LARACOR AND LONDON.
Swift at the age of thirty-one had gained a small amount of cash, and a
promise from William. He applied to the king, but the great man in whom he
trusted failed to deliver his petition; and, after some delay, he accepted
an invitation to become chaplain and secretary to the Earl of Berkeley,
just made one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. He acted as secretary on
the journey to Ireland: but upon reaching Dublin, Lord Berkeley gave the
post to another man, who had persuaded him that it was unfit for a
clergyman. Swift next claimed the deanery of Derry, which soon became
vacant. The secretary had been bribed by 1000_l._ from another candidate,
upon whom the deanery was bestowed: but Swift was told that he might still
have the preference for an equal bribe. Unable or unwilling to comply, he
took leave of Berkeley and the secretary, with the pithy remark, "God
confound you both for a couple of scoundrels." He was partly pacified,
however (February 1700), by the gift of Laracor, a village near Trim, some
twenty miles from Dublin. Two other small livings, and a prebend in the
cathedral of St. Patrick, made up a revenue of about 230_l._ a year.[14]
The income enabled him to live; but, in spite of the rigid economy which
he always practised, did not enable him to save. Marriage under such
circumstances would have meant the abandonment of an ambitious career. A
wife and family would have anchored him to his country parsonage.
This may help to explain an unpleasant episode which followed. Poor Varina
had resisted Swift's entreaties, on the ground of her own ill-health and
Swift's want of fortune. She now, it seems, thought that the economical
difficulty was removed by Swift's preferment, and wished the marriage to
take place. Swift replied in a letter, which contains all our information:
and to which I can apply no other epithet than brutal. Some men might feel
bound to fulfil a marriage engagement, even when love had grown cold;
others might think it better to break it off in the interests of both
parties. Swift's plan was to offer to fulfil it on conditions so insulting
that no one with a grain of self-respect could accept. In his letter he
expresses resentment for Miss Waring's previous treatment of him; he
reproaches her bitterly with the company in which she lives--including, as
it seems, her mother; no young woman in the world with her income should
"dwindle away her health in such a sink and among such family
conversation." He explains that he is still poor; he doubts the
improvement of her own health; and he then says that if she will submit to
be educated so as to be capable of entertaining him: to accept all his
likes and dislikes: to soothe his ill-humour, and live cheerfully wherever
he pleases: he will take her without inquiring into her looks or her
income. "Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the other, is all I
look for." Swift could be the most persistent and ardent of friends. But,
when any one tried to enforce claims no longer congenial to his feelings,
the appeal to the galling obligation stung him into ferocity, and brought
out the most brutal side of his imperious nature.
It was in the course of the next year that Swift took a step which has
sometimes been associated with this. The death of Temple had left Esther
Johnson homeless. The small fortune left to her by Temple consisted of an
Irish farm. Swift suggested to her that she and her friend Mrs. Dingley
would get better interest for their money, and live more cheaply, in
Ireland than in England. This change of abode naturally made people talk.
The little parson cousin asked (in 1706) whether Jonathan had been able to
resist the charms of the two ladies who had marched from Moor Park to
Dublin "with full resolution to engage him." Swift was now (1701) in his
thirty-fourth year, and Stella a singularly beautiful and attractive girl
of twenty. The anomalous connexion was close, and yet most carefully
guarded against scandal. In Swift's absence, the ladies occupied his
apartments at Dublin. When he and they were in the same place they took
separate lodgings. Twice, it seems, they accompanied him on visits to
England. But Swift never saw Esther Johnson except in presence of a third
person; and he incidentally declares in 1726--near the end of her
life--that he had not seen her in a morning "these dozen years, except
once or twice in a journey." The relations thus regulated remained
unaltered for several years to come. Swift's duties at Laracor were not
excessive. He reckons his congregation at fifteen persons, "most of them
gentle and all simple." He gave notice, says Orrery, that he would read
prayers every Wednesday and Friday. The congregation on the first
Wednesday consisted of himself and his clerk, and Swift began the service,
"Dearly beloved Roger, the scripture moveth you and me," and so forth.
This being attributed to Swift, is supposed to be an exquisite piece of
facetiousness; but we may hope that, as Scott gives us reason to think, it
was really one of the drifting jests that stuck for a time to the skirts
of the famous humorist. What is certain is, that Swift did his best, with
narrow means, to improve the living--rebuilt the house, laid out the
garden, increased the glebe from one acre to twenty, and endowed the
living with tithes bought by himself. He left the tithes on the remarkable
condition (suggested probably by his fears of Presbyterian ascendancy)
that, if another form of Christian religion should become the established
faith in this kingdom, they should go to the poor--excluding Jews,
Atheists, and infidels. Swift became attached to Laracor, and the gardens
which he planted in humble imitation of Moor Park; he made friends of some
of the neighbours; though he detested Trim, where "the people were as
great rascals as the gentlemen;" but Laracor was rather an occasional
retreat than a centre of his interests. During the following years Swift
was often at the castle at Dublin, and passed considerable periods in
London, leaving a curate in charge of the minute congregation at Laracor.
He kept upon friendly terms with successive Viceroys. He had, as we have
seen, extorted a partial concession of his claims from Lord Berkeley. For
Lord Berkeley, if we may argue from a very gross lampoon, he can have felt
nothing but contempt. But he had a high respect for Lady Berkeley; and one
of the daughters, afterwards Lady Betty Germaine, a very sensible and
kindly woman, retained his friendship through life, and in letters written
long afterwards refers with evident fondness to the old days of
familiarity. He was intimate, again, with the family of the Duke of
Ormond, who became Lord Lieutenant in 1703, and, again, was the close
friend of one of the daughters. He was deeply grieved by her death a few
years later, soon after her marriage to Lord Ashburnham. "I hate life," he
says characteristically, "when I think it exposed to such accidents; and
to see so many thousand wretches burdening the earth when such as her die,
makes me think God did never intend life for a blessing." When Lord
Pembroke succeeded Ormond, Swift still continued chaplain, and carried on
a queer commerce of punning with Pembroke. It is the first indication of a
habit which lasted, as we shall see, through life. One might be tempted to
say, were it not for the conclusive evidence to the contrary, that this
love of the most mechanical variety of facetiousness implied an absence of
any true sense of humour. Swift, indeed, was giving proofs that he
possessed a full share of that ambiguous talent. It would be difficult to
find a more perfect performance of its kind than the poem by which he
amused the Berkeley family in 1700. It is the _Petition of Mrs. Frances
Harris_, a chambermaid, who had lost her purse, and whose peculiar style
of language, as well as the unsympathetic comments of her various
fellow-servants, are preserved with extraordinary felicity in a peculiar
doggerel invented for the purpose by Swift. One fancies that the famous
Mrs. Harris of Mrs. Gamp's reminiscences was a phantasmal descendant of
Swift's heroine. He lays bare the workings of the menial intellect with
the clearness of a master.
Neither Laracor nor Dublin could keep Swift from London.[15] During the
ten years succeeding 1700, he must have passed over four in England. In
the last period mentioned he was acting as an agent for the Church of
Ireland. In the others he was attracted by pleasure or ambition. He had
already many introductions to London society, through Temple, through the
Irish Viceroys, and through Congreve, the most famous of then living wits.
A successful pamphlet, to be presently mentioned, helped his rise to fame.
London society was easy of access for a man of Swift's qualities. The
divisions of rank were doubtless more strongly marked than now. Yet
society was relatively so small, and concentrated in so small a space,
that admission into the upper circle meant an easy introduction to every
one worth knowing. Any noticeable person became, as it were, member of a
club which had a tacit existence, though there was no single place of
meeting or recognized organization. Swift soon became known at the
coffee-houses, which have been superseded by the clubs of modern times. At
one time, according to a story vague as to dates, he got the name of the
"mad parson" from Addison and others, by his habit of taking
half-an-hour's smart walk to and fro in the coffee-house, and then
departing in silence. At last he abruptly accosted a stranger from the
country: "Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the world?" "Yes,
sir," was the reply, "I thank God I remember a great deal of good weather
in my time." "That," said Swift, "is more than I can say. I never remember
any weather that was not too hot, or too cold, or too wet, or too dry:
but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all
very well;" with which sentiment he vanished. Whatever his introduction
Swift would soon make himself felt. The _Tale of a Tub_ appeared--with a
very complimentary dedication to Somers--in 1704, and revealed powers
beyond the rivalry of any living author.
In the year 1705 Swift became intimate with Addison, who wrote in a copy
of his _Travels in Italy_, To _Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable
companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age, this
work is presented by his most humble servant the author_. Though the word
"genius" had scarcely its present strength of meaning, the phrase
certainly implies that Addison knew Swift's authorship of the _Tale_, and
with all his decorum was not repelled by its audacious satire. The pair
formed a close friendship, which is honourable to both. For it proves that
if Swift was imperious and Addison a little too fond of the adulation of
"wits and Templars," each could enjoy the society of an intellectual
equal. They met, we may fancy, like absolute kings, accustomed to the
incense of courtiers, and not inaccessible to its charms; and yet glad at
times to throw aside state and associate with each other without jealousy.
Addison, we know, was most charming when talking to a single companion,
and Delany repeats Swift's statement that, often as they spent their
evenings together, they never wished for a third. Steele, for a time, was
joined in what Swift calls a triumvirate; and though political strife led
to a complete breach with Steele and a temporary eclipse of familiarity
with Addison, it never diminished Swift's affection for his great rival.
"That man," he said once, "has virtue enough to give reputation to an
age," and the phrase expresses his settled opinion. Swift, however, had a
low opinion of the society of the average "wit." "The worst conversation I
ever heard in my life," he says, "was that at Wills' coffee-house, where
the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble;" and he speaks
with a contempt recalling Pope's satire upon the "little senate," of the
absurd self-importance and the foolish adulation of the students and
Templars who listened to these oracles. Others have suspected that many
famous coteries of which literary people are accustomed to speak with
unction, probably fell as far short in reality of their traditional
pleasantness. Swift's friendship with Addison was partly due, we may
fancy, to the difference in temper and talent which fitted each to be
complement of the other. A curious proof of the mutual goodwill is given
by the history of Swift's _Baucis and Philemon_. It is a humorous and
agreeable enough travesty of Ovid; a bit of good-humoured pleasantry,
which we may take as it was intended. The performance was in the spirit of
the time, and if Swift had not the lightness of touch of his
contemporaries, Prior, Gay, Parnell, and Pope, he perhaps makes up for it
by greater force and directness. But the piece is mainly remarkable
because, as he tells us, Addison made him "blot out four score lines, add
four score, and alter four score," though the whole consisted of only 178
verses.[16] Swift showed a complete absence of the ordinary touchiness of
authors. His indifference to literary fame as to its pecuniary rewards,
was conspicuous. He was too proud, as he truly said, to be vain. His sense
of dignity restrained him from petty sensibility. When a clergyman
regretted some emendations which had been hastily suggested by himself and
accepted by Swift, Swift replied that it mattered little, and that he
would not give grounds by adhering to his own opinion, for an imputation
of vanity. If Swift was egotistical, there was nothing petty even in his
egotism.
A piece of facetiousness, started by Swift in the last of his visits to
London, has become famous. A cobbler called Partridge had set up as an
astrologer, and published predictions in the style of _Zadkiel's Almanac_.
Swift amused himself in the beginning of 1708 by publishing a rival
prediction under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff. Bickerstaff professed that
he would give verifiable and definite predictions, instead of the vague
oracular utterances of his rival. The first of these predictions announced
the approaching death, at 11 p.m., on March 29th, of Partridge himself.
Directly after that day appeared a letter "to a person of honour,"
announcing the fulfilment of the prediction by the death of Partridge
within four hours of the date assigned. Partridge took up the matter
seriously, and indignantly declared himself, in a new Almanac, to be
alive. Bickerstaff retorted in a humorous Vindication, arguing that
Partridge was really dead; that his continuing to write almanacs was no
proof to the contrary, and so forth. All the wits, great and small, took
part in the joke: the Portuguese inquisition, so it is said, were
sufficiently taken in to condemn Bickerstaff to the flames; and Steele,
who started the _Tatler_, whilst the joke was afoot, adopted the name of
Bickerstaff for the imaginary author. Dutiful biographers agree to admire
this as a wonderful piece of fun. The joke does not strike me, I will
confess, as of very exquisite flavour; but it is a curious illustration of
a peculiarity to which Swift owed some of his power, and which seems to
have suggested many of the mythical anecdotes about him. His humour very
easily took the form of practical joking. In those days, the mutual
understanding of the little clique of wits made it easy to get a hoax
taken up by the whole body. They joined to persecute poor Partridge, as
the undergraduates at a modern college might join to tease some obnoxious
tradesman. Swift's peculiar irony fitted him to take the load; for it
implied a singular pleasure in realizing the minute consequences of some
given hypothesis, and working out in detail some grotesque or striking
theory. The love of practical jokes, which seems to have accompanied him
through life, is one of the less edifying manifestations of the tendency.
It seems as if he could not quite enjoy a jest till it was translated into
actual tangible fact. The fancy does not suffice him till it is realized.
If the story about "dearly beloved Roger" be true, it is a case in point.
Sydney Smith would have been content with suggesting that such a thing
might be done. Swift was not satisfied till he had done it. And even if it
be not true, it has been accepted because it is like the truth. We could
almost fancy that if Swift had thought of Charles Lamb's famous quibble
about walking on an empty stomach ("on whose empty stomach?"), he would
have liked to carry it out by an actual promenade on real human flesh and
blood.
Swift became intimate with Irish viceroys, and with the most famous wits
and statesmen of London. But he received none of the good things bestowed
so freely upon contemporary men of letters. In 1705, Addison, his intimate
friend, and his junior by five years, had sprung from a garret to a
comfortable office. Other men passed Swift in the race. He notes
significantly in 1708, that "a young fellow," a friend of his, had just
received a sinecure of 400_l._ a year, as an addition to another of
300_l._ Towards the end of 1704 he had already complained that he got
"nothing but the good words and wishes of a decayed ministry, whose lives
and mine will probably wear out before they can serve either my little
hopes, or their own ambition." Swift still remained in his own district,
"a hedge-parson," flattered, caressed and neglected. And yet he held,[17]
that it was easier to provide for ten men in the church, than for one in a
civil employment. To understand his claims, and the modes by which he used
to enforce them, we must advert briefly to the state of English politics.
A clear apprehension of Swift's relation to the ministers of the day is
essential to any satisfactory estimate of his career.
The reign of Queen Anne was a period of violent party spirit. At the end
of 1703, Swift humorously declares that even the cats and dogs were
infected with the Whig and Tory animosity. The "very ladies" were divided
into high church and low; and, "out of zeal for religion, had hardly time
to say their prayers." The gentle satire of Addison and Steele, in the
_Spectator_, confirms Swift's contemporary lamentations, as to the baneful
effects of party zeal upon private friendship. And yet, it has been often
said, that the party issues were hopelessly confounded. Lord Stanhope
argues--and he is only repeating what Swift frequently said--that Whigs
and Tories had exchanged principles.[18] In later years, Swift constantly
asserted that he attacked the Whigs in defence of the true Whig faith. He
belonged indeed to a party, almost limited to himself: for he avowed
himself to be the anomalous hybrid, a High-church Whig. We must therefore
inquire a little further into the true meaning of the accepted
shibboleths.
Swift had come from Ireland, saturated with the prejudices of his caste.
The highest Tory in Ireland, as he told William, would make a tolerable
Whig in England. For the English colonists in Ireland, the expulsion of
James was a condition not of party success but of existence. Swift, whose
personal and family interests were identified with those of the English in
Ireland, could repudiate James with his whole heart, and heartily accepted
the revolution; he was therefore a Whig, so far as attachment to
"revolution principles" was the distinctive badge of Whiggism. Swift
despised James, and he hated Popery from first to last. Contempt and
hatred with him were never equivocal, and in this case they sprang as much
from his energetic sense as from his early prejudices. Jacobitism was
becoming a sham, and therefore offensive to men of insight into facts. Its
ghost walked the earth for some time longer, and at times aped reality;
but it meant mere sentimentalism or vague discontent. Swift, when asked to
explain its persistence, said that when he was in pain and lying on his
right side, he naturally turned to his left, though he might have no
prospect of benefit from the change.[19] The country squire, who drank
healths to the king over the water, was tired of the Georges, and shared
the fears of the typical Western, that his lands were in danger of being
sent to Hanover. The Stuarts had been in exile long enough to win the love
of some of their subjects. Sufficient time had elapsed to erase from short
memories the true cause of their fall. Squires and parsons did not cherish
less warmly the privileges in defence of which they had sent the last
Stuart king about his business. Rather the privileges had become so much a
matter of course that the very fear of any assault seemed visionary. The
Jacobitism of later days did not mean any discontent with revolution
principles, but dislike to the revolution dynasty. The Whig indeed argued
with true party logic, that every Tory must be a Jacobite, and every
Jacobite a lover of arbitrary rule. In truth a man might wish to restore
the Stuarts without wishing to restore the principles for which the
Stuarts had been expelled: he might be a Jacobite without being a lover of
arbitrary rule; and still more easily might he be a Tory without being a
Jacobite. Swift constantly asserted--and in a sense with perfect
truth--that the revolution had been carried out in defence of the Church
of England, and chiefly by attached members of the Church. To be a sound
churchman was, so far, to be pledged against the family which had assailed
the Church.
Swift's Whiggism would naturally be strengthened by his personal relation
with Temple, and with various Whigs whom he came to know through Temple.
But Swift, I have said, was a churchman as well as a Whig; as staunch a
churchman as Laud, and as ready, I imagine, to have gone to the block or
to prison in defence of his church as any one from the days of Laud to
those of Mr. Green. For a time his zeal was not called into play; the war
absorbed all interests. Marlborough and Godolphin, the great heads of the
family clique which dominated poor Queen Anne, had begun as Tories and
churchmen, supported by a Tory majority. The war had been dictated by a
national sentiment: but from the beginning it was really a Whig war: for
it was a war against Louis, Popery, and the Pretender. And thus, the great
men who were identified with the war, began slowly to edge over to the
party whose principles were the war principles; who hated the Pope, the
Pretender, and the King of France, as their ancestors had hated Phillip of
Spain, or as their descendants hated Napoleon. The war meant alliance with
the Dutch, who had been the martyrs, and were the enthusiastic defenders
of toleration and free thought; and it forced English ministers, almost in
spite of themselves, into the most successful piece of statesmanship of
the century, the Union with Scotland. Now Swift hated the Dutch and hated
the Scotch, with a vehemence that becomes almost ludicrous. The margin of
his Burnet was scribbled over with execrations against the Scots. "Most
damnable Scots," "Scots hell-hounds," "Scotch dogs," "cursed Scots still,"
"hellish Scottish dogs," are a few of his spontaneous flowers of speech.
His prejudices are the prejudices of his class intensified as all passions
were intensified in him. Swift regarded Scotchmen as the most virulent and
dangerous of all dissenters; they were represented to him by the Irish
Presbyterians, the natural rivals of his church. He reviled the Union,
because it implied the recognition by the State of a sect which regarded
the Church of England as little better than a manifestation of Antichrist.
And, in this sense, Swift's sympathies were with the Tories. For in truth
the real contrast between Whigs and Tories, in respect of which there is a
perfect continuity of principle, depended upon the fact that the Whigs
reflected the sentiments of the middle classes, the "monied men" and the
dissenters; whilst the Tories reflected the sentiments of the land and the
church. Each party might occasionally adopt the commonplaces or accept the
measures generally associated with its antagonists; but at bottom, the
distinction was between squire and parson on one side, tradesmen and
banker on the other.
The domestic politics of the reign of Anne turned upon this difference.
The history is a history of the gradual shifting of government to the Whig
side, and the growing alienation of the clergy and squires, accelerated by
a system which caused the fiscal burden of the war to fall chiefly upon
the land. Bearing this in mind, Swift's conduct is perfectly intelligible.
His first plunge into politics was in 1701. Poor King William was in the
thick of the perplexities caused by the mysterious perverseness of English
politicians. The king's ministers, supported by the House of Lords, had
lost the command of the House of Commons. It had not yet come to be
understood that the Cabinet was to be a mere committee of the House of
Commons. The personal wishes of the sovereign, and the alliances and
jealousies of great courtiers, were still highly important factors in the
political situation; as indeed both the composition and the subsequent
behaviour of the Commons could be controlled to a considerable extent by
legitimate and other influences of the Crown. The Commons, unable to make
their will obeyed, proceeded to impeach Somers and other ministers. A
bitter struggle took place between the two Houses, which was suspended by
the summer recess. At this crisis Swift published his _Discourse on the
Dissensions in Athens and Rome_. The abstract political argument is as
good or as bad as nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand political
treatises--that is to say, a repetition of familiar commonplaces; and the
mode of applying precedents from ancient politics would now strike us as
pedantic. The pamphlet, however, is dignified and well-written, and the
application to the immediate difficulty is pointed. His argument is,
briefly, that the House of Commons is showing a factious, tyrannical
temper, identical in its nature with that of a single tyrant and as
dangerous in its consequences, that it has therefore ceased to reflect the
opinions of its constituents, and has endangered the sacred balance
between the three primary elements of our constitution, upon which its
safe working depends.
The pamphlet was from beginning to end a remonstrance against the
impeachments, and therefore a defence of the Whig lords; for whom
sufficiently satisfactory parallels are vaguely indicated in Pericles,
Aristides, and so forth. It was "greedily bought;" it was attributed to
Somers and to the great Whig bishop, Burnet, who had to disown it for fear
of an impeachment. An Irish bishop, it is said, called Swift a "very
positive young man" for doubting Burnet's authorship; whereupon Swift had
to claim it for himself. Youthful vanity, according to his own account,
induced him to make the admission, which would certainly not have been
withheld by adult discretion. For the result was that Somers, Halifax, and
Sunderland, three of the great Whig junto, took him up, often admitted him
to their intimacy, and were liberal in promising him "the greatest
preferments" should they come into power. Before long Swift had another
opportunity which was also a temptation. The Tory House of Commons had
passed the bill against occasional conformity. Ardent partisans generally
approved this bill, as it was clearly annoying to dissenters. It was
directed against the practice of qualifying for office by taking the
sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England without
permanently conforming. It might be fairly argued--as Defoe argued, though
with questionable sincerity--that such a temporary compliance would be
really injurious to dissent. The Church would profit by such an
exhibition of the flexibility of its opponents' principles. Passions were
too much heated for such arguments; and in the winter of 1703-4, people,
says Swift, talked of nothing else. He was "mightily urged by some great
people" to publish his opinion. An argument from a powerful writer, and a
clergyman, against the bill would be very useful to his Whig friends. But
Swift's high church prejudices made him hesitate. The Whig leaders assured
him that nothing should induce them to vote against the bill if they
expected its rejection to hurt the church or "do kindness to the
dissenters." But it is precarious to argue from the professed intentions
of statesmen to their real motives, and yet more precarious to argue to
the consequences of their actions. Swift knew not what to think. He
resolved to think no more. At last he made up his mind to write against
the bill, but he made it up too late. The bill failed to pass; and Swift
felt a relief in dismissing this delicate subject. He might still call
himself a Whig, and exult in the growth of Whiggism. Meanwhile he
persuaded himself that the dissenters and their troubles were beneath his
notice.
They were soon to come again to the front. Swift came to London at the end
of 1707, charged with a mission on behalf of his church. Queen Anne's
Bounty was founded in 1704. The crown restored to the church the
first-fruits and tenths which Henry VIII. had diverted from the papal into
his own treasury, and appropriated them to the augmentation of small
livings. It was proposed to get the same boon for the Church of Ireland.
The whole sum amounted to about 1000_l._ a year, with a possibility of an
additional 2000_l._ Swift, who had spoken of this to King, the Archbishop
of Dublin, was now to act as solicitor on behalf of the Irish clergy, and
hoped to make use of his influence with Somers and Sunderland. The
negotiation was to give him more trouble than he foresaw, and initiate
him, before he had done with it, into certain secrets of cabinets and
councils which he as yet very imperfectly appreciated. His letters to
King, continued over a long period, throw much light on his motives. Swift
was in England from November, 1707, till March, 1709. The year 1708 was
for him, as he says, a year of suspense, a year of vast importance to his
career, and marked by some characteristic utterances. He hoped to use his
influence with Somers. Somers, though still out of office, was the great
oracle of the Whigs, whilst Sunderland was already Secretary of State. In
January, 1708, the bishopric of Waterford was vacant, and Somers tried to
obtain the see for Swift. The attempt failed, but the political
catastrophe of the next month gave hopes that the influence of Somers
would soon be paramount. Harley, the prince of wire-pulling and back-stair
intrigue, had exploded the famous Masham plot. Though this project failed,
it was "reckoned," says Swift, "the greatest piece of court skill that has
been acted many years." Queen Anne was to take advantage of the growing
alienation of the church party to break her bondage to the Marlboroughs,
and change her ministers. But the attempt was premature, and discomfited
its devisers. Harley was turned out of office; Marlborough and Godolphin
came into alliance with the Whig junto; and the queen's bondage seemed
more complete than ever. A cabinet crisis in those days, however, took a
long time. It was not till October, 1708, that the Whigs, backed by a new
Parliament and strengthened by the victory of Oudenarde, were in full
enjoyment of power. Somers at last became President of the Council and
Wharton Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Wharton's appointment was specially
significant for Swift. He was, as even Whigs admitted, a man of infamous
character, redeemed only by energy and unflinching fidelity to his party.
He was licentious and a freethinker; his infidelity showed itself in the
grossest outrages against common decency. If he had any religious
principle it was a preference of Presbyterians, as sharing his antipathy
to the church. No man could be more radically antipathetic to Swift.
Meanwhile, the success of the Whigs meant in the first instance the
success of the men from whom Swift had promises of preferment. He tried to
use his influence as he had proposed. In June he had an interview about
the first-fruits with Godolphin, to whom he had been recommended by Somers
and Sunderland. Godolphin replied in vague officialisms, suggesting with
studied vagueness that the Irish clergy must show themselves more grateful
than the English. His meaning, as Swift thought, was that the Irish clergy
should consent to a repeal of the Test Act, regarded by them and by him as
the essential bulwark of the Church. Nothing definite, however, was said;
and meanwhile Swift, though he gave no signs of compliance, continued to
hope for his own preferment. When the final triumph of the Whigs came he
was still hoping, though with obvious qualms as to his position. He begged
King (in Nov. 1708) to believe in his fidelity to the church. Offers might
be made to him, but "no prospect of making my fortune shall ever prevail
on me to go against what becomes a man of conscience and truth, and an
entire friend to the established church." He hoped that he might be
appointed secretary to a projected embassy to Vienna, a position which
would put him beyond the region of domestic politics.
Meanwhile he had published certain tracts which may be taken as the
manifesto of his faith at the time when his principles were being most
severely tested. Would he or would he not sacrifice his churchmanship to
the interests of the party with which he was still allied? There can be no
doubt that by an open declaration of Whig principles in church
matters--such a declaration, say, as would have satisfied Burnet--he would
have qualified himself for preferment, and have been in a position to
command the fulfilment of the promises made by Somers and Sunderland.
The writings in question were the _Argument to prove the inconvenience of
abolishing Christianity_; a _Project for the Advancement of Religion_; and
the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_. The first, as I have said,
was meant to show that the satirical powers which had given offence in the
_Tale of a Tub_, could be applied without equivocation in defence of
Christianity. The _Project_ is a very forcible exposition of a text which
is common enough in all ages--namely, that the particular age of the
writer is one of unprecedented corruption. It shares, however, with
Swift's other writings, the merit of downright sincerity, which convinces
us that the author is not repeating platitudes, but giving his own
experience and speaking from conviction. His proposals for a reform,
though he must have felt them to be chimerical, are conceived in the
spirit common in the days before people had begun to talk about the State
and the individual. He assumes throughout that a vigorous action of the
court and the government will reform the nation. He does not contemplate
the now commonplace objection that such a revival of the Puritanical
system might simply stimulate hypocrisy. He expressly declares that
religion may be brought into fashion "by the power of the administration,"
and assumes that to bring religion into fashion is the same thing as to
make men religious. This view--suitable enough to Swift's imperious
temper--was also the general assumption of the time. A suggestion thrown
out in his pamphlet is generally said to have led to the scheme soon
afterwards carried out under Harley's administration for building fifty
new churches in London. A more personal touch is Swift's complaint that
the clergy sacrifice their influence by "sequestering themselves" too
much, and forming a separate caste. This reads a little like an implied
defence of himself for frequenting London coffee-houses, when cavillers
might have argued that he should be at Laracor. But like all Swift's
utterances, it covered a settled principle. I have already noticed this
peculiarity, which he shows elsewhere when describing himself as
A clergyman of special note
For shunning others of his coat;
Which made his brethren of the gown
Take care betimes to run him down.
The _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_ is more significant. It is a
summary of his unvarying creed. In politics he is a good Whig. He
interprets the theory of passive obedience as meaning obedience to the
"legislative power;" not therefore to the king specially; and he
deliberately accepts the revolution on the plain ground of the _salus
populi_. His leading maxim is that the "administration cannot be placed in
too few hands nor the legislature in too many." But this political
liberality is associated with unhesitating churchmanship. Sects are
mischievous: to say that they are mischievous is to say that they ought to
be checked in their beginning; where they exist they should be tolerated,
but not to the injury of the church. And hence he reaches his leading
principle that a "government cannot give them (sects) too much ease, nor
trust them with too little power." Such doctrines clearly and tersely laid
down were little to the taste of the Whigs, who were more anxious than
ever to conciliate the dissenters. But it was not till the end of the year
that Swift applied his abstract theory to a special case. There had been
various symptoms of a disposition to relax the Test Acts in Ireland. The
appointment of Wharton to be Lord Lieutenant was enough to alarm Swift,
even though his friend Addison was to be Wharton's secretary. In December,
1708, he published a pamphlet, ostensibly a letter from a member of the
Irish to a member of the English House of Commons, in which the necessity
of keeping up the Test was vigorously enforced. It is the first of Swift's
political writings in which we see his true power. In those just noticed
he is forced to take an impartial tone. He is trying to reconcile himself
to his alliance with the Whigs, or to reconcile the Whigs to their
protection of himself. He speaks as a moderator, and poses as the
dignified moralist above all party-feeling. But in this letter he throws
the reins upon his humour, and strikes his opponents full in the face.
From his own point of view the pamphlet is admirable. He quotes Cowley's
verse,
Forbid it, heaven, my life should be
Weighed with thy least conveniency.
The Irish, by which he means the English, and the English exclusively of
the Scotch, in Ireland, represent this enthusiastic lover, and are called
upon to sacrifice themselves to the political conveniency of the Whig
party. Swift expresses his usual wrath against the Scots, who are eating
up the land, boasts of the loyalty of the Irish Church, and taunts the
Presbyterians with their tyranny in former days. Am I to be forced, he
asks, "to keep my chaplain disguised like my butler, and steal to prayers
in a back room, as my grandfather used in those times when the Church of
England was malignant?" Is not this a ripping up of old quarrels? Ought
not all Protestants to unite against Papists? No, the enemy is the same as
ever. "It is agreed among naturalists that a lion is a larger, a stronger,
and more dangerous enemy than a cat; yet if a man were to have his choice,
either a lion at his foot fast bound with three or four chains, his teeth
drawn out, and his claws pared to the quick, or an angry cat in full
liberty at his throat, he would take no long time to determine." The bound
lion means the Catholic natives, whom Swift declares to be as
"inconsiderable as the women and children."
Meanwhile the long first-fruits negotiation was languidly proceeding. At
last it seemed to be achieved. Lord Pembroke, the outgoing Lord
Lieutenant, sent Swift word that the grant had been made. Swift reported
his success to Archbishop King with a very pardonable touch of complacency
at his "very little" merit in the matter. But a bitter disappointment
followed. The promise made had never been fulfilled. In March, 1709, Swift
had again to write to the Archbishop, recounting his failure, his attempt
to remonstrate with Wharton, the new Lord Lieutenant, and the too certain
collapse of the whole business. The failure was complete; the promised
boon was not granted, and Swift's chance of a bishopric had pretty well
vanished. Halifax, the great Whig Mæcenas, and the Bufo of Pope, wrote to
him in his retirement at Dublin, declaring that he had "entered into a
confederacy with Mr. Addison" to urge Swift's claims upon Government, and
speaking of the declining health of South, then a Prebendary of
Westminster. Swift endorsed this "I lock up this letter as a true original
of courtiers and court promises," and wrote in a volume he had begged from
the same person that it was the only favour "he ever received from him or
his party." In the last months of his stay he had suffered cruelly from
his old giddiness, and he went to Ireland, after a visit to his mother in
Leicester, in sufficiently gloomy mood; retired to Laracor, and avoided
any intercourse with the authorities at the Castle, excepting always
Addison.
To this it is necessary to add one remark. Swift's version of the story is
substantially that which I have given, and it is everywhere confirmed by
contemporary letters. It shows that he separated from the Whig party when
at the height of their power, and separated because he thought them
opposed to the church principles which he advocated from first to last. It
is most unjust, therefore to speak of Swift as a deserter from the Whigs,
because he afterwards joined the church party, which shared all his
strongest prejudices. I am so far from seeing any ground for such a
charge, that I believe that few men have ever adhered more strictly to the
principles with which they have started. But such charges have generally
an element of truth; and it is easy here to point out what was the really
weak point in Swift's position.
Swift's writings, with one or two trifling exceptions, were originally
anonymous. As they were very apt to produce warrants for the apprehension
of publisher and author, the precaution was natural enough in later years.
The mask was often merely ostensible; a sufficient protection against
legal prosecution, but in reality covering an open secret. When in the
_Sentiments of a Church of England Man_ Swift professes to conceal his
name carefully, it may be doubted how far this is to be taken seriously.
But he went much further in the letter on the Test Act. He inserted a
passage intended really to blind his adversaries by a suggestion that Dr.
Swift was likely to write in favour of abolishing the test; and he even
complains to King of the unfairness of this treatment. His assault,
therefore, upon the supposed Whig policy was clandestine. This may
possibly be justified; he might even urge that he was still a Whig, and
was warning ministers against measures which they had not yet adopted, and
from which, as he thinks, they may still be deterred by an alteration of
the real Irish feeling.[20] He complained afterwards that he was
ruined--that is, as to his chances of preferment from the party--by the
suspicion of his authorship of this tract. That is to say, he was "ruined"
by the discovery of his true sentiments. This is to admit that he was
still ready to accept preferment from the men whose supposed policy he was
bitterly attacking, and that he resented their alienation as a grievance.
The resentment indeed was most bitter and pertinacious. He turned savagely
upon his old friends because they would not make him a bishop. The answer
from their point of view was conclusive. He had made a bitter and covert
attack, and he could not at once claim a merit from churchmen for
defending the church against the Whigs, and revile the Whigs for not
rewarding him. But inconsistency of this kind is characteristic of Swift.
He thought the Whigs scoundrels for not patronizing him, and not the less
scoundrels because their conduct was consistent with their own scoundrelly
principles. People who differ from me must be wicked, argued this
consistent egotist, and their refusal to reward me is only an additional
wickedness. The case appeared to him as though he had been a Nathan
sternly warning a David of his sins, and for that reason deprived of
honour. David could not have urged his sinful desires as an excuse for
ill-treatment of Nathan. And Swift was inclined to class indifference to
the welfare of the church as a sin even in an avowed Whig. Yet he had to
ordinary minds forfeited any right to make non-fulfilment a grievance,
when he ought to have regarded performance as a disgrace.