'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 friends2 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."

Swift's style consists of 'proper words in proper places." Clearness was his chief aim, and his very simplicity, combined with his inventive genius, made the sarcasm and irony keener. Johnson says, ' He always understands himself, and his readers always understand him.' This is true enough of his style, but so successfully does the artist conceal his art that it is not, as we have seen, equally true of his intention. For complete and consistent irony is the chief characteristic of his work. His best and most constant method is to take some absurd proposition, to adopt some paradoxical idea, and to pursue and develop it with inimitable gravity and relentless logic. His grammar is often faulty, but his diction is always clear. He rivals Voltaire in lucidity of thought and style. The satire of Voltaire is seldom veiled; but that of Swift frequently lurks beneath much excellent fooling.2 His attacks are often coarse, sometimes disguised by subtle irony, sometimes breaking out into furious volleys of abuse; but they are sincere. He has command alike of vituperation and of sarcasm. His gross wit and grotesque invention can always present his opponents in an ignominious or contemptible light. Never commonplace, he ridicules what is trite, even at the risk of being dirty, and then he seems to sit like one of his own Yahoos, squirting filth on all mankind. In his 'Polite Conversation and Directions to Servants he discovers great power of minute observation; and in his Journal to Stella,' a child-like tenderness, which his sardonic humour and wounding satire have elsewhere obscured. At the back of all his work there lurks the hidden tragedy of that horrid fear of approaching madness, which embittered his life, and

1 'Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.'-Letter to a Young Clergyman.

2 Cf. 'Candide' with the introduction to the Tale of a Tub.'

1717.

proved in the end only too well founded. We cannot take his book and laugh our spleen away,"1 for that sæva indignatio,2 that cruel indignation with life, vexed him even as a thing that is raw. But we can say of him, in the words of Pope, 'One there is who charms us with his spleen,' and, charming us, we may add, fills us with the profoundest pity by the outpourings of his troubled heart, and the tragic silence of his miserable end.

It is a relief to turn from the malice and personal bitterness, the spleen and sour disdain 3 which lie at the heart of so much English satirical writing, to the hinting, gentlemanly satire of Joseph Addison. His was the criticism that only half says what it means, but is none the less effective. The most graceful of our social satirists does not sit in the seat of the scornful. Hic tibi comis et urbanus liberque videtur. This line, written by Horace, equally with that line written of Horace-admissus circum præcordia ludit-applies to Addison. It is in these gentle prose satires that the truest representation of the Horatian spirit is to be found. These essays correspond, far more really than Pope's 'Imitations,' to Horace's Causeries, his talks on the art of living, his sketches of life as he saw it. As with Horace, the purpose of his satire is general. The aim is not to gibbet individuals. He assails the follies, not the fools of the age. He tries to go to the

1 Dryden, Ep. ix.

6

2 Cf. his epitaph, written by himself: 'Ubi sæva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit '-'Where fierce indignation can no longer lacerate his heart.'

36 Essay on Criticism,' 1. 530.

4 Horace, Sat. I., iv. 90: 'He seems to you a courteous, wellbred gentleman.'

5 Persius, i. 118: 'He finds his way to our inmost feelings and plays round them.'

6 Sermones.'

root of the matter. He will not, he says, be 'very satirical upon the little muff that is now in fashion,"1 but he applies his remedies to the seeds of every social evil. When he attacks the vicious, he sets upon them in a body, and will not make an example of any particular criminal. He passes

over a single foe to charge whole armies, and lashes not Lais or Silenus, but the harlot and the drunkard. Gifted with observation that is acute but not profound, and with a peculiar humour blended with wit, he depicts, without offence, by playful and subtle strokes of irony, the manners and habits, the faults and foibles of various classes of men. He never descends to mere caricature; as a critic he is tolerant, and never wounds by severity of sarcasm. Judging with coolness, he is, we feel, 'not dully prepossessed nor blindly right'; rather he shows himself modestly bold, and humanly severe.'

His delicate humour, the urbanity of his manner, and the gentleness of his rebuke lead almost unawares those whom he criticises to condemn what is ridiculous or unworthy. A more tolerant censor, a more genial and useful satirist never wrote. He is an exception to the rule one is too ready to frame, that the lash of the satirist only serves to please him who cracks it; for he and his colleague Steele made the Spectator an instrument of education and social reform. Steele, however, had none of the sly malice and satirical bent of Addison.

Of the latter's inimitable prose style it is impossible to treat adequately in this place. It is impossible here to show forth all its praise. This style, to the sober grace of which we owe our love of Addison, is full of varied cadence and subtle charm. The

1 Cf. Spectator, No. 16.

2 Pope, Essay on Criticism,' 634, 658.