In his works he has given very different specimens both of 111 sentiment and expression. His Tale of a Tub has little resemblance to his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction such as he afterwards never possessed or never exerted. It is of a mode so distinct and peculiar that it must be considered by itself; what is true of that is not true of any thing else which he has written '. In his other works is found an equable tenour of easy language, 112 which rather trickles than flows. His delight was in simplicity. That he has in his works no metaphor, as has been said 2, is not true; but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice3. He studied purity; and though perhaps 1 Ante, SWIFT, 26. Congreve wrote to a friend in Ireland in 1704: -'I am of your mind as to The Tale of a Tub. I am not alone in the opinion, as you are there; but I am pretty near it, having but very few on my side; but those few are worth a million. However I have never spoke my sentiments, not caring to contradict a multitude. ... I confess I was diverted with several passages, but I should not care to read it again.' G.M.Berkeley's Literary Relics, p.341. Voltaire wrote of it in 1759:'Pascal n'amuse qu'aux dépens des jésuites; Swift divertit et instruit aux dépens du genre humain.' Euvres, 1. 211. In 1767 he wrote:-'Swift était bien moins savant que Rabelais, mais son esprit est plus fin et plus délié; c'est le Rabelais de la bonne compagnie.' Ib. xlii. 195. See also ib. xxiv. 133, xlii. 194, 430, and Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi, iii. 17. 'Swift was Anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco-the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place.' COLERIDGE, Table Talk, 1884, p. 100. 2 [Biog. Brit. p. 3879; but Melmoth in The Fitzosborne Letters, 1748, who is quoted as the authority, states (ii. 56) that Swift, 'who does not seem in general very fond of the figurative manner, is not always free from censure in his management of the metaphysical language." He gives an instance from A discourse of the 3 Ante, DRYDEN, 223 n. 'Johnson,' writes Warton, 'said to me, speaking of the simplicity of Swift's style:-"The Rogue never hazards a figure." Pope's Works, 1822, ix. 76. Within twenty-three lines in An Argument against Abolishing Christianity he hazards a good many. He writes :-'There is one darling inclination of mankind which usually affects to be a retainer to religion, though she be neither its parent, its godmother, or its friend. . . . Does the gospel anywhere prescribe a starched, squeezed countenance?... Yet if Christianity did not lend its name to stand in the gap... there is a portion of enthusiasm assigned to every nation which, if it has not proper objects to work on, will burst out, and set all in a flame. If the quiet of a state can be bought by only flinging men a few ceremonies to devour, it is a purchase no wise man would refuse.' Works, viii. 72. In The Tale of a Tub, after writing of 'the satirical itch,' he adds that— 'the world is insensible to the lashes 7 all his structures are not exact, yet it is not often that solecisms can be found and whoever depends on his authority may generally conclude himself safe. His sentences are never too much dilated or contracted; and it will not be easy to find any embarrassment in the complication of his clauses, any inconsequence in his connections, or abruptness in his transitions. 113 His style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilised by nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by ambitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought learning. He pays no court to the passions; he excites neither surprise nor admiration; he always understands himself, and his reader always understands him: the peruser of Swift wants little previous knowledge; it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with common words and common things; he is neither required to mount elevations nor to explore profundities; his passage is always on a level, along solid ground, without asperities, without obstruction. 114 115 This easy and safe conveyance of meaning it was Swift's desire to attain, and for having attained he deserves praise, though perhaps not the highest praise. For purposes merely didactick, when something is to be told that was not known before, it is the best mode, but against that inattention by which known truths are suffered to lie neglected it makes no provision; it instructs, but does not persuade 3. 4 By his political education he was associated with the Whigs, of it.' Works, x. 57. In writing about 1 Post, SWIFT, 139. For Swift's 'good neat style' see Boswell's Johnson, ii. 191. 'It has,' said Hume, 'no harmony, no eloquence, no ornament, and not much correctness, whatever the English may imagine.' Burton's Hume, ii. 413. Hume, perhaps, was no judge. 'His style,' said Johnson, 'is not English; the structure of his sentences is French.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 439. 'Swift is the best writer that ever was in his peculiar style.' MACKINTOSH, Life, ii. 476. 'Defoe, and perhaps also Swift, produced Franklin. Paine was the follower of Franklin and the master of Cobbett.' Ib. ii. 92. 3 In his sermon On Sleeping in Church he says:-'Nor are preachers justly blamed for neglecting human oratory to move the passions, which is not the business of a Christian orator, whose office it is only to work upon faith and reason.' Works, viii. 22. In A Letter to a Young Clergyman he writes:- Beware of letting the pathetic part [of a sermon] swallow up the rational.' Ib. p. 206. He says of the Brobdingnags:-'Their style is clear, masculine and smooth, but not florid; for they avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various expressions.' Ib. xi. 167. Under Temple. Ante, SWIFT, 8. but he deserted them when they deserted their principles, yet without running into the contrary extreme'; he continued throughout his life to retain the disposition which he assigns to the 'Church-of-England Man,' of thinking commonly with the Whigs of the State, and with the Tories of the Church 2. He was a churchman rationally zealous; he desired the pros- 116 perity and maintained the honour of the Clergy; of the Dissenters he did not wish to infringe the toleration, but he opposed their encroachments 3. To his duty as Dean he was very attentive. He managed 117 the revenues of his church with exact œconomy; and it is said by Delany that more money was, under his direction, laid out in repairs than had ever been in the same time since its first erection. Of his choir he was eminently careful; and, though he neither loved nor understood musick, took care that all the singers were well qualified, admitting none without the testimony of skilful judges 5. In his church he restored the practice of weekly communion, 118 and distributed the sacramental elements in the most solemn and devout manner with his own hand. He came to church Ante, SWIFT, 36, 39. In his Sentiments of a Church of England Man (ante, SWIFT, 31) he writes:I should think that, in order to preserve the constitution entire in Church and State, whoever has a true value for both would be sure to avoid the extremes of Whig, for the sake of the former, and the extremes of Tory, on account of the latter.' Works, viii. 270. 3 Ante, SWIFT, 32 n. In 1736 he wrote: All wise Christian governments always had some established religion, leaving at best a toleration to others.' Works, xviii. 406. The same year he wrote to Alderman Barber:- Long may you live a bridle to the insolence of dissenters, who, with their pupils the atheists, are now wholly employed in ruining the Church.' Ib. xix. 22. Delany, pp. 201, 207. 5 Delany, who reports him as saying: 'I know nothing of music; I would not give a farthing for all the music in the universe,' testifies to his care for the choir. Ib. p. 192. 6 lb. p. 46. He was not a High Churchman in the modern sense of the term. On March 5, 1711-12, he wrote to Stella:-'I wish you a merry Lent. I hate Lent; I hate different diets, ... and sour devout faces of people who only put on religion for seven weeks.' Works, ii. 496. On Saturday, April 4, 1713, he wrote:This Passion-week people are so demure, especially this last day, that I told Dilly I would dine with him, and so I did, faith; and had a small shoulder of mutton of my own bespeaking.' Ib. iii. 141. See also ante, ADDISON, 122. He thus translates a French epigram (Works, xiv. 358):— Who can believe with common sense A bacon slice gives God offence; 119 every morning, preached commonly in his turn, and attended the evening anthem, that it might not be negligently performed'. He read the service 'rather with a strong nervous voice than in a graceful manner; his voice was sharp and high-toned, rather than harmonious 2.' 120 He entered upon the clerical state with hope to excel in preaching, but complained that, from the time of his political controversies,' he could only preach pamphlets 3. This censure of himself, if judgement be made from those sermons which have been published, was unreasonably severe. 121 The suspicions of his irreligion proceeded in a great measure from his dread of hypocrisy: instead of wishing to seem better, he delighted in seeming worse than he was. He went in London to early prayers lest he should be seen at church 5; he read 'St. Patrick's Church is subject to the inundation of a little dirty river, and is almost perpetually damp the whole winter. His physicians pressed him to forbear attending; nevertheless he continued his old practice until he found by repeated colds that he could bear it no longer.' Deane Swift, p. 370. In Sept. 1735 he wrote:-I very seldom go to church for fear of being seized with a fit of giddiness in the midst of the service." Works, xviii. 328. 2 Delany, p. 42; Orrery, p. 5. Swift wrote to St. John :-'I will read verses in your presence until you snatch them out of my hands.' Works, xv. 426. He wrote to Stella :-'Mr. Harley made me read a paper of verses of Prior's. I read them plain, without any fine manner, and Prior swore I should never read any of his again... I said I was famous for reading verses the worst in the world.' 16. ii. 127. For bad readers among the poets see ante, CONGREVE, 7 n. 36 He could, he said, never rise higher than preaching pamphlets.' Delany, p. 42. 'His sermon On Doing Good (Works, viii. 41) contains perhaps the best motives to patriotism that were ever delivered within so small a compass.' BURKE, [Annual Register, 1765, pt. 2, p. 304]. • Voltaire says of Rabelais and Swift:Tous deux lancèrent plus de sarcasmes contre le christianisme que Molière n'en a prodigué contre la médecine.' Euvres, xlii. 193. See also ib. xxiv. 132. 'Of course any man is welcome to believe as he likes for me except a parson; and I can't help looking upon Swift and Sterne as a couple of traitors and renegades... with a scornful pity for them, in spite of all their genius and greatness.' THACKERAY, Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 34,619, f. 233. Bishop Berkeley's grandson wrote: 'I have from my cradle been taught to consider Swift as a man in whom were united . . . inviolable integrity and a belief in Revelation that was his rule of conduct here, and his source of hope hereafter.' G. M. Berkeley's Literary Relics, Pref. p. liii. Thackeray's condemnation seems to me unjust. Swift was much such a Christian as South, whose orthodoxy is generally admitted. He believed, that is to say, with his head, and not with his heart. Christianity was summed up for both of them, not in the Sermon on the Mount, but in the Articles of the Church. Those Articles they accepted without difficulty. 5 Delany, p. 44. On Christmas prayers to his servants every morning with such dexterous secrecy that Dr. Delany was six months in his house before he knew it. He was not only careful to hide the good which he did, but willingly incurred the suspicion of evil which he did not. He forgot what himself had formerly asserted, that hypocrisy is less mischievous than open impiety. Dr. Delany, with all his zeal for his honour, has justly condemned this part of his character 3. The person of Swift had not many recommendations. He 122 had a kind of muddy complexion, which, though he washed himself with oriental scrupulosity, did not look clear*. He had a countenance sour and severe 5, which he seldom softened by Day, 1710, he wrote:-'I was at church to-day by eight and received the sacrament.... Went to Court at two; but the Queen stayed so long at sacrament that I came back.' Works, ii. 121. 'He read them at a fixed hour every night in his bed-chamber. To which the servants silently resorted at the time appointed; without any notice except the striking of the clock.' Delany, p. 44. 'Whilst the power of speech remained he continued constant in his private devotions; as his memory failed they were gradually shortened, till at last he could only repeat the Lord's Prayer. That, however, he continued to do till the power of utterance for ever ceased. This in formation I had from the servant who attended him.' G. M. Berkeley's Lit. Relics, Preface, p. xxvii. For An Evening Prayer, in MS., by Swift see Works, ix. 294. Hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice; it wears the livery of religion; it acknowledges her authority, and is cautious of giving scandal. ... I believe it is often with religion as it is with love, which, by much dissembling, at last grows real.' Works, viii. 97. 'Bolingbroke summed up Swift's character in this respect by saying that he was a hypocrite reversed.' Works, 1803, i. 66. Don Quixote says:-'Even at the worst, the hypocrite who feigns him self good does much less injury than the undisguised and bold-faced sinner.' Jervas's Don Quixote, 1820, iii. 257. Lamb quotes Fuller's saying about a Bishop, that he was 'a good hypocrite, and far more humble than he appeared.' Lamb's Poems, &c., 1888, p. 264. 3 Delany, p. 45. See also ib. pp. 204, 287. 'He was one of the cleanliest men that ever lived... to even feminine nicety. . . . As he walked much, he rarely dressed himself without a bason of water by his side, in which he dipt a towel, and cleansed his feet with the utmost exactness.' Ib. p. 173. He wrote to Miss Waryng (Varina), whom he had wished to marry, that, provided she had certain qualities, he would not regard 'whether your person be beautiful, or your fortune large. Cleanliness in the first and competency in the other is all I look for.' Works, xv. 265. For scrupulosity see ante, ADDI- 5 [That picture of Dr. Swift (by Jervas) is very like him; though his face has a look of dulness in it, he has very particular eyes; they are quite azure as the heavens, and there is a very uncommon archness in them.' POPE, 1735, Spence's Anec. ed. Malone, p. 135. Jervas's portrait of Swift in his prime (now in the Bodleian), painted in 1708 but retouched two years later, hardly bears out Johnson's description.] |