man of genius, it also caused him to be regarded with sus picion as an ecclesiastic. The three sons, Peter, Jack, and Martin, who figure in the allegory, are intended to represent Popery, Presbyterianism, and Episcopalianism, and the story of their adventures is so related as to favour Episcopalianism, for Swift was always strongly attached to the Anglican Church. Along with the "Tale of a Tub" was printed the "Battle of the Books," which had been written at Moor Park in behalf of Temple, who had taken a prominent part in a very foolish controversy as to the relative merits of ancient and modern literature. It does not show the same condensation and elaboration as distinguish Swift's later satires. During the years. 1708-9 he published several tracts, of which the most. noticeable is his famous "Argument against the Abolishing of Christianity," an admirable specimen of his gravely ironical style, and his "Predictions of Isaac Bickerstaff," a squib upon the astrological almanac-makers of the time, in which, among other things, he predicted that John Partridge, one of the chief members of the body, would die on a certain specified date. In his almanac for 1709, Partridge proclaimed that he " was still living, and in health, and all were knaves who reported otherwise." Swift replied in a very amusing pamphlet, "The Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff," in which he argued that Partridge was quite mistaken, and that he really was dead. "The jest," says Mr. Forster, "had by this time diffused itself into so wide a popularity that all the wits became eager to take part in it; Rowe, Steele, Addison, and Prior contributed to it in divers amusing ways, and Congreve described, under Partridge's name, the distresses and reproaches Squire Bickerstaff had exposed him to, insomuch that he could not leave his door without somebody twitting him for sneaking about without paying his funeral expenses. The poor astrologer himself meanwhile was continually adver tising that he was not dead."

We now come to the most active and exciting period of Swift's career. Till 1710 he had supported the Whigs-not so strenuously, it is true, as he afterwards supported the rival

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party, but still with considerable zeal. His services had not been rewarded, and there can be no doubt that the personal neglect with which he was treated was the main reason why he, in 1710, transferred his talents to the Tory ministry of Harley and St. John. By his new associates he was received with open arms. "We were determined to have you," said St. John; "you were the only one we were afraid of." Till the fall of the Tory ministry in 1714, Swift occupied a position which for real power and influence was probably unsurpassed. "He held probably," writes Mr. Hannay, "the most potent position that a writer ever held in this country, but all the while held it in a dubious unrecognised way. He was the patron of men of letters; got them places and got them money. He 'crammed' the ministers; and his pen was not employed in quizzing hoops or patches, or sneering at City people—it was an engine of power over all England. He used it as an orator does his tongue,-to do something with. In a word, he was a power in the State; and, indeed, it is one of the few pleasant things to read about in the records of these days, how those who, in their hearts, tried to despise him as an 'Irish parson,'-how, I say, they dreaded him; how they flattered and courted him; and how they felt that he was their master." During this period Swift wrote his most telling political pamphlets, the "Conduct of the Allies," the "Letter to the October Club;" and the Examiner, a weekly periodical which had been started in support of the new ministry, and which he conducted for seven months, assailing the enemies of his party with the intensest virulence and the most trenchant ridicule. Of more permanent value than his political writings is his evercharming "Journal to Stella," which he wrote during the years of his residence in London: "that wonderful journal," says Mr. Forster, "that unrivalled picture of the time, in which he set down day by day the incidents of these momentous years; which received every hope, fear, or fancy in its undress as it rose to him; which was written for one person's private pleasure, and has had indestructible attractiveness for every one since."

1 "Satire and Satirists," p. 160.

"Stella" had removed to Ireland shortly after Swift received the living of Laracor, and now lived there, along with Mrs. Dingley, a relation of the Temple family.

The fond expectations cherished by Swift that his Tory friends would reward his great exertions in their favour by a bishopric fell to the ground as completely as his former hopes of preferment. Queen Anne would not make a bishop of the author of the "Tale of a Tub;" all the advancement he received was being made Dean of St. Patrick's in 1713. On the death of the Queen the Whigs again returned to power; and Swift, a soured and disappointed man, went back to Ireland to pass the remainder of his days with dire scorn and indignation gnawing at his heart. By the publication in 1720 of the tract proposing the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures," and still more by his famous "Drapier's Letters" (1723) written against Ward's patent for a copper coinage, he raised himself to unexampled popularity in Ireland; his name was in every mouth as the saviour of his country, and so great was the commotion excited that the patent had ultimately to be withdrawn. His success did nothing to cheer him : he still remained the same gloomy and misanthropic man. In 1726-27 he published "Gulliver's Travels," his most generally read work, the last part of which shows to how terrible an extent he carried what he believed to be his virtuous indignation against the "villanies and corruptions of mankind." In his latter years a settled melancholy spread over him. When parting with a friend he would say with a sigh, "I hope I shall never see you again." The melancholy gradually darkened into madness. During the last three years of his life he is known to have spoken only once or twice. At length, in October 1745, death came to his release. He bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to found and endow an asylum in Dublin for lunatics and idiots.

Stella had died before him in 1727. How truly and tenderly he loved her, the thousand endearing expressions in the "Journal" amply show. But the dark cloud which overshadowed all Swift's life, overshadowed his relations with her also. Mr. Forster, whose unfinished Life of Switt is, with all

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its wordiness and tediousness, a splendid tribute to this great sat rist's memory, could see no sufficient evidence for the story that Switt became united to her by a private marriage. However this may be, they certainly always lived apart. Of his relations with Vanessa (Hester Vanhomrigh) we need not say much. He became acquainted with her in London, where she made him an offer of marriage, which he declined, without, however, breaking off his intercourse with her; followed him to Ireland; and died of a broken heart on becoming acquainted with his intimacy with Stella.

Had Swift been born in such a position as to give him an independent fortune, his life might have been a happy one. Nay, if he had not entered the Church, but had risen (an event quite within the range of possibility) like Addison to high office in the State, it is very probable that we should never have heard so much of his misanthropy and cynicism. Impatient of control, proud, contemptuous of inferiority, and intolerant of stupidity, he never found a proper field wherein to exercise his vast and daring genius. For literary fame, except as a stepping stone to what he considered higher ends, he cared little or nothing: the finest fruits of his mind, "Gulliver" and the "Tale of a Tub," were flung carelessly, unacknowledged, upon the world. That there were noble and generous tendencies in Swift's nature can scarcely be doubted by any one who has studied him with impartiality. Strictly economical in his personal expenses, he could, when occasion required, give largely like many who take care of the pence, he sometimes dispensed the pounds with a bounteousness which put to shame the charity of his apparently more freehanded contemporaries. That he was often sullen, rude, insolent, and disdainful cannot be denied. But some of his fugitive pieces, and especially the "Journal to Stella," show that beneath his outward misanthropy and harshness lay a vein of playfulness, tenderness, and affection. The fact that he was a general favourite with women is a further proof in the same direction. In spite of the large literature which has accumulated round Swift's name, the key which shall enable

us to solve the many enigmas about his life and character, which have baffled so many inquirers, still remains to be found. He stands alone, a unique and portentous figure, to whom the eyes of men will long be directed, some with pity and even affection, some with aversion and distrust, all with wonder and great admiration. Swift's outward appearance corresponded to the character of him which we gather from his writings and from other sources. He was, says Scott, "in person tall, strong, and well made, of a dark complexion, but with blue eyes, black and bushy eyebrows, nose somewhat aquiline, and features which remarkably expressed the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind.”

As an author, Swift was prominent within his own range, but his range was not very wide. For the sublime and pathetic in composition he had no turn. His verses, of which he wrote many, are clever, lively, and spirited, but they are not poetry in any high sense of the word. His intellect was not at all of an ethereal order: it was solid, massive, and intense, but of the earth, earthy. Satire was his peculiar province; there his genius got full scope in expressing the fierce indignation which lacerated his heart. Hating insincere sentiment, he was too apt to believe that all sentiments to which his nature did not respond were insincere; the baser qualities of men stood out much more prominently before his eyes than their virtues ; and he often fell into the common error of satirists of supposing that the anger which arose simply from his own jaundiced imagination was the wrath of a good man disgusted with the wickedness he saw around him. His style is simple, nervous, terse, disdainful of gaudy ornament, yet often surprising us by happy turns of expression and felicitous illustrations. As his "Drapier's Letters" and other political writings show, he could adapt himself admirably to any class to which he appealed, never hesitating to use homely expressions, and picking out with great skill the facts which best suited his purpose. His love of gross allusions and filthy images is the great stain on his literary fame. It no doubt arose, in part at least, from the degraded notions he entertained of humanity.