wife's, the vilest corruption and tyranny in his government are piled upon his victim as thickly as they will stand. Swift does not expect to sting Wharton. " I neither love nor hate him," he says. " If I see him after this is published, he will tell me ' that he is damnably mauled ;' and then, with the easiest transition in the world, ask about the weather, or the time of day." Wharton might possibly think that abuse of this kind might almost defeat itself by its own virulence. But Swift had already begun writings of a more statesmanlike and effective kind.
A paper war was already raging when Swift came to London. The Examiner had been started by St. John, with the help of Atterbury, Prior, and others ; and, opposed for a short time by Addison, in the -Whig Examiner. Harley, after granting the first-fruits, had told Swift, that the great want of the ministry was " some good pen," to keep up the spirits of the party. The
88 SWIFT. [CHAP.
Examiner, however, was in need of a firmer and more regular manager; and Swift took it in hand, his first weekly article appearing November 2nd, 1710, his last on June 14th, 1711. His Examiners achieved an immediate and unprecedented success. And yet to say the truth, a modern reader is apt to find them decidedly heavy. No one, indeed, can fail to perceive the masculine sense, the terseness and precision of the utterance. And yet many writings which produced less effect are far more readable now. The explanation is simple, and applies to most of Swift's political writings. They are all rather acts than words. They are blows struck in a party-contest : and their merit is to be gauged by their effect. Swift cares nothing for eloquence, or logic, or invective — and little, it must be added, for veracity — so long as he hits his mark. To judge him by a merely literary standard, is to judge a fencer by the grace of his attitudes. Some high literary merits are implied in efficiency, as real grace is necessary to efficient fencing : but in either case, a clumsy blow which reaches the heart is better than the most dexterous flourish in the air. Swift's eye is always on the end, as a good marksman looks at nothing but the target.
What, then, is Swift's aim in the Examiner? Mr. Kinglake has told us how a great journal throve by discovering what was the remark that was on every one's lips, and making the remark its own. Swift had the more dignified task of really striking the keynote for his party. He was to put the ministerial theory into that form in which it might seem to be the inevitable utterance of strong common-sense. Harley's supporters were to see in Swift's phrases just what they would themselves have said — if they had been able. The shrewd, sturdy, narrow prejudices of the average Englishman were to be pressed
V.] THE HAELEY ADMINISTRATION. 89
into the service of the ministry, by showing how admirably they could be clothed in the ministerial formulas.
The real question, again, as Swift saw, was the question of peace. Whig and Tory, as he said afterwards,3 were really obsolete words. The true point at issue was peace or war. The purpose, therefore, was to take up his ground so that peace might be represented as the natural policy of the church or Tory party ; and war as the natural fruit of the selfish "Whigs. It was necessary, at the same time, to show that this was not the utterance of high-flying Toryism or downright Jacobitism, but the plain dictate of a cool and impartial judgment. He was not to prove but to take for granted that the war had become intolerably burdensome ; and to express the growing wish for peace in terms likely to conciliate the greatest number of sup porters. He was to lay down the platform which could attract as many as possible, both of the zealous Tories and of the lukewarm "Whigs.
Measured by their fitness for this end, the Examiners are admirable. Their very fitness for the end implies the absence of some qualities which would have been more attractive to posterity. Stirring appeals to patriotic sen timent may suit a Chatham rousing a nation to action ; but Swift's aim is to check the extravagance in the name of selfish prosaic prudence. The philosophic reflections of Burke, had Swift been capable of such reflection, would have flown above the heads of his hearers. Even the polished and elaborate invective of Junius would have been out of place. No man, indeed, was a greater master of invective than Swift. He shows it in the Examiners by onslaughts upon the detested Wharton. He shows,
3 Letter to a Whig Lord, 1712.
90 SWIFT. [CHAP.
too, that he is not restrained by any scruples when it comes in his way to attack his old patrons, and he adopts the current imputations upon their private character. He could roundly accuse Cowper of .bigamy, and Somers — the Somers whom he had elaborately praised some years before in the dedication to the Tale of a Tub— of the most abominable perversion of justice. But these are taunts thrown out by the way. The substance of the articles is not invective, but profession of political faith. One great name, indeed, is of necessity assailed. Marlborough's fame was a tower of strength for the Whigs. His duchess and his colleagues had fallen ; but whilst war was still raging, it seemed impossible to dismiss the greatest living commander. Yet whilst Marlborough was still in power, his influence might be used to bring back his party. Swift's treatment of this great adversary is significant. He constantly took credit for having suppressed many attacks * upon Marlborough. He was convinced that it would be dangerous for the country to dismiss a general whose very name carried victory.5 He felt that it was dangerous for the party to make an unreserved attack upon the popular hero. Lord Rivers, he says, cursed the Examiner to him for speaking civilly of Marlborough ; and St. John, upon hearing of this, replied that if the counsels of such men as Eivers were taken, the ministry " would be blown up in twenty-four hours." Yet Marlborough was the war personified ; and the way to victory lay over Marlborough's body. Nor had Swift any regard for the man himself, who, he says,6 is certainly a vile man, and has no sort of merit except the military — as " covetous as hell, and as
* Journal to Stella, Feb. 6th, 1712, and Jan. 8th and 25th, 1712.
* Ib. Jan. 7th, 1711. • Ib. Jan. 21st, 1712.
v.] THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 91
ambitious as the prince of it." 7 The whole case of the ministry implied the condemnation of Marlborough. Most modern historians would admit that continuance of the war could at this time be desired only by fanatics or interested persons. A psychologist might amuse himself by inquir ing what were the actual motives of its advocates ; in what degrees personal ambition, a misguided patriotism, or some more sordid passions were blended. But in the ordinary dialect of political warfare there is no room for such refinements. The theory of Swift and Swift's patrons was simple. The war was the creation of the Whig " ring ;" it was carried on for their own purposes by the stock-jobbers and "moniedmen," whose rise was a new political phenomenon, and who had introduced the diabolical contrivance of public debts. The landed interest and the church had been hoodwinked too long by the union of corrupt interests supported by Dutchmen, Scotchmen, dissenters, freethinkers, and other manifesta tions of the evil principle. Marlborough was the head and patron of the whole. And what was Marlborough's motive 1 The answer was simple. It was that which has been assigned, with even more emphasis, by Macaulay — Avarice. The twenty-seventh Examiner (Feb. 8th, 1711) probably contains the compliments to which Eivers objected. Swift, in fact, admits that Marlborough had all the great qualities generally attributed to him ; but all are spoilt by this fatal blemish. How far the accusation was true matters little. It is put at least with force and dignity ; and it expressed in the pithiest shape Swift's genuine conviction, that the war now meant corrupt self- interest. Invective, as Swift knew well enough in his
•> 16. Dec. 31st, 1710.
92 SWIFT. [CHAP.
cooler moments, is a dangerous weapon, apt to recoil on the assailant unless it carries conviction. The attack on Marlborough does not betray personal animosity ; but the deliberate and the highly plausible judgment of a man determined to call things by their right names, and not to be blinded by military glory.
This, indeed, is one of the points upon which Swift's Toryism was unlike that of some later periods. He always disliked and despised soldiers and their trade. " It will no doubt be a mighty comfort to our grandchildren," he says in another pamphlet,8 " when they see a few rags hung up in Westminster Hall which cost a hundred millions, whereof they are paying the arrears, to boast as beggars do that their grandfathers were rich and great." And in other respects he has some right to claim the adhesion of thorough Whigs. His personal attacks, indeed, upon the party have a questionable sound. In his zeal he constantly forgets that the corrupt ring which he denounces were the very men from whom he expected preferment. " I well remember," he says9 elsewhere, " the clamours often raised during the late reign of that party (the Whigs) against the leaders by those who thought their merits were not rewarded ; and they had, no doubt, reason on their side, because it is, no doubt, a misfortune to forfeit honour and conscience for nothing " — rather an awkward remark from a man who was calling Somers "a false, deceitful rascal " for not giving him a bishopric ! His eager desire to make the " ungrateful dogs " repent their ill-usage of him prompts attacks which injure his own character with that of his former associates. But he has some ground for saying that Whigs have changed their
• Conduct of the Allies. » Advice to October Club.
V.] THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 93
principles, in the sense that their dislike of prerogative and of standing armies had curiously declined when the Crown and the army came to be on their side. Their enjoyment of power had made them soften some of the prejudices learnt in days of depression. Swift's dis like of what we now call " militarism " really went deeper than any party sentiment ; and in that sense, as we shall hereafter see, it had really most affinity with a radicalism which would have shocked Whigs and Tories alike. But in this particular case it fell in with the Tory sentiment. The masculine vigour of the Examiners served the ministry, who were scarcely less in danger from the excessive zeal of their more bigoted followers than from the resistance of the Whig minority. The pig-headed country squires had formed an October Club, to muddle themselves with beer and politics, and hoped — good honest souls — to drive ministers into a genuine attack on the corrupt practices of their predecessors. All Harley's skill in intriguing and wire-pulling would be needed. The ministry, said Swift (on March 4th), " stood like an isthmus " between Whigs and violent Tories. He trembled for the result. They are able seamen, but the tempest " is too great, the ship too rotten, and the crew all against them." Somershad been twice in the queen's closet. The Duchess of Somerset, who had succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough, might be trying to play Mrs. Masham's game. Harley, " though the most fearless man alive," seemed to be nervous, and was far from well. " Pray God preserve his health," says Swift ; " everything depends upon it." Four days later, Swift is in an agony. " My heart," he exclaims, " is almost broken." Harley had been stabbed by Guis- card (March 8th, 1711) at the council-board. Swift's letters and journals show an agitation, in which personal
04 SWIFT. [CHAJ».
affection seems to be even stronger than political anxiety. '• Pray pardon my distraction," he says to Stella, in broken sentences. " I now think of all his kindness to me. The poor creature now lies stabbed in his bed by a des perate French popish villain. Good night, and God bless you both, and pity me ; I want it" He wrote to King under the same excitement. Harley, he says, " has always treated me with the tenderness of a parent, and never refused me any favour I asked for a friend ; there fore I hope your Grace will excuse the character of this letter. " He apologizes again in a postscript for his confusion ; it must be imputed to the " violent pain of mind I am in — greater than ever I felt in my life." The danger was not over for three weeks. The chief effect seems to have been that Harley became popular as the intended victim of an hypothetical Popish conspiracy ; he introduced an applauded financial scheme in Parliament after his re covery, and was soon afterwards made Earl of Oxford by way of consolation. " This man," exclaimed Swift, " has grown by persecutions, turnings out, and stabbings. "What waiting and crowding and bowing there will be at his levee !"
Swift had meanwhile (April 26) retired to Chelsea "for the air," and to have the advantage of a compulsory walk into j,own (two miles, or 5748 steps each way, he calcu lates). He was liable, indeed, to disappointment on a rainy day, when " all the three stage-coaches " were taken up by the " cunning natives of Chelsea ;" but he got a lift to town in a gentleman's coach for a shilling. He bathed in the river on the hot nights, with his Irish servant, Patrick, standing on the bank to warn off passing boats. The said Patrick, who is always getting drunk, whom Swift cannot find it in his heart to dismiss in England, who
v.] THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 95
atones for his general carelessness and lying by buying a linnet for Dingley, making it wilder than ever in his attempts to tame it, is a characteristic figure in the journal. In June Swift gets ten days' holiday at Wycombe, and in the summer he goes down pretty often with the ministers to Windsor. He came to town in two hours and forty minutes on one occasion : " twenty miles are nothing here." The journeys are described in one of the happiest of his occasional poems —
" 'Tis (let me see ) three years or more (October next it will be four) Since Harley bid me first attend And chose me for an humble friend : Would take me in his coach to chat And question me of this or that : As " What's o'clock ? " and " How's the wind ? " " Whose chariot's that we left behind ? " Or gravely try to read the lines Writ underneath the country signs. Or, " Have you nothing new to-day, From Pope, from Parnell, or from Gay ? " Such tattle often entertains My lord and me as far as Staines, As once a week we travel down To Windsor, and again to town, Where all that passes inter nos Might be proclaimed at Charing Cross.
And when, it is said, St. John was disgusted by the frivolous amusements of his companions ; and his political discourses might be interrupted by Harley's exclamation, " Swift, I am up ; there's a cat " — the first who saw a cat or an old woman, winning the game.
Swift and Harley were soon playing a more exciting game. Prior had been sent to France to renew peace negotiations, with eladorate mystery. Even Swift was
96 SWIFT. [CHAP.
kept in ignorance. On his return Prior was arrested by officious custom-house officers, and the fact of his journey became public. Swift took advantage of the general interest by a pamphlet intended to " bite the town." Its political purpose, according to Swift, was to " furnish fools with something to talk of ;" to draw a false scent across the trail of the angry and suspicious Whigs. It seems difficult to believe that any such effect could be produced or anticipated ; but the pamphlet, which purports to be an account of Prior's journey given by a French valet, desirous of passing himself off as a secretary, is an amusing example of Swift's power of grave simulation of realities. The peace negotiations brought on a decisive political struggle. Parliament was to meet in September. The Whigs resolved to make a desperate effort. They had lost the House of Commons, but were still strong in the Peers. The Lords were not affected by the rapid oscilla tions of public opinion. They were free from some of the narrower prejudices of country squires, and true to a revolution which gave the chief power for more than a century to the aristocracy : while the recent creations had ennobled the great Whig leaders, and filled the bench with low churchmen. Marlborough and Godolphin had come over to the Whig junto, and an additional alliance was now made. Nottingham had been passed over by Harley, as it seems, for his extreme Tory principles. In his wrath, he made an agreement with the other extreme. By one of the most disgraceful bargains of party history, Nottingham was to join the Whigs in attacking the peace, whilst the Whigs were to buy his support by accepting the Occasional Conformity Bill — the favourite high church measure. A majority in the House of Lords could not indeed determine the victory. The Government of Eng-
v.] THE HAKLEY ADMINISTRATION. 97
land, says Swift in 1715,1 " cannot move a step while the House of Commons continues to dislike proceedings or persons employed." But the plot went further. The House of Lords might bring about a deadlock, as it had done before. The queen, having thrown off the rule of the Duchess of Marlborough, had sought safety in the rule of two mistresses, Mrs. Masham and the Duchess of Somerset. The Duchess of Somerset was in the Whig interest; and her influence with the, queen caused the gravest anxiety to Swift and the ministry. She might induce Anne to call back the Whigs, and in a new House of Commons, elected under a Whig ministry wielding the crown influence and appealing to the dread of a dis creditable peace, the majority might bo reversed. Mean while Prince Eugene was expected to pay a visit to England, bringing fresh proposals for war, and stimulating by his presence the enthusiasm of the Whigs.
Towards the end of September the Whigs began to pour in a heavy fire of pamphlets, and Swift rather meanly begs the help of St. John and the law. But he is confident of victory. Peace is certain ; and a peace " very much to the honour and advantage of England." The Whigs are furious; "but we'll wherret them, I warrant, boys." Yet he has misgivings. The news comes of the failure of the Tory expedition against Quebec, which was to have anticipated the policy and the triumphs of Chatham. Harley only laughs as usual ; but St. John is cruelly vexed, and begins to suspect his colleagues of suspecting him. Swift listens to both, and tries to smooth matters ; but he is growing serious. " I am half weary of them all," he exclaims, and begins to talk of
1 Behaviour of Queen's Ministry.
98 SWIFT. [CHAP.
retiring to Ireland. Harley has a slight illness, and Swift is at once in a fright. " We are all undone without him," he says, " so pray for him, sirrahs ! " Meanwhile, as the parliamentary struggle comes nearer, Swift launches the pamphlet which has been his summer's work. The Conduct of the Allies is intended to prove what he had taken for granted in the Examiner*. It is to show, that is, that the war has ceased to be deniauded by national interests. We ought always to have been auxiliaries ; we chose to become principals ; and have yet so conducted the war that all the advantages have gone to the Dutch. The explanation of course is the selfishness or corruption of the great Whig junto. The pamphlet, forcible and terse in the highest degree, had a success due in part to other circumstances. It was as much a State paper as a pamphlet ; a manifesto obviously inspired by the ministry and containing the facts and papers which were to serve in the coming debates. It was published on Nov. 27th ; on December 1st the second edition was sold in five hours ; and by the end of January 11,000 copies had been sold. The parliamentary struggle began on December 7th ; and the amendment to the address, declaring that no peace could be safe which left Spain to the Bourbons, was moved by Nottingham, and carried by a small majority. Swift had foreseen this danger; he had begged ministers to work up the majority ; and the defeat was due to Harley's carelessness. It was Swift's temper to anticipate though not to yield to the worst. He could see nothing but ruin. Every rumour increased his fears, The queen had taken the hand of the Duke of Somerset on leaving the House of Lords, and refused Shrewsbury's. She must be going over. Swift, in his despair, asked St. John to find him some foreign post, where he might be out of
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harm's way if the Whigs should triumph. St. John laughed and affected courage, but Swift refused to be comforted. Harley told him that " all would be well ;" but Haiiey for the moment had lost his confidence. A week after the vote he looks upon the ministry as certainly ruined j and " God knows," he adds, " what may be the consequences." By degrees a little hope began to appear ; though the ministry, as Swift still held, could expect nothing till the Duchess of Somerset was turned out. By way of accelerating this event, he hit upon a plan, which he had reason to repent, and which nothing but his ex citement could explain. He composed and printed one of his favourite squibs, the Windsor Prophecy, and though Mrs. Masharn persuaded him not to publish it, distributed too many copies for secrecy to be possible. In this pro duction, now dull enough, he calls the duchess" carrots," as a delicate hint at her red hair, and says that she mur dered her second husband.2 These statements, even if true, were not conciliatory ; and it was folly to irritate with out injuring. Meanwhile reports of ministerial plans gave him a little courage ; and in a day or two the secret was out. He was on his way to the post on Saturday, December 28th, when the great news came. The ministry had resolved on something like a coup d'etat, to be long mentioned with horror by all orthodox Whigs and Tories. " I have broke open my letter," scribbled Swift in a coffee house, " and tore it into the bargain, to let you know that
2 There was enough plausibility in this scandal to give it a sting. The duchess had left her second husband, a Mr. Thynne, immediately after the marriage ceremony, and fled to Holland. There Count Coningsniark paid her his addresses, and, coming to England, had Mr. Thynne shot by ruffians in Pall Mall. See the curious case in the State Trials, vol. ix. H'2
100 SWIFT. [CHAP.
we are all safe. The queen has made no less than twelve new peers .... and has turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is awaked at last, and so is Lord Treasurer. I want nothing now but to see the duchess out. But we shall do without her. We are all extremely happy. Give me joy, sirrahs ! " The Duke of Somerset was not out ; but a greater event happened within three days ; the Duke of Marlborough was removed from all his employ ments. The Tory victory was for the time complete.
Here, too, was the culminating point of Swift's career. Fifteen months of energetic effort had been crowned with success. He was the intimate of the greatest men in the country ; and the most powerful exponent of their policy. No man in England, outside the ministry, enjoyed a wider reputation. The ball was at his feet; and no position open to a clergyman beyond his hopes. Yet from this period begins a decline. He continued to write, publishing numerous squibs, of which many have been lost, and occasionally firing a gun of heavier metal. But nothing came from him having the authoritative and masterly tone of the Conduct of the Allies. His health broke down. At the beginning of April, 1712, he was attacked by a distressing complaint ; and his old enemy, giddiness, gave him frequent alarms. The daily journal ceased, and was not fairly resumed till December, though its place is partly supplied by occasional letters. The political contest had changed its character. The centre of interest was transferred to Utrecht, where negotiations began in January, to be protracted over fifteen months : the ministry had to satisfy the demand for peace, without shocking the national self-esteem. Meanwhile jealousies were rapidly developing themselves, which Swift watched with ever-growing anxiety.
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Swift's personal influence remained or increased. He drew closer to Oxford, but was still friendly with St. John ; and to the public his position seemed more im posing than ever. Swift was not the man to bear his honours meekly. In the early period of his acquaintance with St. John (February 12, 1711), he sends the Prime Minister into the House of Commons, to tell the Secretary of State that " I would not dine with him if he dined late." He is still a novice at the Saturday dinners when the Duke of Shrewsbury appears : Swift whispers that he does not like to see a stranger among them ; and St. John has to explain that the Duke has written for leave. St. John then tells Swift that the Duke of Buckingham desires his acquaintance. The Duke, replied Swift, has not made sufficient advances : and he always expects greater advances from men in proportion to their rank. Dukes and great men yielded, if only to humour the pride of this audacious parson : and Swift soon came to be pestered by innumerable applicants, attracted by his ostentation of influence. Even ministers applied through him. " There is not one of them," he says, in January, 1713, " but what will employ me as gravely to speak for them to Lord Treasurer, as if I were their brother or his." He is proud of the burden of influence with the great, though he affects to complain. The most vivid picture of Swift in all his glory, is in a familiar passage from Bishop Kennett's diary : —
" Swift," says Kennett, in 1713, " came into the coffee-house, and had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the antechamber to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as minister of requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother the Duke of Ormond to get a chaplain's place established in
102 SWIFT. [CHAP.
the garrison of Hull, for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and published sermons to pay fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to under take with my Lord Treasurer that according to his petition he should obtain a salary of 200?. per annum, as minister of the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the red bag to t-he queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He talked with the son of Dr. Davenant to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book and wrote down several things as memoranda, to do for him. He turned to the fire, and took out his gold watch, and telling him the time of day, complained it was very late. A gentleman said, " it was too fast." " How can I help it," says the Doctor, " if the courtiers give me a watch that won't go right?" Then he instructed a young nobleman that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which, he said, he must have them all subscribe. ' For,' says he, ' the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.' Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him ; both went off just before prayers.''
There is undoubtedly something offensive in this blustering self-assertion. " No man," says Johnson, with his iisual force, " can pay a more servile tribute to the great than by suffering his liberty in their presence to aggrandize him in his own esteem." Delicacy was not Swift's strong point; his compliments are as clumsy as his invectives are forcible ; and he shows a certain taint of vulgarity in his intercourse with social dignitaries. He is perhaps avenging himself for the humiliations received at Moor Park. He has a Napoleonic absence of magnanimity. He likes to relish his triumph ; to accept the pettiest as well as the greatest rewards ; to flaunt his
v.] THE HAELEY ADMINISTRATION. 103
splendours in the eyes of the servile as well as to enjoy the consciousness of real power. But it would be a great mistake to infer that this ostentatiousness of authority con cealed real servility. Swift preferred to take the bull by the horns. He forced himself upon ministers by self- assertion ; and he held them in awe of him as the lion- tamer keeps down the latent ferocity of the wild beast. He never takes his eye off his subjects, nor lowers his imperious demeanour. He retained his influence, as Johnson observes, long after his services had ceased to be useful. And all this demonstrative patronage meant real and energetic work. We may note, for example, and it incidentally confirms Kennett's accuracy, that he was really serviceable to Davenant,3 and that Fiddes got the chaplaincy at Hull. No man ever threw himself with more energy into the service of his friends. He declared afterwards that in the days of his credit he had done fifty times more for fifty people, from whom he had received no obligations, than Temple had done for him.4 The journal abounds in proofs that this was not overstated. There is " Mr. Harrison," for example, who has written "some mighty pretty things." Swift takes him up; rescues him from the fine friends who are carelessly tempting him to extravagance ; tries to start him in a continuation of the Taller; exults in getting him a secretaryship abroad, which he declares to be " the prettiest post in Europe for a young gentleman ; " and is most unaffectedly and deeply grieved when the poor lad dies of a fever. He is carrying 100?. to his young friend, when he hears of his death. " I told Parnell I was afraid to knock at the door, my mind misgave me," he says. On
3 Letters from Smalridge and Dr. Davenant in 1713.
4 Letter to Lord Palmerston, Jan. 29th, 1726.
104 SWIFT. [CHAP.
his way to bring help to Harrison, he goes to see a " poor poet, one Mr. Diaper, in a nasty garret, very sick," and consoles him with twenty guineas from Lord Bolingbroke. A few days before he has managed to introduce Pamell to Harley, or rather to contrive it so that " the ministry desire to be acquainted with Parnell, and not Parnell with the ministry." His old schoolfellow Congreve was in alann about his appointments. Swift spoke at once to Harley, and went off immediately to report his success to Congreve: "so," he says, "I have made a worthy man easy, and that is a good day's work." 5 One of the latest letters in his journal refers to his attempt to serve his other schoolfellow, Berkeley. "I will favour him as much as I can," he says ; " this I think I am bound to in honour and conscience, to use all my little credit toward helping forward men of worth in the world." He was always helping less conspicuous men ; and he prided himself, with justice, that he had been as helpful to Whigs as to Tories. The ministry complained that he never came to them "without a Whig in his sleeve." Besides his friend Congreve, he recommended Rowe for preferment, and did his best to protect Steele and Addison. No man of letters ever laboured more heartily to promote the interests of his fellow-craftsmen, as few have ever had similar opportunities.
Swift, it is plain, desired to use his influence magnifi cently. He hoped to make his reign memorable by splendid patronage of literature. The great organ of munificence was the famous Brothers' Club, of which he was the animating spirit. It was founded in June, 1711, during Swift's absence at Wy combe ; it was intended to "advance conversation and friendship," and obtain * June 22nd, 1711.
v.J THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 105
patronage for deserving persons. It was to include none but wits and men able to help wits, and, " if we go on as we begun," says Swift, " no other club in this town will be worth talking of." In March, 1712, it consisted, as Swift tells us, of nine lords and ten commoners.6 It excluded Harley and the Lord Keeper (Harcourt) apparently as they were to be the distributors of the patronage ; but it included St. John and several leading ministers, Harley's son and son-in-law, and Harcourt's son ; whilst literature was represented by Swift, Arbutlmot, Prior, and Friend, all of whom were more or less actively employed by the ministry. The club was therefore composed of the ministry and their dependents, though it had not avowedly a political colouring. It dined on Thursday during the Parliamentary session, when the political squibs of the day were often laid on the table, including Swift's famous Windsor Prophecy, and sub scriptions were sometimes collected for such men as Diaper and Harrison. It flourished, however, for little more than the first season. In the winter of 1712-13 it began to suffer from the common disease of such institu tions. Swift began to complain bitterly of the extrava gance of the charges. He gets the club to leave a tavern in which the bill7 "for four dishes and four, first
6 The list, so far as I can make it out from references in the journal, appears to include more names. One or two had pro bably retired. The peers are as follows : — The Dukes of Shrews bury (perhaps only suggested), Ormond and Beaufort; Lords Orrery, Rivers, Dartmouth, Dupplin, Masham, Bathurst, and Lansdowne (the last three were of the famous twelve) j and the commoners are Swift, Sir R. Raymond, Jack Hill, Disney, Sir W. Wyndham, St. John, Prior, Friend, Arbuthnot, Harley (son of Lord Oxford), and Harcourt (son of Lord Harcourt) .
i Feb. 28th, 1712.
106 SWIFT. [CHAP.
and second course, without wine and drink," had been 21Z. 6s. 8d. The number of guests, it seems, was fourteen. Next winter the charges are divided. " It cost me nine teen shillings to-day for my club dinner," notes Swift, Dec. 18, 1712. "I don't like it." Swift had a high value for every one of the nineteen shillings. The meetings became irregular: Harley was ready to give promises, but no patronage : and Swift's attendance falls off. Indeed, it may be noted that he found dinners and suppers full of danger to his health. He constantly complains of their after-effects ; and partly perhaps for that reason he early ceases to frequent coffee-houses. Perhaps too his contempt for coffee-house society, and the increasing dignity which made it desirable to keep possible applicants at a distance, had much to do with this. The Brothers' Club, however, was long remembered by its members, and in later years they often address each other by the old fraternal title.
One design which was to have signalized Swift's period of power, suggested the only paper which he had ever pub lished with his name. It was a " proposal for correcting, im proving, and ascertaining the English language," published in May, 1712, in the form of a letter to Harley. The letter itself, written offhand in six hours (Feb. 21, 1712), is not of much value; but Swift recurs to the subject frequently enough to show that he really hoped to be the founder of an English Academy. Had Swift been his own minister instead of the driver of a minister, the project might have been started. The rapid development of the political struggle sent Swift's academy to the limbo provided for such things ; and few English authors will regret the failure of a scheme unsuited to our natural
v.] THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 107
idiosyncrasy, and calculated, as I fancy, to end in nothing but an organization of pedantry.
One remark meanwhile occurs which certainly struclc Swift himself. He says (March 17, 1 7 1 2) that Sacheverel, the Tory martyr, has come to him for patronage, and observes that when he left Ireland neither of them could have anticipated such a relationship. " This," he adds, "is the seventh I have now provided for since I came, and can do nothing for myself." Hints at a desire for preferment do not appear for some time ; but as he is con stantly speaking of an early return to Ireland, and is as Tegularly held back by the entreaties of the ministry, there must have been at least an implied promise. A hint had been given that he might be made chaplain to Harley, when the minister became Earl of Oxford. " I will be no man's chaplain alive," he says. He remarks about the same time (May 23, 1711) that it "would look extremely little " if ho returned without some distinction ; but he will not beg for preferment. The ministry, he says in the following August, only want him for one bit of business (the Con duct of the Allies presumably). When that is done, he will take his leave of them. " I never got a penny from them nor expect it." The only post for which he made a direct application was that of historiographer. He had made considerable preparations for his so-called History of the Last Four Years of Queen Anne, which appeared posthumously ; and which may be described as one of his political pamphlets without the vigour8 — a dull statement
8 Its authenticity was doubted, but, as I think, quite gratui tously, by Johnson, by Lord Stanhope, and, as Stanhope says, by Macaulay. The dulness is easily explicable by the circumstances of the composition.
108 SWIFT. [CHAP.
of facts put together by a partisan affecting the historical character. This application, however, was not made till April, 1714, when Swift was possessed of all the prefer ment that he was destined to receive. He considered in his haughty way that he should be entreated rather than entreat ; and ministers were perhaps slow to give him any thing which could take him away from them. A secret influence was at work against him. The Tale of a Tub was brought up against him ; and imputations upon his orthodoxy were common. Nottingham even revenged himself by describing Swift in the House of Lords as a divine " who is hardly suspected of being a Christian." Such insinuations were also turned to account by the Duchess of Somerset, who retained her influence over Anne in spite of Swift's attacks. His journal in the winter of 1712-13 shows growing discontent. In Decem ber, 1712, he resolves to write no more till something is done for him. He will get under shelter before he makes more enemies. He declares that he is " soliciting nothing " (February 4, 1713), but he is growing impatient. Harley is kinder than ever. " Mighty kind ! " exclaims Swift,
" with a ; less of civility and more of interest ;" or
as he puts it in one of his favourite " proverbs " soon afterwards — " my grandmother used to say, —
More of your lining And less of your dining."
At last Swift, hearing that he was again to be passed over, gave a positive intimation that he would retire if nothing was done ; adding that he should complain of Harley for nothing but neglecting to inform him sooner of the hope lessness of his position.9 The dean of St. Patrick's was at
9 April 13, 1713.
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last promoted to a bishopric, and Swift appointed to the vacant deanery. The warrant was signed on April 23, and in June Swift set out to take possession of his deanery. It was no great prize ; he would have to pay 1000?. for the house and fees, and thus, he says, it would be three years before he would be the richer for it ; and, more over, it involved what he already described as " banish ment " to a country which he hated.
His state of mind when entering upon his preferment was painfully depressed. "At my first coming," he writes to Miss Vanhomrigli, " I thought I should have died with discontent ; and was horribly melancholy while they were installing me; but it begins to Avear off, and change to dulness." This depression is singular, when we remember that Swift was returning to the woman for whom he had the strongest affection, and from whom he had been separated for nearly three years; and moreover, that he was returning as a famous and a successful man. He seems to have been received with some disfavour by a society of Whig proclivities ; he was suffering from a fresh return of ill- health ; and besides the absence from the political struggles in which he was so keenly interested, he could not think of them without deep anxiety. He returned to London in October at the earnest request of political friends. Matters were looking serious ; and though the journal to Stella was not again taken up, we can pretty well trace the events of the following period.
There can rarely have been a less congenial pair of colleagues than Harley and St. John. Their union was that of a still more brilliant, daring, and self-confident Disraeli with a very inferior edition of Sir Eobert Peel, with smaller intellect and exaggerated infirmities. The timidity, procrastination, and " refinement " of the Trea-
110 SWIFT. [CHAP.
surer were calculated to exasperate his audacious colleague. From the earliest period Swift had declared that every thing depended upon the good mutual understanding of the two ; he was frightened by every symptom of discord, and declares (in August, 1711) that he has ventured all his credit with the Ministers to remove their differences. He knew, as he afterwards said (October 20, 1711), that this was the way to be sent back to his willows at Laracor, Imt everything must be risked in such a case. When difficulties revived next year he hoped that he had made a reconciliation. But the discord was too vital. The victory of the Tories brought on a serious danger. They had come into power to make peace. They had made it. The next question was that of the succession of the crown. Here they neither reflected the .general opinion of the nation nor were agreed amongst themselves. Harley, as we now know, had flirted with the Jacobites ; and Boling- broke was deep in treasonable plots. The existence of such plots was a secret to Swift, who indignantly denied their existence. "When King hinted at a possible danger to Swift from the discovery of St. John's treason, ho indignantly replied that he must have been " a most false and vile man" to join in anything of the kind.1 He professes elsewhere his conviction that there were not at this period 500 Jacobites in England ; and "amongst these not six of any quality or consequence." a Swift's sin cerity, here as everywhere, is beyond all suspicion ; but his conviction proves incidentally that he was in the dark as to the "wheels within wheels"— the backstairs plots, by which the administration of his friends was hampered and distracted. With so many causes for jealousy and
1 Letter to King, Dec. 16th, 1716.
2 Inquiry into the BelMviour of the Queen's last Ministry.
v.] THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. Ill
discord, it is no wonder that the political world became a mass of complex intrigue and dispute. The queen, mean while, might die at any moment, and some decided course of action become imperatively necessary. Whenever the queen was ill, said Harley, people were at their wits' end; as soon as she recovered they acted as if she were im mortal. Yet, though he complained of the general inde cision, his own conduct was most hopelessly undecided.
It was in the hopes of pacifying these intrigues that Swift Avas recalled from Ireland. He plunged into the fight, but not with his old success. Two pamphlets which he published at the end of 1713 are indications of his state of mind. One was an attack upon a wild no-popery shriek emitted by Bishop Burnet, whom he treats, says Johnson, " like one whom he is glad of an opportunity to insult." A man who, like Burnet, is on friendly terms with those who assail the privileges of his order must often expect such treatment from its zealous adherents. Yet the scornful assault, which finds out weak places enough in Burnet's mental rhetoric, is in painful contrast to the dignified argument of earlier pamphlets. The other pamphlet was an incident in a more painful contest. Swift had tried to keep on good terms with Addison and Steele. He had prevented Steele's dismissal from a Commissionership of Stamps. Steele, however, had lost his place of Gazetteer for an attack upon Harley. Swift persuaded Harley to be reconciled to Steele, on condition that Steele should apolo gize. Addison prevented Steele from making the required submission, "out of mere spite, "says Swift, at the thought that Steele should require other help ; rather, we guess, because Addison thought that the submission would savour of party infidelity. A coldness followed ; "all our friendship is over," says Swift of Addison (March 6th, 1711) ; and
112 SWIFT. [CHAP.
though good feeling revived between the principals, their intimacy ceased. Swift, swept into the ministerial vortex, pretty well lost sight of Addison ; though they now and then met on civil terms. Addison dined with Swift and St. John upon April 3rd, 1713, and Swift attended a rehearsal of Cato — the only time when we see him at a theatre. Meanwhile the ill feeling to Steele remained, and bore bitter fruit.
Steele and Addison had to a great extent retired from politics, and during the eventful years 1711-12 were chiefly occupied in the politically harmless Spectator. But Steele was always ready to find vent for his zeal ; and in 1713 ho fell foul of the Examiner in the Guardian. Swift had long ceased to write Examiners or to be respon sible for the conduct of the paper, though he still occa sionally inspired the writers. Steele, naturally enough, supposed Swift to be still at work ; and in defending a daughter of Steele's enemy, Nottingham, not only sug gested that Swift was her assailant, but added an in sinuation that Swift was an infidel The imputation stung Swift to the quick. He had a sensibility to per sonal attacks, not rare with those who most freely indulge in them, which was ridiculed by the easy-going Harley. An attack from an old friend — from a friend whose good opinion he still valued, though their intimacy had ceased ; from a friend, moreover, whom in spite of their separation he had tried to protect ; and, finally, an attack upon the tenderest part of his character, irritated him beyond measure. Some angry letters passed, Steele evidently regarding Swift as a traitor, and disbelieving his profes sions of innocence and his claims to active kindness ; wliilst Swift felt Steele's ingratitude the more deeply from the apparent plausibility of the accusation. If Steele was
V.] THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION. 118
really unjust and ungenerous, we may admit as a partial excuse that in such cases the less prosperous combatant has a kind of right to bitterness. The quarrel broke out at the time of Swift's appointment to the deanery. Soon after the new dean's return to England, Steele was elected member for Stockbridge, and rushed into political controversy. His most conspicuous performance was a frothy and pompous pamphlet called the Crisis, intended to rouse alarms as to French invasion and Jacobite intrigues. Swift took the op portunity to revenge himself upon Steele. Two pamphlets — The importance of the " Guardian " considered,