We cannot properly understand Swift's cynicism and bring it into any
relation of consistency with our belief in his natural amiability
without taking his whole life into account. Few give themselves the
trouble to study his beginnings, and few, therefore, give weight enough
to the fact that he made a false start. He, the ground of whose nature
was an acrid common-sense, whose eye magnified the canker till it
effaced the rose, began as what would now be called a romantic poet.
With no mastery of verse, for even the English heroic (a balancing-pole
which has enabled so many feebler men to walk the ticklish rope of
momentary success) was uneasy to him, he essayed the Cowleian
Pindarique, as the adjective was then rightly spelled with a hint of
Parisian rather than Theban origin. If the master was but a fresh
example of the disasters that wait upon every new trial of the
flying-machine, what could be expected of the disciple who had not even
the secret of the mechanic wings, and who stuck solidly to the earth
while with perfect good faith he went through all the motions of
soaring? Swift was soon aware of the ludicrousness of his experiment,
though he never forgave Cousin Dryden for being aware of it also, and
the recoil in a nature so intense as his was sudden and violent. He who
could not be a poet if he would, angrily resolved that he would not if
he could. Full-sail verse was beyond his skill, but he could manage the
simpler fore-and-aft rig of Butler's octosyllabics. As Cowleyism was a
trick of seeing everything as it was not, and calling everything
something else than it was, he would see things as they were--or as, in
his sullen disgust, they seemed to be--and call them all by their right
names with a resentful emphasis. He achieved the naked sincerity of a
Hottentot--nay, he even went beyond it in rejecting the feeble
compromise of the breech-clout. Not only would he be naked and not
ashamed, but everybody else should be so with a blush of conscious
exposure, and human nature should be stripped of the hypocritical
fig-leaves that betrayed by attempting to hide its identity with the
brutes that perish. His sincerity was not unconscious, but self-willed
and aggressive. But it would be unjust to overlook that he began with
himself. He despised mankind because he found something despicable in
Jonathan Swift, as he makes Gulliver hate the Yahoos in proportion to
their likeness with himself. He had more or less consciously sacrificed
self-respect for that false consideration which is paid to a man's
accidents; he had preferred the vain pomp of being served on plate, as
no other "man of his level" in Ireland was, to being happy with the
woman who had sacrificed herself to his selfishness, and the
independence he had won turned out to be only a morose solitude after
all. "Money," he was fond of saying, "is freedom," but he never learned
that self-denial is freedom with the addition of self-respect. With a
hearty contempt for the ordinary objects of human ambition, he could yet
bring himself for the sake of them to be the obsequious courtier of
three royal strumpets. How should he be happy who had defined happiness
to be "the perpetual possession of being well deceived," and who could
never be deceived himself? It may well be doubted whether what he
himself calls "that pretended philosophy which enters into the depth of
things and then comes gravely back with informations and discoveries
that in the inside they are good for nothing," be of so penetrative an
insight as it is apt to suppose, and whether the truth be not rather
that to the empty all things are empty. Swift's diseased eye had the
microscopic quality of Gulliver's in Brobdingnag, and it was the
loathsome obscenity which this revealed in the skin of things that
tainted his imagination when it ventured on what was beneath. But with
all Swift's scornful humor, he never made the pitiful mistake of his
shallow friend Gay that life was a jest. To his nobler temper it was
always profoundly tragic, and the salt of his sarcasm was more often, we
suspect, than with most humorists distilled out of tears. The lesson is
worth remembering that _his_ apples of Sodom, like those of lesser men,
were plucked from boughs of his own grafting.
But there are palliations for him, even if the world were not too ready
to forgive a man everything if he will only be a genius. Sir Robert
Walpole used to say "that it was fortunate so few men could be prime
ministers, as it was best that few should thoroughly know the shocking
wickedness of mankind." Swift, from his peculiar relation to two
successive ministries, was in a position to know all that they knew, and
perhaps, as a recognized place-broker, even more than they knew, of the
selfish servility of men. He had seen the men who figure so imposingly
in the stage-processions of history too nearly. He knew the real Jacks
and Toms as they were over a pot of ale after the scenic illusion was
done with. He saw the destinies of a kingdom controlled by men far less
able than himself; the highest of arts, that of politics, degraded to a
trade in places, and the noblest opportunity, that of office, abused for
purposes of private gain. His disenchantment began early, probably in
his intimacy with Sir William Temple, in whom (though he says that all
that was good and great died with him) he must have seen the weak side
of solemn priggery and the pretension that made a mystery of statecraft.
In his twenty-second year he writes:
Off fly the vizards and discover all:
How plain I see through the deceit!
How shallow and how gross the cheat!
* * * * *
On what poor engines move
The thoughts of monarchs and designs of states!
What petty motives rule their fates!
I to such blockheads set my wit!
I damn such fools! go, go, you're bit!
Mr. Forster's own style (simpler now than when he was under the
immediate influence of Dickens, if more slipshod than when repressed by
Landor) is not in essentials better or worse than usual. It is not
always clear nor always idiomatic. On page 120 he tells us that "Scott
did not care to enquire if it was likely that stories of the kind
referred to should have contributed to form a character, or if it were
not likelier still that they had grown and settled round a character
already famous as well as formed." Not to speak of the confusion of
moods and tenses, the phrase "to form a character" has been so long
appropriated to another meaning than that which it has here, that the
sense of the passage vacillates unpleasantly. He tells us that Swift was
"under engagement to Will Frankland to christen _the baby his wife is
near bringing to bed_." Parthenogenesis is a simple matter to this. And
why _Will_ Frankland, _Joe_ Beaumont, and the like? We cannot claim so
much intimacy with them as Swift, and the eighteenth century might be
allowed to stand a little on its dignity. If Mr. Forster had been
quoting the journal to Stella, there would be nothing to say except that
Swift took liberties with his friends in writing to her which he would
not have ventured on before strangers. In the same odd jargon, which the
English journals are fond of calling American, Mr. Forster says that
"Tom [Leigh] was not _popular_ with Swift." Mr. Forster is not only no
model for contemporary English, but (what is more serious) sometimes
mistakes the meaning of words in Swift's day, as when he explains that
"strongly engaged" meant "interceded with or pressed." It meant much
more than that, as could easily be shown from the writings of Swift
himself.
All the earlier biographers of Swift Mr. Forster brushes contemptuously
aside, though we do not find much that is important in his own biography
which industry may not hit upon somewhere or other in the confused
narrative of Sheridan, for whom and for his sources of information he
shows a somewhat unjust contempt. He goes so far as sometimes to
discredit anecdotes so thoroughly characteristic of Swift that he cannot
resist copying them himself. He labors at needless length the question
of Swift's standing in college, and seems to prove that it was not
contemptible, though there can be no doubt that the contrary opinion was
founded on Swift's own assertion, often repeated. We say he seems to
prove it, for we are by no means satisfied which of the two Swifts on
the college list, of which a facsimile is given, is the future Dean. Mr.
Forster assumes that the names are ranked in the order of seniority, but
they are more likely to have been arranged alphabetically, in which case
Jonathan would have preceded Thomas, and at best there is little to
choose between three _mediocriters_ and one _male_, one _bene_, and one
_negligenter_. The document, whatever we may think of its importance,
has been brought to light by Mr. Forster. Of his other materials
hitherto unpublished, the most important is a letter proving that
Swift's Whig friends did their best to make him a bishop in 1707. This
shows that his own later account of the reasons of his change from Whig
to Tory, if not absolutely untrue, is at least unjust to his former
associates, and had been shaped to meet the charge of inconsistency if
not of desertion to the enemy. Whatever the motives of his change, it
would have been impossible to convince a sincere Whig of their honesty,
and in spite of Mr. Forster's assertion that Addison continued to love
and trust him to the last, we do not believe that there was any
cordiality in their intercourse after 1710. No one familiar with Swift's
manner of thinking will deem his political course of much import in
judging of his moral character. At the bottom of his heart he had an
impartial contempt for both parties, and a firm persuasion that the aims
of both were more or less consciously selfish. Even if sincere, the
matters at issue between them were as despicable to a sound judgment as
that which divided the Big and Little-endians in Lilliput. With him the
question was simply one between men who galled his pride and men who
flattered it. Sunderland and Somers treated him as a serviceable
inferior; Harley and Bolingbroke had the wit to receive him on a footing
of friendship. To him they were all, more or less indifferently, rounds
in the ladder by which he hoped to climb. He always claimed to have been
a consistent Old Whig--that is, as he understood it, a High-Churchman
who accepted the Revolution of 1688. This, to be sure, was not quite
true, but it could not have been hard for a man who prided himself on a
Cavalier grandfather, and whose first known verses were addressed to the
non-juring primate Sancroft after his deprivation, to become first a
Tory and then a conniver at the restoration of the Stuarts as the best
device for preventing a foreign succession and an endless chance of
civil war. A man of Swift's way of thinking would hardly have balked at
the scruple of creed, for he would not have deemed it possible that the
Pretender should have valued a kingdom at any lower rate than his
great-grandfather had done before him.
The more important part of Mr. Forster's fresh material is to come in
future volumes, if now, alas! we are ever to have them. For some of what
he gives us in this we can hardly thank him. One of the manuscripts he
has unearthed is the original version of "Baucis and Philemon" as it was
before it had passed under the criticism of Addison. He seems to think
it in some respects better than the revised copy though in our judgment
it entirely justifies the wisdom of the critic who counselled its
curtailment and correction. The piece as we have hitherto had it comes
as near poetry as anything Swift ever wrote except "Cadenus and
Vanessa," though neither of them aspires above the region of cleverness
and fancy. Indeed, it is misleading to talk of the poetry of one whose
fatal gift was an eye that disidealized. But we are not concerned here
with the discussion of Swift's claim to the title of poet. What we are
concerned about is to protest in the interests of good literature
against the practice, now too common, of hunting out and printing what
the author would doubtless have burned. It is unfair to the dead writer
and the living reader by disturbing that unitary impression which every
good piece of work aims at making, and is sure to make, only in
proportion to the author's self-denial and his skill in
The last and greatest art, the art to blot.
We do not wish, nor have we any right to know, those passages through
which the castigating pen has been drawn.
Mr. Forster may almost claim to have rediscovered Swift's journals to
Esther Johnson, to such good purpose has he used them in giving life and
light to his narrative. He is certainly wrong, however, in saying to the
disparagement of former editors that the name Stella was not invented
"till long after all the letters were written." This statement,
improbable in itself as respects a man who forthwith refined Betty,
Waring, and Vanhomrigh into Eliza, Varina, and Vanessa, is refuted by a
passage in the journal of 14th October, 1710, printed by Mr. Forster
himself. At least, we know not what "Stellakins" means unless it be
"little Stella." The value of these journals for their elucidation of
Swift's character cannot be overestimated, and Mr. Forster is quite
right in insisting upon the importance of the "little language," though
we are by no means sure that he is always so in his interpretation of
the cipher. It is quite impossible, for instance, that ME can stand for
Madam Elderly, and so for Dingley. It is certainly addressed, like the
other endearing epithets, to Esther Johnson, and may mean My Esther or
even Marry Esther, for anything we know to the contrary.
Mr. Forster brings down his biography no farther than the early part of
1710, so that we have no means of judging what his opinion would be of
the conduct of Swift during the three years that preceded the death of
Queen Anne. But he has told us what he thinks of his relations with
Esther Johnson; and it is in them, as it seems to us, that we are to
seek the key to the greater part of what looks most enigmatical in his
conduct. At first sight, it seems altogether unworthy of a man of
Swift's genius to waste so much of it and so many of the best years of
his life in a sordid struggle after preferment in the church--a career
in which such selfish ambitions look most out of place. How much better
to have stayed quietly at Laracor and written immortal works! Very good:
only that was not Swift's way of looking at the matter, who had little
appetite for literary fame, and all of whose immortal progeny were
begotten of the moment's overmastering impulse, were thrown nameless
upon the world by their father, and survived only in virtue of the vigor
they had drawn from his stalwart loins. But how if Swift's worldly
aspirations, and the intrigues they involved him in, were not altogether
selfish? How if he was seeking advancement, in part at least, for
another, and that other a woman who had sacrificed for him not only her
chances of domestic happiness, but her good name? to whom he was bound
by gratitude? and the hope of repairing whose good fame by making her
his own was so passionate in that intense nature as to justify any and
every expedient, and make the patronage of those whom he felt to be his
inferiors endurable by the proudest of men? We believe that this was the
truth, and that the woman was Stella. No doubt there were other motives.
Coming to manhood with a haughtiness of temper that was almost savage,
he had forced himself to endure the hourly humiliation of what could not
have been, however Mr. Forster may argue to the contrary, much above
domestic servitude. This experience deepened in him the prevailing
passions of his life, first for independence and next for consideration,
the only ones which could, and in the end perhaps did, obscure the
memory and hope of Stella. That he should have longed for London with a
persistency that submitted to many a rebuff and overlived continual
disappointment will seem childish only to those who do not consider that
it was a longing for life. It was there only that his mind could be
quickened by the society and spur of equals. In Dublin he felt it dying
daily of the inanition of inferior company. His was not a nature, if
there be any such, that could endure the solitude of supremacy without
impair, and he foreboded with reason a Tiberian old age.
This certainly is not the ordinary temper of a youth on whom the world
is just opening. In a letter to Pope, written in 1725, he says, "I
desire that you and all my friends will take a special care that my
disaffection to the world may not be imputed to my age; for I have
credible witnesses ready to depose that it hath never varied from the
twenty-first to the fifty-eighth year of my age." His contempt for
mankind would not be lessened by his knowledge of the lying subterfuges
by which the greatest poet of his age sought at once to gratify and
conceal his own vanity, nor by listening to the professions of its
cleverest statesman that he liked planting cabbages better than being
prime minister. How he must have laughed at the unconscious parody when
his old printer Barber wrote to him in the same strain of philosophic
relief from the burthensome glories of lord-mayoralty!
Nay, he made another false start, and an irreparable one, in prose also
with the "Tale of a Tub." Its levity, if it was not something worse,
twice balked him of the mitre when it seemed just within his reach.
Justly or not, he had the reputation of scepticism. Mr. Forster would
have us believe him devout, but the evidence goes no further than to
prove him ceremonially decorous. Certain it is that his most intimate
friends, except Arbuthnot, were free-thinkers, and wrote to him
sometimes in a tone that was at least odd in addressing a clergyman.
Probably the feeling that he had made a mistake in choosing a profession
which was incompatible with success in politics, and with perfect
independence of mind, soured him even more than his disappointed hopes.
He saw Addison a secretary of state and Prior an ambassador, while he
was bubbled (as he would have put it) with a shabby deanery among
savages. Perhaps it was not altogether his clerical character that stood
in his way. A man's little faults are more often the cause of his
greatest miscarriages than he is able to conceive, and in whatever
respects his two friends might have been his inferiors, they certainly
had the advantage of him in that _savoir vivre_ which makes so large an
element of worldly success. In judging him, however, we must take into
account that his first literary hit was made when he was already
thirty-seven, with a confirmed bias towards moody suspicion of others
and distrust of himself.
The reaction in Swift's temper and ambition told with the happiest
effect on his prose. For its own purposes, as good working English, his
style (if that may be called so whose chief success was that it had no
style at all), has never been matched. It has been more praised than
studied, or its manifest shortcomings, its occasional clumsiness, its
want of harmony and of feeling for the finer genialities of language,
would be more often present in the consciousness of those who discourse
about it from a superficial acquaintance. With him language was a means
and not an end. If he was plain and even coarse, it was from choice
rather than because he lacked delicacy of perception; for in badinage,
the most ticklish use to which words can be put, he was a master.