SWIFT.1

THE Common conception of the character of Swift has done him less justice than has been accorded to most of the Dii majores of English prose and poetry. Popular impressions can never include details; but so long as Addison, for instance, is thought of as a kind of personified mitis sapientia, Johnson as a unique compound of rather rough-handed and hard-hitting honesty, sense, and humour, Keats as an embodiment of an almost effeminate sensitiveness to beauty in all its forms, so long justice, even if she cannot be said to have reached her perfect work, attains as much of it as can be demanded of human weakness. But this can be hardly said in Swift's case. The

1 Swift's Letters occupy the last five volumes of "The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., with Notes and a Life of the Author, by Sir Walter Scott, Bart."; nineteen volumes, Constable, 1824. There is also an edition of his "Letters and Journals," selected and edited by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, and a new edition of his "Prose Works" is in course of publication, of which the first volume, with an introduction by Mr. Lecky, appeared in 1891. There is an interesting picture of Swift in Mrs. Woods' novel, "Esther Vanhomrigh."

picture which rises before the ordinary eye at the mention of his name is one of a man of almost unparalleled pride and insolence, hating and despising all around him, and uttering his hatred with an unchecked brutality, which knew no pleasure so great as that of trampling on the hopes or affections of others. No one will pretend that there is nothing of this in Swift; but it is strange and cruel, that nothing else in him should have strength enough, after the vicissitudes of a hundred and fifty years or more, to assert its right to a place in the popular judgment about him. With this feeling one is very glad, after a study of the letters has filled one with a sense of the great injustice done to Swift, to find on taking up some of his most recent critics that they are conscious of it, and anxious to repair it: Mr. Churton Collins, for instance, in his "Biographical Study," and Mr. Lane Poole, who says in the preface to his excellent "Selection," "I am confident that no one can read these letters without materially changing, if he ever held it, the traditional view of Swift as a morose cynic." Happily, it is, on the whole, the true and not the false conception of a great man which generally survives; and even in Swift's case, it is probably not

yet too late to hope that the larger and juster estimate which is formed by those who have made the effort to know what manner of man he really was may find its way out of that narrower circle, and establish itself as the final thought about him throughout the nation, among whose great names his has an undying place.

The cause of the injustice done him is not far to seek. His own cynical whim of parading his hates and hiding his loves laid a foundation, which the unexplained dislike of Johnson, the literary dictator of the last half of the eighteenth century, and the natural and inevitable dislike of the typical Whig Macaulay, who succeeded for a time in our own century to something like Johnson's authority, confirmed and completed. It is curious that Johnson, who carried his combative churchmanship so far as to declare (under provocation, of course) that Episcopalians in Scotland were "as Christians in Turkey," should not have had a friendlier feeling for the man who cared more for the Church perhaps than any one who has played a considerable part in English politics. between Laud's day and Mr. Gladstone's. Yet, if I were bound to suggest an explanation of the fact, I think it would be in

this very direction, in the quarter where they seem to meet so closely, that I should look for the cause of divergence. On such questions as the respect due to the clergy, and the disrespect due to Presbyterians, Swift and Johnson were, indeed, as one and the same man. But go a little deeper and it is not so. The whole cast of Johnson's mind and character was deeply impressed, perhaps more than that of any writer of equal eminence, with the profoundest sense at once of the truth and the mystery of the Christian religion. He was for ever dwelling on the tremendous questions which that religion raises, and to some of which it gives answers; answers which he reverently accepted. And it was not only the speculative side of religion which moved him so greatly. The idea of duty was as constantly present to him as that of faith. His diary, his private prayers, his conversations with Boswell and others remain to prove him a man possessed with a very exceptional craving after what can hardly be given a less name than personal holiness. There is nothing of this in Swift. He was perfectly loyal to the doctrines of his church, but there is not a sign of his having ever thought about them seriously in Johnson's way as the

greatest and most important of all materials for meditation. His piety was perfectly sincere, but, compared with that of Johnson, it gives the impression of a mood which returned on stated and official occasions, instead of an essential and principal part of the man, colouring every act and thought of his life. It is not easy to pass behind Swift's curtain of cynicism, but I should say that anything like Johnson's deep sense of sin, and personal dependence upon the help of God in daily life, was quite alien to his nature.

That fine but melancholy saying of Johnson, for instance, "the better a man is the more afraid is he of death, having a clearer view of infinite purity" belongs, whatever its truth or falsity, to a realm of thought far above any reach of such a man as Swift. The higher possibilities by which man transcends this world of sense, were known to Johnson only on the side of religion: they were not known to Swift at all. Dryden's "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet" was a true saying. And poetry and religion are alike in this, that they must both know how to see "the light that never was on sea or land." It was not in

Swift's nature to do that.

No one ever

had his eyes more intently and invariably