STEELE AND SWIFT.
Sir Richard Steele. Periodicals. The Crisis. His Last Days. Jonathan
Swift--Poems. The Tale of a Tub. Battle of the Books. Pamphlets. M. B.
Drapier. Gulliver's Travels. Stella and Vanessa. His Character and
Death.
Contemporary with Addison, and forming with him a literary fraternity,
Steele and Swift were besides men of distinct prominence, and clearly
represent the age in which they lived.
SIR RICHARD STEELE.--If Addison were chosen as the principal literary
figure of the period, a sketch of his life would be incomplete without a
large mention of his lifelong friend and collaborator, Steele. If to Bacon
belongs the honor of being the first writer and the namer of the English
_essay_, Steele may claim that of being the first periodical essayist.
He was born in Dublin, in 1671, of English parents; his father being at
the time secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He received his
early education at the Charter-House school, in London, an institution
which has numbered among its pupils many who have gained distinguished
names in literature. Here he met and formed a permanent friendship with
Addison. He was afterwards entered as a student at Merton College, Oxford;
but he led there a wild and reckless life, and leaving without a degree,
he enlisted as a private in the Horse Guards. Through the influence of his
friends, he was made a cornet, and afterwards a captain, in the
Fusileers; but this only gave him opportunity for continued dissipation.
His principles were better than his conduct; and, haunted by conscience,
he made an effort to reform himself by writing a devotional work called
_The Christian Hero_; but there was such a contrast between his precepts
and his life, that he was laughed at by the town. Between 1701 and 1704 he
produced his three comedies. _The Funeral, or Grief à la Mode_; _The
Tender Husband_, and _The Lying Lover_. The first two were successful upon
the stage, but the last was a complete failure. Disgusted for the time
with the drama, he was led to find his true place as the writer of those
light, brilliant, periodical essays which form a prominent literary
feature of the reign of Queen Anne. These _Essays_ were comments,
suggestions, strictures, and satires upon the age. They were of immediate
and local interest then, and have now a value which the writers did not
foresee: they are unconscious history.
PERIODICALS.--The first of these periodicals was _The Tatler_, a penny
sheet, issued tri-weekly, on post-days. The first number appeared on the
12th of April, 1709, and asserted the very laudable purpose "to expose the
deceits, sins, and vanities of the former age, and to make virtue,
simplicity, and plain-dealing the law of social life." "For this purpose,"
in the words of Dr. Johnson,[34] "nothing is so proper as the frequent
publication of short papers, which we read not as study, but amusement. If
the subject be slight, the treatise is short. The busy may find time, and
the idle may find patience." One _nom de plume_ of Steele was _Isaac
Bickerstaff_, which he borrowed from Swift, who had issued party-pamphlets
under that name.
_The Tatler_ was a success. The fluent pen of Addison gave it valuable
assistance; and in January, 1711, it was merged into, rather than
superseded by, _The Spectator_, which was issued six days in the week.
In this new periodical, Steele wrote the paper containing the original
sketch of Sir Roger de Coverley and The Club; but, as has been already
said, Addison adopted, elaborated, and finished this in several later
papers. Steele had been by far the larger contributor to _The Tatler_. Of
all the articles in _The Spectator_, Steele wrote two hundred and forty,
and Addison two hundred and seventy-four; the rest were by various hands.
In March, 1713, when _The Spectator_ was commencing its seventh volume,
_The Guardian_ made its appearance. For the first volume of _The
Guardian_, Addison wrote but one paper; but for the second he wrote more
than Steele. Of the one hundred and seventy-six numbers of that
periodical, eighty-two of the papers were by Steele and fifty-three by
Addison. If the writings of Addison were more scholarly and elegant, those
of Steele were more vivacious and brilliant; and together they have
produced a series of essays which have not been surpassed in later times,
and which are vividly delineative of their own.
THE CRISIS.--The career of Steele was varied and erratic. He held several
public offices, was a justice of the peace, and a member of parliament. He
wrote numerous political tracts, which are not without historical value.
For one pamphlet of a political character, entitled _The Crisis_, he was
expelled from parliament for libel; but upon the death of Queen Anne, he
again found himself in favor. He was knighted in 1715, and received
several lucrative appointments.
He was an eloquent orator, and as a writer rapid and brilliant, but not
profound. Even thus, however, he catered to an age at once artificial and
superficial. Very observant of what he saw, he rushed to his closet and
jotted down his views in electrical words, which made themselves
immediately and distinctly felt.
HIS LAST DAYS.--Near the close of his life he produced a very successful
comedy, entitled _The Conscious Lover_, which would have been of pecuniary
value to him, were it not that he was already overwhelmed with debt. His
end was a sad one; but he reaped what his extravagance and recklessness
had sown. Shattered in health and ruined in fortune, he retreated from the
great world into homely retirement in Wales, where he lived, poor and
hidden, in a humble cottage at Llangunnor. His end was heralded by an
attack of paralysis, and he died in 1729.
After his death, his letters were published; and in the private history
which they unfold, he appears, notwithstanding all his follies, in the
light of a tender husband and of an amiable and unselfish man. He had
principle, but he lacked resolution; and the wild, vacillating character
of his life is mirrored in his writings, where _The Christian Hero_ stands
in singular contrast to the comic personages of his dramas. He was a
genial critic. His exuberant wit and humor reproved without wounding; he
was not severe enough to be a public censor, nor pedantic enough to be the
pedagogue of an age which often needed the lash rather than the gentle
reproof, and upon which a merciful clemency lost its end if not its
praises. He deserves credit for an attempt, however feeble, to reward
virtue upon the stage, after the wholesale rewards which vice had reaped
in the age of Charles II.
Steele has been overshadowed, in his connection with Addison, by the more
dignified and consistent career, the greater social respectability, and
the more elegant and scholarly style of his friend; and yet in much that
they jointly accomplished, the merit of Steele is really as great, and
conduces much to the reputation of Addison. The one husbanded and
cherished his fame; the other flung it away or lavished it upon his
colleagues. As contributors to history, they claim an equal share of our
gratitude and praise.
JONATHAN SWIFT.--The grandfather of Swift was vicar of Goodrich, in
Herefordshire. His father and mother were both English, but he was born in
Dublin, in the year 1667. A posthumous child, he came into the world seven
months after his father's death. From his earliest youth, he deplored the
circumstances among which his lot had been cast. He was dependent upon his
uncle, Godwin Swift, himself a poor man; but was not grateful for his
assistance, always saying that his uncle had given him the education of a
dog. At the University of Dublin, where he was entered, he did not bear a
good character: he was frequently absent from his duties and negligent of
his studies; and although he read history and poetry, he was considered
stupid as well as idle. He was more than once admonished and suspended,
but at length received his degree, _Speciali gratia_; which special act of
grace implied that he had not fairly earned it. Piqued by this, he set to
work in real earnest, and is said to have studied eight hours a day for
eight years. Thus, from an idle and unsuccessful collegian, he became a
man of considerable learning and a powerful writer.
He was a distant connection of Sir William Temple, through Lady Temple;
and he went, by his mother's advice, to live with that distinguished man
at his seat, Shene, in Moor Park, as private secretary.
In this position Swift seems to have led an uncomfortable life, ranking
somewhere between the family and the upper servants. Sir William Temple
was disposed to be kind, but found it difficult to converse with him on
account of his moroseness and other peculiarities. At Shene he met King
William III., who talked with him, and offered him a captaincy in the
army. This Swift declined, knowing his unfitness for the post, and
doubtless feeling the promptings of a higher ambition. It was also at
Shene that he met a young girl, whose history was thenceforth to be
mingled with his in sadness and sorrow, during their lives. This was
Esther Johnson, the daughter of Temple's housekeeper, and surmised, at a
later day, to be the natural daughter of Temple himself. When the young
secretary first met her, she was fourteen years of age, very clever and
beautiful; and they fell in love with each other.
We cannot dwell at length upon the events of his life. His versatile pen
was prolific of poetry, sentimental and satirical; of political allegories
of great potency, of fiction erected of impossible materials, and yet so
creating and peopling a world of fancy as to illude the reader into
temporary belief in its truth.
POEMS.--His poems are rather sententious than harmonious. His power,
however, was great; he managed verse as an engine, and had an entire
mastery over rhyme, which masters so many would-be poets. His _Odes_ are
classically constructed, but massive and cumbrous. His satirical poems are
eminently historical, ranging over and attacking almost every topic,
political, religious, and social. Among the most characteristic of his
miscellaneous verses are _Epigrams and Epistles, Clever Tom Pinch Going to
be Hanged, Advice to Grub Street Writers, Helter-Skelter, The Puppet
Show_, and similar odd pieces, frequently scurrilous, bitter, and lewd in
expression. The writer of English history consults these as he does the
penny ballads, lampoons, and caricatures of the day,--to discern the
_animus_ of parties and the methods of hostile factions.
But it is in his inimitable prose writings that Swift is of most value to
the historical student. Against all comers he stood the Goliath of
pamphleteers in the reign of Queen Anne, and there arose no David who
could slay him.
THE TALE OF A TUB.--While an unappreciated student at the university, he
had sketched a satirical piece, which he finished and published in 1704,
under the title of _The Tale of a Tub_. As a tub is thrown overboard at
sea to divert a whale, so this is supposed to be a sop cast out to the
_Leviathan_ of Hobbes, to prevent it from injuring the vessel of state.
The story is a satire aimed against the Roman Catholics on the one hand,
and the Presbyterians on the other, in order that he may exalt the Church
of England as, in his judgment, free from the errors of both, and a just
and happy medium between the two extremes. His own opinion of its merits
is well known: in one of his later years, when his hand had lost its
cunning, he is said to have exclaimed, as he picked it up, "What a genius
I had when I wrote that book!" The characters of the story are _Peter_
(representing St. Peter, or the Roman Catholic Church), _Martin_ (Luther,
or the Church of England), and _Jack_ (John Calvin, or the Presbyterians).
By their father's will each had been left a suit of clothes, made in the
fashion of his day. To this Peter added laces and fringes; Martin took off
some of the ornaments of doubtful taste; but Jack ripped and tore off the
trimmings of his dress to such an extent that he was in clanger of
exposing his nakedness. It is said that the invective was so strong and
the satire so bitter, that they presented a bar to that preferment which
Swift might otherwise have obtained. He appears at this time to have cared
little for public opinion, except that it should fear his trenchant wit
and do homage to his genius.
THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS.--In the same year, 1704, he also published _The
Battle of the Books_, the idea of which was taken from a French work of
Courtraye, entitled "_Histoire de la guerre nouvellement déclarée entre
les Anciens et les Modernes_." Swift's work was written in furtherance of
the views of his patron, Temple, who had some time before engaged in the
controversy as to the relative merits of ancient and modern learning, and
who, in the words of Macaulay, "was so absurd as to set up his own
authority against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and
philology."
_The Battle of the Books_ is of present value, as it affords information
upon the opinions then held on a question which, in various forms, has
been agitating the literary world ever since. In it Swift compares Dryden,
Wotten, and Bentley with the old authors in St. James's Library, where the
battle of the books is said to have taken place.
Upon the death of Sir William Temple, in 1699, Swift had gone to London.
He was ambitious of power and money, and when he found little chance of
preferment among the Whigs, he became a Tory. It must be said, in
explanation of this change, that, although he had called himself a Whig,
he had disliked many of their opinions, and had never heartily espoused
their cause. Like others already referred to, he watched the political
horizon, and was ready for a change when circumstances should warrant it.
This change and its causes are set forth in his _Bickerstaff's Ridicule of
Astrology_ and _Sacramental Test_.
The Whigs tried hard to retain him; the Tories were rejoiced to receive
him, and modes of preferment for him were openly canvassed. One of these
was to make him Bishop of Virginia, with metropolitan powers in America;
but it failed. He was also recommended for the See of Hereford; but
persons near the queen advised her "to be sure that the man she was going
to make a bishop was a Christian." Thus far he had only been made rector
of Agher and vicar of Laracor and Rathbeggin.
VARIOUS PAMPHLETS.--His _Argument Against the Abolition of Christianity_,
Dr. Johnson calls "a very happy and judicious irony." In 1710 he wrote a
paper, at the request of the Irish primate, petitioning the queen to remit
the first-fruits and twentieth parts to the Irish clergy. In 1712, ten
days before the meeting of parliament, he published his _Conduct of the
Allies_, which, exposing the greed of Marlborough, persuaded the nation to
make peace. A supplement to this is found in _Reflections on the Barrier
Treaty_, in which he shows how little English interests had been consulted
in that negotiation.
His pamphlet on _The Public Spirit of the Whigs_, in answer to Steele's
_Crisis_, was so terrible a bomb-shell thrown into the camp of his former
friends, and so insulting to the Scotch, that £300 were offered by the
queen, at the instance of the Scotch lords, for the discovery of the
author; but without success.
At last his versatile and powerful pen obtained some measure of reward: in
1713 he was made Dean of St. Patrick's, in Dublin, with a stipend of £700
per annum. This was his greatest and last preferment.
On the accession of George I., in the following year, he paid his court,
but was received with something more than coldness. He withdrew to his
deanery in Dublin, and, in the words of Johnson, "commenced Irishman for
life, and was to contrive how he might be best accommodated in a country
where he considered himself as in a state of exile." After some
misunderstanding between himself and his Irish fellow-citizens, he
espoused their cause so warmly that he became the most popular man in
Ireland. In 1721 he could write to Pope, "I neither know the names nor the
number of the family which now reigneth, further than the prayer-book
informeth me." His letters, signed _M. B. Drapier_, on Irish manufactures,
and especially those in opposition to Wood's monopoly of copper coinage,
in 1724, wrought upon the people, producing such a spirit of resistance
that the project of a debased coinage failed; and so influential did Swift
become, that he was able to say to the Archbishop of Dublin, "Had I raised
my finger, the mob would have torn you to pieces." This popularity was
increased by the fact that a reward of £300 was offered by Lord Carteret
and the privy council for the discovery of the authorship of the fourth
letter; but although it was commonly known that Swift was the author,
proof could not be obtained. Carteret, the Lord Lieutenant, afterwards
said, "When people ask me how I governed Ireland, I said that I pleased
Doctor Swift."
Thus far Swift's literary labors are manifest history: we come now to
consider that great work, _Gulliver's Travels_,--the most successful of
its kind ever written,--in which, with all the charm of fiction in plot,
incident, and description, he pictures the great men and the political
parties of the day.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.--Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon's mate, finds himself
shipwrecked on the shore of the country of Lilliput, the people of which
are only six inches in height. His adventures are so vividly described
that our charmed fancy places us among them as we read, and we, for a
time, abandon ourselves to a belief in their reality. It was, however,
begun as a political satire; in the insignificance of the court of
pigmies, he attacks the feebleness and folly of the new reign. _Flimnap_,
the prime minister of Lilliput, is a caricature of Walpole; the _Big
Indians_ and _Little Indians_ represent the Protestants and Roman
Catholics; the _High Heels_ and _Low Heels_ stand for the Whigs and
Tories; and the heir-apparent, who wears one heel high and the other low,
is the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., who favored both parties in
order to gain both to his purpose.
In his second voyage, that to Brobdignag, his satirical imagination took a
wider range--European politics as they appear to a superior intelligence,
illustrated by a man of _sixty_ feet in comparison with one of _six_. As
Gulliver had looked with curious contempt upon the united efforts of the
Lilliputians, he now found himself in great jeopardy and fear when in the
hands of a giant of Brobdignag. As the pigmy metropolis, five hundred
yards square, was to London, so were London and other European capitals to
the giants' city, two thousand miles in circumference. And what are the
armies of Europe, when compared with that magnificent cavalry
manœuvring on a parade-ground twenty miles square, each mounted
trooper ninety feet high, and all, as they draw their swords at command,
representing ten thousand flashes of lightning?
The third part contains the voyage of Gulliver--no less improbable than
the former ones--to _Laputa_, the flying island of projectors and
visionaries. This is a varied satire upon the Royal Society, the
eccentricities of the savans, empirics of all kinds, mathematical magic,
and the like. In this, political schemes to restore the pretender are
aimed at. The Mississippi Scheme and the South Sea bubble are denounced.
Here, too, in his journey to Luggnagg, he introduces the sad and revolting
picture of the Struldbrugs, those human beings who live on, losing all
their power and becoming hideously old.
In his last voyage--to the land of the _Houyhnhnms_--his misanthropy is
painfully manifest. This is the country where horses are masters, and men
a servile and degraded race; and he has painted the men so brutish and
filthy that the satire loses its point. The power of satire lies in
contrast; we must compare the evil in men with the good: when the whole
race is included in one sweeping condemnation, and an inferior being
exalted, in opposition to all possibility, the standard is absurd, and the
satirist loses his pains.
The horses are the _Houyhnhnms_, (the name is an attempt to imitate a
neigh,) a noble race, who are amazed and disgusted at the Yahoos,--the
degraded men,--upon whom Swift, in his sweeping misanthropy, has exhausted
his bitterness and his filth.
STELLA AND VANESSA.--While Swift's mysterious associations with Stella and
Vanessa have but little to do with the course of English Literature, they
largely affect his personality, and no sketch of him would be complete
without introducing them to the reader. We cannot conjure up the tall,
burly form, the heavy-browed, scowling, contemptuous face, the sharp blue
eye, and the bushy black hair of the dean, without seeing on one side and
the other the two pale, meek-eyed, devoted women, who watch his every
look, shrink from his sudden bursts of wrath, receive for their
infatuation a few fair words without sentiment, and earnestly crave a
little love as a return for their whole hearts. It is a wonderful,
touching, baffling story.
Stella he had known and taught in her young maidenhood at Sir William
Temple's. As has been said, she was called the daughter of his steward and
housekeeper, but conjectures are rife that she was Sir William's own
child. When Swift removed to Ireland, she came, at Swift's request, with a
matron friend, Mrs. Dingley, to live near him. Why he did not at once
marry her, and why, at last, he married her secretly, in 1716, are
questions over which curious readers have puzzled themselves in vain, and
upon which, in default of evidence, some perhaps uncharitable conclusions
have been reached. The story of their association may be found in the
_Journal to Stella_.
With Miss Hester Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) he became acquainted in London, in
1712: he was also her instructor; and when with her he seems to have
forgotten his allegiance to Stella. Cadenus, as he calls himself, was too
tender and fond: Vanessa became infatuated; and when she heard of Swift's
private marriage with Stella, she died of chagrin or of a broken heart.
She had cancelled the will which she had made in Swift's favor, and left
it in charge to her executors to publish their correspondence. Both sides
of the history of this connection are fully displayed in the poem of
_Cadenus and Vanessa_, and in the _Correspondence of Swift and Vanessa_.
CHARACTER AND DEATH.--Pride overbearing and uncontrollable, misanthropy,
excessive dogmatism, a singular pleasure in giving others pain, were among
his personal faults or misfortunes. He abused his companions and servants;
he never forgave his sister for marrying a tradesman; he could attract
with winning words and repel with furious invective; and he was always
anxiously desiring the day of his death, and cursing that of his birth.
His common farewell was "Good-bye; I hope we may never meet again." There
is a painful levity in his verses _On the Death of Doctor Swift_, in which
he gives an epitome of his life:
From Dublin soon to London spread,
'Tis told at court the dean is dead!
And Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
Runs laughing up to tell the queen:
The queen, so gracious, mild, and good,
Cries, "Is he gone? it's time he should."
At last the end came. While a young man, he had suffered from a painful
attack of vertigo, brought on by a surfeit of fruit; "eating," he says, in
a letter to Mrs. Howard, "an hundred golden pippins at a time." This had
occasioned a deafness; and both giddiness and deafness had recurred at
intervals, and at last manifestly affected his mind. Once, when walking
with some friends, he had pointed to an elm-tree, blasted by lightning,
and had said, "I shall be like that tree: I shall die first at the top."
And thus at last the doom fell. Struck on the brain, he lingered for nine
years in that valley of spectral horrors, of whose only gates idiocy and
madness are the hideous wardens. From this bondage he was released by
death on the 19th of October, 1745.
Many have called it a fearful retribution for his sins, and especially for
his treatment of Stella and Vanessa. A far more reasonable and charitable
verdict is that the evil in his conduct through life had its origin in
congenital disorder; and in his days of apparent sanity, the character of
his eccentric actions is to be palliated, if not entirely excused, on the
plea of insanity. Additional force is given to this judgment by the fact
that, when he died, it was found that he had left his money to found a
hospital for the insane, illustrating the line,--
A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.
In that day of great classical scholars, Swift will hardly rank among the
most profound; but he possessed a creative power, a ready and versatile
fancy, a clear and pleasing but plain style. He has been unjustly accused
by Lady Montagu of having stolen plot and humor from Cervantes and
Rabelais: he drew from the same source as they; and those suggestions
which came to him from them owe all their merit to his application of
them. As a critic, he was heartless and rude; but as a polemic and a
delineator of his age, he stands prominently forth as an historian, whose
works alone would make us familiar with the period.
OTHER WRITERS OF THE AGE.
_Sir William Temple_, 1628-1698: he was a statesman and a political
writer; rather a man of mark in his own day than of special interest to
the present time. After having been engaged in several important
diplomatic affairs, he retired to his seat of Moor Park, and employed
himself in study and with his pen. His _Essays and Observations on
Government_ are valuable as a clue to the history. In his controversy with
Bentley on the _Epistles of Phalaris_, and the relative merits of ancient
and modern authors, he was overmatched in scholarship. In a literary point
of view, Temple deserves praise for the ease and beauty of his style. Dr.
Johnson says he "was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose."
"What can be more pleasant," says Charles Lamb, "than the way in which the
retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned in his delightful
retreat at Shene?" He is perhaps better known in literary history as the
early patron of Swift, than for his own works.
_Sir Isaac Newton_, 1642-1727: the chief glory of Newton is not connected
with literary effort: he ranks among the most profound and original
philosophers, and was one of the purest and most unselfish of men. The
son of a farmer, he was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, after his
father's death,--a feeble, sickly child. The year of his birth was that in
which Galileo died. At the age of fifteen he was employed on his mother's
farm, but had already displayed such an ardor for learning that he was
sent first to school and then to Cambridge, where he was soon conspicuous
for his talents and his genius. In due time he was made a professor. His
discoveries in astronomy, mechanics, and optics are of world-wide renown.
The law of gravitation was established by him, and set forth in his paper
_De Motu Corporum_. His treatise on _Fluxions_ prepared the way for that
wonderful mathematical, labor-saving instrument--the differential
calculus. In 1687 he published his _Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia
Mathematica_, in which all his mathematical theories are propounded. In
1696 he was made Warden of the Mint, and in 1699 Master of the Mint. Long
a member of the Royal Society, he was its president for the last
twenty-four years of his life. In 1688 he was elected member of parliament
for the university of Cambridge. Of purely literary works he left two,
entitled respectively, _Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the
Apocalypse of St. John_, and a _Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended_;
both of which are of little present value except as the curious remains of
so great a man.
_Viscount Bolingbroke_ (Henry St. John), 1678-1751: as an erratic
statesman, a notorious free-thinker, a dissipated lord, a clever political
writer, and an eloquent speaker, Lord Bolingbroke was a centre of
attraction in his day, and demands observation in literary history. During
the reign of Queen Anne he was a plotter in favor of the pretender, and
when she died, he fled the realm to avoid impeachment for treason. In
France he joined the pretender as Secretary of State, but was dismissed
for intrigue; and on being pardoned by the English king, he returned to
England. His writings are brilliant but specious. His influence was felt
in the literary society he drew around him,--Swift, Pope, and
others,--and, as has been already said, his opinions are to be found in
that _Essay on Man_ which Pope dedicated to him. In his meteoric political
career he represents and typifies one phase of the time in which he lived.
_George Berkeley_, 1684-1753: he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin,
and soon engaged in metaphysical controversy. In 1724 he was made Dean of
Derry, and in 1734, Bishop of Cloyne. A man of great philanthropy, he set
forth a scheme for the founding of the _Bermudas College_, to train
missionaries for the colonies and to labor among the North American
Indians. As a metaphysician, he was an _absolute idealist_. This is no
place to discuss his theory. In the words of Dr. Reid, "He maintains ...
that there is no such thing as matter in the universe; that the sun and
moon, earth and sea, our own bodies and those of our friends, are nothing
but ideas in the minds of those who think of them, and that they have no
existence when they are not objects of thought; that all that is in the
universe may be reduced to two categories, to wit, _minds_ and _ideas in
the mind_." The reader is referred, for a full discussion of this
question, to Sir William Hamilton's _Metaphysics_. Berkeley's chief
writings are: _New Theory of Vision, Treatise Concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge_, and _Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous_. His name
and memory are especially dear to the American people; for, although his
scheme of the training-college failed, he lived for two years and a half
in Newport, where his house still stands, and where one of his children is
buried. He presented to Yale College his library and his estate in Rhode
Island, and he wrote that beautiful poem with its kindly prophecy:
Westward the course of empire takes its way:
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.