1667-1745

nervous majesty, Pope in smooth uniformity and pungent epigram. We quote, it will be found, the phrases of Pope, and we apply the satire of Dryden. It is possible to love Dryden through his works, but Pope can only compel our admiration. Both alike. found the life of a wit a warfare upon earth,"1 and both might justly feel with Horace-sunt quibus in satura videar nimis acer. But while much may be forgiven to the poet whose 'life was one long disease,' we respect the greater self-restraint of him who, being naturally vindictive, often suffered in silence, and possessed his soul in quiet."2

'Cousin Swift,' said Dryden, you will never be a poet'a verdict which gained him the dislike of that furious and gifted man. The prophecy was correct. But the verses of so striking and original a genius could not be dull or insignificant. Swift had a gift of fluent rhyme: his poems are distinguished by their ease, if not by their elegance; often harsh and uncouth, they are never laboured. Some of his poetical lampoons show an extreme virulence of invective. 'The Legion Club,' in which every line has the sting of a hornet, will serve as an example. 'The Rhapsody on Poetry,' though it suffers from the inevitable comparison with the 'Dunciad,' yet displays in a high degree that quality of irony in which Swift is preeminent. The trenchant bitterness of the 'Beasts' Confession' likewise betrays the hand of the author of Gulliver's Travels.'

Whatever the merit or interest of his poetry, it is as the prince of prose satirists that Swift claims our attention. He ranks with Lucian and Voltaire, rivalling the former in irony, and surpassing the latter in originality. His power was tremendous. 1 Pope, Preface.

2

'Essay on Origin and Progress of Satire,' Dryden's Works, vol. iii., p. 171 (Malone's edition).

Even to-day his writings affect us as, sometimes, his presence affected Vanessa.1 No satirist ever scored such exquisite triumphs. Concerning 'Gulliver's Travels,' we have it on his own authority-whatever that is worth-that 'a bishop here said that book was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it; and so much for Gulliver."2 Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff's 'Predictions were burnt in all seriousness by the Inquisition in Portugal. In the Rhapsody on Poetry' the irony of his censure is so perfect and so admirably sustained that he received, at the hands of the Royal Family he had satirized, thanks for the passages of praise. No political writer ever had such power. Each pamphlet was worth hundreds of votes to the Tories, and the author of the Drapier Letters' could boast that he had but to raise his hand to bring about an Irish rebellion. His political and personal satire has much of the freedom and point of Junius; but he is not a mere carper. Since he lived in an epoch of party literature and unbridled slander, when all the best writers were retained for the purpose of exalting or defaming the Whig or Tory leaders, his writings are necessarily to a certain extent bound up with the politics of his time, but they touch none the less the wider human interests of all ages. His suggestions are often eminently practical, and much in advance of his day.1

1 'There is something in your look so awful that it strikes me dumb.' 'You strike me with that prodigious awe I tremble with fear.'-Letters of Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift.

Cf. the story of the barber who besought him on his knees not to put him into print, for that he was a poor barber, and had a large family to maintain (vol. i., p. 415).

2 Letter to Pope, November 17, 1726, written from Ireland. 3 E.g., 'A short character of Thomas, Earl of Wharton.'

Cf. the very remarkable passage on the early closing of public-houses and the serving of intoxicated persons: ' Project

1704.

It was in the Bentley-Boyle quarrel-a quarrel which was soon developed into a violent dispute as to the relative superiority of the Ancients or Moderns -that Swift, with his Battle of the Books,' made his reputation as the wittiest of controversialists, a reputation he confirmed in the following year by the Tale of a Tub,' a sort of 'Hudibras' in prose, in which he shows the happy gift of satirical allegory, which was brought to perfection in Gulliver's Travels.' The Tale of a Tub' ridicules, 'with all the rash dexterity of wit," superstition and fanaticism, but not the essentials of religion. Though pleading for charity in argument, Swift's own strong feeling for Martin' renders him somewhat uncharitable to ' Peter' and Jack."2 Voltaire recommended this work as a masterly satire against religion in general, and Thackeray denies Swift's belief in that Christian religion which he had defended with such perfect irony in his 'Argument against abolishing Christianity.' But neither in the 'Tale' nor in the politico-religious pamphlets is any reason to be found for a charge which reduces Swift to the level of the hypocrites he satirized. His hatred of cant and his dread of the imputation of cant have caused his attitude to be misconstrued into that of mere irreligion. His loathing of hypocrisy was so intense that he ran into the opposite extreme, and exhibited the vice which Bolingbroke termed hypocrisy reversed. Like Plato, he has often fallen a victim to his own irony.

for the Advancement of Religion,' vol. iii., pp. 297, 298. Cf. also his views on the education of women, which he put into practice with Stella. 'G. T.,' IV., chap. viii., ' My master thought it monstrous in us to give the females a different kind of education from the males.'

1 Pope, 'Essay on Man,' ii. 83.

2 Church of England, Church of Rome, Dissenters.

'The Tale of a Tub,' it is said, cost Swift a bishopric. Twenty years later, when, like some world-weary Timon, embittered by the fall of his party and the failure of his own ambitions, he had commenced Irishman for ever,' he produced 'Gulliver's Travels,' in which he satirized the politics, manners, and philosophy of Europe, and analyzed the corruptions of human nature. This 'formal grave lie" is so simple in the narration, so apparently artless and sincere, that it imposed upon many people at the time, and still delights the child who does not penetrate the satire.2 Swift is more realistic, if less exuberant, than Rabelais. The story of Gulliver's preposterous adventures is more completely a satirical allegory than is that of the wanderings of Gargantua. The satire itself is the most bitter and overwhelming Swift ever wrote. Its province is the mortification of human pride. Light and amusing at first, it becomes more severe as it progresses, till in the description of the Yahoos it reaches a pitch of savage intensity. The author strips the rags from shivering humanity. Beneath the resolvent acid of his satire our miserable covering of shams crumbles and disappears. Sometimes he gazes on the naked imposture with that cold, hard grin which still lingers on the marble lips of Voltaire, but often with the kindly firmness of a reformer. He wishes to prevent people from winking at their own faults, as Gulliver winked at his own littleness.

Critics have been too ready to assume that Swift really regarded all his fellow-creatures as Yahoos, and to charge him with misanthropy. The description 1 Journal to Stella.

2From the highest to the lowest it is universally read, from the Cabinet Council to the nursery.'-Gay, letter to Swift, Nov. 17, 1726.

3 Gulliver's Travels,' Part IV., pp. 392, 393.

1726.

of the Yahoos is not a mere libel on the human race. It teaches a very definite and moral lesson-that the greatness of humanity lies in mind, mind that is set on righteousness. Without it we are as the beasts that perish; with it, even horses are more excellent than we. Man is not man by virtue of his form, but by virtue of his right reason.1 St. Paul-or are we to say Apollos ?-teaches that each time a man does wrong he sins against the divine nature within him, and crucifies Christ afresh. Swift, using the point of his pen and not the feather, puts it, that so man becomes more of a Yahoo and less of a Houyhnhnm. The more odious and vile the Yahoo is represented, the more effective therefore is the lesson. The only proof of Swift's misanthropy is his desire to reform mankind by displaying their vices in the most hateful light.

Against this charge we have the evidence of his journal, of his charities, of his sermons, of his humanitarian suggestions, of his legacies, of those tracts relating to Ireland, which do honour, in Burke's phrase, to his heart as well as to his head. His friends also-they were many and distinguished -speak of him as really good-natured and tenderhearted, though from his excessive hatred of cant he strove to conceal the fact. When he boasts in a letter to Pope, 'I hate and detest that animal called man,' he has to add, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.' We need not, indeed, go so far as this to seek to disprove this charge. His humour is too deep and genuine to admit of his being a misanthrope.

1 'Gulliver's Travels,' Part IV., chap. iii.

2 E.g., Addison, who wrote in a copy of his 'Travels' presented to Swift, 'To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of the day.