Dryden did not invent the heroic couplet, but it was he who first

made it famous. "It was he," says Scott, "who first showed that

the English language was capable of uniting smoothness and

strength." But when you come to read Dryden's poems you may

perhaps feel that in gaining the smoothness of Art they have lost

something of the beauty of Nature. The perfect lines with their

regular sounding rimes almost weary us at length, and we are glad

to turn to the rougher beauty of some earlier poet.

But before speaking more of what Dryden did let me tell you a

little of what we know of his life.

John Dryden was the son of a Northamptonshire gentleman who had a

small estate and a large family, for John was the eldest of

fourteen children. The family was a Puritan one, although in

1631, when John was born, the Civil War had not yet begun.

When John Dryden left school he went, like nearly all the poets,

to Cambridge. Of what he did at college we know very little. He

may have been wild, for more than once he got into trouble, and

once he was "rebuked on the head" for speaking scornfully of some

nobleman. He was seven years at Cambridge, but he looked back on

these years with no joy. He had no love for his University, and

even wrote:--

"Oxford to him a dearer name shall be,

Than his own Mother University."

Already at college Dryden had begun to write poetry, but his poem

on the death of Cromwell is perhaps the first that is worth

remembering:--

"Swift and relentless through the land he past,

Like that bold Greek, who did the East subdue;

And made to battles of such heroic haste

As if on wings of victory he flew.

He fought secure of fortune as of fame,

Till by new maps the island might be shown

Of conquests, which he strewed where'er he came,

This as the galaxy with stars is sown.

Nor was he like those stars which only shine,

When to pale mariners they storms portend,

He had a calmer influence, and his mien

Did love and majesty together blend.

Nor died he when his ebbing fame went less,

But when fresh laurels courted him to live:

He seemed but to prevent some new success,

As if above what triumphs earth could give.

His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest;

His name a great example stands, to show,

How strangely high endeavours may be blessed,

Where piety and valour jointly go."

So wrote Dryden. But after the death of Cromwell came the

Restoration. Dryden had been able to admire Cromwell, but

although he came of a Puritan family he could never have been a

Puritan at heart. What we learn of him in his writings show us

that. He was not of the stern stuff which makes martyrs and

heroes. There was no reason why he should suffer for a cause in

which he did not whole-heartedly believe. So Dryden turned

Royalist, and the very next poem he wrote was On the Happy

Restoration and Return of His Majesty Charles the Second.

"How easy 'tis when destiny proves kind,

With full spread sails to run before the wind!"*

*Astroe Redux.

So Dryden ran before the wind.

About three years after the Restoration Dryden married an earl's

daughter, Lady Elizabeth Howard. We know very little about their

life together, but they had three children of whom they were very

fond.

With the Restoration came the re-opening of the theaters, and for

fourteen years Dryden was known as a dramatic poet. There is

little need to tell you anything about his plays, for you would

not like to read them. During the reign of Puritanism in England

the people had been forbidden even innocent pleasures. The

Maypole dances had been banished, games and laughter were frowned

upon. Now that these too stern laws had been taken away, people

plunged madly into pleasure: laughter became coarse, merriment

became riotous. Puritan England had lost the sense of where

innocent pleasure ends and wickedness begins. In another way

Restoration England did the same. The people of the Restoration

saw fun and laughter in plays which seem to us now simply vulgar

and coarse as well as dull. The coarseness, too, is not the

coarseness of an ignorant people who know no better, but rather

of a people who do know better and who yet prefer to be coarse.

I do not mean to say that there are no well-drawn characters, no

beautiful lines, in Dryden's plays for that would not be true.

Many of them are clever, the songs in them are often beautiful,

but nearly all are unpleasant to read. The taste of the

Restoration times condemned Dryden to write in a way unworthy of

himself for money. "Neither money nor honour--that in two words

was the position of writers after the Restoration."*

*Beljame, Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres in Angleterre.

"And Dryden, in immortal strain,

Had raised the table-round again

But that a ribald King and Court

Bade him toil on to make them sport,

Demanding for their niggard pay,

Fit for their souls, a loser lay."*

*Walter Scott, Marmion.

Had Dryden written nothing but plays we should not remember him

as one of our great poets. Yet it was during this time of play-

writing that Dryden was made Poet Laureate and Historiographer

Royal with the salary of 200 pounds a year and a butt of sack.

It was after he became Poet Laureate that Dryden began to write

his satires, the poems for which he is most famous. Although a

satire is a poem which holds wickedness up to scorn, sometimes it

was used, not against the wicked and the foolish, but against

those who merely differed from the writer in politics or religion

or any other way of life or thought. Such was Dryden's best

satire--thought by some people the best in the English language.

It is called Absalom and Achitophel. To understand it we must

know and understand the history of the times. Here in the guise

of the old Bible story Dryden seeks to hold Lord Shaftesbury up

to scorn because he tried to have a law passed which would

prevent the King's brother James from succeeding to the throne,

and which would instead place the Duke of Monmouth there. When

the poem was published Shaftesbury was in the Tower awaiting his

trial for high treason. The poem had a great effect, but

Shaftesbury was nevertheless set free.

In spite of the fine sounding lines you will perhaps never care

to read Absalom and Achitophel save as a footnote to history.

But Dryden's was the age of satire. Those he wrote called forth

others. He was surrounded and followed by many imitators, and it

is well to remember Dryden as the greatest of them all. His

satires were so powerful, too, that the people against whom they

were directed felt them keenly, and no wonder. "There are

passages in Dryden's satires in which every couplet has not only

the force but the sound of a slap in the face," says a recent

writer.*

*Saintsbury.

Among the younger writers Dryden took the place Ben Jonson used

hold. He kinged it in the coffee-house, then the fashionable

place at which the wits gathered, as Jonson had in the tavern.

He was given the most honored seat, in summer by the window, in

winter by the fire. And although he was not a great talker like

Jonson, the young wits crowded around him, eager for the honor of

a word or a pinch from the great man's snuff-box.

Besides his plays and satires Dryden wrote a poem in support of

the English Church called Religio Laici. Then a few years later,

when Charles II died and James II came to the throne, Dryden

turned Roman Catholic and wrote a poem called The Hind and the

Panther in praise of the Church of Rome.

But the reign of James II was short. The "Glorious Revolution"

came, and with a Protestant King and Queen upon the throne, the

Catholic Poet Laureate lost his post and pension and all his

other appointments. Dryden was now nearly sixty; and although he

had made what was then a good deal of money by his plays and

other poems he had spent it freely, and always seemed in need.

Now he had to face want and poverty. But he faced them bravely.

Dryden all his life had been a flatterer; he had always sailed

with the wind. Now, whether he could not or would not, he

changed no more, he flattered no more. A kind friend, it is

said, still continued to pay him the two hundred pounds he had

received as Poet Laureate, and he now wrote more plays which

brought him money. Then, thus late in life, he began the work

which for you at present will have the greatest interest. Dryden

was a great poet, but he could create nothing, he had to have

given him ideas upon which to work. Now he began translations

from Latin poets, and for those who cannot read them in the

original they are still a great pleasure and delight.

True, Dryden did not translate literally, that is word for word.

He paraphrased rather, and in doing so he Drydenized the

originals, often adding whole lines of his own. Among his

translations was Virgil's Aeneid, which long before, you remember,

Surrey had begun in blank verse. But blank verse was not what

the age in which Dryden lived desired, and he knew it. So he

wrote in rimed couplets. Long before this he had turned Milton's

Paradise Lost into rimed couplets, making it into an opera, which

he called The State of Innocence. An opera is a play set to

music, but this opera was never set to music, and never sung or

acted. Dryden, we know, admired Milton's poetry greatly. "This

man cuts us all out," he had said. Yet he thought he could make

the poem still better, and asked Milton's leave to turn it into

rime. "Ay, you may tag my verses if you will," replied the great

blind man.

It is interesting to compare the two poems, and when you come to

read The State of Innocence you will find that not all the verses

are "tagged." So that in places you can compare Milton's blank

verse with Dryden's. And although Dryden must have thought he

was improving Milton's poem, he says himself: "Truly I should be

sorry, for my own sake, that any one should take the pains to

compare them (the poems) together, the original being,

undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime

poems which either this age or nation has produced."

Dryden begins his poem with the speech of Satan, Lucifer he calls

him, on finding himself cast out from heaven:--

"Is this the seat our conqueror has given?

And this the climate we must change for heaven?

These regions and this realm my wars have got;

This mournful empire is the loser's lot;

In liquid burnings, or on dry, to dwell,

Is all the sad variety of hell."

If you turn back to page 401 you can compare this with Milton's

own version.

Besides translating some Latin and a few Greek poems Dryden

translated stories from Boccaccio, Chaucer's old friend, and last

of all he translated Chaucer himself into Drydenese. For in

Dryden's day Chaucer's language had already become so old-

fashioned that few people troubled to read him. "It is so

obsolete," says Dryden, "that his sense is scarce to be

understood." "I find some people are offended that I have turned

these tales into modern English, because they think them unworthy

of my pains, and look on Chaucer as a dry, old-fashioned wit not

worthy reviving."

Again he says: "But there are other judges, who think I ought

not to have translated Chaucer into English, out of a quite

contrary notion. They suppose there is a certain veneration due

to his old language, and that it is little less than profanation

and sacrilege to alter it. They are further of opinion that

somewhat of his good sense will suffer in this transfusion, and

much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly be lost, which

appear with more grace in their old habit." I think all of us

who can read Chaucer in his own language must agree with these

judges. But Dryden goes on to say he does not write for such,

but for those who cannot read Chaucer's English. Are they who

can understand Chaucer to deprive the greater part of their

countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up, as misers do

their gold, only to look on it themselves and hinder others from

making use of it? he asks.

This is very good reasoning, and all that can be said against it

is that when Dryden has done with Chaucer, although he tells the

same tales, they are no longer Chaucer's but Dryden's. The

spirit is changed. But that you will be able to feel only when

you grow older and are able to read the two and balance them one

against the other. Dryden translated only a few of the

Canterbury Tales, and the one he liked best was the knight's tale

of Palamon and Arcite. He published it in a book which he called

Fables, and it is, I think, as a narrative or story-telling poet

in these fables, and in his translations, that he keeps most

interest for the young people of to-day.

You have by this time, I hope, read the story of Palamon and

Arcite at least in Tales from Chaucer, and here I will give you a

few lines first from Dryden and then from Chaucer, so that you

can judge for yourselves of the difference. In them the poets

describe Emelia as she appeared on that May morning when Palamon

first looked forth from his prison and saw her walk in the

garden:--

"Thus year by year they pass, and day by day,

Till once,--'twas on the morn of cheerful May,--

The young Emila, fairer to be seen

Than the fair lily on the flowery green,

More flesh than May herself in blossoms new,

For with the rosy colour strove her hue,

Waked, as her custom was, before the day,

To do the observance due to sprightly May;

For sprightly May commands our youth to keep

The vigils of her night, and breaks their sluggard sleep;

Each gentle breast with kindly warmth she moves;

Inspires new flames, revives extinguished loves.

In this remembrance, Emily, ere day,

Arose, and dressed herself in rich array;

Fresh as the month, and as the morning fair,

Adown her shoulders fell her length of hair;

A ribbon did the braided tresses bind,

The rest was loose, and wantoned in the wind:

Aurora had but newly chased the night,

And purpled o'er the sky with blushing light,

When to the garden walk she took her way,

To sport and trip along in cool of day,

And offer maiden vows in honour of the May.

At every turn she made a little stand,

And thrust among the thorns her lily hand

To draw the rose, and every rose she drew,

She shook the stalk, and brushed away the dew;

Then party-coloured flowers of white and red

She wove, to make a garland for her head.

This done, she sang and carolled out so clear,

That men and angels might rejoice to hear;

Even wondering Philomel forgot to sing,

And learned from her to welcome in the Spring."

That is Dryden's, and this is how Chaucer tells of the same May

morning:--

"This passeth yeer by yeer, and day by day,

Till it fel oones in a morwe of May

That Emelie, that farier was to seene

Than is the lilie on his stalke grene,

And fressher than the May with floures newe--

For with the rose colour strof hire hewe,

I not which was the fairer of hem two--

Er it were day, as was hir wone to do,

She was arisen and al redy dight.

For May wol have no sloggardy anight.

The seson priketh every gentil herte,

And maketh him out of his sleep to sterte,

And seith, 'Arise and do thin observance'.

This makéd Emelye have remembraunce

To don honour to May, and for to rise.

I-clothed was she fressh for to devise,

Hir yelowe heer was broyded in a tresse,

Behinde hir bak, a yerde long I gesse;

And in the gardyn at the sunne upriste

She walketh up and doun, and as hir liste

She gadereth floures, party white and rede,

To make a subtil garland for hir hede,

And as an angel hevenly she song."

In this quotation from Chaucer I have not changed the old

spelling into modern as I did in the chapter on Chaucer, so that

you may see the difference between the two styles more clearly.

If you can see the difference between these two quotations you

can see the difference between the poetry of Dryden's age and all

that went before him. It is the difference between art and

nature. Chaucer sings like a bird, Dryden like a trained concert

singer who knows that people are listening to him. There is room

for both in life. We want and need both.

If you can feel the difference between Chaucer and Dryden you

will understand in part what I meant by saying that Dryden was

the expression of his time. For in Restoration times the taste

was for art rather than for natural beauty. The taste was for

what was clever, witty, and polished rather than for the simple,

stately grandeur of what was real and true. Poetry was utterly

changed. It no longer went to the heart but to the brain.

Dryden's poetry does not make the tears start to our eye or the

blood come to our cheek, but it flatters our ear with its

smoothness and elegance; it tickles our fancy with its wit.

You will understand still better what the feeling of the times

was when I tell you that Dryden, with the help of another poet,

re-wrote Shakespeare's Tempest and made it to suit the fashion of

the day. In doing so they utterly spoiled it. As literature it

is worthless; as helping us to understand the history of those

times it is useful. But although The Tempest, as re-written by

Dryden, is bad, one of the best of his plays is founded upon

another of Shakespeare's. This play is called All for Love or

the World Well Lost, and is founded upon Shakespeare's Antony and

Cleopatra. It is not written in Dryden's favorite heroic couplet

but in blank verse. "In my style," he says, "I have professed to

imitate the divine Shakespeare, which, that I might perform more

freely, I have disencumbered myself from rhyme. Not that I

condemn my former way, but that this is more proper to my present

purpose." And when you come to read this play you will find

that, master as Dryden was of the heroic couplet, he could write,

too, when he chose, fine blank verse.

Perhaps the best-known of all Dryden's shorter poems is the ode

called Alexander's Feast. It was written for a London musical

society, which gave a concert each year on St. Cecilia's day,

when an original ode was sung in her honor. Dryden in this ode,

which was sung in 1697, pictures Timotheus, the famous Greek

musician and poet, singing before Alexander, at a great feast

which was held after the conquest of Persia. Alexander listens

while

"The lovely Thais, by his side,

Sate like a blooming Eastern Bride,

In flower of youth and beauty's pride.

Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair!"

As Timotheus sings he stirs at will his hearers' hearts to love,

to pity, or to revenge.

"Timotheus, to his breathing flute

And sounding lyre,

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire."

But those were heathen times. In Christian times came St.

Cecilia and she

"Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

With nature's Mother-wit, and arts unknown before.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize.

Or both divide the crown:

He raised a mortal to the skies

She drew an angel down."

Dryden was a great poet, and he dominated his own age and the age

to come. But besides being a poet he was a great prose-writer.

His prose is clear and fine and almost modern. We do not have to

follow him through sentences so long that we lose the sense

before we come to the end. "He found English of brick and left

it marble," says a late writer, and when we read his prose we

almost believe that saying to be true. He was the first of

modern critics, that is he was able to judge the works of others

surely and well. And many of his criticisms of men were so true

that we accept them now even as they were accepted then. Here is

what he says of Chaucer in his preface to The Fables:--

"He [Chaucer] must have been a man of a most wonderful

comprehensive nature, because as it has been truly observed of

him, he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the

various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole

English nation, in his age. Not a single character has escaped

him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each

other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very

physiognomies persons. . . . The matter and manner of their

tales, and of their telling are so suited to their different

educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be

improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious

characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity.

Their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling,

and their breeding; such as are becoming to them and to them

only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some

are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are

learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different:

the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and

distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady-

Prioress and the broad-speaking, gap-toothed Wife of Bath. . . .

It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is

God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all

before us, as they were in Chaucer's days. Their general

characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England,

though they are called by other names than those of monks, and

friars, and canons, and lady abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is

ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature though everything

is altered."

The Fables was the last book Dryden wrote. He was growing to be

an old man, and a few months after it was published he became

very ill. "John Dryden, Esq., the famous poet, lies a-dying,"

said the newspapers on the 30th April, 1700. One May morning he

closed his eyes for ever, just as

"Aurora had but newly chased the night,

And purpled o'er the sky with blushing light."

Chapter LXI DEFOE--THE FIRST NEWSPAPERS

TO almost every house in the land, as regular as the milk man,

more regular than the postman, there comes each morning the

newspaper boy. To most of us breakfast means, as well as things

to eat, mother pouring out the tea and father reading the

newspaper. As mother passes father's tea she says, "Anything in

the paper, John?" And how often he answers, "Nothing, nothing

whatever."

Although father says there is nothing in the paper there is a

great deal of reading in it, that we can see. And now comes the

question, Who writes it all? Who writes this thin, flat book of

six or eight great pages which every morning we buy for a penny

or a halfpenny? But perhaps you think it does not matter who

writes the newspapers, for the newspaper is not literature.

Literature means real books with covers--dear possessions to be

loved and taken care of, to be read and read again. But a

newspaper is hardly read at all when it is crumpled up and used

to light the fire. And no one minds, for who could love a

newspaper, who cares to treasure it, and read it again and yet

again?

We do not want even to read yesterday's newspapers, for

newspapers seem to hold for us only the interest of the day. The

very name by which they used to be called, journal, seems to tell

us that, for it comes from the French word "jour," meaning "a

day." Newspapers give us the news of the day for the day. Yet

in them we find the history of our own times, and we are

constantly kept in mind of how important they are in our everyday

life by such phrases as "the freedom of the Press," "the opinion

of the Press," the Press meaning all the newspapers, journals and

magazines and the people who write for them.

So we come back again to our question, Who writes for the

newspapers? The answer is, the journalists. A newspaper is not

all the work of one man, but of many whose names we seldom know,

but who work together so that each morning we may have our paper.

And in this chapter I want to tell you about one of our first

real journalists, Daniel Defoe. Of course you know of him

already, for he wrote Robinson Crusoe, and he is perhaps your

favorite author. But before he was an author he was a

journalist, and as I say one of our first.

For there was a time when there were no newspapers, nothing for

father to read at breakfast-time, and no old newspapers to

crumple up and light fires with. The first real printed English

newspaper was called the Weekly News. It was published in 1622,

while King Charles I was still upon the throne.

But this first paper and others that came after it were very

small. The whole paper was not so large as a page of one of our

present halfpenny papers. The news was told baldly without any

remarks upon it, and when there was not enough news it was the

fashion to fill up the space with chapters from the Bible.

Sometimes, too, a space was left blank on purpose, so that those

who bought the paper in town might write in their own little bit

of news before sending it off to country friends.

Defoe was one of the first to change this, to write articles and

comments upon the news. Gradually newspapers became plentiful.

And when Government by party became the settled form of our

Government, each party had its own newspaper and used it to help

on its own side and abuse the other.

Milton and Dryden were really journalists; Milton when he wrote

his political pamphlets, and Dryden when he wrote Absalom and

Achitophel and other poems of that kind. But they were poets

first, journalists by accident. Defoe was a journalist first,

though by nature ever a story-teller.

Daniel Defoe, born in 1661, was the son of a London butcher names

James Foe. Why Daniel, who prided himself on being a true-born

Englishman, Frenchified his name by adding a "De" to it we do not

know, and he was over forty before he changed plain Foe into

Defoe.

Daniel's father and mother were Puritans, and he was sent to

school with the idea that he should become a Nonconformist

minister. But Defoe did not become a minister; perhaps he felt

he was unsuited for such solemn duty. "The pulpit," he says

later, "is none of my office. It was my disaster first to be set

apart for, and then to be set apart from the honor of that sacred

employ."

Defoe never went to college, and because of this many a time in

later days his enemies taunted him with being ignorant and

unlearned. He felt these taunts bitterly, and again and again

answered them in his writings. "I have been in my time pretty

well master of five languages," he says in one place. "I have

also, illiterate though I am, made a little progress in science.

I have read Euclid's Elements. . . . I have read logic. . . . I

went some length in physics. . . . I thought myself master of

geography and to possess sufficient skill in astronomy." Yet he

says I am "no scholar."

When Defoe left school he went into the office of a merchant

hosier. It was while he was in this office that King Charles II

died and King James II came to the throne. Almost at once there

followed the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion. The Duke was a

Protestant and James was a Catholic. There were many in the land

who feared a Catholic King, and who believed too that the Duke

had more right to the throne than James, so they joined the

rebellion. Among them was Daniel. But the Rebellion came to

nothing. In a few weeks the Duke's army was scattered in flight,

and he himself a wretched prisoner in the Tower.

Happier than many of his comrades, Defoe succeeded in escaping

death or even punishment. Secretly and safely he returned to

London and there quietly again took up his trade of merchant

hosier. But he did not lose his interest in the affairs of his

country. And when the glorious Revolution came he was one of

those who rode out to meet and welcome William the Deliverer.

But perhaps he allowed politics to take up too much of his time

and thought, for although he was a good business man he failed

and had to hide from those to whom he owed money. But soon we

find him setting to work again to mend his fortunes. He became

first secretary to and then part owner of a tile and brick

factory, and in a few years made enough money to pay off all his

old debts.

By this time Defoe had begun to write, and was already known as a

clever author. Now some one wrote a book accusing William among

many other "crimes" of being a foreigner. Defoe says, "this

filled me with a kind of rage"; and he replied with a poem called

The True-born Englishman. It became popular at once, thousands

of copies being sold in the first few months. Every one read it

from the King in his palace to the workman in his hut, and long

afterwards Defoe was content to sign his books "By the author of

'The True-born Englishman.'" It made Defoe known to the King.

"This poem," he said, "was the occasion of my being known to his

Majesty." He was received and employed by him and "above the

capacity of my deserving, rewarded." He was given a small

appointment in the Civil Service. All his life after Defoe loved

King William and was his staunch friend, using all the power of

his clever pen to make the unloved Dutch King better understood

of his people. But when King William died and Queen Anne ruled

in his stead Defoe fell on evil times.

In those days the quarrels about religion were not yet over.

There was a party in the Church which would very willingly have

seen the Nonconformists or Dissenters persecuted. Dissenters

were like to have an evil time. To show how wrong persecution

was, Defoe wrote a little pamphlet which he called The Shortest

Way with the Dissenters. He wrote as if he were very angry

indeed with the Dissenters. He said they had been far too kindly

treated and that if he had his way he would make a law that

"whoever was found at a conventicle should be banished the nation

and the preacher be hanged. We should soon see an end of the

tale--they would all come to Church, and one age would make us

all one again."

Defoe meant this for satire. A satire is, you remember, a work

which holds up folly or wickedness to ridicule. He meant to show

the High Churchmen how absurd and wicked was their desire to

punish the Dissenters for worshiping God in their own way. He

meant to make the world laugh at them. But at first the High

Churchmen did not see that it was meant to ridicule them. They

greeted the author of this pamphlet as a friend and ally. The

Dissenters did not see the satire either, and found in the writer

a new and most bitter enemy.

But when at last Defoe's meaning became plain the High Church

party was very angry, and resolved to punish him. Defoe fled

into hiding. But a reward of fifty pounds was offered for his

discovery, and, "rather than others should be ruined by his

mistake," Defoe gave himself up.

For having written "a scandalous and seditious pamphlet" Defoe

was condemned to pay a large fine, to stand three times in the

pillory, and to be imprisoned during the Queen's pleasure. Thus

quickly did Fortune's wheel turn round. "I have seen the rough

side of the world as well as the smooth," he said long after. "I

have, in less than half a year, tasted the difference between the

closet of a King, and the dungeon of Newgate."

The pillory was a terrible punishment. In a public place, raised

on a platform, in full view of the passing crowd, the victim

stood. Round his neck was a heavy collar of wood, and in this

collar his hands were also confined. Thus he stood helpless,

unable to protect himself either from the sun or rain or from the

insults of the crowd. For a man in the pillory was a fitting

object for laughter and rude jests. To be jeered at, to have mud

thrown at him, was part of his punishment.

But for Defoe it was a triumph rather than a punishment. To the

common people he was already a hero. So they formed a guard

round him to protect him from the mud and rotten eggs his enemies

would now thrown. They themselves threw flowers, they wreathed

the pillory with roses and with laurel till it seemed a place of

honor rather than of disgrace. They sang songs in his praise and

drank to his health and wished those who had sent him there stood

in his place. Thus through all the long, hot July hours Defoe

was upheld and comforted in his disgrace. And to show that his

spirit was untouched by his sentence he wrote A Hymn to the

Pillory. This was bought and read and shouted in the ears of his

enemies by thousands of the people. It was a more daring satire

than even The Shortest Way. In the end of it Defoe calls upon

the Pillory, "Thou Bugbear of the Law," to speak and say why he

stands there:--

"Tell them, it was, because he was too bold,

And told those truths which should not have been told!

Extol the justice of the land,

Who punish what they will not understand!

Tell them, he stands exalted there

For speaking what we would not hear:

And yet he might have been secure,

Had he said less, or would he have said more!

Tell them the men that placed him here

Are scandals to the Times!

Are at a loss to find his guilt,

And can't commit his crimes!"

But although Defoe's friends could take the sting out of the

terrible hours during which he stood as an object for mockery

they could do little else for him. So he went back to prison to

remain there during the Queen's pleasure.

This, of course, meant ruin to him. For himself he could bear

it, but he had a wife and children, and to know that they were in

poverty and bitter want was his hardest punishment.

From prison Defoe could not manage his factory. He had to let

that go, losing with it thousands of pounds. For the second time

he saw himself ruined. But he had still left to him his pen and

his undaunted courage. So, besides writing many pamphlets in

prison, Defoe started a paper called the Review. It appeared at

first once, then twice, and at last three times a week. Unlike

our papers of to-day, which are written by many hands, Defoe

wrote the whole of the Review himself, and continued to do so for

years. It contained very little news and many articles, and when

we turn these worn and yellowing pages we find much that,

interesting in those days, has lost interest for us. But we also

find articles which, worded in clear, strong, truly English

English, seem to us as fresh and full of life as when they were

written more than two hundred years ago. We find as well much

that is of keen historical interest, and we gain some idea of the

undaunted courage of the author when we remember that the first

numbers of the Review at least were penned in a loathsome prison

where highwaymen, pirates, cut-throats, and common thieves were

his chief companions.

Chapter LXII DEFOE--"ROBINSON CRUSOE"

FOR more than a year and a half Defoe remained in prison; then he

was set free.

A new Government had come into power. It was pointed out to the

Queen that it was a mistake to make an enemy of so clever an

author as Defoe. Then he was set at liberty, but on condition

that he should use his pen to support the Government. So

although Defoe was now free to all seeming, this was really the

beginning of bondage. He was no longer free in mind, and by

degrees he became a mere hanger-on of Government, selling the

support of his pen to whichever party was in power.

We cannot follow him through all the twists and turns of his

politics, nor through all his ups and downs in life, nor mention

all the two hundred and fifty books and pamphlets that he wrote.

It was an adventurous life he led, full of dark and shadowy

passages which we cannot understand and so perhaps cannot pardon.

But whether he sold his pen or no we are bound to confess that

Defoe's desire was towards the good, towards peace, union, and

justice.

One thing he fought for with all his buoyant strength was the

Union between England and Scotland. It had been the desire of

William III ere he died, it had now become the still stronger

desire of Queen Anne and her ministers. So Defoe took "a long

winter, a chargeable, and, as it proved, hazardous journey" to

Scotland. There he threw himself into the struggle, doing all he

could for the Union. He has left for us a history of that

struggle,* which perhaps better than any other makes us realize

the unrest of the Scottish people, the anger, the fear, the

indecision, with which they were filled. "People went up and

down wondering and amazed, expecting every day strange events,

afraid of peace, afraid of war. Many knew not which way to fix

their resolution. They could not be clear for the Union, yet

they saw death at the door in its breaking off--death to their

liberty, to their religion, and to their country." Better than

any other he gives a picture of the "infinite struggles, clamor,

railing, and tumult of party." Let me give, in his own words, a

description of a riot in the streets of Edinburgh:--

*History of the Union of Great Britain.

"The rabble by shouting and noise having increased their numbers

to several thousands, they began with Sir Patrick Johnston, who

was one of the treaters, and the year before had been Lord

Provost. First they assaulted his lodging with stones and

sticks, and curses not a few. But his windows being too high

they came up the stairs to his door, and fell to work at it with

sledges or great hammers. And had they broke it open in their

first fury, he had, without doubt, been torn to pieces without

mercy; and this only because he was a treater in the Commission

to England, for, before that, no man was so well beloved as he,

over the whole city.

"His lady, in the utmost despair with this fright, came to the

window, with two candles in her hand, that she might be known;

and cried out, for God's sake to call the guards. An honest

Apothecary in the town, who knew her voice, and saw the distress

she was in, and to whom the family, under God, is obliged for

their deliverance, ran immediately down to the town guard. But

they would not stir without the Lord Provost's order. But that

being soon obtained, one Captain Richardson, who commanded,

taking about thirty men with him, marched bravely up to them; and

making his way with great resolution through the crowd, they

flying, but throwing stones and hallooing at him, and his men.

He seized the foot of the stair case; and then boldly went up,

cleared the stair, and took six of the rabble in the very act,

and so delivered the gentleman and his family.

"But this did not put a stop to the general tumult, though it

delivered this particular family. For the rabble, by this time,

were prodigiously increased, and went roving up and down the

town, breaking the windows of the Members of Parliament and

insulting them in their coaches in the streets. They put out all

the lights that they might not be discovered. And the author of

this had one great stone thrown at him for but looking out of a

window. For they suffered nobody to look out, especially with

any lights, lest they should know faces, and inform against them

afterwards.

"By this time it was about eight or nine o'clock at night, and

now they were absolute masters of the city. And it was reported

they were going to shut up all the ports.* The Lord Commissioner

being informed of that, sent a party of the foot guards, and took

possession of the Netherbow, which is a gate in the middle of the

High Street, as Temple Bar between the City of London and the

Court.

*Gates in the City Wall.

"The city was now in a terrible fright, and everybody was under

concern for their friends. The rabble went raving about the

streets till midnight, frequently beating drums, raising more

people. When my Lord Commissioner being informed, there were a

thousand of the seamen and rabble come up from Leith; and

apprehending if it were suffered to go on, it might come to a

dangerous head, and be out of his power to suppress, he sent for

the Lord Provost, and demanded that the guards should march into

the city.

"The Lord Provost, after some difficulty, yielded; though it was

alleged, that it was what never was known in Edinburgh before.

About one o'clock in the morning a battalion of the guards

entered the town, marched up to the Parliament Close, and took

post in all the avenues of the city, which prevented the

resolutions taken to insult the houses of the rest of the

treaters. The rabble were entirely reduced by this, and

gradually dispersed, and so the tumult ended."

Although Defoe did all he could to bring the Union about he felt

for and with the poor distracted people. He saw that amid the

strife of parties, proud, ignorant, mistaken, it may be, the

people were still swayed by love of country, love of freedom.

Even after the Union was accomplished Defoe remained in Scotland.

He still wrote his Review every week, and filled it so full of

Union matters that his readers began to think he could speak of

nothing else and that he was grown dull. In his Review he

wrote:--

"Nothing but Union, Union, says one now that wants diversion; I

am quite tired of it, and we hope, 'tis as good as over now.

Prithee, good Mr. Review, let's have now and then a touch of

something else to make us merry." But Defoe assures his readers

he means to go on writing about the Union until he can see some

prospect of calm among the men who are trying to make dispeace.

"Then I shall be the first that shall cease calling upon them to

Peace."

The years went on, Defoe always living a stormy life amid the

clash of party politics, always writing, writing. More than once

his noisy, journalistic pen brought him to prison. But he was

never a prisoner long, never long silenced. Yet although Defoe

wrote so much and lived at a time when England was full of witty

writers he was outside the charmed circle of wits who pretended

not to know of his existence. "One of these authors," says

another writer, "(the fellow that was pilloried, I have forgotten

his name), is indeed so grave, sententious, dogmatical a rogue

that there is no enduring him."*

*Johnathan Swift.

At length when Defoe was nearly sixty years old he wrote the book

which has brought him world-wide and enduring fame. Need I tell

you of that book? Surely not. For who does not know Robinson

Crusoe, or, as the first title ran, "The Life and Strange

Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, who

lived eight-and-twenty years all alone in an uninhabited Island

on the Coast of America near the Mouth of the great River

Oroonoque, having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all

the men perished but himself. With an account how he was at last

strangely delivered by Pirates. Written by himself." In those

days, you see, they were not afraid of long titles. The book,

too, is long. "Yet," as another great writer says,* "was there

ever anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its

readers, except Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's

Progress?"

*Samuel Johnson.

The book was a tremendous success. It pleased the men and women

and children of two hundred years ago as much as it pleases them

to-day. Within a few months four editions had been sold. Since

then, till now, there has never been a time when Robinson Crusoe

has not been read. The editions of it have been countless. It

has been edited and re-edited, it has been translated and

abridged, turned into shorthand and into poetry, and published in

every form imaginable, and at every price, from one penny to many

pounds.

Defoe got the idea of his story from the adventures of a Scots

sailor named Alexander Selkirk. This sailor quarreled with his

captain, and was set ashore upon an uninhabited island where he

remained alone for more than four years. At the end of that time

he was rescued by a passing ship and brought home to England.

Out of this slender tale Defoe made his fascinating story so full

of adventure.

What holds us in the story is its seeming truth. As we read it

we forget altogether that it is only a story, we feel sure that

Crusoe really lived, that all his adventures really happened.

And if you ever read any more of Defoe's books you will find that

this feeling runs through them all. Defoe was, in fact, a born

story-teller--like Sir John Mandeville. With an amazing show of

truth he was continually deceiving people. "He was a great, a

truly great liar, perhaps the greatest liar that ever lived."*

*William Minto.

Finding that Robinson Crusoe was such a success, Defoe began to

write other stories. He wrote of thieves, pirates and rogues.

These stories have the same show of truth as Robinson Crusoe.

Defoe, no doubt, got the ideas for them from the stories of the

rogues with whom he mixed in prison. But they have nearly all

been forgotten, for although they are clever the heroes and

heroines are coarse and the story of their adventures is

unpleasant reading. Yet as history, showing us the state of the

people in the days of Queen Anne and of George I, they are

useful.

Defoe was now well off. He had built himself a handsome house

surrounded by a pleasant garden. He had carriages and horses and

lived in good style with his wife and beautiful daughters. There

seemed to be no reason why he should not live happily and at ease

for the rest of his life. But suddenly one day, for some unknown

reason, he fled from his comfortable home into hiding. Why he

did this no one can tell. For two years he lived a homeless,

skulking fugitive. Then in 1731 he died, if not in poverty at

least in loneliness and distress of mind.

BOOKS TO READ

Robinson Crusoe, abridged by John Lang. Robinson Crusoe, retold

by Edith Robarts, illustrated by J. Hassall, R. I. Robinson

Crusoe (Everyman's Library).

Chapter LXIII SWIFT--THE "JOURNAL TO STELLA"

WE all know what it is to feel hurt and angry, to feel that we

are misunderstood, that no one loves us. At such times it may be

we want to hurt ourselves so that in some mysterious way we may

hurt those who do not love us. We long to die so that they may

be sorry. But these feelings do not come often and they soon

pass. We cry ourselves to sleep perhaps and wake up to find the

evil thoughts are gone. We forget all about them, or if we

remember them we remember to smile at our own foolishness, for we

know that after all we are understood, we are loved. And when we

grow old enough to look back upon those times, although we may

remember the pain of them, we can see that sometimes they came

from our own fault, it was not that we were misunderstood so much

as that we were misunderstanding. Yet whether it be our own

fault or not, when such times do come, the world seems very dark

and life seems full of pain. Then think of what a whole life

filled with these evil thoughts must be. Think of a whole life

made terrible with bitter feelings. That would be misery indeed.

Yet when we read the sad story of the life of Jonathan Swift who

has in Gulliver's Travels given to countless children, and grown-

up people too, countless hours of pleasure, we are forced to

believe that so he passed a great part of his life. Swift was

misunderstood and misunderstanding. It was not that he had no

love given to him, for all his life through he found women to

love him. But it was his unhappiness that he took that love only

to turn it to bitterness in his heart, that he took that love so

as to leave a stain on him and it ever after. He had friendship

too. But in the hands stretched out to help him in his need he

saw only insult. In the kindness that was given to him he saw

only a grudging charity, and yet he was angry with the world and

with man that he did not receive more.

In the life of Jonathan Swift there are things which puzzle even

the wisest. Children would find those things still harder to

understand, so I will not try to explain them, but will tell you

a little that you will readily follow about the life of this

lonely man with the biting pen and aching heart.

Jonathan Swift's father and mother were very poor, so poor indeed

that their friends said it was folly for them to marry. And when

after about two years of married life the husband died, he left

his young wife burdened with debts and with a little baby girl to

keep. It was not until a few months after his father's death

that Jonathan was born.

His mother was a brave-hearted, cheerful woman, and although her

little son came to her in the midst of such sorrow she no doubt

loved him, and his nurse loved him too. Little Jonathan's father

and mother were English, but because he was born in Dublin, and

because he spent a great deal of his life there, he has sometimes

been looked upon as an Irishman.

Jonathan's nurse was also an Englishwoman, and when he was about

a year old she was called home to England to a dying friend. She

saw that she must go to her friend, but she loved her baby-charge

so much that she could not bear to part from him. He had been a

sickly child, often ill, but that seemed only to make him dearer

to her. She held him in her arms thinking how empty they would

fell without their dear burden. She kissed him, jealous at the

thought that he might learn to know and love another nurse, and

she felt that she could not part with him. Making up her mind

that she would not, she wrapped him up warmly and slipped quietly

from the house carrying the baby in her arms. She then ran

quickly to the boat, crept on board, and was well out on the

Irish Sea before it was discovered that she had stolen little

Jonathan from his mother. Mrs. Swift was poor, Jonathan was not

strong so the fond and daring nurse was allowed by the mother to

keep her little charge until he was nearly four. Thus for three

years little Jonathan lived with his nurse at Whitehaven, growing

strong and brown in the sea air. She looked after him lovingly,

and besides feeding and clothing him, taught him so well that

Swift tells us himself, though it seems a little hard to believe,

that he could spell and could read any chapter in the Bible

before he was three.

After Jonathan's return to Ireland his uncle, Godwin Swift, seems

to have taken charge of him, and when he was six to have sent him

to a good school. His mother, meanwhile, went home to her own

people in England, and although mother and son loved each other

they were little together all through life. At fourteen Godwin

Swift sent his nephew from school to Trinity College, Dublin.

But Swift was by this time old enough to know that he was living

on the charity of his uncle and the knowledge was bitter to his

proud spirit. Instead of spurring him on the knowledge weighed

him down. He became gloomy, idle, and wild. He afterwards said

he was a dunce at college and "was stopped of his degree for

dulness and insufficiency." But although at first the examiners

refused to pass him, he was later, for some reason, given a

special degree, granted by favor rather than gained by desert "in

a manner little to his credit," says bitter Swift. Jonathan gave

his uncle neither love nor thanks for his schooling. "He gave me

the education of a dog," was how he spoke of it years after. Yet

he had been sent to the best school in Ireland and to college

later. But perhaps it was not so much the gift as the manner of

giving which Swift scorned. We cannot tell.

Soon after Jonathan left college he went to live in the house of

Sir William Temple. Temple was a great man in his day. He had

been an Ambassador, the friend of kings and princes, and he

considered himself something of a scholar. To him Swift acted as

a kind of secretary. To a proud man the post of secretary or

chaplain in a great house was, in those days, no happy one. It

was a position something between that of a servant and a friend,

and in it Swift's haughty soul suffered torments. Sir William,

no doubt, meant to be kind, but he was cold and condescending,

and not a little pompous and conceited. Swift's fierce pride was

ready to fancy insults where none were meant, he resented being

"treated like a schoolboy," and during the years he passed in Sir

William's house he gathered a store of bitterness against the

world in his heart.

But in spite of all his miseries real or imaginary, Swift had at

least one pleasure. Among the many people making up the great

household there was a little girl of seven named Esther Johnson.

She was a delicate little girl with large eyes and black hair.

She and Swift soon grew to be friends, and he spent his happiest

hours teaching her to read and write. It is pleasant to think of

the gloomy, untrained genius throwing off his gloom and bending

all his talents to the task of teaching and amusing this little

delicate child of seven.

With intervals between, Swift remained in Sir William's household

for about five years. Here he began to write poetry, but when he

showed his poems to Dryden, who was a distant kinsman, he got

little encouragement. "Cousin Swift," said the great man, "you

will never be a poet." Here was another blow from a hostile

world which Swift could never either forget or forgive.

As the years went on Swift found his position grow more and more

irksome. At last he began to think of entering the Church as a

means of earning an independent livelihood and becoming his own

master. And one day, having a quarrel with Sir William, he left

his house in a passion and went back to Ireland. Here after some

trouble he was made a priest and received a little seaside parish

worth about a hundred pounds a year.

Swift was now his own master, but he found it dull. He had so

few parishioners that it is said he used to go down to the

seashore and skiff stones in order to gather a congregation. For

he thought if the people would not come to hear sermons they

would come at least to stare at the mad clergyman, and for years

he was remembered as the "mad clergyman." And now because he

found his freedom dull, and for various other reasons, when Sir

William asked him to come back he gladly came. This time he was

much happier as a member of Sir William's household than he had

been before.

It was now that Swift wrote the two little books which first made

him famous. These were The Battle of the Books and A Tale of a

Tub. The Battle of the Books rose out of a silly quarrel in

which Sir William Temple had taken part as to whether the ancient

or the modern writers were the best. Swift took Temple's side

and wrote to prove that the ancient writers were best. But, as

it has been said, he wrote so cleverly that he proved the

opposite against his will, for nowhere in the writings of the

ancients is there anything so full or humor and satire as The

Battle of the Books.

Swift imagines a real battle to have taken place among the books

in the King's library at St. James's Palace. The books leave the

shelves, some on horseback, some on foot, and armed with sword

and spear throw themselves into the fray, but we are left quite

uncertain as to who gained the victory. This little book is a

satire, and, like all Swift's famous satires, is in prose not in

poetry. In the preface he says, "Satire is a sort of glass,

wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but

their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it

meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with

it." It is not a book that you will care to read for a long

time, for to find it interesting you must know both a good deal

about Swift's own times and about the books that fight the

battle.

You will not care either for A Tale of a Tub. And yet it is the

book above all others which one must read, and read with

understanding, if one would get even a little knowledge of

Swift's special genius. It was the book, nevertheless, which

more than any other stood in his way in after life.

A Tale of a Tub like The Battle of the Books is a satire, and

Swift wrote it to show up the abuses of the Church. He tells the

story of three brothers, Peter, Martin and Jack. Peter

represents the Roman Catholic, Martin the Anglican, and Jack the

Presbyterian Church. He meant, he says, to turn the laugh only

against Peter and Jack. That may be so, but his treatment of

Martin cannot be called reverent. Indeed, reverence was

impossible to Swift. There is much good to be said of him.

There was a fierce righteousness about his spirit which made him

a better parish priest than many a more pious man. He hated

shams, he hated cant, he hated bondage. "Dr. Swift," it was

said, "hated all fanatics: all fanatics hated Dr. Swift."* But

with all his uprightness and breadth he was neither devout nor

reverent.

*Lord Orrery.

When Sir William Temple died Swift went back to Ireland, and

after a little time he once more received a Church living there.

But here, as before, his parish was very small, so that sometimes

he had only his clerk as congregation. Then he would begin the

service with "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and

me," instead of "Dearly beloved brethren," as the Prayer Book has

it.

Sir William had left Swift some money; he had also left some to

Esther Johnson, the little girl Swift used to teach. She had

grown into a beautiful and witty woman and now she too, with a

friend, went to Ireland, and for the rest of her life lived there

near Swift.

The strange friendship between these two, between Esther Johnson

and Swift, is one of the puzzles in Swift's life. That they

loved each other, that they were life-long friends, every one

knows. But were they ever married? Were they man and wife?

That question remains unanswered.

Esther is the Persian word for star; Stella the Latin. Swift

called his girl-friend Stella, and as Stella she has become

famous in our literature. For when Swift was away from home he

wrote letters to her which we now have under the name of the

Journal to Stella. Here we see the great man in another light.

Here he is no longer armed with lightning, his pen is no longer

dipped in poison, but in friendly, simple fashion he tells all

that happens to him day by day. He tells what he thinks and what

he feels, where and when he dines, when he gets up, and when he

goes to bed, all the gossiping details interesting to one who

loves us and whom we love. And with it all we get a picture of

the times in which he lived, of the politics of the day, of the

great men he moved among. Swift always addresses both Stella and

her companion Mistress Dingley, and the letters are everywhere

full of tender, childish nonsense. He invented what he called a

"little language," using all sorts of quaint and babyish words

and strange strings of capital letters, M. D., for instance,

meaning my dears, M. E., Madam Elderly, or D. D., Dear Dingley,

and so on. Throughout, too, we come on little bits of doggerel

rimes, bad puns, simple jokes, mixed up with scraps of politics,

with threatenings of war, with party quarrels, with all kinds of

stray fragments of news which bring the life of the times vividly

before us. The letters were never meant for any one but Stella

and Mistress Dingley to see, and sometimes when we are reading

the affectionate nonsense we feel as if no one ought to have seen

it but these two. And yet it gives us one whole side of Swift

that we should never have known but for it. It is not easy to

give an idea of this book, it must be read to be understood, but

I will give you a few extracts from it:--

"Pshaw, I must be writing to those dear saucy brats every night,

whether I will or no, let me have what business I will, or come

home ever so late, or be ever so sleepy; but an old saying and a

true one,

'Be you lords, or be you earls,

You must write to saucy girls.'

"I was to-day at Court and saw Raymond among the beefeaters,

staying to see the Queen; so I put him in a better station, made

two or three dozen of bows, and went to Church, and then to Court

again to pick up a dinner, as I did with Sir John Stanley, and

then we went to visit Lord Mountjoy, and just now left him, and

'tis near eleven at night, young women."

Or again:--

"The Queen was abroad to-day in order to hunt, but finding it

disposed to rain she kept in her coach; she hunts in a chaise

with one horse, which she drives herself, and drives furiously,

like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod. Dingley has

heard of Nimrod, but not Stella, for it is in the Bible. . . .

The Queen and I were going to take the air this afternoon, but

not together: and were both hindered by a sudden rain. Her

coaches and chaises all went back, and the guards too; and I

scoured into the marketplace for shelter."

Another day he writes:--

"Pish, sirrahs, put a date always at the bottom of your letter,

as well as the top, that I may know when you send it; your last

is of November 3, yet I had others at the same time, written a

fortnight after. . . . Pray let us have no more bussiness,

busyness. Take me if I know how to spell it! Your wrong

spelling, Madam Stella, has put me out: it does not look right;

let me see, bussiness, busyness, business, bisyness, bisness,

bysness; faith, I known not which is right, I think the second; I

believe I never writ the word in my life before; yes, sure I

must, though; business, busyness, bisyness.-- I have perplexed

myself, and can't do it. Prithee ask Walls. Business, I fancy

that's right. Yes it is; I looked in my own pamphlet, and found

it twice in ten lines, to convince you that I never writ it

before. O, now I see it as plain as can be; so yours is only an

s too much."

Chapter LXIV SWIFT--"GULLIVER'S TRAVELS"

DURING the years in which Swift found time to write these playful

letters to Stella he was growing into a man of power. Like Defoe

he was a journalist, but one of far more authority. The power of

his pen was such that he was courted by his friends, feared by

his enemies. He threw himself into the struggle of party, first

as a Whig, then as a Tory; but as a friend said of him later, "He

was neither Whig nor Tory, neither Jacobite nor Republican. He

was Dr. Swift."* He was now, he says:--

*Lord Orrery.

"Grown old in politicks and wit,

Caress'd by ministers of State,

Of half mankind the dread and hate."*

*Cadenus and Vanessa.

And he felt that he deserved reward for what he had done for his

party. He thought that he should have been made a bishop. But

even in those days, when little thought was given to the fitness

of a man for such a position, the Queen steadily refused to make

the author of A Tale of a Tub a bishop.

Again Swift felt that he was unjustly treated, and even when he

was at length made Dean of St. Patrick's that consoled him

little. He longed for power, and owned that he was never so

happy as when treated like a lord. He longed for wealth, for

"wealth," he said, "is liberty, and liberty is a blessing fittest

for a philosopher." And if Swift was displeased at being made

only a Dean, the Irish people were equally displeased with him as

their Dean. As he rode through the streets of Dublin to take

possession of his Deanery, the people threw stones and mud at him

and hooted him as he passed. The clergy, too, made his work as

Dean as hard as possible. But Swift set himself to conquer them,

and soon he had his own way even in trifles.

We cannot follow Swift through all his political adventures and

writings. In those days the misgovernment of Ireland was

terrible, and Swift, although he loved neither Ireland nor the

Irish, fought for their rights until, from being hated by them,

he became the idol of the people, and those who had thrown mud

and stones now cheered him as he passed. Wherever he went he was

received with honor, his birthday was kept as a day of rejoicing

by Irishmen with gratitude. But even in his hour of triumph

Swift was a lonely and discontented man as we may learn from his

letters.

It was now that he published the book upon which his fame most

surely rests--Gulliver's Travels. It is a book which has given

pleasure to numberless people ever since. Yet Swift said

himself: "The chief end I propose to myself in all my labours is

to vex the world rather than divert it, and if I could compass

that design without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be

the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen. . . . I hate

and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John,

Peter, Thomas, and so forth. . . . Upon this great foundation of

misanthropy, the whole building of my Travels is erected."

But whether Swift at the time vexed the world with Gulliver or

not, ever since he has succeeded in diverting it. Gulliver's

Travels is an allegory and a satire, but there is no need now to

do more than enjoy it as a story.

The story is divided into four parts. In the first Captain

Lemuel Gulliver being wrecked finds himself upon an island where

all the people are so small that he can pick them up in his thumb

and finger, and it requires six hundred of their beds to make one

for him.

In the second part Gulliver comes to a country where the people

are giants. They are so large that they in their turn can lift

Gulliver up between thumb and finger.

In the third voyage Gulliver is taken by pirates and at last

lands upon a flying island, and from there he passes on to other

wonderful places.

In the fourth his men mutiny and put him ashore on an unknown

land. There he finds that horses are the rulers, and a terrible

kind of degraded human being their slaves and servants.

In the last part the satire is too bitter, the degradation of man

too terribly insisted upon to make it pleasant reading, and

altogether the first two stories are the most interesting.

Here is how Swift tells us of Gulliver's arrival in Lilliput, the

country of the tiny folk. After the shipwreck and a long battle

with the waves he has at length reached land:--

"I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I

slept sounder than ever I remember to have done in my life, and,

as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just

daylight. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for as

I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were

strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which

was long and thick, tied down in the same manner.

"I could only look upwards, the sun began to grow hot, and the

light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me, but

in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a

little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which

advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my

chin; when bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I

perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a

bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back.

"In the meantime, I felt at least fifty more of the same kind (as

I conjectured) following the first. I was in the utmost

astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a

fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt

with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground.

However, they soon returned, and one of them, who ventured so far

as to get a full sight of my face, lifting up his hands and eyes

by way of admiration, cried out in a shrill, but distinct voice,

Hekinah degul: the others repeated the same words several times,

but then I knew not what they meant.

"I lay all this while, as the reader may believe, in great

uneasiness: at length, struggling to get loose, I had the

fortune to break the strings, and wrench out the pegs that

fastened my left arm to the ground; for, by lifting it up to my

face, I discovered the methods they had taken to bind me, and at

the same time with a violent pull, which game me excessive pain,

I a little loosened the strings that tied down my hair on the

left side, so that I was just able to turn my head about two

inches.

"But the creatures ran off a second time, before I could seize

them; whereupon there was a great shout in a very shrill accent,

and after it ceased, I heard one of them cry aloud Tolgo phonac;

when in an instant I felt above an hundred arrows discharged on

my left hand, which pricked me like so many needles; and besides,

they shot another flight into the air, as we do bombs in Europe,

whereof many, I suppose, fell on my body (though I felt them not)

and some on my face, which I immediately covered with my left

hand.

"When this shower of arrows was over, I fell a-groaning with

grief and pain, and then striving again to get loose, they

discharged another volley larger than the first, and some of them

attempted with spears to stick me in the sides, but, by good

luck, I had on a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce."

Gulliver decided that the best thing he could do was to lie still

until night came and then, having his left hand already loose, he

would soon be able to free himself. However, he did not need to

wait so long, for very soon, by orders of a mannikin, who seemed

to have great authority over the others, his head was set free.

The little man then made a long speech, not a word of which

Gulliver understood, but he replied meekly, showing by signs that

he had no wicked intentions against the tiny folk and that he was

also very hungry.

"The Hurgo (for so they call a great lord, as I afterwards

learnt) understood me very well. He commanded that several

ladders should be applied to my sides, on which above an hundred

of the inhabitants mounted and walked towards my mouth, laden

with baskets full of meat, which had been provided and sent

thither by the King's orders, upon the first intelligence he

received of me. I observed there was the flesh of several

animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste. There were

shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and very

well dressed, but smaller than the wings of a lark. I ate them

by two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time,

about the bigness of musket bullets. They supplied me as fast as

they could, showing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment

at my bulk and appetite. I then made another sign that I wanted

to drink. They found by my eating, that a small quantity would

not suffice me; and being a most ingenious people, they slung up

with great dexterity one of their largest hogsheads, then rolled

it towards my hand, and beat out the top; I drank it off at a

draught, which I might well do, for it did not hold half a pint,

and tasted like a small wine of Burgundy, but much more

delicious. They brought me a second hogshead, which I drank in

the same manner, and made signs for more, but they had none to

give me. When I had performed these wonders, they shouted for

joy, and danced upon my breast, repeating several times as they

did at first Hekinah degul."

And now having introduced you and Gulliver to the Lilliputians, I

must leave you to hear about his further adventures among them

from the book itself. There you will learn how Gulliver received

his freedom, and how he lived happily among the little people

until at length Swift falls upon the quaint idea of having him

impeached for treason. Gulliver then, hearing of this danger,

escapes, and after a few more adventures arrives at home.

As a contrast to what you have just read you may like to hear of

Gulliver's first adventures in Brobdingnag, the land of giants.

Gulliver had been found by a farmer and carried home. When the

farmer's wife first saw him "she screamed and ran back, as women

in England do at the sight of a toad or a spider." However, when

she saw that he was only a tiny man, she soon grew fond of him.

"It was about twelve at noon, and a servant brought in dinner.

It was only one substantial dish of meat (fit for the plain

condition of a husbandman) in a dish of about four-and-twenty

foot diameter. The company were the farmer and his wife, three

children, and an old grand-mother. When they were sat down, the

farmer placed me at some distance from him on the table, which

was thirty foot high from the floor. I was in a terrible fright,

and kept as far as I could from the edge for fear of falling.

The wife minced a bit of meat, then crumbled some bread on a

trencher, and placed it before me. I made her a low bow, took

out my knife and fork, and fell to eat, which gave them exceeding

delight. The mistress sent her maid for a small dram cup, which

held about two gallons, and filled it with drink. I took up the

vessel with much difficulty in both hands, and in a most

respectful manner drank to her ladyship's health, expressing the

words as loud as I could in English, which made the company laugh

so heartily, that I was almost deafened with the noise. . . .

"In the midst of dinner, my mistress's favourite cat leapt into

her lap. I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen

stocking-weavers at work; and turning my head, I found it

proceeded from the purring of this animal, who seemed to be three

times larger than an ox, as I computed by the view of her head,

and one of her paws, while her mistress was feeding and stroking

her. The fierceness of this creature's countenance altogether

discomposed me; though I stood at the further end of the table,

above fifty foot off; and although my mistress held her fast for

fear she might give a spring, and seize me in her talons. But it

happened there was no danger; for the cat took not the least

notice of me when my master placed me within three yards of her.

And as I have been always told, and found true by experience in

my travels, that flying, or discovering fear before a fierce

animal, is a certain way to make it pursue or attack you, so I

resolved in this dangerous juncture to show no manner of concern.

I walked with intrepidity five or six times before the very head

of the cat, and came within half a yard of her; whereupon she

drew herself back, as if she were more afraid of me."

When it was published Gulliver's Travels was at once a great

success. Ten days after it appeared, two poets wrote to Swift

that "the whole town, men, women, and children are quite full of

it."

For nearly twenty years longer Swift lived, then sad to say the

life of the man who wrote for us these fascinating tales closed

in gloom without relief. Stella, his life-long friend, died.

That left him forlorn and desolate. Then, as the years passed,

darker and darker gloom settled upon his spirit. Disease crept

over both mind and body, he was tortured by pain, and when at

length the pain left him he sank into torpor. It was not madness

that had come upon him, but a dumb stupor. For more than two

years he lived, but it was a living death. Without memory,

without hope, the great genius had become the voiceless ruin of a

man. But at length a merciful end came. On an October day in

1745 Swift died. He who had torn his own heard with restless

bitterness, who had suffered and caused others to suffer, had at

last found rest.

He was buried at dead of night in his own cathedral and laid by

Stella's side, and over his grave were carved words chosen by

himself which told the wayfarer that Jonathan Swift had gone

"Where savage indignation can no longer tear at his heart. Go,

wayfarer, and imitate, if thou canst, a man who did all a man may

do as a valiant champion of liberty."

BOOKS TO READ

Stories of Gulliver, by J. Lang. Gulliver's Travels. Gulliver's

Travels (Everyman's Library).

NOTE:--These two last are both the same text and are illustrated

by A. Rackham. It is the edition in Temple Classics for Young

People that is recommended, not that in the Temple Classics.

Chapter LXV ADDISON--THE "SPECTATOR"

SWIFT'S wit makes us laugh, but it leaves us on the whole,

perhaps, a little sad. Now we come to a satirist of quite

another spirit whose wit, it has been said, "makes us laugh and

leaves us good and happy."*

*Thackeray.

Joseph Addison was the son of a Dean. He was born in 1672 in the

quaint little thatched parsonage of Milston, a Wiltshire village,

not far from that strange monument of ancient days, Stonehenge.

When he was old enough Joseph was sent first to schools near his

home, and then a little later to the famous Charterhouse in

London. Of his schooldays we know little, but we can guess, for

one story that has come down to us, that he was a shy, nervous

boy. It is said that once, having done something a little wrong,

he was so afraid of what punishment might follow that he ran

away. He hid in a wood, sleeping in a hollow tree and feeding on

wild berries until he was found and taken home to his parents.

At Charterhouse Joseph met another boy named Dick Steele, and

these two became fast friends although they were very different

from each other. For Dick was merry, noisy, and fun-loving, and

although Joseph loved fun too it was in a quiet, shy way. Dick,

who was a few weeks older than Joseph, was the son of a well-to-

do lawyer. He was born in Ireland, but did not remain there

long. For, as both his father and mother died when he was still

a little boy, he was brought to England to be taken care of by an

uncle.

From Charterhouse Joseph and Dick both went to Oxford, but to

different Colleges. Dick left the University without taking his

degree and became a soldier, while Joseph stayed many years and

became a man of learning.

Joseph Addison had gone to College with the idea of becoming a

clergyman like his father, but after a time he gave up that idea,

and turned his thoughts to politics. The politicians of the day

were always on the lookout for clever men, who, by their

writings, would help to sway the people to their way of thinking.

Already at college Addison had become known by his Latin poetry,

and three Whig statesmen thought so highly of it that they

offered him a pension of 300 pounds a year to allow him to travel

on the Continent and learn French and so add to his learning as to

be able to help their side by his writing. Addison accepted the

pension and set out on his travels. For four years he wandered

about the Continent, adding to his store of knowledge of men and

books, meeting many of the foremost men of letters of his day.

But long before he returned home his friends had fallen from

power and his pension was stopped. So back in London we find him

cheerfully betaking himself to a poor lodging up three flights of

stairs, hoping for something to turn up.

These were the days of the War of the Spanish Succession and of

the brilliant victories of Marlborough of which you have read in

the history of the time of Anne. Blenheim had been fought. All

England was ringing with the praises of the great General in

prose and verse. But the verse was poor, and it seemed to those

in power that this great victory ought to be celebrated more

worthily, so the Lord Treasurer looked about him for some one who

could sing of it in fitting fashion. The right person, however,

seemed hard to find, and the laureate of the day, an honest

gentleman named Nahum Tate, who could hardly be called a poet,

was quite unable for the task. To help the Lord Treasurer out of

his difficulty one of the great men who had already befriended

Addison suggested him as a suitable writer. And so one morning

Addison was surprised in his little garret by a visit from no

less a person than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

A shy boy at school, Addison had grown into a shy, retiring man,

and no doubt he was not a little taken aback at a visit from so

great a personage. The Chancellor, however, soon put him at his

ease, told him what he had come about, and begged him to

undertake the work. "In short, the Chancellor said so many

obliging things, and in so graceful a manner, as gave Mr. Addison

the utmost spirit and encouragement to begin that poem, which he

afterwards published and entitled The Campaign."*

*Budgell, Memories of the Boyles.

The poem was a great success, and besides being paid for the

work, Addison received a Government post, so once more life ran

smoothly for him. He had now both money and leisure. His

Government duties left him time to write, and in the next few

years he published a delightful book of his travels, and an

opera.

Shy, humorous, courteous, Addison steadily grew popular.

Everything went well with him. "If he had a mind to be chosen

king he would hardly be refused," said Swift. He, however, only

became a member of Parliament. But he was too shy ever to make a

speech, and presently he went to Ireland as Secretary of State.

Swift and Addison already knew each other, and Addison had sent a

copy of his travels to Swift as "to the most agreeable companion,

the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age." Now in

Ireland they saw much of each other, and although they were, as

Swift himself says, as different as black and white, they became

fast friends. And even later, in those days of bitter party

feeling, when Swift left his own side and became a Tory, though

their friendship cooled, they never became enemies. Swift's

bitter pen was never turned against his old friend. Addison with

all his humor and his satire never attacked any man personally,

so their relations continued friendly and courteous to the end.

In the Journal to Stella we find many entries about this

difficulty between the friends, "Mr. Addison and I are as

different as black and white, and I believe our friendship will

go off by this business of party. But I love him still as much

as ever, though we seldom meet." "All our friendship and

dearness are off. We are civil acquaintance, talk words of

course, of when we shall meet, and that's all. Is it not odd?"

Then later the first bitterness of difference seems to pass, and

Swift tells how he went to Addison's for supper. "We were very

good company, and I yet know no man half so agreeable to me as he

is."

It was while Addison was in Ireland that Richard Steele started a

paper called the Tatler. When Addison found out that it was his

old friend Dick who had started the Tatler he offered to help.

And he helped to such good purpose that Steele says, "I fared

like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his

aid. I was undone by my own auxiliary; when I had once called

him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him."

This was the beginning of a long literary partnership that has

become famous. Never perhaps were two friends more different in

character. Yet, says Steele, long after, speaking of himself and

Addison, "There never was a more strict friendship than between

those gentlemen, nor had they ever any difference but what

proceeded from their different way of pursuing the same thing.

The one with patience, foresight, and temperate address, always

waited and stemmed the torrent; while the other often plunged

himself into it, and was as often taken out by the temper of him

who stood weeping on the brink for his safety, whom he could not

dissuade from leaping into it. . . . When they met they were as

unreserved as boys, and talked of the greatest affairs, upon

which they saw where they differed, without pressing (what they

knew impossible) to convert each other."*

*Steele in the Theatre, 12.

The Tatler, like Defoe's Review, was a leaflet of two or three

pages, published three times a week. The Review and other papers

of the same kind no doubt prepared the way for the Tatler. But

the latter was written with far greater genius, and while the

Review is almost forgotten the Tatler is still remembered and

still read.

In the first number Steele announced that:--"All accounts of

gallantry, pleasure and entertainment, shall be under the article

of White's Chocolate-House; Poetry under that of Wills' Coffee-

House; learning under the title of Grecian; foreign and domestic

news you will have from Saint James's Coffee-House; and what else

I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own

apartment."

The coffee-houses and chocolate-houses were the clubs of the day.

It was there the wits gathered together to talk, just as in the

days of Ben Jonson they gathered at the Mermaid Tavern. And in

these still nearly newspaperless days it was in the coffee-houses

that the latest news, whether of politics or literature or sheer

gossip, was heard and discussed. At one coffee-house chiefly

statesmen and politicians would gather, at another poets and

wits, and so on. So Steele dated each article from the coffee-

house at which the subject of it would most naturally be

discussed.

Steele meant the Tatler to be a newspaper in which one might find

all the news of the day, but he also meant it to be something

more.

You have heard that, after the Restoration, many of the books

that were written, and plays that were acted, were coarse and

wicked, and the people who read these books and watched these

plays led coarse and wicked lives. And now a rollicking soldier,

noisy, good-hearted Dick Steele, "a rake among scholars, and a

scholar among rakes"* made up his mind to try to make things

better and give people something sweet and clean to read daily.

The Tatler, especially after Addison joined with Steele in

producing it, was a great success. But, as time went on,

although it continued to be a newspaper, gradually more room was

given to fiction than to fact, and to essays on all manner of

subjects than to the news of the day. For Addison is among the

greatest of our essayists. But although these essays were often

meant to teach something, neither Steele nor Addison are always

trying to be moral or enforce a lesson. At times the papers

fairly bubble with fun. One of the best humorous articles in the

Tatler is one in which Addison gives a pretended newly found

story by our friend Sir John Mandeville. It is perhaps as

delightful a lying tale as any that "learned and worthy knight"

ever invented. Here is a part of it:--

*Macaulay.

"We were separated by a storm in the latitude of 73, insomuch

that only the ship which I was in, with a Dutch and French

vessel, got safe into a creek of Nova Zembla. We landed, in

order to refit our vessels, and store ourselves with provisions.

The crew of each vessel made themselves a cabin of turf and wood,

at some distance from each other, to fence themselves against the

inclemencies of the weather, which was severe beyond imagination.

"We soon observed, that in talking to one another we lost several

of our words, and could not hear one another at above two yards'

distance, and that too when we sat very near the fire. After

much perplexity, I found that our words froze in the air before

they could reach the ears of the persons to whom they were

spoken. I was soon confirmed in this conjecture, when, upon the

increase of the cold, the whole company grew dumb, or rather

deaf. For every man was sensible, as we afterwards found, that

he spoke as well as ever, but the sounds no sooner took air than

they were condensed and lost.

"It was now a miserable spectacle to see us nodding and gaping at

one another, every man talking, and no man heard. One might

observe a seaman that could hail a ship at a league distance,

beckoning with his hands, straining his lungs, and tearing his

throat, but all in vain.

"We continued here three weeks in this dismal plight. At length,

upon a turn of wind, the air about us began to thaw. Our cabin

was immediately filled with a dry clattering sound, which I

afterwards found to be the crackling of consonants that broke

above our heads, and were often mixed with a gentle hissing,

which I imputed to the letter S, that occurs so frequently in the

English tongue.

"I soon after felt a breeze of whispers rushing by my ear; for

those, being of a soft and gentle substance, immediately

liquified in the warm wind that blew across our cabin. These

were soon followed by syllables and short words, and at length by

entire sentences, that melted sooner or later, as they were more

or less congealed; so that we now heard everything that had been

spoken during the whole three weeks that we had been silent; if I

may use that expression.

"It was now very early in the morning, and yet, to my surprise, I

heard somebody say, 'Sir John, it is midnight, and time for the

ship's crew to go to bed.' This I knew to be the pilot's voice,

and upon recollecting myself I concluded that he had spoken these

words to me some days before, though I could not hear them before

the present thaw. My reader will easily imagine how the whole

crew was amazed to hear every man talking, and seeing no man

opening his mouth."

When the confusion of voices was pretty well over Sir John

proposed a visit to the Dutch cabin, and so they set out. "At

about half a mile's distance from our cabin, we heard the

groanings of a bear, which at first startled us. But upon

inquiry we were informed by some of our company, that he was

dead, and now lay in salt, having been killed upon that very spot

about a fortnight before, in the time of the frost."

Having reached the Dutch cabin the company was almost stunned by

the confusion of sounds, and could not make out a word for about

half an hour. This, Sir John thinks, was because the Dutch

language being so much harsher than ours it "wanted more time

than ours to melt and become audible."

Next they visited the French cabin and here Sir John says, "I was

convinced of an error into which I had before fallen. For I had

fancied, that for the freezing of the sound, it was necessary for

it to be wrapped up, and, as it were, preserved in breath. But I

found my mistake, when I heard the sound of a kit playing a

minuet over our heads."

The kit was a small violin to the sound of which the Frenchmen

had danced to amuse themselves while they were deaf or dumb. How

it was that the kit could be heard during the frost and yet still

be heard in the thaw we are not told. Sir John gave very good

reasons, says Addison, but as they are somewhat long "I pass over

them in silence."*

*Tatler, 254.

Addison and Steele carried on the Tatler for two years, then it

was stopped to make way for a far more famous paper called the

Spectator. But meanwhile the Whigs fell from power and Addison

lost his Government post. In twelve months, he said to a friend,

he lost a place worth two thousand pounds a year, an estate in

the Indies, and, worst of all, his lady-love. Who the lady-love

was is not known, but doubtless she was some great lady ready

enough to marry a Secretary of State, but not a poor scribbler.

As Addison had now no Government post, it left him all the more

time for writing, and his essays in the Spectator are what we

chiefly remember him by.

The Spectator was still further from the ordinary newspaper than

the Tatler. It was more perhaps what our modern magazines are

meant to be, but, instead of being published once a week or once

a month, it was published every morning.

In order to give interest to the paper, instead of dating the

articles from various coffee-houses, as had been done in the

Tatler, Addison and Steele between them imagined a club. And it

is the doings of these members, their characters, and their

lives, which supply subjects for many of the articles. In the

first numbers of the Spectator these members are described to us.

First of all there is the Spectator himself. He is the editor of

the paper. It is he who with kindly humorous smile and grave

twinkle in his eye is to be seen everywhere. He is seen, and he

sees and listens, but seldom opens his lips. "In short," he

says, "I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on."

And that is the meaning of Spectator--the looker-on. This on-

looker, there can be little doubt, was meant to be a picture of

Addison himself. In a later paper he tells us that "he was a man

of a very short face, extremely addicted to silence. . . . and

was a great humorist in all parts of his life."* And when you

come to know Mr. Spectator well, I think you will love this grave

humorist.

*Spectator, 101.

After Mr. Spectator, the chief member of the Club was Sir Roger

de Coverley. "His great-grandfather was inventor of that famous

country dance which is called after him. All who know that shire

(in which he lives), are very well acquainted with the parts and

merits of Sir Roger. He is a gentleman that is very singular in

his behaviour, but his singularities proceed from his good sense,

and are contradictions to the manners of the world, only as he

thinks the world is in the wrong." He was careless of fashion in

dress, and wore a coat and doublet which, he used laughingly to

say, had been in and out twelve times since he first wore it.

"He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and hearty;

keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of

mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that

he is rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his

servants look satisfied. All the young women profess love to him

and the young men are glad of his company. When he comes into a

house he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way

upstairs to a visit."

Next came a lawyer of the Inner Temple, who had become a lawyer

not because he wanted to be one, but because he wanted to please

his old father. He had been sent to London to study the laws of

the land, but he liked much better to study those of the stage.

"He is an excellent critic, and the time of the play is his hour

of business. Exactly at five he passes through New Inn, crosses

through Russel Court, and takes a turn at Wills' till the play

begins. He has his shoes rubbed and his periwig powdered at the

barber's as you go into the Rose."

Next comes Sir Andrew Freeport, "a merchant of great eminence in

the City of London." "He abounds in several frugal maxims,

amongst which the greatest favorite is, 'A penny saved is a penny

got.'"

"Next to Sir Andrew in the Club room sits Captain Sentry, a

gentleman of great courage, good understanding, but invincible

modesty. He was some years a captain, and behaved himself with

great gallantry in several engagements and at several sieges.

But having a small estate of his own, and being next heir to Sir

Roger, he has quitted a way of life in which no man can rise

suitably to his merit, who is not something of a courtier as well

as a soldier. The military part of his life has furnished him

with many adventures, in the relation of which he is very

agreeable to the company, for he is never overbearing, though

accustomed to command men in the utmost degree below him, nor

ever too obsequious, from an habit of obeying men highly above

him.

"But that our society may not appear a set of humorists,

unacquainted with the gallantries and pleasures of the age, we

have among us the gallant Will Honeycomb, a gentleman who,

according to his years, should be in the decline of his life.

But having ever been very careful of his person, and always had a

very easy fortune, time has made but very little impression,

either by wrinkles on his forehead, or traces in his brain. His

person is well turned, of a good height. He is very ready at

that sort of discourse with which men usually entertain women.

He has all his life dressed very well, and remembers habits as

other do men. He can smile when one speaks to him, and laugh

easily." He is in fact an old beau, a regular man about town, "a

well-bred, fine gentleman," yet no great scholar, "he spelt like

a gentleman and not like a scholar,"* he says.

*Spectator, 105.

Last of all there is a clergyman, a man of "general learning,

great sanctity of life, and the most exact breeding." He seldom

comes to the Club, "but when he does it adds to every man else a

new enjoyment of himself."

This setting forth of the characters in the story will remind you

a little perhaps of Chaucer in his Prologue to the Canterbury

Tales. As he there gives us a clear picture of England in the

time of Edward III, so Addison gives us a clear picture of

England in the time of Anne. And although the essays are in the

main unconnected, the slight story of these characters runs

through them, weaving them into a whole. You may pick up a

volume of the Spectator and read an essay here or there at will

with enjoyment, or you may read the whole six hundred one after

the other and find in them a slight but interesting story.

You know that the books many of your grown-up friends read most

are called novels. But in the days when Joseph Addison and

Richard Steele wrote the Spectator, there were no novels. Even

Defoe's stories had not yet appeared, and it was therefore a new

delight for our forefathers to have the adventures of the

Spectator Club each day with their morning cup of tea or

chocolate. "Mr. Spectator," writes one lady, "your paper is part

of my tea equipage, and my servant knows my humour so well, that

calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual

hour) she answered, the Spectator was not yet come in, but that

the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment."

Thus the Spectator had then become part of everyday life just as

our morning newspapers have now, and there must have been many

regrets among the readers when one member of the supposed Club

died, another married and settled down, and so on until at length

the Club was entirely dispersed and the Spectator ceased to

appear. It may interest you to know that the paper we now call

the Spectator was not begun until more than a hundred years after

its great namesake ceased to appear, the first number being

published in 1828.

It was after the Spectator ceased that Addison published his

tragedy called Cato. Cato was a great Roman who rebelled against

the authority of Caesar and in the end killed himself. His is a

story out of which a good tragedy might be made. But Addison's

genius is not dramatic, and the play does not touch our hearts as

Shakespeare's tragedies do. Yet, although we cannot look upon

Addison's Cato as a really great tragedy, there are lines in it

which every one remembers and quotes, although they may not know

where they come from. Such are, for instance, "Who deliberates

is lost," and

"'Tis not in mortals to command success,

But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."

But although Cato is not really great, the writer was perhaps the

most popular man of his day, and so his tragedy was a tremendous

success. With Cato Addison reached the highest point of his fame

as an author in his own day, but now we remember him much more as

a writer of delightful essays, and as the creator or at least the

perfecter of Sir Roger, for to Steele is due the first invention

of the worthy knight.

Fortune still smiled on Addison. When George I came to the

throne, the Whigs once more returned to power, and Addison again

became Secretary for Ireland. He still wrote, both on behalf of

his Government and to please himself.

And now, in 1716, when he was already a man of forty-four,

Addison married. His wife was the Dowager Countess of Warwick,

and perhaps she was that great lady whom he had lost a few years

before when he lost his post of Secretary of State. Of all

Addison's pleasant prosperous life these last years ought to have

been most pleasant and most prosperous. But it has been said

that his marriage was not happy, and that plain Mr. Addison was

glad at times to escape from the stately grandeur of his own home

and from the great lady, his wife, to drink and smoke with his

friends and "subjects" at his favorite coffee-house. For Addison

held sway and was surrounded by his little court of literary

admirers, as Dryden and Ben Jonson before him.

But whether Addison was happy in his married life or not, one

sorrow he did have. Between his old friend, Dick Steele, and

himself a coldness grew up. They disagreed over politics.

Steele thought himself ill-used by his party. His impatient,

impetuous temper was hurt at the cool balance of his friend's,

and so they quarreled. "I ask no favour of Mr. Secretary

Addison," writes Steele angrily. During life the quarrel was

never made up, but after Addison died Steele spoke of his friend

in his old generous manner. Under his new honors and labours

Addison's health soon gave way. He suffered much from asthma,

and in 1718 gave up his Government post. A little more than a

year later he died.

He met his end cheerfully and peacefully. "See how a Christian

can die," he said to his wild stepson, the Earl of Warwick, who

came to say farewell to his stepfather.

The funeral took place at dead of night in Westminster Abbey.

Whig and Tory alike joined in mourning, and as the torchlight

procession wound slowly through the dim isles, the organ played

and the choir sang a funeral hymn.

"How silent did his old companions tread,

By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead,

Thro' breathing statues, then unheeded things,

Thro' rows of warriors, and thro' walks of Kings!

What awe did the slow solemn knell inspire,

The pealing organ, and the pausing choir;

The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid,

And the last words, that dust to dust conveyed!

While speechless o'er thy closing grave we bend,

Accept these tears, thou dear departed Friend!"*

*T. Tickell.

So our great essayist was laid to rest, but it was not until many

years had come and gone that a statue in his honor was placed in

the Poets' Corner. This, says Lord Macaulay, himself a great

writer, was "a mark of national respect due to the unsullied

statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of pure

English eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and manners.

It was due, above all, to the great satirist, who alone knew how

to use ridicule without abusing it, who, without inflicting a

wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit

with virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which

wit had been lead astray by profligacy, and virtue by

fanaticism."

BOOKS TO READ

Sir Roger de Coverley. The Coverley Papers, edited by O. M.

Myers.

Chapter LXVI STEELE--THE SOLDIER AUTHOR

YOU have heard a little about Dick Steele in connection with

Joseph Addison. Steele is always overshadowed by his great

friend, for whom he had such a generous admiration that he was

glad to be so overshadowed. But in this chapter I mean to tell

you a little more about him.

He was born, you know, in Dublin in 1671, and early lost his

father. About this he tells us himself in one of the Tatlers:

"The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my

father, at which time I was not quite five years of age. But was

rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a

real understanding, why nobody was willing to play with me. I

remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother

sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and

fell abeating the coffin, and calling 'Papa,' for, I know not

how, I had some light idea that he was locked up there. My

mother catched me in her arms, and, transported beyond all

patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost

smothered me in her embrace, and told me, in a flood of tears,

Pap could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they

were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to

us again."*

*Tatler, 181.

Steele's sad, beautiful mother died soon after her husband, and

little Dick was left more lonely than ever. His uncle took

charge of him, and sent him to Charterhouse, where he met

Addison. From there he went to Oxford, but left without taking a

degree. "A drum passing by," he says, "being a lover of music, I

listed myself for a soldier."* "He mounted a war horse, with a

great sword in his hand, and planted himself behind King William

the Third against Lewis the Fourteenth." But he says when he

cocked his hat, and put on a broad sword, jack boots, and

shoulder belt, he did not know his own powers as a writer, he did

not know then that he should ever be able to "demolish a

fortified town with a goosequill."** So Steele became a

"wretched common trooper," or, to put it more politely, a

gentleman volunteer. But he was not long in becoming an ensign,

and about five years later he got his commission as captain.

*Tatler, 89.

**Theatre, 11.

In those days the life of a soldier was wild and rough. Drinking

and swearing were perhaps the least among the follies and

wickedness they were given to, and Dick Steele was as ready as

any other to join in all the wildness going. But in spite of his

faults and failings his heart was kind and tender. He had no

love of wickedness though he could not resist temptation. So the

dashing soldier astonished his companions by publishing a little

book called the Christian Hero. It was a little book written to

show that no man could be truly great who was not religious. He

wrote it at odd minutes when his day's work was over, when his

mind had time "in the silent watch of the night to run over the

busy dream of the day." He wrote it at first for his own use,

"to make him ashamed of understanding and seeming to feel what

was virtuous and yet living so quite contrary a life."

Afterwards he resolved to publish it for the good of others.

But among Steele's gay companions the book had little effect

except to make them laugh at him and draw comparisons between the

lightness of his words and actions, and the seriousness of the

ideas set forth in his Christian Hero. He found himself slighted

instead of encouraged, and "from being thought no undelightful

companion, was soon reckoned a disagreeable fellow."* So he took

to writing plays, for "nothing can make the town so fond of a man

as a successful play."

*Apology for himself and his Writings.

The plays of the Restoration had been very coarse. Those of

Steele show the beginning of a taste for better things, "Tho'

full of incidents that move laughter, virtue and vice appear just

as they ought to do," he says of his first comedy. But although

we may still find Steele's plays rather amusing, it is not as a

dramatist that we remember him, but as an essayist.

Steele led a happy-go-lucky life, nearly always cheerful and in

debt. His plays brought him in some money, he received a

Government appointment which brought him more, and when he was

about thirty-three he married a rich widow. Still he was always

in debt, always in want of money.

In about a year Steele's wife died, and he was shortly married to

another well-off lady. About this time he left the army, it is

thought, although we do not know quite surely, and for long

afterwards he was called Captain Steele.

Steele wrote a great many letters to his second wife, both before

and after his marriage. She kept them all, and from them we can

learn a good deal of this warm-hearted, week-willed, harum-scarum

husband. She is "Dearest Creature," "Dear Wife," "Dear Prue"

(her name, by the way, was Mary), and sometimes "Ruler,"

"Absolute Governess," and he "Your devoted obedient Husband,"

"Your faithful, tender Husband." Many of the letters are about

money troubles. We gather from them that Dick Steele loved his

wife, but as he was a gay and careless spendthrift and she was a

proud beauty, a "scornful lady," for neither of them was life

always easy.

It was about two years after this second marriage that Steele

suddenly began the Tatler. He did not write under his own name,

but under that of Isaac Bickerstaff, a name which Swift had made

use of in writing one of his satires. As has been said, the

genius of Steele has been overshadowed by that of Addison, for

Steele had such a whole-hearted admiration for his friend that he

was ready to give him all the praise. And yet it is nearly

always to Steele that we owe the ideas which were later worked

out and perfected by Addison.

It is Steele, too, that we owe the first pictures of English

family life. It has been said that he "was the first of our

writers who really seemed to admire and respect women,"* and if

we add "after the Restoration" we come very near the truth.

Steele had a tender heart towards children too, and in more than

one paper his love of them shows itself. Indeed, as we read we

cannot help believing that in real life Captain Dick had many

child-friends. Here is how he tells of a visit to a friend's

house:--

*Thackeray.

"I am, as it were, at home at that house, and every member of it

knows me for their well-wisher. I cannot indeed express the

pleasure it is, to be met by the children with so much joy as I

am when I go thither. The boys and girls strive who shall come

first, when they think it is I that am knocking at the door. And

that child which loses the race to me, runs back again to tell

the father it is Mr. Bickerstaff.

"This day I was led in by a pretty girl, that we all thought must

have forgot me, for the family has been out of town these two

years. Her knowing me again was a mighty subject with us, and

took up our discourse at the first entrance. After which they

began to rally me upon a thousand little stories they heard in

the country about my marriage to one of my neighbor's daughters.

Upon which the gentleman, my friend, said 'Nay, if Mr.

Bickerstaff marries a child of any of his old companions, I hope

mine shall have the preference. There's Mistress Mary is now

sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow as the best of

them.'"

After dinner the mother and children leave the two friends

together. The father speaks of his love for his wife, and his

fears for her health.

"'Ah, you little understand, you that have lived a bachelor, how

great a pleasure there is in being really beloved. Her face is

to me more beautiful than when I first saw it. In her

examination of her household affairs she show a certain

fearfulness to find a fault, which makes her servants obey her

like children, and the meanest we have has an ingenuous shame for

an offence, not always to be seen in children in other families.

I speak freely to you, my old friend. Ever since her sickness,

things that gave me the quickest joy before, turn now to a

certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know

the poor things by their steps, and am considering what they must

do, should they lose their mother in their tender years. The

pleasure I used to take in telling my boy stories of the battles,

and asking my girl questions about the disposal of her baby, and

the gossiping of it, is turned into inward reflection and

melancholy.' The poor gentleman would have gone on much longer

with his sad forebodings, but his wife returning, and seeing by

his grave face what he had been talking about, said, with a

smile, 'Mr. Bickerstaff, don't believe a word of what he tells

you. I shall still live to have you for my second, as I have

often promised you, unless he takes more care of himself than he

has done since his coming to town. You must know, he tells me,

that he finds London is a much more healthy place than the

country, for he sees several of his old acquaintance and school-

fellows are here, young fellows with fair, full-bottomed

periwigs. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out

open-breasted.'" And so they sat and chatted pleasantly until,

"on a sudden, we were alarmed with the noise of a drum, and

immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of war.*

His mother, between laughing and chiding, would have put him out

of the room, but I would not part with him so. I found, upon

conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth,

that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all

the learning on the other side of eight years old. I perceived

him to be a very great historian in Aesop's Fables; but he frankly

declared to me his mind, that he did not delight in that

learning, because he did not believe they were true. For which

reason I found he had very much turned his studies, for about a

twelve-month past, into the lives and adventures of Don Bellianis

of Greece, Guy of Warwick, the Seven Champions, and other

historians of that age.

*A strain of war-like music.

"I could not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the

forwardness of his son, and that these diversions might turn to

some profit, I found the boy had made remarks which might be of

service to him during the course of his whole life. He would

tell you the mismanagements of John Hickathrift, find fault with

the passionate temper of Bevis of Southampton, and loved St.

George for being the champion of England; and by this means had

his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of discretion,

virtue, and honour.

"I was extolling his accomplishments, when the mother told me

that the little girl who led me in this morning was, in her way,

a better scholar than he. 'Betty,' says she, 'deals chiefly in

fairies and sprites, and sometimes, in a winter night, will

terrify the maids with her accounts, till they are afraid to go

up to bed.'

"I sat with them till it was very late, sometimes in merry,

sometimes in serious discourse, with this particular pleasure

which gives the only true relish to all conversation, a sense

that every one of us liked each other. I went home considering

the different conditions of a married life and that of a

bachelor. And I must confess it struck me with a secret concern

to reflect that, whenever I go off, I shall leave no traces

behind me. In this pensive mood I returned to my family, that is

to say, to my maid, my dog, and my cat, who only can be the

better or worse for what happens to me."*

*Tatler, 96.

You will be sorry to know that, a few Tatlers further on, the

kind mother of this happy family dies. But Steele was himself so

much touched by the thought of all the misery he was bringing

upon the others by giving such a sad ending to his story, that he

could not go on with the paper, and Addison had to finish it for

him.

The Spectator, you know, succeeded the Tatler, and it was while

writing for the Spectator that Steele took seriously to politics.

He became a member of Parliament and wrote hot political

articles. He and Swift crossed swords more than once, and from

being friends became enemies. But Steele's temper was too hot,

his pen too hasty. The Tories were in power, and he was a Whig,

and he presently found himself expelled from the House of Commons

for "uttering seditious libels." Shut out from politics, Steele

turned once more to essay-writing, and published, one after the

other, several papers of the same style as the Spectator, but

none of them lived long.

Better days, however, were coming. Queen Anne died, and King

George became a king in 1714, the Whigs returned to power, Steele

again received a Government post, again he sat in Parliament, and

a few months later he was knighted, and became Sir Richard

Steele. We cannot follow him through all his projects,

adventures, and writings. He was made one of the commissioners

for the forfeited estates of the Scottish lords who had taken

part in the '15, and upon this business he went several times to

Scotland. The first time he went was in the autumn of 1717. But

before that Lady Steele had gone to Wales to look after her

estates there. While she was there Dick wrote many letters to

her, some of which are full of tenderness for his children. They

show us something too of the happy-go-lucky household in the

absence of the careful mistress. In one he says:--