_Dr. Swift_.--Surely, Addison, Fortune was exceedingly inclined to play
the fool (a humour her ladyship, as well as most other ladies of very
great quality, is frequently in) when she made you a minister of state
and me a divine!
_Addison_.--I must confess we were both of us out of our elements; but
you don't mean to insinuate that all would have been right if our
destinies had been reversed?
_Swift_.--Yes, I do. You would have made an excellent bishop, and I
should have governed Great Britain, as I did Ireland, with an absolute
sway, while I talked of nothing but liberty, property, and so forth.
_Addison_.--You governed the mob of Ireland; but I never understood that
you governed the kingdom. A nation and a mob are very different things.
_Swift_.--Ay, so you fellows that have no genius for politics may
suppose; but there are times when, by seasonably putting himself at the
head of the mob, an able man may get to the head of the nation. Nay,
there are times when the nation itself is a mob, and ought to be treated
as such by a skilful observer.
_Addison_.--I don't deny the truth of your proposition; but is there no
danger that, from the natural vicissitudes of human affairs, the
favourite of the mob should be mobbed in his turn?
_Swift_.--Sometimes there may, but I risked it, and it answered my
purpose. Ask the lord-lieutenants, who were forced to pay court to me
instead of my courting them, whether they did not feel my superiority.
And if I could make myself so considerable when I was only a dirty Dean
of St. Patrick's, without a seat in either House of Parliament, what
should I have done if Fortune had placed me in England, unencumbered with
a gown, and in a situation that would have enabled me to make myself
heard in the House of Lords or of Commons?
_Addison_.--You would undoubtedly have done very marvellous acts! Perhaps
you might then have been as zealous a Whig as my Lord Wharton himself;
or, if the Whigs had unhappily offended the statesman as they did the
doctor, who knows whether you might not have brought in the Pretender?
Pray let me ask you one question between you and me: If your great
talents had raised you to the office of first minister under that prince,
would you have tolerated the Protestant religion or not?
_Swift_.--Ha! Mr. Secretary, are you witty upon me? Do you think,
because Sunderland took a fancy to make you a great man in the state,
that he, or his master, could make you as great in wit as Nature made me?
No, no; wit is like grace, it must be given from above. You can no more
get that from the king than my lords the bishops can the other. And,
though I will own you had some, yet believe me, my good friend, it was no
match for mine. I think you have not vanity enough in your nature to
pretend to a competition in that point with me.
_Addison_.--I have been told by my friends that I was rather too modest,
so I will not determine this dispute for myself, but refer it to Mercury,
the god of wit, who fortunately happens to be coming this way with a soul
he has brought to the Shades.
Hail, divine Hermes! A question of precedence in the class of wit and
humour, over which you preside, having arisen between me and my
countryman, Dr. Swift, we beg leave--
_Mercury_.--Dr. Swift, I rejoice to see you. How does my old lad? How
does honest Lemuel Gulliver? Have you been in Lilliput lately, or in the
Flying Island, or with your good nurse Glumdalclitch? Pray when did you
eat a crust with Lord Peter? Is Jack as mad still as ever? I hear that
since you published the history of his case the poor fellow, by more
gentle usage, is almost got well. If he had but more food he would be as
much in his senses as Brother Martin himself; but Martin, they tell me,
has lately spawned a strange brood of Methodists, Moravians,
Hutchinsonians, who are madder than ever Jack was in his worst days. It
is a great pity you are not alive again to make a new edition of your
"Tale of the Tub" for the use of these fellows. Mr. Addison, I beg your
pardon; I should have spoken to you sooner, but I was so struck with the
sight of my old friend the doctor, that I forgot for a time the respects
due to you.
_Swift_.--Addison, I think our dispute is decided before the judge has
heard the cause.
_Addison_.--I own it is in your favour, but--
_Mercury_.--Don't be discouraged, friend Addison. Apollo perhaps would
have given a different judgment. I am a wit, and a rogue, and a foe to
all dignity. Swift and I naturally like one another. He worships me
more than Jupiter, and I honour him more than Homer; but yet, I assure
you, I have a great value for you. Sir Roger de Coverley, Will
Honeycomb, Will Wimble, the Country Gentleman in the Freeholder, and
twenty more characters, drawn with the finest strokes of unaffected wit
and humour in your admirable writings, have obtained for you a high place
in the class of my authors, though not quite so high a one as the Dean of
St. Patrick's. Perhaps you might have got before him if the decency of
your nature and the cautiousness of your judgment would have given you
leave. But, allowing that in the force and spirit of his wit he has
really the advantage, how much does he yield to you in all the elegant
graces, in the fine touches of delicate sentiment, in developing the
secret springs of the soul, in showing the mild lights and shades of a
character, in distinctly marking each line, and every soft gradation of
tints, which would escape the common eye? Who ever painted like you the
beautiful parts of human nature, and brought them out from under the
shade even of the greatest simplicity, or the most ridiculous weaknesses;
so that we are forced to admire and feel that we venerate, even while we
are laughing? Swift was able to do nothing that approaches to this. He
could draw an ill face, or caricature a good one, with a masterly hand;
but there was all his power, and, if I am to speak as a god, a worthless
power it is. Yours is divine. It tends to exalt human nature.
_Swift_.--Pray, good Mercury (if I may have liberty to say a word for
myself) do you think that my talent was not highly beneficial to correct
human nature? Is whipping of no use to mend naughty boys?
_Mercury_.--Men are generally not so patient of whipping as boys, and a
rough satirist is seldom known to mend them. Satire, like antimony, if
it be used as a medicine, must be rendered less corrosive. Yours is
often rank poison. But I will allow that you have done some good in your
way, though not half so much as Addison did in his.
_Addison_.--Mercury, I am satisfied. It matters little what rank you
assign me as a wit, if you give me the precedence as a friend and
benefactor to mankind.
_Mercury_.--I pass sentence on the writers, not the men, and my decree is
this:--When any hero is brought hither who wants to be humbled, let the
talk of lowering his arrogance be assigned to Swift. The same good
office may be done to a philosopher vain of his wisdom and virtue, or to
a bigot puffed up with spiritual pride. The doctor's discipline will
soon convince the first, that with all his boasted morality, he is but a
Yahoo; and the latter, that to be holy he must necessarily be humble. I
would also have him apply his anticosmetic wash to the painted face of
female vanity, and his rod, which draws blood at every stroke, to the
hard back of insolent folly or petulant wit. But Addison should be
employed to comfort those whose delicate minds are dejected with too
painful a sense of some infirmities in their nature. To them he should
hold his fair and charitable mirror, which would bring to their sight
their hidden excellences, and put them in a temper fit for
Elysium.--Adieu. Continue to esteem and love each other, as you did in
the other world, though you were of opposite parties, and, what is still
more wonderful, rival wits. This alone is sufficient to entitle you both
to Elysium.