CHAPTER XIII. SWIFT AND THE ESSAYISTS. Coarseness of Manners in the 17th and 18th centuries-Jonathan Swift Battle of the Books-Tale of a Tub - Pamphlets - Stella and Venessa Drapier's Letters-Voyages of Gulliver - Minor Works-Poems-Steele and Addison-Cato - Tatier-Spectator-Samuel Johnson Prose Style - Satires of London' and 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' Rasselas -Journey to the Hebrides-Lives of the Poets-Edition of Shakspeare Dictionary-Rambler and Idler. - Ir can hardly, we think, be denied, that the Revolution of 1688 either produced or was accompanied by certain social effects at least temporarily injurious to society in England, and lowering the tone of sentiment, not only in political matters, but also, which is of much more importance to our subject, in the literary character of the times. Something of the old courtesy, something of the romantic and ideal in social intercourse between man and man, and still more preceptibly between man and woman, the Revolution appears to have annihilated; a more selfish, calculating, and material spirit begins to be perceptible in society, and consequently to be reflected in books. Language becomes a little ruder, more disputative, and more combative- the intellect now plays a more prominent part than either the fancy or the sensibility the head has overbalanced the heart. Of the general prevalence of such a tone of society there can be no more conclusive proof than the personal and literary character of Jonathan Swift; a man of robust and mighty intellect, of great and ready acquirements, of an indomitable will, activity, and perseverance, but equally deficient in heart as a man and in disinterestedness as a patriot. The Dean of St. Patrick's was indeed a rarely-gifted, prompt, and vigorous intellect: in his particular line of satire he is unequalled in literature; he did more and more readily what few beside him could have attempted; he played during his life a prominent and important part in the political drama of his country, and established himself by his writings among the prose classics of the world: but he was, as a man, heartless, selfish, unloving, and unsympathising; as a writer, he degraded and lowered our reverencə for the divinity of our nature; and as a statesman, he appears to have felt no nobler spur to the exertion of his gigantic powers than the sting of personal pique and the pang of discontented ambition. He was born in Dublin in the year 1667 ; a posthumous child, left dependent upon the uncertain charity of relations for support, and the not less precarious favour of the great for protection. This unfortunate entrance into life appears to have tinged with a darker shade of misanthropic gloom a temperament naturally saturnine, and to have inspired something of that morbid melancholy which ultimately deepened into hypochondria, and terminated so terribly in madness and idiotcy. Swift at the beginning of his career received the aid and protection of Sir William Temple, who enabled him to complete his education at Oxford, and in whose house he made that acquaintance with Mrs. Johnson (the daughter of Temple's steward) which became the source, to Swift, of a signal instance of retributive justice, and to the unfortunate lady of such a sad celebrity under the name of Stella. Swift did not begin to write until he had reached the tolerably mature age of thirty-four; and this circumstance will not only account for the extraordinary force and mastery which his style from the first exhibited, but it will prove the absence in Swift's mind of any of that purely literary ambition which incites the student "To scorn delights, and live laborious days." Throughout the whole of his literary career Swift never appears to have cared to obtain the reputation of a mere writer: his works (the greater number of which were political pamphlets, referring to temporary events, and composed for the purpose of attaining temporary objects) seem never to have been considered by him otherwise than as means, instruments, or engines for the securing of their particular object. The ruling passion of his mind was an intense and arrogant desire for political power and notoriety; or, as he says himself, "All my endeavours, from a boy, to distinguish myself, were only for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts—whether right or wrong, it is no great matter." This was indeed but a low and creeping ambition; and the fruit-at least as far as any augmentation of human happiness is concerned—is worthy of the tree. The protégé of Temple, Swift was naturally, at the beginning of his public life, a Whig; and his first achievements in the warfare of party were made under the Whig banner. He also exhibited his attachment to his patron by taking part in the famous controversy respecting the comparative superiority of the ancients or the moderns; a controversy of which Temple was the most distinguished champion. Swift wrote the 'Battle of the Books,' a short satirical pamphlet, full of that coarse invective and savage personality which afterwards rendered him so famous and so formidable. Some of the incidents of the battle are worthy of the hand which painted the Yahoos or the Projectors' College of Laputa. The principal object of attack in this fierce and brutal piece of drollery was Bentley. In 1704 appeared Swift's extraordinary satiric allegory, entitled 'The Tale of a Tub,' in which the author pretends to give an account - of the rise and policy of the three most important sects into which Christendom has unhappily been divided the Romanist, Lutheran (with which he identifies the Church of England,) and Calvinistic Churches. These events are recounted in the broadest, boldest, most unreserved language of farcical extravagance; the three religions being typified by three brothers, Peter (the Church of Rome, or St. Peter), Martin (that of Luther), and Jack (John Calvin). The corruptions of the Romish Church, and the renunciation of those errors at the Reformation, are allegorised by a number of tassels, fringes, and shoulderknots, which the three brothers superadd to the primitive simplicity of their coats (the practice and belief of the Christian religion). These extraneous ornaments Martin strips off cautiously and gradually; but poor Jack, in his eagerness, nearly reduces himself to a state of nature. Nothing can exceed the richness of imagination with which Swift places in a ridiculous or contemptible light the extravagances of the three brothers. It must be observed that he invariably sides with Martin, and pursues the fantastic pranks of Jack with a pitiless and envenomed malignity that shows how richly nature had gifted him for the trade of political and religious lampooning. This strange work is divided into chapters, between which are interposed an equal number of what the author calls "digressions," and which latter, like the main work, are absolute treasuries of droll allusion and ingenious adaptation of obscure and uncommon learning. In 1708 Swift turned Tory; and he was soon found writing as nervously, fluently, and vigorously on the side of his new patrons as ever he had done in support of his former one. He now published successively a number of able pamphlets, under the title of 'Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man,' 'Letters on the Application of the Sacramental Test,' and the admirable Apology for Christianity. In this last production, under his usual veil of grave irony, he shows the ill consequences which would result from an abolition of the Christian religion: among the rest, for example, proving what a loss it would be to the freethinker and scoffer and esprit fort to be deprived of so fertile a subject of ridicule as is now afforded by the principles and practice of our religion. About the same time, Swift, in a succession of humorous jeux d'esprit, ridiculed the credulity of many classes of persons at that time as to the predictions of astrology, and the gross ignorance of the almanac-makers and other needy and obscure quacks, who administered food to the public appetite for the marvellous. In 1712 he wrote a species of half-history, half-pamphlet, entitled 'The Conduct of the Allies,' severely reflecting upon the Duke of Marlborough; and nearly at the same time he became acquainted with the beautiful and most unhappy Vanessa, whose real name was Vanhomrigh. This young lady had been in some measure educated by Swift; and the fair pupil conceived for her instructor a passion of that deep, durable, and all-engrossing character, which, for weal or woe, fills and occupies a whole existence, and to whose intensity not even time can apply any real alleviation. It is not certain how far a thoughtless vanity, or an almost incredible hardness of heart, or a taint of that insanity which was to cloud the setting of Swift's bright and powerful intellect, may have led him to sport with the affections of this unfortunate girl; but, at the very time when he was allowing her to indulge in dreams of happiness which he knew were vain, Swift was keeping up with Stella, the former victim of his selfish vanity, the hope of a union which, if it came at all, was certain to be but too tardy a reparation. Vanessa died of a broken heart, on learning the relations in which Swift stood, and had all along remained, with respect to Stella; and Stella appears ultimately to have received a legal right to Swift's protection as a husband. But this act of justice came too late either to restore her ruined happiness or to save her life. For this double act of heartlessness Swift was to suffer a terrible and just retribution. At the accession to the English throne of the House of Hanover, Swift retired to Ireland; for the Whigs were now in power. But in leaving the more busy stage of English politics, Swift carried with him the greatest powers to annoy and harass the government at a distance; and he soon arrived at a pitch of popularity among his own countrymen which has never been surpassed-perhaps never equalled-even in the heated atmosphere of Irish politics. Taking advantage of a species of monopoly (apparently not much more unjust and oppressive than such privileges usually are) which the government was about to grant to a certain William Wood, and the object of which was to admit into Ireland a considerable sum of copper money to be coined by Wood, Swift succeeded in raising against the government which granted, and the speculator who obtained, the obnoxious monopoly, so violent a storm of Irish indignation, that not only was it found impossible to execute the project, but an insurrection was very nearly excited; or to use Swift's energeti answer to Archbishop Boulter, who once accused him of having excited the popular fury against the government, "If I had lifted my finger, they would have torn you to pieces!" The engine of this vehement movement was the publication (in a Dublin newspaper) of a succession of letters, signed "M. B. Drapier," written by Swift in the character of a Dublin tradesman, and a most admirable specimen of consummate skill in political writing for the people. In 1726 appeared the satiric romance of "Gulliver," undoubtedly the greatest and most durable monument of Swift's style and originality of conception. Gulliver,' being a work of universal satire, will be read as long as the corruptions of human nature render its innumerable ironic and sarcastic strokes applicable and intelligible to human beings; and even were the follies and basenesses of humanity so far purged away that men should no longer need the sharp and bitter medicine of satire, it would still be read with little less admiration and delight for the wonderful richness of, invention it displays, and the exquisite art with which the most impossible and extravagant adventures are related-related so naturally as to cheat us into a momentary belief in their reality. The book consists of an account of the strange adventures of the hero in whose person it is written. Nothing can be better than the dexterity with which Swift has identified himself—particularly at the beginning with the character of a plain, rough, honest surgeon of a ship, and the minute verisimilitude which pervades his relationa verisimilitude kept up with surprising watchfulness, even in the least details and descriptions of an imaginary world. Lemuel Gulliver, after being shipwrecked, all his companions having perished, finds himself landed in the country of Lilliput, the inhabitants of which are about six inches high, and in which all the objects, natural and artificial, are in exact proportion to the people. We have a most amusing description of the court, the capital, and the government of this pigmy empire; and while exciting our incessant interest by the prodigality of invention exhibited, and the wonderful richness of fancy, all these descriptions, as well as the account of Gulliver's adventures in Lilliput, are made the vehicle of incessant strokes of satire, directed not only against the vices and follies of mankind (thus held up to ridicule in the disguise of these human insects), but against contemporary persons and intrigues. It is hardly necessary to remark, that what is of general application now possesses a much greater interest than many of the sly temporary allusions which probably gave most delight when the book appeared. In the second part of the fiction our honest Gulliver visits a nation of giants, where we find the same carefully calculated proportion between the people of the country (represented as sixty feet high) and the relative size of their trees, animals, houses, utensils, and so on. In Brobdignag the illusion is perhaps even more artfully kept up than it is in the description of Lilliput; the so enormous, yet always so perfectly in accordance with the scale pre-established-of the various objects being here generally indicated, or rather hinted in a parenthesis, than elaborately detailed. What can be more richly comic, for instance, than the conflagration of the capital of Lilliput, the court intrigues, the grand review of the army, Gulliver's capture of the entire fleet of Blefuscu, or the terrible schisms of the Big-endians and Little-endians? What can exhibit a more fertile conception, or a more truly Rabelæsian drollery, than many of the adventures at Lorbrulgrud, the netropolis of the gigantic Brobdignagians; the scene in which poor Gulliver is carried up to the palace-roof by the monkey; the size |