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mother, above mild Dorothea, above that tremendous Sir William in his square toes and periwig, - when Mr. Swift comes down from his master with rage in his heart, and has not a kind word even for little Hester Johnson?

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crying his own grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by fortune, and even hope.

I don't know any thing more melancholy than the letter to Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches Perhaps, for the Irish Secretary, piteously towards his cage again, and his Excellency's condescension was deprecates his master's anger. He even more cruel than his frowns. Sir asks for testimonials for orders. "The William would perpetually quote Latin particulars required of me are what and the ancient classics apropos of his relate to morals and learning; and gardens and his Dutch statues and the reasons for quitting your honor's plates-bandes, and talk about Epicurus family- that is, whether the last was and Diogenes Laertius, Julius Cæsar, occasioned by any ill action. They Semiramis, and the gardens of the are left entirely to your honor's merHesperides, Mæcenas, Strabo describ-cy, though in the first I think I caning Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. Apropos of beans, he would mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that this precept probably meant that wise men should abstain from public affairs. He is a placid Epicurean; he is a Pythagorean philosopher; he is a wise man- that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so? One can imagine the downcast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which they emit. Swift's eyes were as azure as the heavens; Pope says nobly (as every thing Pope said and thought of his friend was good and noble), His eyes are as azure as the heavens, and have a charming archness in them." And one person in that household, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park, saw heaven nowhere else.

But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with Swift. He was half killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins; and in a garden-seat which he devised for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured greedily the stock of books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness which punished and tormented him through life. He could not bear the place or the servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condolence, from which we have quoted a few lines of mock melancholy, he breaks out of the funereal procession with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away

not reproach myself for any thing
further than for infirmities. This is
all I dare at present beg from your
honor, under circumstances of life not
worth your regard: what is left me to
wish (next to the health and pros-
perity of your honor and family) is
that Heaven would one day allow me
the opportunity of leaving my ac-
knowledgments at your feet. I beg
my most humble duty and service be
presented to my ladies, your honor's
lady and sister." Can prostration
fall deeper? could
lower ? **

a slave bow

*"He continued in Sir William Tem

ple's house till the death of that great man."- Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, by the DEAN.

"It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to himself."— Preface to Temple's Works.

On all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. But the reader will better understand how acutely

he remembered the indignities he suffered in his household, from the subjoined extracts from the Journal to Stella:

"I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the dailed him on Sunday: I made him a very proper speech; told him I observed he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be glad to see he was in better; and one thing I warned him of- never to appear cold to me for I would not be treated like a schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my life already" (meaning. Sir William Temple), &c. &c. — Stella.

Journal to

"I am thinking what a veneration we

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His

This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is harsh, though not altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, and to deserving men too, in the midst of these intrigues and triumphs. His journals and a thousand anecdotes of him relate his kind acts and rough manners. hand was constantly stretched out to relieve an honest man he was cautious about his money, but ready. — If you were in a strait would you like such a benefactor? I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner.* He insulted

Twenty years afterwards Bishop | urer, after leaving the Queen, came Kennet, describing the same man, through the room, beckoning Dr. says, "Dr. Swift came into the coffee- Swift to follow him, both went off house and had a bow from everybody just before prayers.' There's a little but me. When I came to the ante- malice in the Bishop's "just before chamber [at Court] to wait before prayers." prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake, with my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a salary of 2001. per annum as member of the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going into the Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling the time of day, complained that it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. 'How can I help it,' says the Doctor, if the courtiers give me a watch that won't go right?" Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English, for which he would have them all subscribe: For,' says he, he shall not begin to print until I have a thousand guineas for him.'* Lord Treas-of any person for the first time, it was his

used to have for Sir William Temple because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment.". Ibid.

"The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of State." -Ibid.

"Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple." - Ibid.

"I thought I saw Jack Temple [nephew to Sir William] and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach; but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly shaken off that family." S. to S., Sept. 1710.

"Swift must be allowed," says Dr. Johnson, "for a time, to have dictated

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the political opinions of the English nation."

A conversation on the Dean's pam

phlets excited one of the Doctor's liveliest sallies. "One, in particular, praised his 'Conduct of the Allies.'-JOHNSON: 'Sir, his "Conduct of the Allies" is a performTom Davies might have written the Conance of very little ability. Why, sir, duct of the Allies!"""- BOSWELL's Life of Johnson.

* "Whenever he fell into the company

custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt question that bore the appearance of rudeness. If this were well taken, and answered with good humor, he afterwards made amends by his civilities. But if he saw any marks of resentment, from alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all further intercourse with the party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After supper, the Dean having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained into a glass, and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it. For,' said he, 'I always keep some poor parson to drink the foul wine for me.' Mr. Pilkington, entering into his humor, thanked him, and told him 'he did not know the difference, but was glad to get a glass at any rate.' Why, then,' said the Dean, you shan't, for I'll drink it myself. Why, take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate whom I asked to dine with me a few days ago; for upon my making the same speech to him, he

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It is told, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean of St. Patrick's performed his family devotions every imorning regularly, but with such secrecy that the guests in his house were never in the least aware of the ceremony. There was no need surely why a church dignitary should assemble his family privily in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of heathen persecution. But I think the world was right, and the bishops who advised Queen Anne, when they counselled her not to appoint the author of the "Tale of a Tub" to a bishopric, gave perfectly good advice. The man who wrote the arguments and illustrations in that wild book, could not but be aware what must be the sequel of the propositions which he laid down. The boon companion of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends of his life, and the recipients of his confidence and affection, must have heard many an argument, and joined in many a conversation over Pope's port, or St. John's burgundy, which would not bear to be repeated at other men's boards.

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the "Beggar's Opera" -Gay, the wildest of the wits about town- -it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders to invest in a cassock and bands-just as he advised him to husband his shillings, and put his thousand pounds out at in

said he did not understand such usage, and so walked off without his dinner. By the same token, I told the gentleman who recommended him to me that the fellow was a blockhead, and I had done with him.'"-SHERIDAN's Life of Swift.

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"I HAVE been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, that I am resolved to have no more, especially when I am likely to be overmatched; and as I have some reason to hope what is passed will be forgotten, I confess I did endeavor in my last to put the best color I could think of upon a very bad cause. My friends judge right of my idleness; but, in reality, it has hitherto proceeded from a hurry and lucky unforeseen accidents rather than confusion, arising from a thousand unmere sloth. I have but one troublesome affair now upon my hands, which by the help of the prime sergeant, I hope soon to true Irish' bishop. Sir James Ware has get rid of; and then you shall see me a made a very useful collection of the memorable actions of my predecessors. He tells me, they were born in such a town such a year; and if not translated, were of England or Ireland; were consecrated buried in the Cathedral church, either on the north or south side. Whence I conclude that a good bishop has nothing more die; which laudable example I propose to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and for the remainder of my life to follow; for to tell you the truth, I have for these four or five years past met with so much among mankind, that I can hardly think treachery, baseness, and ingratitude it incumbent on any man to endeavor to do good to so perverse a generation.

"I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health. Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take to recover your flesh; and I do not know, except in one suited to your circumstances, as from stage, where you can choose a road so Dublin hither. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve miles' end. From Kilkenny hither

is twenty long miles, bad road, and no inns at all: but I have an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not poor; his wife is allowed to be the best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a little cellar of his own, of which he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side; and he cleans, and pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with a coach; if you be tired, you shall stay

spirit.

I am not here, of course, to speak | nius, but the consequences to which of any man's religious views, except the genius had brought him a vast in so far as they influence his literary genius, a magnificent genius, a genius character, his life, his humor. The wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and most notorious sinners of all those strong, to seize, to know, to see, to fellow-mortals whom it is our busi- flash upon falsehood and scorch it into ness to discuss - Harry Fielding and perdition, to penetrate into the hidDick Steele, were especially loud, and den motives, and expose the black I believe really fervent, in their ex- thoughts of men, an awful, an evil pressions of belief; they belabored freethinkers, and stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of occasions, going out of their way to bawl their own creed, and persecute their neighbor's, and if they sinned and stumbled, as they constantly did with debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behavior, they got upon their knees, and cried "Peccavi" with a most sonorous orthodoxy. Yes; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of England men; they abhorred Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in general; and hiccoughed Church and State with fervor.

66

But Swift? His mind had had a different schooling, and possessed a very different logical power. He was not bred up in a tipsy guard-room, and did not learn to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could conduct an argument from beginning to end. He could see forward with a fatal clearness. In his old age, looking at the "Tale of a Tub," when he said, "Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book!" I think he was admiring not the ge

all night; if not, after dinner, we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine; and by going through fields and by-ways, which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and stony roads that lie between this place and that, which are certainly very bad. I hope you will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may have all things prepared for you. It may be, if you ask him, Cope will come; he will do nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, your most faithful and obedient servant,

"THEO. CASHELL."

Ah man! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, you whose friends were Pope and St. Johnwhat made you to swear to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a lifelong hypocrisy before the Heaven which you adored with such real wonder, humility, and reverence? For Swift was a reverent, was a pious spirit - for Swift could love and could pray. Through the storms and tempests of his furious mind, the stars of religion and love break out in the blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of his life.

It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.* The paper left behind him, called "Thoughts on Religion," is merely a set of excuses for not professing disbelief. He says of his sermons that he preached pamphlets: they have scarce a Christian characteristic; they might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost. There is little or no cant he is too great and too proud for that; and, in so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having put that cassock on, it poisoned him; he was strangled in his bands. He goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a

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devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian | wrath. Marriage is one of these; in

story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant! It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The kings can have no company. But this man suffered so; and deserved so to suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a pain.

a hundred passages in his writings he rages against it; rages against children; an object of constant satire, even more contemptible in his eyes than a lord's chaplain, is a poor curate with a large family. The idea of this luckless paternity never fails to bring down from him gibes and foul language. Could Dick Steele, or Goldsmith, or Fielding, in his most reckless moment of satire, have written any thing like the Dean's famous "modest proposal" for eating children? Not one of these but melts at the thoughts of childhood, fondles and caresses it. Mr. Dean The "sæva indignatio" of which has no such softness, and enters the he spoke as lacerating his heart, and nursery with the tread and gayety of which he dares to inscribe on his an ogre. "I have been assured," tombstone as if the wretch who lay says he in the "Modest Proposal," under that stone waiting God's judg-"by a very knowing American of my ment had a right to be angry acquaintance in London, that a young breaks out from him in a thousand healthy child, well nursed, is, at a pages of his writing, and tears and year old, a most delicious, nourishrends him. Against men in office, he ing, and wholesome food, whether having been overthrown; against stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and men in England, he having lost his I make no doubt it will equally serve chance of preferment there, the furi- in a ragoût." And taking up this ous exile never fails to rage and curse. pretty joke, as his way is, he argues Is it fair to call the famous "Dra- it with perfect gravity and logic. pier's Letters " patriotism? They He turns and twists this subject in a are master-pieces of dreadful humor score of different ways: he hashes it; and invective: they are reasoned and he serves it up cold; and he garlogically enough too, but the proposi-nishes it; and relishes it always. tion is as monstrous and fabulous as He describes the little animal as the Lilliputian island. It is not that " dropped from its dam," advising the grievance is so great, but there is that the mother should let it suck his enemy the assault is wonderful plentifully in the last month, so as to for its activity and terrible rage. It render it plump and fat for a good is Samson, with a bone in his hand, table! "A child," says his Reverrushing on his enemies and felling ence, "will make two dishes at an them: one admires not the cause so entertainment for friends; and when much as the strength, the anger, the the family dines alone, the fore or fury of the champion. As is the case hind quarter will make a reasonable with madmen, certain subjects pro- dish," and so on; and, the subject bevoke him, and awaken his fits of

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*"Dr. Swift had a natural severity of face, which even his smiles could never soften, or his utmost gayety render placid and serene; but when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine looks or features that carried in them more terror and austerity."-ORRERY.

*

"London, April 10th, 1713.

"Lady Masham's eldest boy is very ill: I doubt he will not live; and she stays at Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is so excessively fond, it makes me mad. She should never leave the Queen, but leave every thing, to stick to what is so much the interest of the pubIlic, as well as her own. "-Journal.

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