Swift has been styled the Prince of Journalists. Like most titles whose
aim is to express in modern words the character and achievements of a man
of a past age, this phrase is not of the happiest. Applied to so
extraordinary a man as Jonathan Swift, it is both misleading and
inadequate. At best it embodies but a half-truth. It belongs to that
class of phrases which, in emphasizing a particular side of the
character, sacrifices truth to a superficial cleverness, and so does
injustice to the character as a whole. The vogue such phrases obtain is
thus the measure of the misunderstanding that is current; so that it
often becomes necessary to receive them with caution and to test them
with care.
A prince in his art Swift certainly was, but his art was not the art of
the journalist. Swift was a master of literary expression, and of all
forms of that expression which aim at embodying in language the common
life and common facts of men and their common nature. He had his
limitations, of course; but just here lies the power of his special
genius. He never attempted to express what he did not fully comprehend.
If he saw things narrowly, he saw them definitely, and there was no
mistaking the ideas he wished to convey. "He understands himself," said
Dr. Johnson, "and his reader always understands him." Within his
limitations Swift swayed a sovereign power. His narrowness of vision,
however, did never blind him to the relations that exist between fact and
fact, between object and subject, between the actual and the possible. At
the same time it was not his province, as it was not his nature, to
handle such relations in the abstract. The bent of his mind was towards
the practical and not the pure reason. The moralist and the statesman
went hand in hand in him--an excellent example of the eighteenth century
thinker.
But to say this of Swift is not to say that he was a journalist. The
journalist is the man of the hour writing for the hour in harmony with
popular opinion. Both his text and his heads are ready-made for him. He
follows the beaten road, and only essays new paths when conditions
have become such as to force him along them. Such a man Swift certainly
was not. Journalism was not his way to the goal. If anything, it was, as
Epictetus might have said, but a tavern by the way-side in which he took
occasion to find the means by which the better to attain his goal. If
Swift's contributions to the literature of his day be journalism, then
did journalism spring full-grown into being, and its history since his
time must be considered as a history of its degeneration. But they were
much more than journalism. That they took the form they did, in
contributions to the periodicals of his day, is but an accident which
does not in the least affect the contributions themselves. These, in
reality, constitute a criticism of the social and political life of the
first thirty years of the English eighteenth century. From the time of
the writing of "A Tale of a Tub" to the days of the Drapier's Letters,
Swift dissected his countrymen with the pitiless hand of the
master-surgeon. So profound was his knowledge of human anatomy, individual
and social, that we shudder now at the pain he must have inflicted in his
unsparing operations. So accurate was his judgment that we stand amazed
at his knowledge, and our amazement often turns to a species of horror as
we see the cuticle flapped open revealing the crude arrangement beneath.
Nor is it to argue too nicely, to suggest that our present sympathy for
the past pain, our amazement, and our horror, are, after all, our own
unconscious tributes to the power of the man who calls them up, and our
confession of the lasting validity of his criticism.
This is not the power nor is it the kind of criticism that are the
elements of the art of the journalist. Perhaps we should be glad that it
is not; which is but to say that we are content with things as they
exist. It requires a special set of conditions to precipitate a Swift.
Happily, if we will have it so, the conditions in which we find ourselves
ask for that kind of journalist whose function is amply fulfilled when
he has measured the movements of the hour by the somewhat higher
standards of the day. The conditions under which Swift lived demanded a
journalist of an entirely different calibre; and they got him. They
obtained a man who dissolved the petty jealousies of party power in the
acid of satire, and who distilled the affected fears for Church and State
in the alembic of a statesmanship that establishes a nation's majesty and
dignity on the common welfare of its free people. When Swift, at the
beginning of the November of 1710, was called in to assist the Tory party
by undertaking the work of "The Examiner," he found a condition of things
so involved and so unstable, that it required the very nicest
appreciation, the most delicate handling, and the boldest of hearts to
readjust and re-establish, without fearful consequences. Harley and St.
John were safely housed, and, apparently, amply protected by a
substantial majority. But majorities are often not the most trustworthy
of supports. Apart from the over-confidence which they inspire, and
apart from the danger of a too-enthusiastic following, such as found
expression in the October Club, there was the danger which might come
from the dissatisfaction of the people at large, should their temper be
wrongly gauged; and at this juncture it was not easy to gauge. The
popularity of Marlborough and his victories, on the one hand, was
undoubted. On the other, however, there was the growing opinion that
those victories had been paid for at a price greater than England could
afford. If she had gained reputation and prestige, these could not fill
the mouths of the landed class, gradually growing poorer, and the members
of this class were not of a disposition to restrain their feelings as
they noted the growing prosperity of the Whig stock-jobbers--a
prosperity that was due to the very war which was beggaring them. If the
landed man cried for peace, he was answered by the Whig stock-jobber that
peace meant the ultimate repudiation of the National Debt, with the
certainty of the reign of the Pretender. If the landed man spoke for the
Church, the Whig speculator raised the shout of "No Popery!" The war had
transformed parties into factions, and the ministry stood between a
Scylla of a peace-at-any-price, on the one side, and a Charybdis of a
war-at-any-price on the other; or, if not a war, then a peace so
one-sided that it would be almost impossible to bring it about.
In such troubled waters, and at such a critical juncture, it was given to
Swift to act as pilot to the ship of State. His papers to "The Examiner"
must bear witness to the skill with which he accomplished the task set
before him. His appeal to the people of England for confidence in the
ministry, should be an appeal not alone on behalf of its distinguished
and able members, but also on behalf of a policy by which "the crooked
should be made straight and the rough places plain." Such was to be the
nature of his appeal, and he made it in a series of essays that turned
every advantage with admirable effect to the side of his clients. Not
another man then living could have done what he did; and we question if
either Harley or St. John ever realized the service he rendered them. The
later careers of these two men furnish no doubtful hints of what might
have happened at this period had Swift been other than the man he was.
But Swift's "Examiners" did much more than preserve Harley's head on his
shoulders; they brought the nation to a calmer sense of its position, and
tutored it to a juster appreciation of the men who were using it for
selfish ends. Let us make every allowance for purely special pleadings;
for indulgence in personal feeling against the men who had either
disappointed, injured, or angered him; for the party man affecting or
genuinely feeling party bitterness, for the tricks and subterfuges of the
paid advocate appealing to the passions and weaknesses of those whose
favour he was seeking to win; allowing for these, there are yet left in
these papers a noble spirit of wide-eyed patriotism, and a distinguished
grasp of the meaning of national greatness and national integrity.
The pamphleteers whom he opposed, and who opposed him, were powerless
against Swift. Where they pried with the curiosity and meanness of petty
dealers, Swift's insight seized on the larger relations, and insisted on
them. Where they "bantered," cajoled, and sneered, arousing a very mild
irritation, Swift's scornful invective, and biting satire silenced into
fear the enemies of the Queen's chosen ministers. Where their jejune
"answers" gained a simper, Swift's virility of mind, range of power, and
dexterity of handling, compelled a homage. His Whig antagonists had
good reason to dread him. He scoffed at them for an existence that was
founded, not on a devotion to principles, but on a jealousy for the power
others enjoyed. "The bulk of the Whigs appears rather to be linked to a
certain set of persons, than any certain set of principles." To these
persons also he directed his grim attention, Somers, Cowper, Godolphin,
Marlborough, and Wharton were each drawn with iron stylus and acid. To
Wharton he gave special care (he had some private scores to pay off), and
in the character of Verres, he etched the portrait of a profligate, an
unscrupulous governor, a scoundrel, an infidel to his religion and
country, a reckless, selfish, low-living blackguard. In the Letter to
Marcus Crassus, Marlborough is addressed in language that the simplest
farm-labourer could understand. The letter is a lay sermon on the vice of
avarice, and every point and illustration are taken from Marlborough's
life with such telling application that Marlborough himself must have
taken thought as he read it. "No man," Swift finely concludes, "of true
valour and true understanding, upon whom this vice has stolen unawares;
when he is convinced he is guilty, will suffer it to remain in his breast
an hour."
But these attentions to the Whigs as a party and as individuals were,
after all, but the by-play of the skilled orator preparing the minds of
his hearers for the true purpose in hand. That purpose may originally
have been to fix the ministry in the country's favour; but Swift having
fulfilled it, and so discharged his office, turned it, as indeed he could
not help turning it, and as later in the Drapier's Letters he turned
another purpose, to the persuasion of an acceptance of those broad
principles which so influenced political thought during the last years of
the reign of Queen Anne. It is with these principles in his mind that Dr.
Johnson confessed that Swift "dictated for a time the political opinions
of the English nation." He recalled the nation to a consideration of the
Constitution; he attributed to the people (because, of course, they had
elected the new ministry into power) an appreciation of what was best for
the protection of their ancient privileges and rights. The past twenty
years had been a period of mismanagement, in which the Constitution had
been ignored; "but the body of the people is wiser; and by the choice
they have made, shew they do understand our Constitution, and would bring
it back to the old form." "The nation has groaned under the intolerable
burden of those who sucked her blood for gain. We have carried on wars,
that we might fill the pockets of stock-jobbers. We have revised our
Constitution, and by a great and united national effort, have secured our
Protestant succession, only that we may become the tools of a faction,
who arrogate to themselves the whole merit of what was a national act. We
are governed by upstarts, who are unsettling the landmarks of our social
system, and are displacing the influence of our landed gentry by that of
a class of men who find their profit in our woes." The rule of the
tradesman must be replaced by the rule of those whose lives are bound up
with the land of their country. The art of government was not "the
importation of nutmegs, and the curing of herrings;" but the political
embodiment of the will of "a Parliament freely chosen, without
threatening or corruption," and "composed of landed men" whose interests
being in the soil would be at one with the interests of those who lived
on the soil. Whigs and Tories may dispute as they will among themselves
as to the best side from which to defend the country; but the men of the
true party are the men of the National party--they "whose principles in
Church and State, are what I have above related; whose actions are
derived from thence, and who have no attachment to any set of ministers,
further than as these are friends to the Constitution in all its parts;
but will do their utmost to save their Prince and Country, whoever be at
the Helm".[1]
In this spirit and in such wise did Swift temper his time and champion
the cause of those men who had chosen him. This was a kind of "examining"
to which neither the Whigs nor the Tories had been accustomed. It shed
quite a new light on matters, which the country at large was not slow to
appreciate. Throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom "The
Examiner" was welcomed and its appeals responded to. Its success was
notable, even magnificent; but it was not a lasting success. It did the
work that the ministry had intended it to do, and did it unmistakably;
but the principles of this National party were for men of a sterner mould
than either Harley or St. John. Swift had laid a burden on their
shoulders heavier than they could carry, and they fell when they were
bereft of his support. But the work Swift did bears witness to-day to a
very unusual combination of qualities in the genius of this man, whose
personality stands out even above his work. It was ever his fate to serve
and never his happiness to command; but then he had himself accepted
servitude when he donned the robe of the priest.
It is deserving of repeated record to note that Dr. Johnson in admitting
that Swift, in "The Examiner," had the advantage in argument, adds that
"with regard to wit, I am afraid none of Swift's papers will be found
equal to those by which Addison opposed him." To which Monck Mason
pertinently remarks: "The Doctor should have told us what these papers
were which Addison wrote in opposition to Swift's 'Examiner;' for the
last 'Whig Examiner,' written by Addison, was published October 12th,
1710, and Swift's first 'Examiner' on the 2nd November following."[2]
* * * * *
In this volume have been collected those writings of Swift which form his
contributions to the periodicals of his time. Care has been taken to give
the best text and to admit nothing that Swift did not write. In the
preparation of the volume the editor has received such assistance from
Mr. W. Spencer Jackson that it might with stricter justice be said that
he had edited it. He collated the texts, revised the proofs, and supplied
most of the notes. Without his assistance the volume must inevitably have
been further delayed, and the editor gladly takes this occasion to
acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Jackson and to thank him for his
help.
His further indebtedness must be acknowledged to the researches of those
writers already named in the previously published volumes of this
edition, and also cited in the notes to the present volume.