"But, notwithstanding the fineness of this allegory (Sin and Death) may

atone for it (the defect in the subject of his poem) in some measure, I

cannot think that persons of such a chimerical existence are proper

actors in an epic poem."[636]

Further on Addison defines poetical machines, the conditions of their

structure, the advantage of their use. He seems to me a carpenter

inspecting a staircase. Do not suppose that artificiality shocks him; on

the contrary, he rather admires it. He finds the violent declamations of

the Miltonic divinity and the royal compliments indulged in by the

persons of the Trinity, sublime. The camps of the angels, their bearing

in chapel and barrack, their scholastic disputes, their bitter

puritanical or pious royalistic style, do not strike him as false or

disagreeable. Adam's pedantry and household lectures appear to him

suitable to the state of innocence. In fact, the classics of the last

two centuries never looked upon the human mind, except in its cultivated

state. The child, the artist, the barbarian, the inspired man, escaped

them; so, of course, did all who were beyond humanity; their world was

limited to the earth, and to the earth of the study and drawing-rooms;

they rose neither to God nor nature, or if they did, it was to transform

nature into a well-regulated garden-plot, and God into a moral

scrutator. They reduced genius to eloquence, poetry to discourse, the

drama to a dialogue. They regarded reason as if it were beauty, a sort

of middle faculty, not apt for invention, potent in rules, balancing

imagination like conduct, and making taste the arbiter of letters, as it

made morality the arbiter of actions. They dispensed with the play on

words, the sensual grossness, the flights of imagination, the

unlikelihood, the atrocities, and all the bad accompaniments of

Shakespeare;[637] but they only half followed him in the deep intuitions

by which he pierced the human heart, and discovered therein the god and

the animal. They wanted to be moved, but not overwhelmed; they allowed

themselves to be impressed, but demanded to be pleased. To please

rationally was the object of their literature. Such is Addison's

criticism, which resembles his art; born, like his art, of classical

urbanity; fit, like his art, for the life of the world, having the same

solidity and the same limits, because it had the same sources, namely,

order and relaxation.

Section VI.--Addison's Gallantry.--His Humor.--Sir Roger

de Coverley.--The Vision of Mirza

But we must consider that we are in England, and that we find there many

things not agreeable to a Frenchman. In France, the classical age

attained perfection; so that, compared to it, other countries lack

somewhat of finish. Addison, elegant in his own native country, is not

quite so in France. Compared with Tillotson, he is the most charming man

possible; compared to Montesquieu, he is only half polished. His

converse is hardly sparkling enough; the quick movement, the easy change

of tone, the facile smile, readily dropped and readily resumed, are

hardly visible. He drags on in long and too uniform phrases; his periods

are too square; we might cull a load of useless words. He tells us what

he is going to say: he marks divisions and subdivisions; he quotes

Latin, even Greek; he displays and protracts without end the serviceable

and sticky plaster of his morality. He has no fear of being wearisome.

That is not what Englishmen fear. Men who love demonstrative sermons

three hours long are not difficult to amuse. Remember that here the

women like to go to meeting, and are entertained by listening for half a

day to discourses on drunkenness, or on the sliding scale for taxes;

these patient creatures do not require that conversation should be

always lively and piquant. Consequently they can put up with a less

refined politeness and less disguised compliments. When Addison bows to

them, which happens often, it is gravely, and his reverence is always

accompanied by a warning. Take the following on their gaudy dresses:

"I looked with as much pleasure upon this little party-coloured

assembly, as upon a bed of tulips, and did not know at first whether it

might not be an embassy of Indian queens; but upon my going about into

the pit, and taking them in front, I was immediately undeceived and saw

so much beauty in every face, that I found them all to be English. Such

eyes and lips, cheeks and foreheads, could be the growth of no other

country. The complexion of their faces hindered me from observing any

further the colour of their hoods, though I could easily perceive, by

that unspeakable satisfaction which appeared in their looks, that their

own thoughts were wholly taken up on those pretty ornaments they wore

upon their heads."[638]

In this discreet raillery, modified by an almost official admiration, we

perceive an English mode of treating women: man, by her side, is always

a lay-preacher; they are for him charming children, or useful

housewives, never queens of the drawing-room, or equals, as amongst the

French. When Addison wishes to bring back the Jacobite ladies to the

Protestant party, i he treats them almost like little girls, to whom we

promise, if they will be good, to restore their doll or their cake:

"They should first reflect on the great sufferings and persecutions to

which they expose themselves by the obstinacy of their behaviour. They

lose their elections in every club where they are set up for toasts.

They are obliged by their principles to stick a patch on the most

unbecoming side of their foreheads. They forego the advantage of

birthday suits.... They receive no benefit from the army, and are never

the better for all the young fellows that wear hats and feathers. They

are forced to live in the country and feed their chickens; at the same

time that they might show themselves at court, and appear in brocade, if

they behaved themselves well. In short, what must go to the heart of

every fine woman, they throw themselves quite out of the fashion. ... A

man is startled when he sees a pretty bosom heaving with such

party-rage, as is disagreeable even in that sex which is of a more

coarse and rugged make. And yet such is our misfortune, that we

sometimes see a pair of stays ready to burst with sedition; and hear the

most masculine passions expressed in the sweetest voices.... Where a

great number of flowers grow, the ground at distance seems entirely

covered with them, and we must walk into it before we can distinguish

the several weeds that spring up in such a beautiful mass of

colours."[639]

This gallantry is too deliberate; we are somewhat shocked to see a woman

touched by such thoughtful hands. It is the urbanity of a moralist;

albeit he is well-bred, he is not quite amiable; and if a Frenchman can

receive from him lessons of pedagogy and conduct, Addison might come

over to France to find models of manners and conversation.

If the first care of a Frenchman in society is to be amiable, that of an

Englishman is to be dignified; their mood leads them to immobility, as

ours to gestures; and their pleasantry is as grave as ours is gay.

Laughter with them is inward; they shun giving themselves up to it; they

are amused silently. Let us make up our mind to understand this kind of

temper, it will end by pleasing us. When phlegm is united to gentleness,

as in Addison, it is as agreeable as it is piquant. We are charmed to

meet a lively man, who is yet master of himself. We are astonished to

see these contrary qualities together. Each heightens and modifies the

other. We are not repelled by venomous bitterness, as in Swift, or by

continuous buffoonery, as in Voltaire. We enjoy altogether the rare

union, which for the first time combines serious bearing and good humor.

Read this little satire against the bad taste of the stage and the

public:

"There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater

amusement to the town than Signor Nicolini's combat with a lion in the

Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general

satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great

Britain.... The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who being a fellow of a

testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer himself

to be killed so easily as he ought to have done.... The second lion was

a tailor by trade, who belonged to the playhouse, and had the character

of a mild and peaceable man in his profession. If the former was too

furious, this was too sheepish for his part; insomuch that, after a

short modest walk upon the stage, he would fall at the first touch of

Hydaspes, without grappling with him, and giving him an opportunity of

shewing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, indeed, that he once

gave him a rip in his flesh-coloured doublet; but this was only to make

work for himself, in his private character of a tailor.... The acting

lion at present is as I am informed, a country gentleman, who does it

for his diversion, but desires his name may be concealed. He says, very

handsomely, in his own excuse, that he does not act for gain, that he

indulges an innocent pleasure in it; and that it is better to pass away

an evening in this manner than in gaming and drinking.... This

gentleman's temper is made out of such a happy mixture of the mild and

the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors, and has drawn

together greater audiences than have been known in the memory of man.

... In the meantime I have related this combat of the lion, to show what

are at present the reigning entertainments of the politer part of Great

Britain."[640]

There is much originality in this grave gayety. As a rule, singularity

is in accordance with the taste of the nation; they like to be impressed

strongly by contrasts. French literature seems to them threadbare; and

the French find them often not very delicate. A number of the

"Spectator" which seemed pleasant to London ladies would have shocked

people in Paris. Thus, Addison relates in the form of a dream the

dissection of a beau's brain:

"The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be

the seat of the soul, smelt very strongly of essence and orange-flower

water, and was encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a

thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked

eye: insomuch that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been

always taken up in contemplating her own beauties. We observed a large

antrim or cavity in the sinciput, that was filled with ribbons, lace,

and embroidery.... We did not find anything very remarkable in the eye,

saving only, that the _musculi amatorii_, or, as we may translate it

into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn, and decayed with

use; whereas on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns

the eye towards heaven, did not appear to have been used at all."[641]

These anatomical details, which would disgust the French, amuse a

matter-of-fact mind; harshness is for him only accuracy; accustomed to

precise images, he finds no objectionable odor in the medical style.

Addison does not share our repugnance. To rail at a vice, he becomes a

mathematician, an economist, a pedant, an apothecary. Technical terms

amuse him. He sets up a court to judge crinolines, and condemns

petticoats in legal formulas. He teaches how to handle a fan as if he

were teaching to prime and load muskets. He draws up a list of men dead

or injured by love, and the ridiculous causes which have reduced them to

such a condition:

"Will Simple, smitten at the Opera by the glance of an eye that was

aimed at one who stood by him.

"Sir Christopher Crazy, Bart., hurt by the brush of a whalebone

petticoat.

"Ned Courtly, presenting Flavia with her glove (which she had dropped on

purpose), she received it and took away his life with a curtsey.

"John Gosselin, having received a slight hurt from a pair of blue eyes,

as he was making his escape, was dispatched by a smile."[642]

Other statistics, with recapitulations and tables of numbers, relate

the history of the Leucadian leap:

"Aridæus a beautiful youth of Epirus, in love with Praxinoe, the wife

of the Thespis, escaped without damage, saving only that two of his fore

teeth were struck out, and his nose a little flatted.

"Hipparchus, being passionately fond of his own wife, who was enamoured

of Bathyllus, leaped and died of his fall; upon which his wife married

her gallant."[643]

We see this strange mode of painting human folly: in England it is

called humor. It consists of an incisive good sense, the habit of

restraint, business habits, but above all a fundamental energy of

invention. The race is less refined, but stronger than the French; and

the pleasures which content its mind and taste are like the liquors

which suit its palate and its stomach.

This potent Germanic spirit breaks out even in Addison through his

classical and Latin exterior. Albeit he relishes art, he still loves

nature. His education, which loaded him with maxims, has not destroyed

his virgin sentiment of truth. In his travels in France he preferred the

wildness of Fontainebleau to the correctness of Versailles. He shakes

off worldly refinement to praise the simplicity of the old national

ballads. He explains to his public the sublime images, the vast

passions, the deep religion of "Paradise Lost." It is curious to see

him, compass in hand, kept back by Bossu, fettered in endless arguments

and academical phrases, attaining with one spring, through the strength

of natural emotion, the lofty unexplored regions to which Milton rose by

the inspiration of faith and genius. Addison does not say, as Voltaire

does, that the allegory of Sin and Death is enough to make people sick.

He has a foundation of grand imagination, which makes him indifferent to

the little refinements of social civilization. He sojourns willingly

amid the grandeur and marvels of the other world. He is penetrated by

the presence of the Invisible, he must escape from the interests and

hopes of the petty life in which we crawl.[644] This source of faith

gushes from him in all directions; in vain is it enclosed in the regular

channel of official dogma; the text and arguments with which it is

covered do not hide its true origin. It springs from the grave and

fertile imagination which can only be satisfied with a sight of what is

beyond.

Such a faculty swallows a man up; and if we descend to the examination

of literary qualities, we find it at the bottom as well as at the top.

Nothing in Addison is more varied and rich than the changes and the

scenery. The driest morality is transformed under his hand into pictures

and stories. There are letters from all kinds of men, clergymen, common

people, men of fashion, who keep their own style, and disguise their

advice under the form of a little novel. An ambassador from Bantam

jests, like Montesquieu, at the lies of European politeness. Greek or

Oriental tales, imaginary travels, the vision of a Scottish seer, the

memoirs of a rebel, the history of ants, the transformations of an ape,

the journal of an idle man, a walk in Westminster, the genealogy of

humor, the laws of ridiculous clubs; in short, an inexhaustible mass of

pleasant or solid fictions. The allegories are most frequent. We feel

that the author delights in their magnificent and fantastic world; he is

acting for himself a sort of opera; his eyes must look on colors. Here

is a paper on religions, very Protestant, but as sparkling as it is

ingenious: relaxation in England does not consist, as in France, in the

vivacity and variety of tone, but in the splendor and correctness of

invention:

"The middle figure, which immediately attracted the eyes of the whole

company, and was much bigger than the rest, was formed like a matron,

dressed in the habit of an elderly woman of quality in Queen Elizabeth's

days. The most remarkable parts of her dress were the beaver with the

steeple crown, the scarf that was darker than sable, and the lawn apron

that was whiter than ermine. Her gown was of the richest black velvet,

and just upon her heart studded with large diamonds of an inestimable

value, disposed in the form of a cross. She bore an inexpressible

cheerfulness and dignity in her aspect; and though she seemed in years,

appeared with so much spirit and vivacity, as gave her at the same time

an air of old age and immortality. I found my heart touched with so much

love and reverence at the sight of her, that the tears ran down my face

as I looked upon her; and still the more I looked upon her, the more my

heart was melted with the sentiments of filial tenderness and duty. I

discovered every moment something so charming in this figure, that I

could scarce take my eyes off it. On its right hand there sat the figure

of a woman so covered, with ornaments, that her face, her body, and her

hands were almost entirely hid under them. The little you could see of

her face was painted, and what I thought very odd, had something in it

like artificial wrinkles; but I was the less surprised at it, when I saw

upon her forehead an old-fashioned tower of grey hairs. Her head-dress

rose very high by three several stories or degrees; her garments had a

thousand colours in them, and were embroidered with crosses in gold,

silver, and silk; she had nothing on, so much as a glove or a slipper,

which was not marked with this figure; nay, so superstitiously fond did

she appear of it, that she sat cross-legged.... The next to her was a

figure which somewhat puzzled me; it was that of a man looking with

horror in his eyes, upon a silver bason filled with water. Observing

something in his countenance that looked like lunacy, I fancied at first

that he was to express that kind of distraction which the physicians

call the Hydrophobia; but considering what the intention of the show

was, I immediately recollected myself, and concluded it to be

Anabaptism."[645]

The reader must guess what these two first figures mean. They will

please a member of the Episcopal Church more than a Roman Catholic; but

I think that a Roman Catholic himself cannot help recognizing the

fulness and freshness of the fiction.

Genuine imagination naturally ends in the invention of characters. For,

if we clearly represent to ourselves a situation or an action, we will

see at the same time the whole network of its connection; the passion

and faculties, all the gestures and tones of voice, all details of

dress, dwelling, social intercourse, which flow from it, will be

connected in our mind, and bring their precedents and their

consequences; and this multitude of ideas, slowly organized, will at

last be concentrated in a single sentiment, from which, as from a deep

spring, will break forth the portrait and the history of a complete

character. There are several such in Addison; the quiet observer Will

Honeycomb, the country Tory Sir Roger de Coverley, which are not

satirical theses, like those of La Bruyère, but genuine individuals,

like, and sometimes equal to, the characters of the great contemporary

novels. In reality, he invents the novel without suspecting it, at the

same time, and in the same way as his most illustrious neighbors. His

characters are taken from life, from the manners and conditions of the

age, described at length and minutely in all the details of their

education and surroundings, with a precise and positive observation,

marvellously real and English. A masterpiece as well as an historical

record is Sir Roger de Coverley, the country gentleman, a loyal servant

of State and Church, a justice of the peace, with a chaplain of his own,

and whose estate shows on a small scale the structure of the English

nation. This domain is a little kingdom, paternally governed, but still

governed. Sir Roger rates his tenants, passes them in review in church,

knows their affairs, gives them advice, assistance, commands; he is

respected, obeyed, loved, because he lives with them, because the

simplicity of his tastes and education puts him almost on a level with

them; because as a magistrate, a landed proprietor of many years'

standing, a wealthy man, a benefactor and neighbor, he exercises a moral

and legal, a useful and respected authority. Addison at the same time

shows in him the solid and peculiar English character, built of heart of

oak, with all the ruggedness of the primitive bark, which can neither be

softened nor planed down, a great fund of kindness which extends even to

animals, a love for the country and for bodily exercises, an inclination

to command and discipline, a feeling of subordination and respect, much

common-sense and little finesse, a habit of displaying and practising in

public his singularities and oddities, careless of ridicule, without

thought of bravado, solely because these men acknowledge no judge but

themselves. A hundred traits depict the times; a lack of love for

reading, a lingering belief in witches, rustic and sporting manners, the

ignorances of an artless or backward mind. Sir Roger gives the children,

who answer their catechism well, a Bible for themselves, and half a

flitch of bacon for their mothers. When a verse pleases him, he sings it

for half a minute after the congregation has finished. He kills eight

fat pigs at Christmas, and sends a pudding and a pack of cards to each

poor family in the parish. When he goes to the theatre, he supplies his

servants with cudgels to protect themselves from the thieves which, he

says, infest London. Addison returns a score of times to the old knight,

always showing some new aspect of his character, a disinterested

observer of humanity, curiously assiduous and discerning, a true

creator, having but one step farther to go to enter, like Richardson and

Fielding, upon the great work of modern literature, the novel of manners

and customs.

There is an undercurrent of poetry in all this. It has flowed through

his prose a thousand times more sincere and beautiful than in his

verses. Rich oriental fancies are displayed, not with a shower of sparks

as in Voltaire, but in a calm and abundant light, which makes the

regular folds of their purple and gold undulate.[646] The music of the

vast cadenced and tranquil phrases leads the mind gently amidst romantic

splendors and enchantments, and the deep sentiment of ever young nature

recalls the happy quietude of Spenser. Through gentle railleries or

moral essays we feel that the author's imagination is happy, delighted

in the contemplation of the swaying to and fro of the forest-tops which

clothe the mountains, the eternal verdure of the valleys, invigorated by

fresh springs, and the wide view undulating far away on the distant

horizon. Great and simple sentiments naturally join these noble images,

and their measured harmony creates a unique spectacle, worthy to

fascinate the heart of a good man by its gravity and sweetness. Such are

the visions of Mirza, which I will give almost entire:

"On the fifth day of the moon, which according to the custom of my

forefathers I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered

up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdad, in order

to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here

airing myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound

contemplation of the vanity of human life; and passing from one thought

to another: Surely, said I, man is but a shadow and life a dream. Whilst

I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was

not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with

a musical instrument in his hand. As I looked upon him he applied it to

his lips, and began to play upon it. The sound of it was exceeding

sweet, and wrought into a variety of tunes that were inexpressibly

melodious, and altogether different from anything I had ever heard. They

put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played to the departed

souls of good men upon their first arrival in Paradise, to wear out the

impressions of the last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of

that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures....

"He (the Genius) then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and

placing me on the top of it, Cast thy eyes eastward, said he, and tell

me what thou seest. I see, said I, a huge valley, and a prodigious tide

of water rolling through it. The valley that thou seest, said he, is the

vale of misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the

great tide of Eternity. What is the reason, said I, that the tide I see

rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick

mist at the other? What thou seest, said he, is that portion of Eternity

which is called Time, measured out by the Sun, and reaching from the

beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine now, said he, this

sea that is bounded with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou

discoverest in it. I see a bridge, said I, standing in the midst of the

tide. The bridge thou seest, said he, is human life; consider it

attentively. Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that it

consisted of three score and ten entire arches, with several broken

arches, which added to those that were entire, made up the number about

an hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this

bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches; but that a great flood

swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now

beheld it. But tell me further, said he, what thou discoverest on it. I

see multitudes of people passing over it, said I, and a black cloud

hanging on each end of it. As I looked more attentively, I saw several

of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that

flowed underneath it; and upon further examination, perceived there were

innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the

passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through them into the

tide, and immediately disappeared. These hidden pit-falls were set very

thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner

broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. They grew

thinner towards the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together

towards the end of the arches that were entire.

"There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that

continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell

through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a

walk.

"I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure,

and the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled

with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst

of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to

save themselves. Some were looking up towards the Heavens in a

thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a Speculation stumbled and fell

out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that

glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they

thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed and

down they sunk. In this confusion of objects, I observed some with

scimitars in their hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro

upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on trap-doors which did not

seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped had they not

been thus forced upon them....

"I here fetched a deep sigh. Alas, said I, man was made in vain! How is

he given away to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and swallowed

up in death! The Genius, being moved with compassion towards me, bid me

quit so uncomfortable a prospect. Look no more, said he, on man in the

first stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity; but cast

thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several

generations of mortals that fall into it. I directed my sight as I was

ordered, and (whether or no the good Genius strengthened it with any

supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too

thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley opening at the farther

end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of

adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal

parts. The clouds still rested on one half of it, insomuch that I could

discover nothing in it: but the other appeared to me a vast ocean

planted with innumerable islands, that were covered with fruits and

flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran

among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits, with

garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the

sides of the fountains, or resting on beds of flowers; and could hear a

confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and

musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so

delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly

away to those happy seas; but the Genius told me there was no passage to

them, except through the gates of death that I saw opening every moment

upon the bridge. The islands, said he, that lie so fresh and green

before thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted

as far as thou canst see, are more in number than the sands on the

sea-shore; there are myriads of islands behind those which thou here

discoverest, reaching farther than thine eye, or even thine imagination,

can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men after death, who

according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are

distributed among these several islands, which abound with pleasures of

different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of

those who are settled in them: every island is a paradise accommodated

to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth

contending for? Does life appear miserable, that gives thee

opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will

convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain,

who has such an eternity reserved for him. I gazed with inexpressible

pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, shew me now, I

beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which

cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of Adamant. The Genius

making me no answer, I turned me about to address myself to him a second

time, but I found that he had left me; I then turned again to the vision

which I had been so long contemplating: but instead of the rolling tide,

the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long

hollow valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the

sides of it."[647]

In this ornate moral sketch, this fine reasoning, so correct and so

eloquent, this ingenious and noble imagination, I find an epitome of all

Addison's characteristics. These are the English tints which distinguish

this classical age from that of the French: a narrower and more

practical argument, a more poetical and less eloquent urbanity, a

structure of mind more inventive and more rich, less sociable and less

refined.

[Footnote 593: Addison's Works, ed. Hurd, 6 vols. v. 151; Steele's Letter

to Mr. Congreve.]

[Footnote 594: Ibid. VI. 729.]

[Footnote 595: Addison's Works, 4 vols. 4 to, Tonson, 1721, vol. I. 43. A

letter to Lord Halifax (1701).]

[Footnote 596: "Renowned in verse, each shady thicket grows,

And every stream in heavenly numbers flows....

Where the smooth chisel all its force has shown,

And softened into flesh the rugged stone....

Here pleasing airs my ravisht soul confound

With circling notes and labyrinths of sound."--Ibid.]

[Footnote 597: Preface to "Remarks on Italy," II.]

[Footnote 598: "Remarks on Italy."]

[Footnote 599: "First Dialogue on Medals," I. 435.]

[Footnote 600: On the victory of Blenheim, I. 63.]

[Footnote 601: "With floods of gore that from the vanquished fell

The marshes stagnate and the rivers swell.

Mountains of slain, etc......

Rows of hollow brass,

Tube behind tube the dreadful entrance keep,

Whilst in their wombs ten thousand thunders sleep...."

"... Here shattered walls, like broken rocks, from far

Rise up in hideous views, the guilt of war;

Whilst here the vine o'er hills of ruin climbs

Industrious to conceal great Bourbon's crimes."--Vol. I. 63-82.]

[Footnote 602: "Spectator," No. 169.]

[Footnote 603: See, for instance, his chapter on the republic of San

Marino.]

[Footnote 604: Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax:

"O Liberty, thou Goddess heavenly bright,

Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight;

Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,

And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train....

'Tis liberty that crowns Britannia's isle,

And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile."--I. 53.

About the republic of San Marino he writes:

"Nothing can be a greater instance of the natural love that mankind has

for liberty, and of their aversion to an arbitrary government, than such

a savage mountain covered with people, and the Campagna of Rome, which

lies in the same country, almost destitute of inhabitants."--"Remarks on

Italy," II. 48.]

[Footnote 605: Halifax, for instance.]

[Footnote 606: "Of the Christian Religion."]

[Footnote 607: Addison's Works, Hurd, VI. 525.]

[Footnote 608: The Stamp Act (1712; 10 Anne, C. 19) put a duty of a

halfpenny on every printed half sheet or less, and a penny on a

whole sheet, besides twelve pence on every advertisement. This Act was

repealed in 1855. Swift writes to Stella (August 7, 1712), "Do you know

that all Grub Street is ruined by the Stamp Act."--Tr.]

[Footnote 609: The sale of the "Spectator" was considerably diminished

through its forced increase of price, and it was discontinued in 1713, the

year after the Stamp Act was passed.--Tr.]

[Footnote 610: "Spectator," No. 173.]

[Footnote 611: "Tatler," No. 108.]

[Footnote 612: "Guardian," No. 123.]

[Footnote 613: "Spectator," No. 198.]

[Footnote 614: "Guardian," No. 100.]

[Footnote 615: "Spectator," No. 45.]

[Footnote 616: Ibid. Nos. 317 and 323.]

[Footnote 617: "Spectator," No. 399.]

[Footnote 618: Ibid. No. 57.]

[Footnote 619: "Freeholder," No. 1.]

[Footnote 620: "Spectator," No. 500.]

[Footnote 621: Ibid. Nos. 26 and 573.]

[Footnote 622: The abbé Pluche (1688-1761) was the author of a "Système

de la Nature" and several other works.--Tr.]

[Footnote 623: "Spectator," No. 580; see also No. 531.]

[Footnote 624: Ibid. Nos. 237, 571, 600.]

[Footnote 625: Ibid. No. 571; see also Nos. 237, 600.]

[Footnote 626: "Tatler," No. 257.]

[Footnote 627: "Spectator," No. 531.]

[Footnote 628: "Spectator," No. 10.]

[Footnote 629: "Spectator," No. 418.]

[Footnote 630: "Spectator," Nos. 423, 265.]

[Footnote 631: See, in the notes of No. 409 of the "Spectator," the

pretty minute analysis of Hurd, the decomposition of the period, the

proportion of long and short syllables, the study of the finals. A

musician could not have done better.]

[Footnote 632: La Quintinie (1626-1688), a celebrated gardener under

Louis XIV, planned the gardens of Versailles.--Tr.]

[Footnote 633: "Spectator," No. 164.]

[Footnote 634: See Ibid. Nos. 411-421.]

[Footnote 635: "Spectator," No. 327.]

[Footnote 636: Ibid. No. 273.]

[Footnote 637: Ibid. Nos. 39, 40, 58.]

[Footnote 638: "Spectator," No. 265.]

[Footnote 639: "Freeholder," No. 26.]

[Footnote 640: "Spectator," No. 13.]

[Footnote 641: "Spectator," No. 275.]

[Footnote 642: Ibid. No. 377.]

[Footnote 643: "Spectator," No. 233.]

[Footnote 644: See the last thirty numbers of the "Spectator."]

[Footnote 645: "Tatler," No. 257.]

[Footnote 646: See the history of Alnaschar in the "Spectator," No. 535,

and also that of Hilpa in the same paper, Nos. 584, 585.]

[Footnote 647: "Spectator," No. 159.]

CHAPTER FIFTH

Swift

In 1685, in the great hall of Dublin University, the professors engaged

in examining for the bachelor's degree beheld a singular spectacle: a

poor scholar, odd, awkward, with hard blue eyes, an orphan, friendless,

dependent on the precarious charity of an uncle, having failed once

before to take his degree on account of his ignorance of logic, had come

up again without having condescended to read logic. To no purpose his

tutor set before him the most respectable folios--Smiglecius,

Keckermannus, Burgerdiscius. He turned over a few pages, and shut them

directly. When the argumentation came on, the proctor was obliged to

"reduce his replies into syllogism." He was asked how he could reason

well without rules; he replied that he did reason pretty well without

them. This folly shocked them; yet he was received, though with some

difficulty, _speciali gratiâ_, says the college register, and the

professors went away, doubtless with pitying smiles, lamenting the

feeble brain of Jonathan Swift.

Section I.--Concerning Swift's Life and Character

This was his first humiliation and his first rebellion. His whole life

was like this moment, overwhelmed and made wretched by sorrow and

hatred. To what excess they rose, his portrait and his history alone can

show. He fostered an exaggerated and terrible pride, and made the

haughtiness of the most powerful ministers and greatest lords bend

beneath his arrogance. Though only a literary man, possessing nothing

but a small Irish living, he treated them on a footing of equality.

Harley, the Prime Minister, having sent him a bank-bill of fifty pounds

for his first articles, he was offended at being taken for a hack

writer, returned the money, demanded an apology, received it, and wrote

in his journal: "I have taken Mr. Harley into favour again."[648] On

another occasion, having observed that the Secretary of State, St. John,

looked upon him coldly, he rebuked him for it:

"One thing I warned him of, never to appear cold to me, for I would not

be treated like a school-boy; that I expected every great minister who

honoured me with his acquaintance, if he heard or saw anything to my

disadvantage, would let me know in plain words, and not put me in pain

to guess by the change or coldness of his countenance or behaviour; for

it was what I would hardly bear from a crowned head; and I thought no

subject's favour was worth it: and that I designed to let my Lord Keeper

and Mr. Harley know the same thing, that they might use me

accordingly."[649]

St. John, approved of this, made excuses, said that he had passed

several nights at "business, and one night at drinking," and that his

fatigue might have seemed like ill-humor. In the minister's drawing-room

Swift went up and spoke to some obscure person, and compelled the lords

to come and speak to him:

"Mr. Secretary told me the Duke of Buckingham had been talking to him

much about me, and desired my acquaintance. I answered, it could not be,

for he had not made sufficient advances. Then the Duke of Shrewsbury

said he thought the Duke was not used to make advances. I said I could

not help that; for I always expected advances in proportion to men's

quality, and more from a Duke than other men."[650]

"Saw Lord Halifax at court, and we joined and talked, and the Duchess of

Shrewsbury came up and reproached me for not dining with her: I said

that was not so soon done; for I expected more advances from ladies,

especially duchesses: She promised to comply.... Lady Oglethorpe

brought me and the Duchess of Hamilton together to-day in the

drawing-room, and I have given her some encouragement, but not

much."[651]

He triumphed in his arrogance, and said with a restrained joy, full of

vengeance: "I generally am acquainted with about thirty in the

drawing-room, and am so proud that I make all the lords come up to me.

One passes half an hour pleasant enough." He carried his triumph to the

verge of brutality and tyranny; writing to the Duchess of Queensberry,

he says: "I am glad you know your duty; for it has been a known and

established rule above twenty years in England, that the first advances

have been constantly made me by all ladies who aspired to my

acquaintance, and the greater their quality, the greater were their

advances."[652] The famous General Webb, with his crutch and cane,

limped up two flights of stairs to congratulate him and invite him to

dinner; Swift accepted, then an hour later withdrew his consent,

preferring to dine elsewhere. He seemed to look upon himself as a

superior being, exempt from the necessity of showing his respects to

anyone, entitled to homage, caring neither for sex, rank, nor fame,

whose business it was to protect and destroy, distributing favors,

insults, and pardons. Addison, and after him Lady Gifford, a friend of

twenty years' standing, having offended him, he refused to take them

back into his favor until they had asked his pardon. Lord Lansdowne,

Secretary for War, being annoyed at an expression of the "Examiner,"

Swift says: "This I resented highly that he should complain of me before

he spoke to me. I sent him a peppering letter, and would not summon him

by a note, as I did the rest; nor ever will have anything to say to him,

till he begs my pardon."[653] He treated art like man, writing a thing

off, scorning the wretched necessity of reading it over, putting his

name to nothing, letting every piece make its way on its own merits,

unassisted, without the prestige of his name, recommended by none. He

had the soul of a dictator, thirsting after power, and saying openly:

"All my endeavors, from a boy, to distinguish myself were only for want

of a great title and fortune, that I might be treated like a lord....

whether right or wrong, it is no great matter; and so the reputation of

wit or great learning does the office of a blue ribbon, or of a coach

and six horses."[654] But he thought this power and rank due to him; he

did not ask, but expected them. "I will never beg for myself, though I

often do it for others." He desired ruling power, and acted as if he had

it. Hatred and misfortune find a congenial soil in these despotic minds.

They live like fallen kings, always insulting and offended, having all

the miseries but none of the consolations of pride, unable to relish

either society or solitude, too ambitious to be content with silence,

too haughty to use the world, born for rebellion and defeat, destined by

their passions and impotence to despair and to talent.

Sensitiveness in Swift's case aggravated the stings of pride. Under this

outward calmness of countenance and style raged furious passions. There

was within him a ceaseless tempest of wrath and desire: "A person of

great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to look into

my mind) used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that

would do mischief, if I would not give it employment." Resentment sunk

deeper in him than in other men. Listen to the profound sigh of joyful

hatred with which he sees his enemies under his feet: "The Whigs were

ravished to see me, and would lay hold on me as a twig while they are

drowning; and the great men making me their clumsy apologies."[655] "It

is good to see what a lamentable confession the Whigs all make of my

ill-usage."[656] And soon after: "Rot them, for ungrateful dogs; I will

make them repent their usage before I leave this place."[657] He is

satiated and has glutted his appetite; like a wolf or a lion, he cares

for nothing else.

This impetuosity led him to every sort of madness and violence. His

"Drapier's Letters" had roused Ireland against the government, and the

government had issued a proclamation offering a reward to anyone who

would denounce the Drapier. Swift came suddenly into the

reception-chamber, elbowed the groups, went up to the lord-lieutenant,

with indignation on his countenance, and in a thundering voice, said:

"So, my lord, this is a glorious exploit that you performed yesterday,

in suffering a proclamation against a poor shopkeeper, whose only crime

is an honest endeavor to save his country from ruin."[658] And he broke

out into railing amidst general silence and amazement. The

lord-lieutenant, a man of sense, answered calmly. Before such a torrent

men turned aside. This chaotic and self-devouring heart could not

understand the calmness of his friends; he asked them: "Do not the

corruptions and villanies of men eat your flesh, and exhaust your

spirits?"[659]

Resignation was repulsive to him. His actions, abrupt and strange, broke

out amidst his silent moods like flashes of lightning. He was eccentric

and violent in everything, in his pleasantry, in his private affairs,

with his friends, with unknown people; he was often taken for a madman.

Addison and his friends had seen for several days at Button's

coffee-house a singular parson, who laid his hat on the table, walked

for half-an-hour backward and forward, paid his money, and left, having

attended to nothing and said nothing. They called him the mad parson.

One day this parson perceives a gentleman "just come out of the

country," went straight up to him, "and in a very abrupt manner, without

any previous salute, asked him, 'Pray sir, do you remember any good

weather in the world?' The country gentleman, after staring a little at

the singularity of his (Swift's) 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.'"[660] Another day, dining with the Earl of

Burlington, the Dean said to the mistress of the house, "Lady

Burlington, I hear you can sing; sing me a song." The lady looked on

this unceremonious manner of asking a favor with distaste, and

positively refused. He said, "she should sing, or he would make her.

Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor English

hedge-parsons; sing when I bid you!" As the earl did nothing but laugh

at this freedom, the lady was so vexed that she burst into tears, and

retired. His first compliment to her, when he saw her again, was, "Pray,

madam, are you as proud and as ill-natured now as when I saw you

last?"[661] People were astonished or amused at these outbursts; I see

in them sobs and cries, the explosion of long, overwhelming and bitter

thoughts; they are the starts of a mind unsubdued, shuddering,

rebelling, breaking the barriers, wounding, crushing, or bruising

everyone on its road, or those who wish to stop it. Swift became mad at

last; he felt this madness coming on, he has described it in a horrible

manner; beforehand he has tasted all the disgust and bitterness of it;

he showed it on his tragic face, in his terrible and wan eyes. This is

the powerful and mournful genius which nature gave up as a prey to

society and life; society and life poured all their poisons into him.

He knew what poverty and scorn were, even at that age when the mind

expands, when the heart is full of pride,[662] when he was hardly

maintained by the alms of his family, gloomy and without hope, feeling

his strength and the dangers of his strength.[663] At twenty-one, as

secretary to Sir William Temple, he had twenty pounds a year salary, sat

at the same table with the upper servants,[664] wrote Pindaric odes in

honor of his master, spent ten years amidst the humiliations of

servitude and the familiarity of the servants' hall, obliged to adulate

a gouty and flattered courtier, to submit to my lady his sister, acutely

pained "when Sir William Temple would look cold and out of humor,"[665]

lured by false hopes, forced after an attempt at independence to resume

the livery which was choking him. "When you find years coming on,

without hopes of a place at court,... I directly advise you to go upon

the road, which is the only post of honour left you; there you will meet

many of your old comrades, and live a short life and a merry one."[666]

This is followed by instructions as to the conduct servants ought to

display when led to the gallows. Such are his "Directions to Servants";

he was relating what he had suffered. At the age of thirty-one,

expecting a place from William III, he edited the works of his patron,

dedicating them to the sovereign, sent him a memorial, got nothing, and

fell back upon the post of chaplain and private secretary to the Earl of

Berkeley. He soon remained only chaplain to that nobleman, feeling all

the disgust which the part of ecclesiastical valet must inspire in a man

of feeling.

Says the chambermaid in the well-known "Petition":

"You know I honour the cloth; I design to be a parson's wife.... And

over and above, that I may have your excellency's letter With an order

for the chaplain aforesaid, or instead of him a better."[667]

The earl, having promised him the deanery of Derry, gave it to another.

Driven to politics, he wrote a Whig pamphlet, "A Discourse on the

Contests and Dissensions in Athens and Rome," received from Lord Halifax

and the party leaders a score of fine promises, and was neglected.

Twenty years of insults without revenge, and humiliations without

respite; the inner tempest of fostered and crushed hopes, vivid and

brilliant dreams, suddenly withered by the necessity of a mechanical

duty; the habit of suffering and hatred, the necessity of concealing

these, the baneful consciousness of superiority, the isolation of genius

and pride, the bitterness of accumulated wrath and pent-up scorn--these

were the goads which pricked him like a bull. More than a thousand

pamphlets in four years, stung him still more, with such designations as

renegade, traitor, and atheist. He crushed them all, set his foot on the

Whig party, solaced himself with the poignant pleasure of victory. If

ever a soul was satiated with the joy of tearing, outraging, and

destroying, it was his. Excess of scorn, implacable irony, crushing

logic, the cruel smile of the foeman, who sees beforehand the spot where

he will wound his enemy mortally, advances towards him, tortures him

deliberately, eagerly, with enjoyment--such were the feelings which had

leavened him, and which broke from him with such harshness that he

hindered his own career;[668] and that of so many high places for which

he stretched out his hands, there remained for him only a deanery in

poor Ireland. The accession of George I exiled him thither; the

accession of George II, on which he had counted, confined him there. He

contended there first against popular hatred, then against the

victorious minister, then against entire humanity, in sanguinary

pamphlets, despairing satires;[669] he tasted there once more the

pleasure of fighting and wounding; he suffered there to the end, soured

by the advance of years, by the spectacle of oppression and misery, by

the feeling of his own impotence, enraged to have to live amongst "an

enslaved people," chained and vanquished. He says: "I find myself

disposed every year, or rather every month, to be more angry and

revengeful; and my rage is so ignoble, that it descends even to resent

the folly and baseness of the enslaved people among whom I live."[670]

This cry is the epitome of his public life; these feelings are the

materials which public life furnished to his talent.

He experienced these feelings also in private life, more violent and

more inwardly. He had brought up and purely loved a charming,

well-informed, modest young girl, Esther Johnson, who from infancy had

loved and reverenced him alone. She lived with him, he had made her his

confidante. From London, during his political struggles, he sent her the

full journal of his slightest actions; he wrote to her twice a day, with

extreme ease and familiarity, with all the playfulness, vivacity,

petting and caressing names of the tenderest attachment. Yet another

girl, beautiful and rich, Miss Vanhomrigh, attached herself to him,

declared her passion, received from him several marks of his own,

followed him to Ireland, sometimes jealous, sometimes submissive, but so

impassioned, so unhappy, that her letters might have broken a harder

heart: "If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made

uneasy by me long.... I am sure I could have borne the rack much better,

than those killing, killing words of you.... Oh, that you may have but

so much regard for me left, that this complaint may touch your soul with

pity!"[671] She pined and died. Esther Johnson, who had so long

possessed Swift's whole heart, suffered still more. All was changed in

Swift's house. "At my first coming (at Laracor) I thought I should have

died with discontent, and was horribly melancholy while they were

installing me."[672] He found tears, distrust, resentment, cold silence,

in place of familiarity and tenderness. He married Miss Johnson from a

feeling of duty, but in secret, and on condition that she should only be

his wife in name. She was twelve years dying; Swift went away to England

as often as he could. His house was a hell to him; it is thought that

some secret physical cause had influenced his loves and his marriage.

Delany, his biographer, having once found him talking with Archbishop

King, saw the archbishop in tears, and Swift rushing by, with a

countenance full of grief, and a distracted air. "Sir," said the

prelate, "you have just met the most unhappy man upon earth; but on the

subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question." Esther

Johnson died. Swift's anguish, the spectres by which he was haunted, the

remembrance of the two women, slowly ruined and killed by his fault,

continually encompassed him with such horrors, that only his end reveals

them. "It is time for me to have done with the world... and so I

would... and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a

hole."[673] Overwork and excess of emotion had made him ill from his

youth; he was subject to giddiness; he lost his hearing. He had long

felt that reason was deserting him. One day he was observed "gazing

intently at the top of a lofty elm, the head of which had been blasted.

Upon his friend's approach, he pointed to it, significantly adding, 'I

shall be like that tree, and die first at the top.'"[674] His memory

left him; he received the attentions of others with disgust, sometimes

with rage. He lived alone, gloomy, unable to read. It is said that he

passed a whole year without uttering a word, hating the sight of a human

being, walking ten hours a day, a maniac, then an idiot. A tumor came on

one of his eyes, so that he continued a month without sleeping, and five

men were needed to prevent his tearing out the eye with his nails. One

of his last words was, "I am a fool." When his will was opened, it was

found that he had left his whole fortune to build a mad-house.

Section II.--Swift's Prosaic and Positive Mind

These passions and these miseries were necessary to inspire "Gulliver's

Travels" and the "Tale of a Tub."

A strange and powerful form of mind, too, was necessary, as English as

his pride and his passions. Swift has the style of a surgeon and a

judge, cold, grave, solid, unadorned, without vivacity or passion, manly

and practical. He desired neither to please, nor to divert, nor to carry

people away, nor to move the feelings; he never hesitated, nor was

redundant, nor was excited, nor made an effort. He expressed his

thoughts in a uniform tone, with exact, precise, often harsh terms, with

familiar comparisons, levelling all within reach of his hand, even the

loftiest things--especially the loftiest--with a brutal and always

haughty coolness. He knows life as a banker knows accounts; and his

total once made up, he scorns or knocks down the babblers who dispute it

in his presence.

He knows the items as well as the sum total. He not only familiarly and

vigorously seized on every object, but he also decomposed it, and kept

an inventory of its details. His imagination was as minute as it was

energetic. He could give you a statement of dry facts on every event and

object, so connected and natural as to deceive any man. "Gulliver's

Travels" read like a log-book. Isaac Bickerstaff's predictions were

taken literally by the inquisition in Portugal. His account of M. du

Baudrier seems an authentic translation. He gives to an extravagant

romance the air of a genuine history. By this thorough knowledge of

details he imports into literature the positive spirit of men of

business and experience. Nothing could be more vigorous, narrow,

unhappy, for nothing could be more destructive. No greatness, false or

true, can stand before him; whatsoever he fathoms and takes in hand

loses at once its prestige and value. Whilst he decomposes he displays

the real ugliness, and removes the fictitious beauty of objects. Whilst

he brings them to the level of common things, he suppresses their real

beauty, and gives them a fictitious ugliness. He presents all their

gross features, and nothing but their gross features. Look with him into

the physical details of science, religion, state, and with him reduce

science, religion, state, to the low standing of every-day events; with

him you will see here a Bedlam of shrivelled-up dreamers, narrow and

chimerical brains, busy in contradicting each other, picking up

meaningless phrases in mouldy books, inventing conjectures, and crying

them up for truth; there, a band of enthusiasts, mumbling phrases which

they do not understand, adoring figures of rhetoric as mysteries,

attaching ideas of holiness or impiety to lawn-sleeves or postures,

spending in persecutions or genuflections the surplus of sheepish or

ferocious folly with which an evil fate has crammed their brains; there,

again, flocks of idiots pouring out their blood and treasure for the

whims or plots of a carriage-drawn aristocrat, out of respect for the

carriage which they themselves have given him. What part of human nature

or existence can continue great and beautiful, before a mind which,

penetrating all details, perceives men eating, sleeping, dressing, in

all mean and low actions, degrading everything to the level of vulgar

events, trivial circumstances of dress and cookery? It is not enough for

the positive mind to see the springs, pulleys, lamps, and whatever there

is objectionable in the opera at which he is present; he makes it more

objectionable by calling it a show. It is not enough not to ignore

anything; we must also refuse to admire. He treats things like domestic

utensils; after reckoning up their materials, he gives them a vile name.

Nature for him is but a caldron, and he knows the proportion and number

of the ingredients simmering in it. In this power and this weakness we

see beforehand the misanthropy and the talent of Swift.

There are, indeed, but two modes of agreeing with the world: mediocrity

of mind and superiority of intelligence--the one for the public and the

fools, the other for artists and philosophers: the one consists in

seeing nothing, the other in seeing all. We will respect the

respectable, if we see only the surface--if we take them as they are, if

we let ourselves be duped by the fine show which they never fail to

present. We will revere the gold-embroidered garments with which our

masters bedizen themselves, and we will never dream of examining the

stains hidden under the embroidery. We will be moved by the big words

which they pronounce in a sublime voice, and we will never see in their

pockets the hereditary phrase-book from which they have taken them. We

will punctiliously bring them our money and our services; the custom

will seem to us just, and we will accept the goose-dogma, that a goose

is bound to be roasted. But, on the other hand, we will tolerate and

even love the world, if, penetrating to its nature, we take the trouble

to explain or imitate its mechanism. We will be interested in passions

by an artist's sympathy or a philosopher's comprehension; we will find

them natural whilst admitting their force, or we will find them

necessary whilst computing their connection; we will cease to be

indignant against the powers which produce fine spectacles, or will

cease to be roused by the rebounds which the law of cause and effect had

foretold. We will admire the world as a grand drama, or as an invincible

development; and we will be preserved by imagination or by logic from

slander or disgust. We will extract from religion the lofty truths which

dogmas hide, and the generous instincts which superstition conceals. We

will perceive in the state the infinite benefits which no tyranny

abolishes, and the sociable inclinations which no wickedness uproots. We

will distinguish in science the solid doctrines which discussion never

shakes, the liberal notions which the shock of systems purifies and

unfolds, the splendid promises which the progress of the present time

opens up to the ambition of the future. We can thus escape hatred by the

nullity or the greatness of the prospect, by the inability to discover

contrasts, or by the power to discover the harmony of contrasts. Raised

above the first, sunk beneath the last, seeing evil and disorder,

ignoring goodness and harmony, excluded from love and calmness, given up

to indignation and bitterness, Swift found neither a cause to cherish,

nor a doctrine to establish;[675] he employs the whole force of an

excellently armed mind and a thoroughly trained character in decrying

and destroying: all his works are pamphlets.

Section III.--Swift as a Political Pamphleteer

At this time, and in his hands, the newspaper in England attained its

proper character and its greatest force. Literature entered the sphere

of politics. To understand what the one became, we must understand what

the other was: art depended upon political business, and the spirit of

parties made the spirit of writers.

In France a theory arises--eloquent, harmonious, and generous; the young

are enamored of it, wear a cap and sing songs in its honor: at night,

the citizens, while digesting their dinner, read it and delight in it;

some, hot-headed, accept it, and prove to themselves their strength of

mind by ridiculing those who are behind the times. On the other hand,

the established people, prudent and timid, are mistrustful: being well

off, they find that everything is well, and demand that things shall

continue as they are. Such are the two parties in France, very old, as

we all know; not very earnest, as everybody can see. They must talk, be

enthusiastic, reason on speculative opinions, glibly, about an hour a

day, indulging but outwardly in this taste; but these parties are so

equally levelled, that they are at bottom all the same; when we

understand them rightly, we will find in France only two parties, the

men of twenty and the men of forty. English parties, on the other hand,

were always compact and living bodies, united by interests of money,

rank, and conscience, receiving theories only as standards or as a

balance, a sort of secondary states, which, like the two old orders in

Rome, legally endeavor to monopolize the government. So, the English

constitution was never more than a transaction between distinct powers,

compelled to tolerate each other, disposed to encroach on each other,

occupied in treating with each other. Politics for them are a domestic

interest, for the French an occupation of the mind; Englishmen make them

a business, the French a discussion.

Thus their pamphlets, notably Swift's, seem to us only half literary.

For an argument to be literary, it must not address itself to an

interest or a faction, but to the pure mind: it must be based on

universal truths, rest on absolute justice, be able to touch all human

reasons; otherwise, being local, it is simply useful; nothing is

beautiful but what is general. It must also be developed regularly by

analysis, and with exact divisions; its distribution must give a picture

of pure reason; the order of ideas must be inviolable; every mind must

be able to draw thence with ease a complete conviction; its method, its

principles, must be sensible throughout, in all places and at all times.

The desire to prove well must be added to the art of proving well; the

writer must announce his proof, recall it, present it under all its

faces, desire to penetrate minds, pursue them persistently in all their

retreats; but at the same time he must treat his hearers like men worthy

of comprehending and applying general truths; his discourse must be

lively, noble, polished, and fervid, so as to suit such subjects and

such minds. It is thus that classical prose and French prose are

eloquent, and that political dissertations or religious controversies

have endured as models of art.

This good taste and philosophy are wanting in the positive mind; it

wishes to attain not eternal beauty, but present success. Swift does not

address men in general, but certain men. He does not speak to reasoners,

but to a party; he does not care to teach a truth, but to make an

impression; his aim is not to enlighten that isolated part of man,

called his mind, but to stir up the mass of feelings and prejudices

which constitute the actual man. Whilst he writes, his public is before

his eyes; fat squires, puffed out with port wine and beef, accustomed at

the end of their meals to bawl loyally for church and king; gentlemen

farmers, bitter against London luxury and the new importance of

merchants; clergymen bred on pedantic sermons, and old-established

hatred of dissenters and papists. These people have not mind enough to

pursue a fine deduction or understand an abstract principle. A writer

must calculate the facts they know, the ideas they have received, the

interests that move them, and recall only these facts, reason only from

these ideas, set in motion only these interests. It is thus Swift

speaks, without development, without logical hits, without rhetorical

effects, but with extraordinary force and success, in phrases whose

accuracy his contemporaries inwardly felt, and which they accepted at

once, because they simply told them in a clear form and openly, what

they murmured obscurely and to themselves. Such was the power of the

"Examiner," which in one year transformed the opinion of three kingdoms;

and particularly of the "Drapier's Letters," which made a government

withdraw one of its measures.

Small change was lacking in Ireland, and the English ministers had given

a certain William Wood a patent to coin one hundred and eight thousand

pounds of copper money. A commission, of which Newton was a member,

verified the pieces made, found them good, and several competent judges

still think that the measure was loyal and serviceable to the land.

Swift roused the people against it, spoke to them in an intelligible

style, and triumphed over common-sense and the state.[676]

"Brethren, friends, countrymen, and fellow-subjects, what I intend now

to say to you is, next to your duty to God and the care of your

salvation, of the greatest concern to you and your children: your bread

and clothing, and every common necessary of life depend upon it.

Therefore I do most earnestly exhort you as men, as, Christians, as

parents, and as lovers of your country, to read this paper with the

utmost attention, or get it read to you by others; which that you may do

at the less expence, I have ordered the printer to sell it at the lowest

rate."[677]

We see popular distrust spring up at a glance; this is the style which

reaches workmen and peasants; this simplicity, these details, are

necessary to penetrate their belief. The author is like a draper, and

they trust only men of their own condition. Swift goes on to accuse

Wood, declaring that his copper pieces are not worth one-eighth of their

nominal value. There is no trace of proof: no proofs are required to

convince the people; it is enough to repeat the same accusation again

and again, to abound in intelligible examples, to strike eye and ear.

The imagination once gained, they will go on shouting, convincing

themselves by their own cries, and incapable of reasoning. Swift says to

his adversaries:

"Your paragraph relates further that Sir Isaac Newton reported an assay

taken at the Tower of Wood's metal; by which it appears that Wood had in

all respects performed his contract. His contract! With whom? Was it

with the Parliament or people of Ireland? Are not they to be the

purchasers? But they detest, abhor, and reject it as corrupt,

fraudulent, mingled with dirt and trash."[678]

And a little further on:

"His first proposal is, that he will be content to coin no more (than

forty thousand pounds), unless the exigencies of the trade require it,

although his patent empowers him to coin a far greater quantity.... To

which if I were to answer, it should be thus: let Mr. Wood and his crew

of founders and tinkers coin on, till there is not an old kettle left in

the kingdom; let them coin old leather, tobacco-pipe clay, or the dirt

in the street, and call their trumpery by what name they please from a

guinea to a farthing; we are not under any concern to know how he and

his tribe of accomplices think fit to employ themselves. But I hope, and

trust, that we are all, to a man, fully determined to have nothing to do

with him or his ware."[679]

Swift gets angry and does not answer. In fact, this is the best way to

answer; to move such hearers we must stir up their blood and their

passions; then shopkeepers and farmers will turn up their sleeves,

double their fists; and the good arguments of their opponents will only

increase their desire to knock them down.

Now see how a mass of examples make a gratuitous assertion probable:

"Your Newsletter says that an assay was made of the coin. How impudent

and insupportable is this! Wood takes care to coin a dozen or two

halfpence of good metal, sends them to the Tower, and they are approved;

and these must answer all that he has already coined, or shall coin for

the future. It is true, indeed, that a gentleman often sends to my shop

for a pattern of stuff; I cut it fairly off, and if he likes it, he

comes or sends and compares the pattern with the whole piece, and

probably we come to a bargain. But if I were to buy a hundred sheep, and

the grazier should bring me one single wether, fat and well fleeced, by

way of pattern, and expect the same price round for the whole hundred,

without suffering me to see them before he was paid, or giving me good

security to restore my money for those that were lean, or shorn, or

scabby, I would be none of his customer. I have heard of a man who had a

mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his

pocket, which he showed as a pattern to encourage purchasers; and this

is directly the case in point with Mr. Wood's assay."[680]

A burst of laughter follows; butchers and bricklayers were gained over.

As a finish, Swift showed them a practical expedient, suited to their

understanding and their rank in life:

"The common soldier, when he goes to the market or ale-house, will offer

his money; and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and

threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and

throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper

or victualler, or any other tradesman, has no more to do than to demand

ten times the price of his goods, if it is to be paid in Wood's money;

for example, twenty-pence of that money for a quart of ale, and so in

all things else, and never part with his goods till he gets the

money."[681]

Public clamor overcame the English government; they withdrew the money

and paid Wood a large indemnity. Such is the merit of Swift's arguments;

good tools, trenchant and handy, neither elegant nor bright, but whose

value is proved by their effect.

The whole beauty of these pamphlets is in their tone. They have neither

the generous fire of Pascal, nor the bewildering gayety of Beaumarchais,

nor the chiselled delicacy of Paul Louis Courier, but an overwhelming

air of superiority and a bitter and terrible rancor. Vast passion and

pride, like the positive "Drapier's" mind just now described, have given

all the blows their force. We should read his "Public Spirit of the

Whigs," against Steele. Page by page Steele is torn to pieces with a

calmness and scorn never equalled. Swift approaches regularly, leaving

no part untouched, heaping wound on wound, every blow sure, knowing

beforehand their reach and depth. Poor Steele, a vain, thoughtless

fellow, is in his hands like Gulliver amongst the giants; it is a pity

to see a contest so unequal; and this contest is pitiless. Swift crushes

him carefully and easily, like an obnoxious animal. The unfortunate man,

formerly an officer and a semi-literary man, had make awkward use of

constitutional words:

"Upon this rock the author... is perpetually splitting, as often as he

ventures out beyond the narrow bounds of his literature. He has a

confused remembrance of words since he left the university, but has lost

half their meaning, and puts them together with no regard, except to

their cadence; as I remember, a fellow nailed up maps in a gentleman's

closet, some sidelong, others upside down, the better to adjust them to

the pannels."[682]

When he judges he is worse than when he proves; witness his "Short

Character of Thomas Earl of Wharton." He pierces him with the formulas

of official politeness; only an Englishman is capable of such phlegm and

such haughtiness:

"I have had the honour of much conversation with his lordship, and am

thoroughly convinced how indifferent he is to applause, and how

insensible of reproach.... He is without the sense of shame, or glory,

as some men are without the sense of smelling; and therefore, a good

name to him is no more than a precious ointment would be to these.

Whoever, for the sake of others, were to describe the nature of a

serpent, a wolf, a crocodile or a fox, must be understood to do it

without any personal love or hatred for the animals themselves. In the

same manner his excellency is one whom I neither personally love nor

hate. I see him at court, at his own house, and sometimes at mine, for I

have the honour of his visits; and when these papers are public, it is

odds but he will tell me, as he once did upon a like occasion, 'that he

is damnably mauled,' and then, with the easiest transition in the world,

ask about the weather, or time of the day; so that I enter on the work

with more cheerfulness, because I am sure neither to make him angry, nor

any way hurt his reputation; a pitch of happiness and security to which

his excellency has arrived, and which no philosopher before him could

reach. Thomas, Earl of Wharton, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, by the force

of a wonderful constitution, has some years passed his grand climacteric

without any visible effects of old age, either on his body or his mind;

and in spite of a continual prostitution to those vices which usually

wear out both.... Whether he walks or whistles, or swears, or talks

bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in each, beyond a templar of

three years' standing. With the same grace, and in the same style, he

will rattle his coachman in the midst of the street, where he is

governor of the kingdom; and all this is without consequence, because it

is in his character, and what everybody expects.... The ends he has

gained by lying, appear to be more owing to the frequency, than the art

of them; his lies being sometimes detected in an hour, often in a day,

and always in a week.... He swears solemnly he loves and will serve you;

and your back is no sooner turned, but he tells those about him, you are

a dog and a rascal. He goes constantly to prayers in the forms of his

place, and will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel door. He is a

presbyterian in politics, and an atheist in religion; but he chooses at

present to whore with a papist. In his commerce with mankind, his

general rule is, to endeavour to impose on their understandings, for

which he has but one receipt, a composition of lies and oaths.... He

bears the gallantries of his lady with the indifference of a stoick; and

thinks them well recompensed, by a return of children to support his

family, without the fatigues of being a father.... He was never yet

known to refuse or keep a promise, as I remember he told a lady, but

with an exception to the promise he then made (which was to get her a

pension), yet he broke even that, and, I confess, deceived us both. But

here I desire to distinguish between a promise and a bargain; for he

will be sure to keep the latter, when he has the fairest offer.... But

here I must desire the reader's pardon, if I cannot digest the following

facts in so good a manner as I intended; because it is thought

expedient, for some reasons, that the world should be informed of his

excellency's merits as soon as possible. ... As they are, they may serve

for hints to any person who may hereafter have a mind to write memoirs

of his excellency's life."[683]

Throughout this piece Swift's voice has remained calm; not a muscle of

his face has moved; we perceive neither smile, flash of the eye, nor

gesture; he speaks like a statue; but his anger grows by constraint, and

burns the more that it shines the less.

This is why his ordinary style is grave irony. It is the weapon of

pride, meditation, and force. The man who employs it is self-contained

whilst a storm is raging within him; he is too proud to make a show of

his passion; he does not take the public into his confidence; he elects

to be solitary in his soul; he would be ashamed to confide in any man;

he means and knows how to keep absolute possession of himself. Thus

collected, he understands better and suffers more; no fit of passion

relieves his wrath or draws away his attention; he feels all the points

and penetrates to the depths of the opinion which he detests; he

multiplies his pain and his knowledge, and spares himself neither wound

nor reflection. We must see Swift in this attitude, impassive in

appearance, but with stiffening muscles, a heart scorched with hatred,

writing with a terrible smile such pamphlets as this:

"It may perhaps be neither safe nor prudent, to argue against the

abolishing of Christianity, at a juncture, when all parties appear so

unanimously determined upon the point.... However, I know not how,

whether from the affectation of singularity, or the perverseness of

human nature, but so it unhappily falls out, that I cannot be entirely

of this opinion. Nay, though I were sure an order were issued for my

immediate prosecution by the attorney-general, I should still confess,

that in the present posture of our affairs, at home or abroad, I do not

yet see the absolute necessity of extirpating the Christian religion

from among us. This perhaps may appear too great a paradox, even for our

wise and paradoxical age to endure; therefore I shall handle it with all

tenderness, and with the utmost deference to that great and profound

majority, which is of another sentiment.... I hope no reader imagines me

so weak to stand up in the defence of real Christianity, such as used,

in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages), to

have an influence upon men's belief and actions; to offer at the

restoring of that, would indeed be a wild project; it would be to dig up

foundations; to destroy at one blow all the wit, and half the learning

of the kingdom.... Every candid reader will easily understand my

discourse to be intended only in defence of nominal Christianity; the

other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent, as

utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of wealth and power."[684]

Let us then examine the advantages which this abolition of the title and

name of Christian might have:

"It is likewise urged, that there are, by computation, in this kingdom

above ten thousand parsons, whose revenues, added to those of my lords

the bishops, would suffice to maintain at least two hundred young

gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and free-thinking, enemies to

priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry, and prejudices, who might be

an ornament to the court and town."[685]

"It is likewise proposed as a great advantage to the public that if we

once discard the system of the gospel, all religion will of course be

banished for ever; and consequently along with it, those grievous

prejudices of education, which under the names of virtue, conscience,

honour, justice, and the like, are so apt to disturb the peace of human

minds, and the notions whereof are so hard to be eradicated, by right

reason, or free-thinking."[686]

Then he concludes by doubling the insult:

"I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt

to murmur, and be choked at the sight of so many daggled-tail parsons,

who happen to fall in their way, and offend their eyes; but at the same

time, these wise reformers do not consider what an advantage and

felicity it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of

scorn and contempt, in order to exercise and improve their talents, and

divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on themselves;

especially when all this may be done, without the least imaginable

danger to their persons. And to urge another argument of a parallel

nature: if Christianity were once abolished, how could the

free-thinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning,

be able to find another subject, so calculated in all points whereon to

display their abilities? what wonderful productions of wit should we be

deprived of, from those, whose genius, by continual practice, has been

wholly turned upon raillery and invectives, against religion, and would,

therefore, never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any

other subject! we are daily complaining of the great decline of wit

among us, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we

have left?"[687]

"I do very much apprehend, that in six months time after the act is

passed for the extirpation of the gospel, the Bank and East India Stock

may fall at least one per cent. And since that is fifty times more, than

ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture, for the preservation

of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so great a loss,

merely for the sake of destroying it."[688]

Swift is only a combatant, I admit; but when we glance at this

common-sense and this pride, this empire over the passions of others,

and this empire over himself; this force and this employment of hatred,

we judge that there have rarely been such combatants. He is a

pamphleteer as Hannibal was a _condottiere._

Section IV.--Swift as a Humorist.--As a Poet

On the night after the battle we usually unbend; we sport, we make fun,

we talk in prose and verse; but with Swift this night is a continuation

of the day, and the mind which leaves its trace in matters of business

leaves also its trace in amusements.

What is gayer than Voltaire's _soirées?_ He rails; but do we find any

murderous intention in his railleries? He gets angry; but do we perceive

a malignant or evil character in his passions? In him all is amiable. In

an instant, through the necessity of action, he strikes, caresses,

changes a hundred times his tone, his face, with abrupt movements,

impetuous sallies, sometimes as a child, always as a man of the world,

of taste and conversation. He wishes to entertain us; he conducts us at

once through a thousand ideas, without effort, to amuse himself, to

amuse us. What an agreeable host is this Voltaire, who desires to please

and who knows how to please, who only dreads ennui, who does not

distrust us, who is not constrained, who is always himself, who is

brimful of ideas, naturalness, liveliness! If we were with him, and he

rallied us, we should not be angry; we should adopt his style, we should

laugh at ourselves, we should feel that he only wished to pass an

agreeable hour, that he was not angry with us, that he treated us as

equals and guests, that he broke out into pleasantries as a winter fire

into sparks, and that he was none the less pleasant, wholesome, amusing.

Heaven grant that Swift may never jest at our expense. The positive mind

is too solid and too cold to be gay and amiable. When such mind takes to

ridicule, it does not sport with it superficially, but studies it, goes

into it gravely, masters it, knows all its subdivisions and its proofs.

This profound knowledge can only produce a withering pleasantry.

Swift's, at bottom, is but a _reductio ad absurdum_, altogether

scientific. For instance, "The Art of Political Lying"[689] is a

didactic treatise, whose plan might serve for a model. "In the first

chapter of this excellent treatise he (the author) reasons

philosophically concerning the nature of the soul of man, and those

qualities which render it susceptible of lies. He supposes the soul to

be of the nature of a piano-cylindrical speculum, or looking-glass....

The plane side represents objects just as they are; and the cylindrical

side, by the rules of catoptrics, must needs represent true objects

false, and false objects true. In his second chapter he treats of the

nature of political lying; in the third of the lawfulness of political

lying. The fourth chapter is wholly employed in this question, 'Whether

the right of coinage of political lies be wholly in the government.'"

Again, nothing could be stranger, more worthy of an archaeological

society, than the argument in which he proves that a humorous piece of

Pope's[690] is an insidious pamphlet against the religion of the state.

His "Art of Sinking in Poetry"[691] has all the appearance of good

rhetoric; the principles are laid down, the divisions justified; the

examples chosen with extraordinary precision and method; it is perfect

reason employed in the service of folly.

His passions, like his mind, were too strong. If he wishes to scratch,

he tears; his pleasantry is gloomy; by way of a joke, he drags his

reader through all the disgusting details of sickness and death.

Partridge, formerly a shoemaker, had turned astrologer, Swift,

imperturbably cool, assumes an astrologer's title, writes maxims on the

duties of the profession, and to inspire confidence, begins to predict:

"My first prediction is but a trifle; yet I will mention it to show how

ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own

concerns: it relates to Partridge the almanack-maker; I have consulted

the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly

die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging

fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs

in time."[692]

The twenty-ninth of March being past, he relates how the undertaker came

to hang Partridge's rooms "in close mourning"; then Ned, the sexton,

asking "whether the grave is to be plain or bricked"; then Mr. White,

the carpenter, to screw down the coffin; then the stone-cutter with his

monument. Lastly, a successor comes and sets up in the neighborhood,

saying in his printed directions, "that he lives in the house of the

late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner in leather,

physic, and astrology."[693] We can tell beforehand the protestations of

poor Partridge. Swift in his reply proves that he is dead, and is

astonished at his hard words:

"To call a man a fool and villain, an impudent fellow, only for

differing from him in a point merely speculative, is, in my humble

opinion, a very improper style for a person of his education.... I will

appeal to Mr. Partridge himself, whether it be probable I could have

been so indiscreet, to begin my predictions, with the only falsehood

that ever was pretended to be in them? and this in an affair at home,

where I had so many opportunities to be exact."[694]

Mr. Partridge is mistaken, or deceives the public, or would cheat

his heirs.

This gloomy pleasantry becomes elsewhere still more gloomy. Swift

pretends that his enemy, the bookseller Curll, has just been poisoned,

and relates his agony. A house-surgeon of a hospital would not write a

more repulsive diary more coldly. The details, worked out with the

completeness of a Hogarth, are admirably minute, but disgusting. We

laugh, or rather we grin, as before the vagaries of a madman in an

asylum, but in reality we feel sick at heart. Swift in his gayety is

always tragical; nothing unbends him; even when he serves, he pains you.

In his "Journal to Stella" there is a sort of imperious austerity; his

condescension is that of a master to a child. The charm and happiness of

a young girl of sixteen cannot soften him. She has just married him, and

he tells her that love is a "ridiculous passion, which has no being but

in playbooks and romances"; then he adds, with perfect brutality:

"I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her sex;... your sex

employ more thought, memory, and application to be fools than would

serve to make them wise and useful.... When I reflect on this, I cannot

conceive you to be human creatures, but a sort of species hardly a

degree above a monkey; who has more diverting tricks than any of you, is

an animal less mischievous and expensive, might in time be a tolerable

critic in velvet and brocade, and, for aught I know, would equally

become them."[695]

Will poetry calm such a mind? Here, as elsewhere, he is most

unfortunate. He is excluded from great transports of imagination, as

well as from the lively digressions of conversation. He can attain

neither the sublime nor the agreeable; he has neither the artist's

rapture, nor the entertainment of the man of the world. Two similar

sounds at the end of two equal lines have always consoled the greatest

troubles: the old muse, after three thousand years, is a young and

divine nurse; and her song lulls the sickly nations whom she still

visits, as well as the young, flourishing races amongst whom she has

appeared. The involuntary music, in which thought wraps itself, hides

ugliness and unveils beauty. Feverish man, after the labors of the

evening and the anguish of the night, sees at morning the beaming

whiteness of the opening heaven; he gets rid of himself, and the joy of

nature from all sides enters with oblivion into his heart. If misery

pursues him, the poetic afflatus, unable to wipe it out, transforms it;

it becomes ennobled, he loves it, and thenceforth he bears it; for the

only thing to which he cannot resign himself is littleness. Neither

Faust nor Manfred have exhausted human grief; they drank from the cruel

cup a generous wine, they did not reach the dregs. They enjoyed

themselves, and nature; they tasted the greatness which was in them, and

the beauty of creation; they pressed with their bruised hands all the

thorns with which necessity has made our way thorny, but they saw them

blossom with roses, fostered by the purest of their noble blood. There

is nothing of the sort in Swift: what is wanting most in his verses is

poetry. The positive mind can neither love nor understand it; it sees

therein only a kind of mechanism or a fashion, and employs it only for

vanity and conventionality. When in his youth Swift attempted Pindaric

odes, he failed lamentably. I cannot remember a line of his which

indicates a genuine sentiment of nature: he saw in the forests only logs

of wood, and in the fields only sacks of corn. He employed mythology, as

we put on a wig, ill-timed, wearily and scornfully. His best piece,

"Cadenus and Vanessa,"[696] is a poor, threadbare allegory. To praise

Vanessa, he supposes that the nymphs and shepherds pleaded before Venus,

the first against men, the second against women; and that Venus, wishing

to end the debates, made in Vanesso a model of perfection. What can such

a conception furnish but flat apostrophes and pedantic comparisons?

Swift, who elsewhere gives a recipe for an epic poem, is here the first

to make use of it. And even his rude prosaic freaks tear this Greek

frippery at every turn. He puts a legal procedure into heaven; he makes

Venus use all kinds of technical terms. He introduces witnesses,

"questions on the fact, bill with costs dismissed," etc. They talk so

loud that the goddess fears to lose her influence, to be driven from

Olympus, or else

"Shut out from heaven and earth,

Fly to the sea, my place of birth:

There live with daggled mermaids pent,

And keep on fish perpetual Lent."[697]

When he relates the touching history of "Baucis and Philemon," he

degrades it by a travesty. He does not love the ancient nobleness and

beauty; the two gods become in his hands begging friars, Philemon and

Baucis Kentish peasants. For a recompense, their house becomes a church,

and Philemon a parson:

"His talk was now of tithes and dues;

He smoked his pipe and read the news....

Against dissenters would repine,

And stood up firm for 'right divine.'"[698]

Wit luxuriates, incisive, in little compact verses, vigorously coined,

of extreme conciseness, facility, precision; but compared to La

Fontaine, it is wine turned into vinegar. Even when he comes to the

charming Vanessa, his vein is still the same: to praise her childhood,

he puts her name first on the list, as a little model girl, just like a

schoolmaster:

"And all their conduct would be tried

By her, as an unerring guide:

Offending daughters oft would hear

Vanessa's praise rung in their ear:

Miss Betty, when she does a fault,

Lets fall her knife, or spills the salt,

Will thus be by her mother chid:

'Tis what Vanessa never did!'"[699]

A strange way of admiring Vanessa, and of proving his admiration for

her. He calls her a nymph, and treats her like a schoolgirl! Cadenus

"now could praise, esteem, approve, but understood not what was love!"

Nothing could be truer, and Stella felt it, like others. The verses'

which he writes every year on her birthday, are a pedagogue's censures

and praises; if he gives her any good marks, it is with restrictions.

Once he inflicts on her a little sermon on want of patience; again, by

way of compliment, he concocts this delicate warning:

"Stella, this day is thirty-four

(We shan't dispute a year or more).

However, Stella, be not troubled,

Although thy size and years are doubled

Since first I saw thee at sixteen,

The brightest virgin on the green;

So little is thy form declin'd,

Made up so largely in thy mind."

And he insists with exquisite taste:

"O, would it please the gods to split

Thy beauty, size, and years, and wit!

No age could furnish out a pair

Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair."[700]

Decidedly this man is an artisan, strong of arm, terrible at his work

and in a fray, but narrow of soul, treating a woman as if she were a log

of wood. Rhyme and rhythm are only businesslike tools, which have served

him to press and launch his thought; he has put nothing but prose into

them: poetry was too fine to be grasped by those coarse hands.

But in prosaic subjects, what truth and force! How this masculine

nakedness crushes the affected elegance and artificial poetry of Addison

and Pope! There are no epithets; he leaves his thought as he conceived

it, valuing it for and by itself, needing neither ornaments, nor

preparation, nor extension; above the tricks of the profession,

scholastic conventionalisms, the vanity of the rhymester, the

difficulties of the art; master of his subject and of himself. This

simplicity and naturalness astonish us in verse. Here, as elsewhere, his

originality is entire, and his genius creative; he surpasses his

classical and timid age; he tyrannizes over form, breaks it, dare utter

anything, spares himself no strong word. Acknowledge the greatness of

this invention and audacity; he alone is a superior being, who finds

everything and copies nothing. What a biting comicality in the "Grand

Question Debated "! He has to represent the entrance of a captain into a

castle, his airs, his insolence, his folly, and the admiration caused by

these qualities! The lady serves him first; the servants stare at him:

"The parsons for envy are ready to burst;

The servants amazed are scarce ever able

To keep off their eyes, as they wait at the table;

And Molly and I have thrust in our nose

To peep at the captain in all his fine clo'es.

Dear madam, be sure he's a fine spoken man,

Do but hear on the clergy how glib his tongue ran:

'And madam,' says he, 'if such dinners you give,

You'll ne'er want for parsons as long as you live.

I ne'er knew a parson without a good nose:

But the devil's as welcome wherever he goes;

G--d--n me! they bid us reform and repent,

But, z--s! by their looks they never keep Lent:

Mister curate, for all your grave looks, I'm afraid

You cast a sheep's eye on her ladyship's maid:

I wish she would lend you her pretty white hand

In mending your cassock, and smoothing your band'

(For the dean was so shabby, and look'd like a ninny,

That the captain suppos'd he was curate to Jinny).

Whenever you see a cassock and gown,

A hundred to one but it covers a clown.

Observe how a parson comes into a room,

G--d--n me, he hobbles as bad as my groom;

A scholard, when just from his college broke loose,

Can hardly tell how to cry bo to a goose;

Your Noveds and Bluturks and Omurs,[701] and stuff,

By G--, they don't signify this pinch of snuff;

To give a young gentleman right education,

The army's the only good school in the nation."[702]

This has been _seen_, and herein lies the beauty of Swift's verses: they

are personal; they are not developed themes, but impressions felt and

observations collected. Read "The Journal of a Modern Lady, The

Furniture of a Woman's Mind," and other pieces by the dozen: they are

dialogues transcribed or opinions put on paper after quitting a

drawing-room. "The Progress of Marriage" represents a dean of fifty-two

married to a young worldly coquette; do we not see in this title alone

all the fears of the bachelor of St. Patrick's? What diary is more

familiar and more pungent than his verses on his own death?

"'He hardly breathes. The Dean is dead.'

Before the passing bell begun,

The news through half the town has run;

'O may we all for death prepare!

What has he left? and who's his heir?'

'I know no more than what the news is;

'Tis all bequeathed to public uses.'

'To public uses! there's a whim!

What had the public done for him?

Mere envy, avarice, and pride:

He gave it all--but first he died.

And had the Dean in all the nation

No worthy friend, no poor relation?

So ready to do strangers good,

Forgetting his own flesh and blood!'...

Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay

A week, and Arbuthnot a day....

My female friends, whose tender hearts

Have better learn'd to act their parts,

Receive the news in doleful dumps:

The Dean is dead (pray what is trumps?)

Then, Lord, have mercy on his soul!

(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)

Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall.

(I wish I knew what king to call.)

Madam, your husband will attend

The funeral of so good a friend?

No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight,

And he's engaged to-morrow night:

My Lady Club will take it ill,

If he should fail her at quadrille.

He lov'd the Dean--(I lead a heart),

But dearest friends they say must part.

His time was come: he ran his race;

We hope he's in a better place."[703]

Such is the inventory of human friendships. All poetry exalts the mind,

but this depresses it; instead of concealing reality, it unveils it;

instead of creating illusions, it removes them. When he wishes to give a

description of the morning,[704] he shows us the street-sweepers, the

"watchful bailiffs," and imitates the different street cries. When he

wishes to paint the rain,[705] he describes "filth of all hues and

odors," the "swelling kennels," the "dead cats, turnip-tops, stinking

sprats," which "come tumbling down the flood." His long verses whirl all

this filth in their eddies. We smile to see poetry degraded to this use;

we seem to be at a masquerade; it is a queen travestied into a rough

country girl. We stop, we look on, with the sort of pleasure we feel in

drinking a bitter draught. Truth is always good to know, and in the

splendid piece which artists show us we need a manager to tell us the

number of the hired applauders and of the supernumeraries. It would be

well if he only drew up such a list! Numbers look ugly, but they only

affect the mind; other things, the oil of the lamps, the odors of the

side scenes, all that we cannot name, remains to be told. I cannot do

more than hint at the length to which Swift carries us; but this I must

do, for these extremes are the supreme effort of his despair and his

genius: we must touch upon them in order to measure and know him. He

drags poetry not only through the mud, but into the filth; he rolls in

it like a raging madman, he enthrones himself in it, and bespatters all

passers-by. Compared with his, all foul words are decent and agreeable.

In Aretin and Brantôme, in La Fontaine and Voltaire, there is a

_soupçon_ of pleasure. With the first, unchecked sensuality, with the

others, malicious gayety, are excuses; we are scandalized, not

disgusted; we do not like to see in a man a bull's fury or an ape's

buffoonery; but the bull is so eager and strong, the ape so funny and

smart, that we end by looking on or being amused. Then, again, however

coarse their pictures may be, they speak of the accompaniments of love:

Swift touches only upon the results of digestion, and that merely with

disgust and revenge; he pours them out with horror and sneering at the

wretches whom he describes. He must not in this be compared to Rabelais;

that good giant, that drunken doctor, rolls himself joyously about on

his dunghill, thinking no evil; the dunghill is warm, convenient, a fine

place to philosophize and sleep off one's wine. Raised to this enormity,

and enjoyed with this heedlessness, the bodily functions become

poetical. When the casks are emptied down the giant's throat, and the

viands are gorged, we sympathize with so much bodily comfort; in the

heavings of this colossal belly and the laughter of this Homeric mouth,

we see as through a mist, the relics of bacchanal religions, the

fecundity, the monstrous joy of nature; these are the splendors and

disorders of its first births. The cruel positive mind, on the contrary,

clings only to vileness; it will only see what is behind things; armed

with sorrow and boldness, it spares no ignoble detail, no obscene word.

Swift enters the dressing-room,[706] relates the disenchantments of

love,[707] dishonors it by a medley of drugs and physic,[708] describes

the cosmetics and a great many more things.[709] He takes his evening

walk by solitary walls,[710] and in these pitiable pryings has his

microscope ever in his hand. Judge what he sees and suffers; this is his

ideal beauty and his jesting conversation, and we may fancy that he has

for philosophy, as for poetry and politics, execration and disgust.

Section V.--Swift as a Narrator and Philosopher

Swift wrote the "Tale of a Tub" at Sir William Templet, amidst all kind

of reading, as an abstract of truth and science. Hence this tale is the

satire of all science and all truth.

Of religion first. He seems here to defend the Church of England; but

what church and what creed are not involved in his attack? To enliven

his subject, he profanes and reduces questions of dogma to a question of

clothes. A father had three sons, Peter, Martin, and Jack; he left each

of them a coat at his death,[711] warning them to wear it clean and

brush it often. The three brothers obeyed for some time and travelled

sensibly, slaying "a reasonable quantity of giants and dragons."[712]

Unfortunately, having come up to town, they adopted its manners, fell in

love with several fashionable ladies, the Duchess d'Argent, Mme de

Grands Titres, and the Countess d'Orgueil,[713] and to gain their favors

began to live as gallants, taking snuff, swearing, rhyming, and

contracting debts, keeping horses, fighting duels, whoring, killing

bailiffs. A sect was established who