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English Men of Letters
Edited by John Morley
SWIFT
by
LESLIE STEPHEN
London:
Macmillan and Co.
1882.
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved
PREFACE.
The chief materials for a life of Swift are to be found in his writings
and correspondence. The best edition is the second of the two edited by
Scott (1814 and 1824).
In 1751 Lord Orrery published _Remarks upon the Life and Writings of Dr.
Jonathan Swift_. Orrery, born 1707, had known Swift from about 1732. His
remarks give the views of a person of quality of more ambition than
capacity, and more anxious to exhibit his own taste than to give full or
accurate information.
In 1754, Dr. Delany published _Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks_,
intended to vindicate Swift against some of Orrery's severe judgments.
Delany, born about 1685, became intimate with Swift soon after the dean's
final settlement in Ireland. He was then one of the authorities of Trinity
College, Dublin. He is the best contemporary authority, so far as he goes.
In 1756 Deane Swift, grandson of Swift's uncle Godwin, and son-in-law to
Swift's cousin and faithful guardian, Mrs. Whiteway, published an _Essay
upon the Life, Writings, and Character of Dr. Jonathan Swift_, in which he
attacks both his predecessors. Deane Swift, born about 1708, had seen
little or nothing of his cousin till the year 1738, when the dean's
faculties were decaying. His book is foolish and discursive. Deane Swift's
son, Theophilus, communicated a good deal of doubtful matter to Scott, on
the authority of family tradition.
In 1765 Hawkesworth, who had no personal knowledge, prefixed a life of
Swift to an edition of the works which adds nothing to our information. In
1781 Johnson, when publishing a very perfunctory life of Swift as one of
the poets, excused its shortcomings on the ground of having already
communicated his thoughts to Hawkesworth. The life is not only meagre but
injured by one of Johnson's strong prejudices.
In 1785 Thomas Sheridan produced a pompous and dull life of Swift. He was
the son of Swift's most intimate companion during the whole period
subsequent to the final settlement in Ireland. The elder Sheridan,
however, died in 1738; and the younger, born in 1721, was still a boy when
Swift was becoming imbecile.
Contemporary writers, except Delany, have thus little authority; and a
number of more or less palpably fictitious anecdotes accumulated round
their hero. Scott's life, originally published in 1814, is defective in
point of accuracy. Scott did not investigate the evidence minutely, and
liked a good story too well to be very particular about its authenticity.
The book, however, shows his strong sense and genial appreciation of
character; and remains, till this day, by far the best account of Swift's
career.
A life which supplies Scott's defects in great measure was given by
William Monck Mason, in 1819, in his _History and Antiquities of the
Church of St. Patrick_. Monck Mason was an indiscriminate admirer, and has
a provoking method of expanding undigested information into monstrous
notes, after the precedent of Bayle. But he examined facts with the utmost
care, and every biographer must respect his authority.
In 1875 Mr. Forster published the first instalment of a _Life of Swift_.
This book, which contains the results of patient and thorough inquiry, was
unfortunately interrupted by Mr. Forster's death, and ends at the
beginning of 1711. A complete _Life_ by Mr. Henry Craik is announced as
about to appear.
Besides these books, I ought to mention an _Essay upon the Earlier Part of
the Life of Swift_, by the Rev. John Barrett, B.D. and Vice-Provost of
Trin. Coll. Dublin (London, 1808); and _The Closing Years of Dean Swift's
Life_, by W. R. Wilde, M.R.I.A., F.R.C.S. (Dublin, 1849). This last is a
very interesting study of the medical aspects of Swift's life. An essay by
Dr. Bucknill, in _Brain_ for Jan. 1882, is a remarkable contribution to
the same subject.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS 1
CHAPTER II.
MOOR PARK AND KILROOT 12
CHAPTER III.
EARLY WRITINGS 32
CHAPTER IV.
LARACOR AND LONDON 51
CHAPTER V.
THE HARLEY ADMINISTRATION 77
CHAPTER VI.
STELLA AND VANESSA 118
CHAPTER VII.
WOOD'S HALFPENCE 147
CHAPTER VIII.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 168
CHAPTER IX.
DECLINE 186
SWIFT.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS.
Jonathan Swift, the famous Dean of St. Patrick's, was the descendant of an
old Yorkshire family. One branch had migrated southwards, and in the time
of Charles I., Thomas Swift, Jonathan's grandfather, was Vicar of
Goodrich, near Ross, in Herefordshire, a fact commemorated by the sweetest
singer of Queen Ann's reign in the remarkable lines--
Jonathan Swift
Had the gift
By fatherige, motherige,
And by brotherige,
To come from Gotheridge.
Thomas Swift married Elizabeth Dryden, niece of Sir Erasmus, the
grandfather of the poet Dryden. By her he became the father of ten sons
and four daughters. In the great rebellion he distinguished himself by a
loyalty which was the cause of obvious complacency to his descendant. On
one occasion he came to the governor of a town held for the king, and
being asked what he could do for his Majesty, laid down his coat as an
offering. The governor remarked that his coat was worth little. "Then,"
said Swift, "take my waistcoat." The waistcoat was lined with three
hundred broad pieces--a handsome offering from a poor and plundered
clergyman. On another occasion he armed a ford, through which rebel
cavalry were to pass, by certain pieces of iron with four spikes, so
contrived that one spike must always be uppermost (_caltrops_, in short).
Two hundred of the enemy were destroyed by this stratagem. The success of
the rebels naturally led to the ruin of this cavalier clergyman; and the
record of his calamities forms a conspicuous article in Walker's
_Sufferings of the Clergy_. He died in 1658, before the advent of the
better times in which he might have been rewarded for his loyal services.
His numerous family had to struggle for a living. The eldest son, Godwin
Swift, was a barrister of Gray's Inn at the time of the Restoration: he
was married four times, and three times to women of fortune; his first
wife had been related to the Ormond family; and this connexion induced him
to seek his fortune in Ireland--a kingdom which at that time suffered,
amongst other less endurable grievances, from a deficient supply of
lawyers.[1] Godwin Swift was made Attorney-General in the palatinate of
Tipperary by the Duke of Ormond. He prospered in his profession, in the
subtle parts of which, says his nephew, he was "perhaps a little too
dexterous;" and he engaged in various speculations, having at one time
what was then the very large income of 3000_l._ a year. Four brothers
accompanied this successful Godwin, and shared to some extent in his
prosperity. In January, 1666, one of these, Jonathan, married to Abigail
Erick, of Leicester, was appointed to the stewardship of the King's Inns,
Dublin, partly in consideration of the loyalty and suffering of his
family. Some fifteen months later, in April, 1667, he died, leaving his
widow with an infant daughter, and seven months after her husband's death,
November 30, 1667, she gave birth to Jonathan, the younger, at 7, Hoey's
Court, Dublin.
The Dean "hath often been heard to say" (I quote his fragment of
autobiography) "that he felt the consequences of that (his parents')
marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during
the greater part of his life." This quaint assumption that a man's
parentage is a kind of removable accident to which may be attributed a
limited part of his subsequent career, betrays a characteristic sentiment.
Swift cherished a vague resentment against the fates which had mixed
bitter ingredients in his lot. He felt the place as well as the
circumstances of his birth to be a grievance. It gave a plausibility to
the offensive imputation that he was of Irish blood. "I happened," he
said, with a bitterness born of later sufferings, "by a perfect accident
to be born here, and thus I am a Teague, or an Irishman, or what people
please." Elsewhere he claims England as properly his own country;
"although I happened to be dropped here, and was a year old before I left
it (Ireland), and to my sorrow did not die before I came back to it." His
infancy brought fresh grievances. He was, it seems, a precocious and
delicate child, and his nurse became so much attached to him, that having
to return to her native Whitehaven, she kidnapped the year-old infant out
of pure affection. When his mother knew her loss, she was afraid to hazard
a return voyage until the child was stronger; and he thus remained nearly
three years at Whitehaven, where the nurse took such care of his
education, that he could read any chapter in the Bible before he was three
years old. His return must have been speedily followed by his mother's
departure for her native Leicester. Her sole dependence, it seems, was an
annuity of 20_l._ a year, which had been bought for her by her husband
upon their marriage. Some of the Swift family seem also to have helped
her; but for reasons not now discoverable, she found Leicester preferable
to Dublin, even at the price of parting from the little Jonathan. Godwin
took him off her hands and sent him to Kilkenny School at the age of six,
and from that early period the child had to grow up as virtually an
orphan. His mother through several years to come can have been little more
than a name to him. Kilkenny School, called the "Eton of Ireland," enjoyed
a high reputation. Two of Swift's most famous contemporaries were educated
there. Congreve, two years his junior, was one of his schoolfellows, and a
warm friendship remained when both had become famous. Fourteen years after
Swift had left the school it was entered by George Berkeley, destined to
win a fame of the purest and highest kind, and to come into a strange
relationship to Swift. It would be vain to ask what credit may be claimed
by Kilkenny School for thus "producing" (it is the word used on such
occasions) the greatest satirist, the most brilliant writer of comedies,
and the subtlest metaphysician in the English language. Our knowledge of
Swift's experiences at this period is almost confined to a single
anecdote. "I remember," he says incidentally in a letter to Lord
Bolingbroke, "when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of
my line, which I drew up almost on the ground; but it dropped in, and the
disappointment vexes me to this very day, and I believe it was the type of
all my future disappointments."[2]
Swift, indeed, was still in the schoolboy stage, according to modern
ideas, when he was entered at Trinity College, Dublin, on the same day,
April 24, 1682, with a cousin, Thomas Swift. Swift clearly found Dublin
uncongenial; though there is still a wide margin for uncertainty as to
precise facts. His own account gives a short summary of his academic
history:--
"By the ill-treatment of his nearest relations" (he says) "he was so
discouraged and sunk in his spirits that he too much neglected his
academic studies, for some parts of which he had no great relish by
nature, and turned himself to reading history and poetry, so that when the
time came for taking his degree of Bachelor of Arts, although he had lived
with great regularity and due observance of the statutes, he was stopped
of his degree for dulness and insufficiency; and at last hardly admitted
in a manner little to his credit, which is called in that college
_speciali gratia_." In a report of one of the college examinations,
discovered by Mr. Forster, he receives a _bene_ for his Greek and Latin, a
_male_ for his "philosophy," and a _negligenter_ for his theology. The
"philosophy" was still based upon the old scholasticism, and proficiency
was tested by skill in the arts of syllogistic argumentation. Sheridan,
son of Swift's intimate friend, was a student at Dublin shortly before the
Dean's loss of intellectual power; the old gentleman would naturally talk
to the lad about his university recollections; and, according to his
hearer, remembered with singular accuracy the questions upon which he had
disputed, and repeated the arguments which had been used, "in syllogistic
form." Swift at the same time declared, if the report be accurate, that he
never had the patience to read the pages of Smiglecius, Burgersdicius, and
the other old-fashioned logical treatises. When told that they taught the
art of reasoning, he declared that he could reason very well without it.
He acted upon this principle in his exercises, and left the Proctor to
reduce his argument to the proper form. In this there is probably a
substratum of truth. Swift can hardly be credited, as Berkeley might have
been, with a precocious perception of the weakness of the accepted system.
When young gentlemen are plucked for their degree, it is not generally
because they are in advance of their age. But the aversion to metaphysics
was characteristic of Swift through life. Like many other people who have
no turn for such speculations, he felt for them a contempt which may
perhaps be not the less justified because it does not arise from
familiarity. The bent of his mind was already sufficiently marked to make
him revolt against the kind of mental food which was most in favour at
Dublin; though he seems to have obtained a fair knowledge of the classics.
Swift cherished through life a resentment against most of his relations.
His uncle Godwin had undertaken his education, and had sent him, as we
see, to the best places of education in Ireland. If the supplies became
scanty, it must be admitted that poor Godwin had a sufficient excuse. Each
of his four wives had brought him a family--the last leaving him seven
sons; his fortunes had been dissipated, chiefly, it seems, by means of a
speculation in iron-works; and the poor man himself seems to have been
failing, for he "fell into a lethargy" in 1688, surviving some five years,
like his famous nephew, in a state of imbecility. Decay of mind and
fortune coinciding with the demands of a rising family might certainly be
some apology for the neglect of one amongst many nephews. Swift did not
consider it sufficient. "Was it not your uncle Godwin," he was asked "who
educated you?" "Yes," said Swift, after a pause; "he gave me the education
of a dog." "Then," answered the intrepid inquirer, "you have not the
gratitude of a dog." And perhaps that is our natural impression. Yet we do
not know enough of the facts to judge with confidence. Swift, whatever his
faults, was always a warm and faithful friend; and perhaps it is the most
probable conjecture that Godwin Swift bestowed his charity coldly and in
such a way as to hurt the pride of the recipient. In any case, it appears
that Swift showed his resentment in a manner more natural than reasonable.
The child is tempted to revenge himself by knocking his head against the
rock which has broken his shins; and with equal wisdom the youth who
fancies that the world is not his friend, tries to get satisfaction by
defying its laws. Till the time of his degree (February, 1686), Swift had
been at least regular in his conduct, and if the neglect of his relations
had discouraged his industry, it had not provoked him to rebellion. During
the three years which followed he became more reckless. He was still a
mere lad, just eighteen at the time of his degree, when he fell into more
or less irregular courses. In rather less than two years he was under
censure for seventy weeks. The offences consisted chiefly in neglect to
attend chapel and in "town-haunting" or absence from the nightly
roll-call. Such offences perhaps appear to be more flagrant than they
really are in the eyes of college authorities. Twice he got into more
serious scrapes. He was censured (March 16, 1687) along with his cousin,
Thomas Swift, and several others for "notorious neglect of duties and
frequenting 'the town.'" And on his twenty-first birthday (Nov. 30, 1688)
he[3] was punished, along with several others, for exciting domestic
dissensions, despising the warnings of the junior dean, and insulting that
official by contemptuous words. The offenders were suspended from their
degrees, and inasmuch as Swift and another were the worst offenders
(_adhuc intolerabilius se gesserant_), they were sentenced to ask pardon
of the dean upon their knees publicly in the hall. Twenty years later[4]
Swift revenged himself upon Owen Lloyd, the junior dean, by accusing him
of infamous servility. For the present Swift was probably reckoned amongst
the black sheep of the academic flock.[5]
This censure came at the end of Swift's university career. The three last
years had doubtless been years of discouragement and recklessness. That
they were also years of vice in the usual sense of the word is not proved;
nor, from all that we know of Swift's later history, does it seem to be
probable. There is no trace of anything like licentious behaviour in his
whole career. It is easier to believe with Scott that Swift's conduct at
this period might be fairly described in the words of Johnson when
speaking of his own university experience: "Ah, sir, I was mad and
violent. It was bitterness that they mistook for frolic. I was miserably
poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I
disregarded all power and all authority." Swift learnt another and a more
profitable lesson in these years. It is indicated in an anecdote which
rests upon tolerable authority. One day, as he was gazing in melancholy
mood from his window, his pockets at their lowest ebb, he saw a sailor
staring about in the college courts. How happy should I be, he thought, if
that man was inquiring for me with a present from my cousin Willoughby!
The dream came true. The sailor came to his rooms and produced a leather
bag, sent by his cousin from Lisbon, with more money than poor Jonathan
had ever possessed in his life. The sailor refused to take a part of it
for his trouble, and Jonathan hastily crammed the money into his pocket,
lest the man should repent of his generosity. From that time forward, he
added, he became a better economist.
The Willoughby Swift here mentioned was the eldest son of Godwin, and now
settled in the English factory at Lisbon. Swift speaks warmly of his
"goodness and generosity" in a letter written to another cousin in 1694.
Some help, too, was given by his uncle William, who was settled at Dublin,
and whom he calls the "best of his relations." In one way or another he
was able to keep his head above water; and he was receiving an impression
which grew with his growth. The misery of dependence was burnt into his
soul. To secure independence became his most cherished wish; and the first
condition of independence was a rigid practice of economy. We shall see
hereafter how deeply this principle became rooted in his mind; here I need
only notice that it is the lesson which poverty teaches to none but men of
strong character.
A catastrophe meanwhile was approaching, which involved the fortunes of
Swift along with those of nations. James II. had been on the throne for a
year when Swift took his degree. At the time when Swift was ordered to
kneel to the junior dean, William was in England, and James preparing to
fly from Whitehall. The revolution of 1688 meant a breaking up of the very
foundations of political and social order in Ireland. At the end of 1688 a
stream of fugitives was pouring into England, whilst the English in
Ireland were gathering into strong places, abandoning their property to
the bands of insurgent peasants.
Swift fled with his fellows. Any prospects which he may have had in
Ireland were ruined with the ruin of his race. The loyalty of his
grandfather to a king who protected the national church was no precedent
for loyalty to a king who was its deadliest enemy. Swift, a Churchman to
the backbone, never shared the leaning of many Anglicans to the exiled
Stuarts; and his early experience was a pretty strong dissuasive from
Jacobitism. He took refuge with his mother at Leicester. Of that mother we
hear less than we could wish; for all that we hear suggests a brisk,
wholesome, motherly body. She lived cheerfully and frugally on her
pittance; rose early, worked with her needle, read her book, and deemed
herself to be "rich and happy"--on twenty pounds a year. A touch of her
son's humour appears in the only anecdote about her. She came, it seems,
to visit her son in Ireland shortly after he had taken possession of
Laracor, and amused herself by persuading the woman with whom she lodged
that Jonathan was not her son but her lover. Her son, though separated
from her through the years in which filial affection is generally
nourished, loved her with the whole strength of his nature; he wrote to
her frequently, took pains to pay her visits "rarely less than once a
year;" and was deeply affected by her death in 1710. "I have now lost," he
wrote in his pocket-book, "the last barrier between me and death. God
grant I may be as well prepared for it as I confidently believe her to
have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice, and
charity, she is there."
The good lady had, it would seem, some little anxieties of the common kind
about her son. She thought him in danger of falling in love with a certain
Betty Jones, who, however, escaped the perils of being wife to a man of
genius, and married an innkeeper. Some forty years later, Betty Jones, now
Perkins, appealed to Swift to help her in some family difficulties, and
Swift was ready to "sacrifice five pounds" for old acquaintance' sake.
Other vague reports of Swift's attentions to women seem to have been
flying about in Leicester. Swift, in noticing them, tells his
correspondent that he values "his own entertainment beyond the obloquy of
a parcel of wretched fools," which he "solemnly pronounces" to be a fit
description of the inhabitants of Leicester. He had, he admits, amused
himself with flirtation; but he has learnt enough, "without going half a
mile beyond the University," to refrain from thoughts of matrimony. A
"cold temper" and the absence of any settled outlook are sufficient
dissuasives. Another phrase in the same letter is characteristic. "A
person of great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to
look into my mind) used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spirit
that would do mischief if I did not give it employment." He allowed
himself these little liberties, he seems to infer, by way of distraction
for his restless nature. But some more serious work was necessary, if he
was to win the independence so earnestly desired, and to cease to be a
burden upon his mother. Where was he to look for help?