From the British Quarterly Review,

SWIFT: HIS LIFE AND GENIUS.*

In dividing the history of English litera-ing, characterized by certain qualities of trimture into periods, it is customary to take the interval between the year 1688 and the year 1727 as constituting one of those periods. This interval includes the reigns of William III., Anne, and George I. If we do not bind ourselves too precisely to the year 1727 as closing the period, the division is proper enough. There are characteristics about the time thus marked out, which distinguish it from previous and from subsequent portions of our literary history. Dryden, Locke, and some other notabilities of the Restoration, lived into this period, and may be regarded as partly belonging to it: but the names more peculiarly representing it, are those of Swift, Burnet, Addison, Steele, Pope, Shaftesbury, Gay, Arbuthnot, Atterbury, Prior, Parnell, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Rowe, Defoe, and Cibber. The names in this cluster disperse themselves over the three reigns which the period includes, some of them having already been known as early as the accession of William, while others survived the first George, and continued to add to their celebrity during the reign of his successor; but the most brilliant portion of the period was from 1702 to 1714 or thereby, when Queen Anne was on the throne. Hence the name of “wits of Queen Anne's reign," commonly applied to the writers of the whole period.

A while ago this used to be spoken of as the golden or Augustan age of English literature. We do not talk in that manner now. We feel that when we get among the authors of the times of Queen Anne and the first George, we are among very pleasant and very clever men, but by no means among giants. In coming down to this period from those going before it, we have an immediate sensation of having left the region of "greatness" behind us. We still find plenty of good writ

ness, artificial grace, and the like, to a degree not before attained; here and there also, we discern something like real power and strength, breaking through the prevailing element; but, on the whole, there is an absence of what, except by a compromise of language, could be called " great. It is the same whether we regard largeness of imaginative faculty, loftiness of moral spirit, or vigor of speculative capacity, as principally concerned in imparting the character of "greatness" to literature. What of genius in the ideal sur vived the seventeenth century in England, contented itself with nice little imaginations of scenes and circumstances connected with the artificial life of the time; the moral quality most in repute was kindliness or courtesy: and speculation did not go beyond that point where thought retains the form either of ordinary good sense, or of keen momentary wit. No sooner, in fact, do we pass the time of Milton, than we feel that we have done with the sublimities. A kind of lumbering largeness does remain in the intellectual gait of Dryden and his contemporaries, as if the age still wore the armor of the old literary forms, though not at home in it; but in Pope's days, even the affectation of the "great" had ceased. Not slowly to build up a grand poem of continuous ideal action, not quietly and at leisure to weave forth tissues of fantastic imagery, not perseveringly and laboriously to prosecute one track of speculation and bring it to a close, not earnestly and courageously to throw one's whole soul into a work of moral agitation and reform, was now what was regarded as natural in literature. On the contrary, he was a wit or a literary man, who, living in the midst of the social bustle, or on the skirts of it, could throw forth, in the easiest manner, little essays, squibs, and jeux d'esprit, pertinent to the rapid occasions of the hour, and never tasking the mind too long or too much. This was the time when that great distinction between Whiggism and Toryism, which for a century and a half has existed in Great Britain as a kind of permanent social condition, affecting

a permanent fact qualifying his literary undertakings, the distinction between Whiggism and Toryism, and to give to at least a consi

the intellectual activity of all natives from the moment of their birth, first began to be practically operative. It has, on the whole, been a wretched thing for the mind of Eng-derable part of his writings the character of land to have had this necessity of being pamphlets or essays in the service of his either a Whig or a Tory put so prominently party. To minister by the pen to the occabefore it. Perhaps, in all times, some simi- sions of Whiggism and Toryism was, therelar necessity of taking one side or the other fore, the main business of the wits both in in some current form of controversy has af- prose and in verse. Out of these occasions flicted the leading minds, and tormented the of ministration there of course arose personal more genial among them; but we question quarrels, and these furnished fresh opportunif ever in this country in previous times there ities to the men of letters. Critics of previwas a form of controversy, so little to be iden- ous writings could be satirized and lampooned tified, in real reason, with the one only true and thus the circle of subjects was widened. controversy between good and evil, and so Moreover, there was abundant matter, capacapable, therefore, of breeding confusion and ble of being treated consistently with either mischief, when so identified in practice, as Whiggism or Toryism, in the social foibles this poor controversy of Whig and Tory which and peculiarities of the day, as we see in the came in with the Revolution. To be called Tatler and the Spectator. Nor could a genial upon to be either a Puritan or a Cavalier-mind like that of Steele, a man of taste and there was some possibility of complying with fine thought like Addison, and an intellect so that call, and still leading a tolerably free keen, exquisite, and sensitive as that of Pope, and large intellectual life; though possibly it fail to variegate and surround all the duller was one cause of the rich mental develop- and harder literature thus called into being, ment of the Elizabethan epoch, that the men with more lasting touches of the humorous, of that time were exempt from any personal the fanciful, the sweet, the impassioned, the obligation of attending even to this distinc-meditative, and the ideal. Thus from one was tion. But to be called upon to be either a Whig or a Tory-why, how on earth can one retain any of the larger humanities about him, if society is to hold him by the neck between two stools such as these, pointing alternately to the one and to the other, and incessantly asking him on which of the two he means to sit? Into a mind trained to regard adhesiveness to one or other of these stools as the first rule of duty or of prudence, what thoughts of any high interest can find their way? Or, if any such do find their way, how are they to be adjusted to so mean a rule? Nowadays, our higher spirits solve the difficulty by kicking both stools down, and plainly telling society that they will not bind themselves to sit on either, or even on both put together. Hence partly, it is that, in recent times, we have had renewed specimens of the "great" or "sublime" in literature-the poetry, for example, of a Byron, a Wordsworth, or a Tennyson. But, in the interval between 1688 and 1727, there was not one wit alive whom society let off from the necessity of being, and declaring himself, either a Whig or a Tory. Constitutionally, and by circumstances, Pope was the man who could have most easily obtained the exemption; but even Pope professed himself a Tory. Addison and Steele were Whigs. In short, every literary man was bound, by the strongest of all motives, to keep in view, as VOL. XXXIII.-NO. IV.

obtained the character of a Sir Roger de Coverley, from another a Vision of Mirza, and from the third a Windsor Forest, an Epistle of Heloise, and much else that delights us still. After all, however, it remains true that the period of English literature now in question, whatever admirable characteristics it may possess, exhibits a remarkable deficiency of what, with recollections of former periods to guide us in our use of epithets, we should call great or sublime.

With the single exception of Pope, and excepting him only out of deference to his peculiar position as the poet or metrical artist of his day, the greatest name in the history of English literature during the early part of the last century is that of Swift. In certain fine and deep qualities, Addison and Steele, and perhaps Farquhar excelled him, just as in the succeeding generation Goldsmith had a finer vein of genius than was to be found in Johnson with all his massiveness; but in natural brawn and strength, in original energy and force and imperiousness of brain, he excelled them all. It was about the year 1702, when he was already thirtyfive years of age, that this strangest specimen of an Irishman, or of an Englishman born in Ireland, first attracted attention in London literary circles. The scene of his first appearance was Button's coffee-house; the witnesses were Addison, Ambrose Phil

30

ips, and other wits, belonging to Addison's | of Sir William Temple, at Sheen and Moorlittle senate, who used to assemble there.

park, near London, that courtly whig and ex - ambassador being distantly connected with his mother's family; that here, while acting as Sir William's secretary, amanuensis, librarian, and what not, he had begun to

They had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman come into the coffee-house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any of those who frequented it, and whose custom it was to lay his hat down on a table, and walk back-write verses and other trifles, some of which ward and forward at a good pace for half an hour he had shown to Dryden, who had told him or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or in reply that they were sad stuff, and that he seeming in the least to attend to anything that would never be a poet; that still, being of a was going forward there. He then used to take restless ambitious temper, he had not given up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away without opening his lips. After having ob- up hopes of obtaining introduction into pubaway without opening his lips. After having ob-lic employment in England through Sir Wilserved this singular behavior for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses; and the name that he went by among them, was that of "the mad parson." This made them more than usually attentive to his motions; and one evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be just come out of the country, and at last advance towards him as intending to address him. They were all eager to hear what this dumb mad parson had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, “Pray sir, do you re

member any good weather in the world?" The country gentleman, after staring a little at the singularity of his manner, and the oddity of the question, answered, "Yes sir; I thank God I remember a great deal of good weather in my time." "That is more," said Swift, "than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry; but however, God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all very well." Upon saying this, he took up his hat, and without uttering a syllable more, or tak ing the least notice of any one, walked out of the coffee-house; leaving all those who had been spectators of this odd scene staring after him, and still more confirmed in the opinion of his being mad.-Dr. Sheridan's Life of Swift, quoted in Scott's Life.

If the company present had had sufficient means of information, they would have found that the mad parson with the harsh swarthy features, and eyes azure as the heavens," whose oddities thus amused them, was Jonathan Swift, then clergyman of Laracor, a rural parish in the diocese of Meath, in Ireland. They would have found that he was an Irishman by birth, though of pure English descent; that he could trace a relationship to Dryden; that, being born after his father's death, he had been educated at the expense of his relatives, at Trinity College, Dublin; that, leaving Ireland in his twentysecond year, and with but a sorry character from the College authorities, he had been received as a humble dependent into the family

liam Temple's influence; that, at length, at the age of twenty-eight, despairing of anything better, he had quarrelled with Sir William, returned to Ireland, taken priest's orders, and settled in a living; that again, disgusted with Ireland and his prospects in that country, he had come back to Moorpark and resided there till 1699, when Sir William's death had obliged him finally to return to Ireland, and accept, first, a chaplaincy to Lord Justice Berkeley, and then his present living in the diocese of Meath. If curious about the personal habits of this restless Irish parson, they might have found that he had already won the reputation of an eccentric in his own parish and district; performing his parochial duties when at home, with scrupulous care, yet by his language and manners often shocking all ideas of clerical decorum, and begetting a doubt as to his sincerity in the religion he professed; boisterous, fierce, overbearing and insulting to all about him, yet often doing acts of real kindness; exact and economical in his management of money to the verge of actual parsimony, yet, on occasion, spending his money freely, and never without pensioners living on his bounty. They would have found that he was habitually irritable, and that he was subject to a recurring giddiness of the head, or vertigo, which he had brought on, as he thought himself, by a surfeit of fruit while staying with Sir William Temple, at Sheen. And, what might have been the best bit of gossip of all, they would have found that, though unmarried, and entertaining a most unaccountable and violent aversion to the very idea of marriage, he had taken over to reside with him, or close to his neighborhood, in Ireland, a certain young and beautiful girl named Hester Johnson, with whom he had formed an acquaintance in Sir William Temple's house, where she had been brought up, and where, though she passed as a daughter of Sir William's stew

of so energetic a man as the parson of Lara- | Presbyterianism, came in for the greatest cor was doubtless welcome to the Whigs. share of the author's scurrility; and Martin, His former connection with the stately old as the representative of the Church of England, Revolution Whig, Sir William Temple, may was left with the honors of the story: but the have prepared the way for him, as it had whole structure and spirit of the story, to say already been the means of making him known nothing of the oaths and other irreverences in some aristocratic families. But there was mingled with its language, was well calculaevidence in his personal bearing and his ted to shock the more serious even of Marwritings that he was not a man to be neg- tin's followers, who could not but see that lected. And if there had been any doubt rank infidelity alone would be a gainer by on the subject on his first presentation of the book. Accordingly, despite of all that himself to ministers, the publication of his Swift could afterwards do, the fact that he "Battle of the Books" and his "Tale of a had written this book left a public doubt as Tub" in 1703 and 1704 would have set it to his Christianity. It is quite possible howoverwhelmingly at rest. The author of ever, that, with a very questionable kind of these works (and though they were anony- belief in Christianity, he may have been a mous, they were at once referred to Swift) conscientious High Churchman, zealous for could not but be acknowledged as the first the social defence and aggrandisement of the prose satirist, and one of the most formidable ecclesiastical institution with which he was writers of the age. On his subsequent visits connected. Whatever that institution was to Button's, therefore-and they were fre- originally based upon, it existed as part and quent enough; for as the Bishop of Derry parcel of the commonwealth of England, had foreseen, he was often an absentee from rooted in the soil of men's habits and interests, and intertwined with the whole system of social order; and just as a Brahmin, lax enough in his own speculative allegiance to the Brahminical faith, might still desire to maintain Brahminism as a vast pervading establishment in Hindostan, so might Swift, with a heart and a head dubious enough respecting men's eternal interest in the facts of the Judæan record, see a use notwithstanding in that fabric of bishoprics, deaneries, prebendaries, parochial livings, and curacies, which ancient belief in those facts had first

his parish - the mad Irish parson was no longer a stranger to the company. Addison, Steele, Tickell, Philips, and the other Whig wits came to know him well and to feel his weight among them in their daily convivial meetings. "To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of the age," was the inscription written by Addison on a copy of his Travels presented to Swift; and it shows what opinion Addison and those about him had formed of the author of the "Tale of a Tub."

created and put together. This kind of reThus, passing and repassing between Lara- spect for the Church Establishment is still cor and London, now lording it over his Irish very prevalent. It is, a most excellent thing, parishioners, and now filling the literary and it is thought by many, to have a cleanly, Whig haunts of the great metropolis with cultured, gentlemanly man invested with authe terror of his merciless wit, and talk be- thority in every parish throughout the land, hind his back of his eccentricities and rude who can look after what is going on, fill up manners, Swift spent the interval between schedules, give advice, and take the lead in all 1702 and 1710, or between his thirty-sixth parish business. That Swift's faith in the and forty-fourth year. His position as a Church included no more than this percepHigh-Church Whig, however, was an ano- tion of its uses as a vast administrative and malous one. In the first place, it was diffi- educational establishment, we will not take cult to see how such a man could honestly upon us to say. Mr. Thackeray, indeed, be in the Church at all. People were by no openly avows his opinion that Swift had no means strict, in those days, in their notions belief in the Christian religion. "Swift's," of the clerical character; but the "Tale of a he says, " was a reverent, was a pious spiritTub" was a strong dose even then to have he could love and could pray;" but such relicome from a clergyman. If Voltaire after-gion as he had, Mr Thackeray hints, was a wards recommended the book as a masterly satire against religion in general, it cannot be wondered at that an outcry arose among Swift's contemporaries respecting the profanity of the book. It is true Peter and Jack, as the representatives of Popery and

kind of mad, despairing Deism, and had nothing of Christianity in it. Hence, "having put that cassock on, it poisoned him; he was strangled in his bands." The question thus broached as to the nature of Swift's religion is too deep to be discussed here. Though