EARLY WRITINGS.
Swift came to Temple's house as a raw student. He left it as the author of
one of the most remarkable satires ever written. His first efforts had
been unpromising enough. Certain _Pindaric Odes_, in which the youthful
aspirant imitated the still popular model of Cowley, are even comically
prosaic. The last of them, dated 1691, is addressed to a queer Athenian
Society, promoted by a John Dunton, a speculative bookseller, whose _Life
and Errors_ is still worth a glance from the curious. The Athenian Society
was the name of John Dunton himself, and two or three collaborators who
professed in the _Athenian Mercury_ to answer queries ranging over the
whole field of human knowledge. Temple was one of their patrons, and Swift
sent them a panegyrical ode, the merits of which are sufficiently summed
up by Dryden's pithy criticism--"Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet."
Swift disliked and abused Dryden ever afterwards, though he may have had
better reasons for his enmity than the child's dislike to bitter medicine.
Later poems, the _Epistle to Congreve_ and that to Temple already quoted,
show symptoms of growing power and a clearer self-recognition. In Swift's
last residence with Temple, he proved unmistakably that he had learnt the
secret often so slowly revealed to great writers, the secret of his real
strength. The _Tale of a Tub_ was written about 1696; part of it appears
to have been seen at Kilroot by his friend, Waring, Varina's brother; the
_Battle of the Books_ was written in 1697. It is a curious proof of
Swift's indifference to a literary reputation that both works remained in
manuscript till 1704. The "little parson cousin" Tom Swift, ventured some
kind of claim to a share in the authorship of the _Tale of a Tub_. Swift
treated this claim with the utmost contempt, but never explicitly claimed
for himself the authorship of what some readers hold to be his most
powerful work.
The _Battle of the Books_, to which we may first attend, sprang out of the
famous controversy as to the relative merits of the ancients and moderns,
which began in France with Perrault and Fontenelle; which had been set
going in England by Sir W. Temple's essay upon ancient and modern learning
(1692), and which incidentally led to the warfare between Bentley and
Wotton on one side, and Boyle and his Oxford allies on the other. A full
account of this celebrated discussion may be found in Professor Jebb's
_Bentley_; and, as Swift only took the part of a light skirmisher, nothing
more need be said of it in this place. One point alone is worth notice.
The eagerness of the discussion is characteristic of a time at which the
modern spirit was victoriously revolting against the ancient canons of
taste and philosophy. At first sight, we might therefore expect the
defenders of antiquity to be on the side of authority. In fact, however,
the argument, as Swift takes it from Temple, is reversed. Temple's theory,
so far as he had any consistent theory, is indicated in the statement that
the moderns gathered "all their learning from books in the universities."
Learning, he suggests, may weaken invention; and people who trust to the
charity of others will always be poor. Swift accepts and enforces this
doctrine. The _Battle of the Books_ is an expression of that contempt for
pedants which he had learnt in Dublin, and which is expressed in the ode
to the Athenian Society. Philosophy, he tells us in that precious
production, "seems to have borrowed some ungrateful taste of doubts,
impertinence, and niceties from every age through which it passed" (this,
I may observe, is verse), and is now a "medley of all ages," "her face
patched over with modern pedantry." The moral finds a more poetical
embodiment in the famous apologue of the Bee and the Spider in the _Battle
of the Books_. The bee had got itself entangled in the spider's web in the
library, whilst the books were beginning to wrangle. The two have a sharp
dispute, which is summed up by Æsop as arbitrator. The spider represents
the moderns who spin their scholastic pedantry out of their own insides;
whilst the bee, like the ancients, goes direct to nature. The moderns
produce nothing but "wrangling and satire, much of a nature with the
spider's poison, which however they pretend to spit wholly out of
themselves is improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and
vermin of the age." We, the ancients, "profess to nothing of our own,
beyond our wings and our voice: that is to say, our flights and our
language. For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labour
and research, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference
is that, instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our
hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of
things, which are Sweetness and Light."
The Homeric battle which follows is described with infinite spirit. Pallas
is the patron of the ancients whilst Momus undertakes the cause of the
moderns, and appeals for help to the malignant deity Criticism, who is
found in her den at the top of a snowy mountain, extended upon the spoils
of numberless half-devoured volumes. By her, as she exclaims in the
regulation soliloquy, children become wiser than their parents, beaux
become politicians, and schoolboys judges of philosophy. She flies to her
darling Wotton, gathering up her person into an octavo compass; her body
grows white and arid and splits in pieces with dryness; a concoction of
gall and soot is strewn in the shape of letters upon her person; and so
she joins the moderns, "undistinguishable in shape and dress from the
divine Bentley, Wotton's dearest friend." It is needless to follow the
fortunes of the fight which follows; it is enough to observe that Virgil
is encountered by his translator Dryden in a helmet "nine times too large
for the head, which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even like the
lady in the lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state, or like a
shrivelled beau within the penthouse of a modern periwig, and the voice
was suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote;" and that the book is
concluded by an episode, in which Bentley and Wotton try a diversion and
steal the armour of Phalaris and Æsop, but are met by Boyle, clad in a
suit of armour given him by all the gods, who transfixes them on his spear
like a brace of woodcocks on an iron skewer.
The raillery, if taken in its critical aspect, recoils upon the author.
Dryden hardly deserves the scorn of Virgil; and Bentley, as we know, made
short work of Phalaris and Boyle. But Swift probably knew and cared little
for the merits of the controversy. He expresses his contempt with
characteristic vigour and coarseness; and our pleasure in his display of
exuberant satirical power is not injured by his obvious misconception of
the merits of the case. The unflagging spirit of the writing, the
fertility and ingenuity of the illustrations, do as much as can be done to
give lasting vitality to what is radically (to my taste at least) a rather
dreary form of wit. The _Battle of the Books_ is the best of the
travesties. Nor in the brilliant assault upon great names do we at present
see anything more than the buoyant consciousness of power, common in the
unsparing judgments of youth, nor edged as yet by any real bitterness.
Swift has found out that the world is full of humbugs; and goes forth
hewing and hacking with super-abundant energy, not yet aware that he too
may conceivably be a fallible being, and still less that the humbugs may
some day prove too strong for him.
The same qualities are more conspicuous in the far greater satire the
_Tale of a Tub_. It is so striking a performance that Johnson, who
cherished one of his stubborn prejudices against Swift, doubted whether
Swift could have written it. "There is in it," he said, "such a vigour of
mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so much of nature, and art, and life." The
doubt is clearly without the least foundation, and the estimate upon which
it is based is generally disputed. The _Tale of a Tub_ has certainly not
achieved a reputation equal to that of _Gulliver's Travels_, to the merits
of which Johnson was curiously blind. Yet I think that there is this much
to be said in favour of Johnson's theory, namely, that Swift's style
reaches its highest point in the earlier work. There is less flagging; a
greater fulness and pressure of energetic thought; a power of hitting the
nail on the head at the first blow, which has declined in the work of his
maturer years, when life was weary and thought intermittent. Swift seems
to have felt this himself. In the twilight of his intellect, he was seen
turning over the pages and murmuring to himself, "Good God, what a genius
I had when I wrote that book!" In an apology (dated 1709) he makes a
statement which may help to explain this fact. "The author," he says, "was
then (1696) young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in
his head. By the assistance of some thinking and much conversation, he had
endeavoured to strip himself of as many prejudices as he could." He
resolved, as he adds, "to proceed in a manner entirely new;" and he
afterwards claims in the most positive terms that through the whole book
(including both the tale and the battle of the books) he has not borrowed
one "single hint from any writer in the world."[12] No writer has ever
been more thoroughly original than Swift, for his writings are simply
himself.
The _Tale of a Tub_ is another challenge thrown down to pretentious
pedantry. The vigorous, self-confident intellect has found out the
emptiness and absurdity of a number of the solemn formulæ which pass
current in the world, and tears them to pieces with audacious and
rejoicing energy. He makes a mock of the paper chains with which solemn
professors tried to fetter his activity, and scatters the fragments to the
four winds of heaven. In one of the first sections he announces the
philosophy afterwards expounded by Herr Teufelsdröckh, according to which
"man himself is but a micro-coat;" if one of the suits of clothes called
animals "be trimmed up with a gold chain, and a red gown, and a white rod,
and a pert look, it is called a Lord Mayor; if certain ermines and furs be
placed in a certain position, we style them a judge; and so an apt
conjunction of lawn and black satin we entitle a bishop." Though Swift
does not himself develop this philosophical doctrine, its later form
reflects light upon the earlier theory. For, in truth, Swift's teaching
comes to this, that the solemn plausibilities of the world are but so many
"shams"--elaborate masks used to disguise the passions, for the most part
base and earthly, by which mankind is really impelled. The "digressions"
which he introduces with the privilege of a humorist, bear chiefly upon
the literary sham. He falls foul of the whole population of Grub Street at
starting, and (as I may note in passing) incidentally gives a curious hint
of his authorship. He describes himself as a worn-out pamphleteer who has
worn his quill to the pith in the service of the State. "Fourscore and
eleven pamphlets have I writ under the reigns and for the service of
six-and-thirty patrons." Porson first noticed that the same numbers are
repeated in _Gulliver's Travels_; Gulliver is fastened with "fourscore and
eleven chains" locked to his left leg "with six-and-thirty padlocks."
Swift makes the usual onslaught of a young author upon the critics, with
more than the usual vigour, and carries on the war against Bentley and his
ally by parodying Wotton's remarks upon the ancients. He has discovered
many omissions in Homer; "who seems to have read but very superficially
either Sendivogus, Behmen, or _Anthroposophia Magia_."[13] Homer, too,
never mentions a saveall; and has a still worse fault--his "gross
ignorance in the common laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as
discipline of the Church of England"--defects, indeed, for which he has
been justly censured by Wotton. Perhaps the most vigorous and certainly
the most striking of these digressions, is that upon "the original use and
improvement of madness in a commonwealth." Just in passing, as it were,
Swift gives the pith of a whole system of misanthropy, though he as yet
seems to be rather indulging a play of fancy, than expressing a settled
conviction. Happiness, he says, is a "perpetual possession of being well
deceived." The wisdom which keeps on the surface is better than that which
persists in officiously prying into the underlying reality. "Last week I
saw a woman flayed," he observes, "and you will hardly believe how much it
altered her person for the worse." It is best to be content with patching
up the outside, and so assuring the "serene, peaceful state"--the
sublimest point of felicity--"of being a fool amongst knaves." He goes on
to tell us how useful madmen may be made: how Curtius may be regarded
equally as a madman and a hero for his leap into the gulf; how the raging,
blaspheming, noisy inmate of Bedlam is fit to have a regiment of dragoons;
and the bustling, sputtering, bawling madman should be sent to Westminster
Hall; and the solemn madman, dreaming dreams and seeing best in the dark,
to preside over a congregation of dissenters; and how elsewhere you may
find the raw material of the merchant, the courtier, or the monarch. We
are all madmen, and happy so far as mad: delusion and peace of mind go
together; and the more truth we know, the more shall we recognize that
realities are hideous. Swift only plays with his paradoxes. He laughs
without troubling himself to decide whether his irony tells against the
theories which he ostensibly espouses, or those which he ostensibly
attacks. But he has only to adopt in seriousness the fancy with which he
is dallying, in order to graduate as a finished pessimist. These, however,
are interruptions to the main thread of the book, which is a daring
assault upon that serious kind of pedantry which utters itself in
theological systems. The three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack,
represent, as we all know, the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and the
Puritanical varieties of Christianity. They start with a new coat provided
for each by their father, and a will to explain the right mode of wearing
it; and after some years of faithful observance, they fall in love with
the three ladies of wealth, ambition, and pride, get into terribly bad
ways and make wild work of the coats and the will. They excuse themselves
for wearing shoulder-knots by picking the separate letters S, H, and so
forth, out of separate words in the will, and as K is wanting, discover it
to be synonymous with C. They reconcile themselves to gold lace by
remembering that when they were boys they heard a fellow say that he had
heard their father's man say that he would advise his sons to get gold
lace when they had money enough to buy it. Then, as the will becomes
troublesome in spite of exegetical ingenuity, the eldest brother finds a
convenient codicil which can be tacked to it, and will sanction a new
fashion of flame-coloured satin. The will expressly forbids silver fringe
on the coats; but they discover that the word meaning silver fringe may
also signify a broomstick. And by such devices they go on merrily for a
time, till Peter sets up to be the sole heir and insists upon the
obedience of his brethren. His performances in this position are trying to
their temper. "Whenever it happened that any rogue of Newgate was
condemned to be hanged, Peter would offer him a pardon for a certain sum
of money; which when the poor caitiff had made all shifts to scrape up and
send, his lordship would return a piece of paper in this form.
"'To all mayors, sheriffs, jailors, constables, bailiffs, hangmen, &c.
Whereas we are informed that A. B. remains in the hands of you or some of
you, under the sentence of death: We will and command you, upon sight
hereof to let the said prisoner depart to his own habitation whether he
stands condemned for murder, &c., &c., for which this shall be your
sufficient warrant; and if you fail hereof, God damn you and yours to all
eternity; and so we bid you heartily farewell. Your most humble man's man,
Emperor Peter.'
"The wretches, trusting to this, lost their lives and their money too."
Peter, however, became outrageously proud. He has been seen to take "three
old high-crowned hats and clap them all on his head three-storey high,
with a huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and an angling-rod in his hand.
In which guise, whoever went to take him by the hand in the way of
salutation, Peter, with much grace, like a well-educated spaniel, would
present them with his foot; and if they refused his civility, then he
would raise it as high as their chops, and give him a damned kick on the
mouth, which has ever since been called a salute."
Peter receives his brothers at dinner, and has nothing served up but a
brown loaf. Come, he says, "fall on and spare not; here is excellent good
mutton," and he helps them each to a shoe. The brothers remonstrate, and
try to point out that they see only bread. They argue for some time, but
have to give in to a conclusive argument. "'Look ye, gentlemen,' cries
Peter in a rage, 'to convince you what a couple of blind, positive,
ignorant, wilful puppies you are, I will use but this simple argument. By
G-- it is true, good, natural mutton as any in Leadenhall Market; and
G-- confound you both eternally, if you offer to believe otherwise.' Such a
thundering proof as this left no further room for objection; the two
unbelievers began to gather and pocket up their mistake as hastily as they
could," and have to admit besides that another large dry crust is true
juice of the grape.
The brothers Jack and Martin afterwards fall out: and Jack is treated to a
storm of ridicule much in the same vein as that directed against Peter;
and, if less pointed, certainly not less expressive of contempt. I need
not further follow the details of what Johnson calls this "wild book,"
which is in every page brimful of intense satirical power. I must however
say a few words upon a matter which is of great importance in forming a
clear judgment of Swift's character. The _Tale of a Tub_ was universally
attributed to Swift, and led to many doubts of his orthodoxy and even of
his Christianity. Sharpe, Archbishop of York, injured Swift's chances of
preferment by insinuating such doubts to Queen Anne. Swift bitterly
resented the imputation. He prefixed an apology to a later edition, in
which he admitted that he had said some rash things; but declared that he
would forfeit his life if any one opinion contrary to morality or religion
could be fairly deduced from the book. He pointed out that he had
attacked no Anglican doctrine. His ridicule spares Martin, and is pointed
at Peter and Jack. Like every satirist who ever wrote, he does not attack
the use but the abuse; and as the Church of England represents for him the
purest embodiment of the truth, an attack upon the abuses of religion
meant an attack upon other churches only in so far as they diverged from
this model. Critics have accepted this apology, and treated poor Queen
Anne and her advisers as representing simply the prudery of the tea-table.
The question, to my thinking, does not admit of quite so simple an answer.
If, in fact, we ask what is the true object of Swift's audacious satire,
the answer will depend partly upon our own estimate of the truth. Clearly
it ridicules "abuses;" but one man's use is another's abuse: and a dogma
may appear to us venerable or absurd according to our own creed. One test,
however, may be suggested, which may guide our decision. Imagine the _Tale
of a Tub_ to be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a
_Rabelais perfectionné_. Can any one doubt that the believer would be
scandalized and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial
element? Would not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons even
though directed against his enemies? Scott urges that the satire was
useful to the high church party because, as he says, it is important for
any institution in Britain (or anywhere else, we may add) to have the
laughers on its side. But Scott was too sagacious not to indicate the
obvious reply. The condition of having the laughers on your side is to be
on the side of the laughers. Advocates of any serious cause feel that
there is a danger in accepting such an alliance. The laughers who join you
in ridiculing your enemy, are by no means pledged to refrain from
laughing in turn at the laugher. When Swift had ridiculed all the Catholic
and all the Puritan dogmas in the most unsparing fashion, could he be sure
that the Thirty-nine Articles would escape scot free? The Catholic theory
of a church possessing divine authority, the Puritan theory of a divine
voice addressing the individual soul, suggested to him, in their concrete
embodiments at least, nothing but a horselaugh. Could any one be sure that
the Anglican embodiment of the same theories might not be turned to equal
account by the scoffer? Was the true bearing of Swift's satire in fact
limited to the deviations from sound Church of England doctrine, or might
it not be directed against the very vital principle of the doctrine
itself?
Swift's blindness to such criticisms was thoroughly characteristic. He
professes, as we have seen, that he had need to clear his mind of _real_
prejudices. He admits that the process might be pushed too far; that is,
that in abandoning a prejudice you may be losing a principle. In fact, the
prejudices from which Swift had sought to free himself--and no doubt with
great success--were the prejudices of other people. For them he felt
unlimited contempt. But the prejudice which had grown up in his mind,
strengthened with his strength, and become intertwined with all his
personal affections and antipathies, was no longer a prejudice in his
eyes, but a sacred principle. The intensity of his contempt for the
follies of others shut his eyes effectually to any similarity between
their tenets and his own. His principles, true or false, were prejudices
in the highest degree, if by a prejudice we mean an opinion cherished
because it has somehow or other become ours, though the "somehow" may
exclude all reference to reason. Swift never troubled himself to assign
any philosophical basis for his doctrines; having, indeed, a hearty
contempt for philosophizing in general. He clung to the doctrines of his
church, not because he could give abstract reasons for his belief, but
simply because the church happened to be his. It is equally true of all
his creeds, political or theological, that he loved them as he loved his
friends, simply because they had become a part of himself, and were
therefore identified with all his hopes, ambitions, and aspirations public
or private. We shall see hereafter how fiercely he attacked the
dissenters, and how scornfully he repudiated all arguments founded upon
the desirability of union amongst Protestants. To a calm outside observer
differences might appear to be superficial; but to him, no difference
could be other than radical and profound which in fact divided him from an
antagonist. In attacking the Presbyterians, cried more temperate people,
you are attacking your brothers and your own opinions. No, replied Swift,
I am attacking the corruption of my principles; hideous caricatures of
myself; caricatures the more hateful in proportion to their apparent
likeness. And therefore, whether in political or theological warfare, he
was sublimely unconscious of the possible reaction of his arguments.
Swift took a characteristic mode of showing that if upon some points he
accidentally agreed with the unbeliever, it was not from any covert
sympathy. Two of his most vigorous pieces of satire in later days are
directed against the deists. In 1708 he published an _Argument to prove
that the abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now stand,
be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps not produce those many
good effects proposed thereby_. And in 1713, in the midst of his most
eager political warfare, he published _Mr. Collins's Discourse of
Freethinking, put into plain English, by way of abstract, for use of the
poor_. No one who reads these pamphlets can deny that the keenest satire
may be directed against infidels as well as against Christians. The last
is an admirable parody, in which poor Collins's arguments are turned
against himself with ingenious and provoking irony. The first is perhaps
Swift's cleverest application of the same method. A nominal religion, he
urges gravely, is of some use, for if men cannot be allowed a God to
revile or renounce, they will speak evil of dignities, and may even come
to "reflect upon the ministry." If Christianity were once abolished, the
wits would be deprived of their favourite topic. "Who would ever have
suspected Asgil for a wit or Toland for a philosopher if the inexhaustible
stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with
materials?" The abolition of Christianity moreover may possibly bring the
Church into danger, for atheists, deists, and Socinians have little zeal
for the present ecclesiastical establishment; and if they once get rid of
Christianity, they may aim at setting up Presbyterianism. Moreover, as
long as we keep to any religion, we do not strike at the root of the evil.
The freethinkers consider that all the parts hold together, and that if
you pull out one nail the whole fabric will fall. Which, he says, was
happily expressed by one who heard that a text brought in proof of the
Trinity, was differently read in some ancient manuscript; whereupon he
suddenly leaped through a long _sorites_ to the logical conclusion: "Why,
if it be as you say, I may safely ... drink on and defy the parson."
A serious meaning underlies Swift's sarcasms. Collins had argued in
defence of the greatest possible freedom of discussion; and tacitly
assumed that such discussion would lead to disbelief of Christianity.
Opponents of the liberal school had answered by claiming his first
principle as their own. They argued that religion was based upon reason,
and would be strengthened instead of weakened by free inquiry. Swift
virtually takes a different position. He objects to freethinking because
ordinary minds are totally unfit for such inquiries. "The bulk of
mankind," as he puts it, is as "well qualified for flying as thinking;"
and therefore free-thought would lead to anarchy, atheism, and immorality,
as liberty to fly would lead to a breaking of necks.
Collins rails at priests as tyrants upheld by imposture. Swift virtually
replies that they are the sole guides to truth and guardians of morality,
and that theology should be left to them, as medicine to physicians and
law to lawyers. The argument against the abolition of Christianity takes
the same ground. Religion, however little regard is paid to it in
practice, is in fact the one great security for a decent degree of social
order; and the rash fools who venture to reject what they do not
understand, are public enemies as well as ignorant sciolists.
The same view is taken in Swift's sermons. He said of himself that he
could only preach political pamphlets. Several of the twelve sermons
preserved are in fact directly aimed at some of the political and social
grievances which he was habitually denouncing. If not exactly "pamphlets,"
they are sermons in aid of pamphlets. Others are vigorous and sincere
moral discourses. One alone deals with a purely theological topic: the
doctrine of the Trinity. His view is simply that "men of wicked lives
would be very glad if there were no truth in Christianity at all." They
therefore cavil at the mysteries to find some excuse for giving up the
whole. He replies in effect that there most be mystery though not
contradiction, everywhere, and that if we do not accept humbly what is
taught in the Scriptures, we must give up Christianity, and consequently,
as he holds, all moral obligation, at once. The cavil is merely the
pretext of an evil conscience. Swift's religion thus partook of the
directly practical nature of his whole character. He was absolutely
indifferent to speculative philosophy. He was even more indifferent to the
mystical or imaginative aspects of religion. He loved downright concrete
realities, and was not the man to lose himself in an _Oh, altitudo!_ or in
any train of thought or emotion not directly bearing upon the actual
business of the world. Though no man had more pride in his order or love
of its privileges, Swift never emphasized his professional character. He
wished to be accepted as a man of the world and of business. He despised
the unpractical and visionary type, and the kind of religious utterance
congenial to men of that type was abhorrent to him. He shrank invariably
too from any display of his emotion, and would have felt the heartiest
contempt for the sentimentalism of his day. At once the proudest and most
sensitive of men, it was his imperative instinct to hide his emotions as
much as possible. In cases of great excitement, he retired into some
secluded corner, where, if he was forced to feel, he could be sure of
hiding his feelings. He always masks his strongest passions under some
ironical veil, and thus practised what his friends regarded as an inverted
hypocrisy. Delany tells us that he stayed for six months in Swift's house,
before discovering that the dean always read prayers to his servants at a
fixed hour in private. A deep feeling of solemnity showed itself in his
manner of performing public religious exercises, but Delany, a man of a
very different temperament, blames his friend for carrying his reserve in
all such matters to extremes. In certain respects Swift was ostentatious
enough; but this intense dislike to wearing his heart upon his sleeve, to
laying bare the secrets of his affections before unsympathetic eyes, is
one of his most indelible characteristics. Swift could never have felt the
slightest sympathy for the kind of preacher who courts applause by a
public exhibition of intimate joys and sorrows; and was less afraid of
suppressing some genuine emotion than of showing any in the slightest
degree unreal.
Although Swift took in the main what may be called the political view of
religion, he did not by any means accept that view in its cynical form. He
did not, that is, hold, in Gibbon's famous phrase, that all religions were
equally false and equally useful. His religious instincts were as strong
and genuine as they were markedly undemonstrative. He came to take (I am
anticipating a little) a gloomy view of the world and of human nature. He
had the most settled conviction not only of the misery of human life but
of the feebleness of the good elements in the world. The bad and the
stupid are the best fitted for life, as we find it. Virtue is generally a
misfortune; the more we sympathize, the more cause we have for
wretchedness; our affections give us the purest kind of happiness, and yet
our affections expose us to sufferings which more than outweigh the
enjoyments. There is no such thing, he said in his decline, as "a fine old
gentleman;" if so and so had had either a mind or a body worth a farthing,
"they would have worn him out long ago." That became a typical sentiment
with Swift. His doctrine was, briefly, that: virtue was the one thing
which deserved love and admiration; and yet that virtue in this hideous
chaos of a world, involved misery and decay. What would be the logical
result of such a creed, I do not presume to say. Certainly, we should
guess, something more pessimistic or Manichæan than suits the ordinary
interpretation of Christian doctrine. But for Swift this state of mind
carried with it the necessity of clinging to some religious creed: not
because the creed held out promises of a better hereafter, for Swift was
too much absorbed in the present to dwell much upon such beliefs; but
rather because it provided him with some sort of fixed convictions in this
strange and disastrous muddle. If it did not give a solution in terms
intelligible to the human intellect, it encouraged the belief that some
solution existed. It justified him to himself for continuing to respect
morality, and for going on living, when all the game of life seemed to be
decidedly going in favour of the devil, and suicide to be the most
reasonable course. At least, it enabled him to associate himself with the
causes and principles which he recognized as the most ennobling element in
the world's "mad farce;" and to utter himself in formulæ consecrated by
the use of such wise and good beings as had hitherto shown themselves
amongst a wretched race. Placed in another situation, Swift no doubt might
have put his creed--to speak after the Clothes Philosophy--into a
different dress. The substance could not have been altered, unless his
whole character as well as his particular opinions had been profoundly
modified.