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years afterwards that he became a professed author, and then one year (1708) produced The Sentiments of a Church-ofEngland Man'; the ridicule of Astrology, under the name of Bickerstaff; the Argument against abolishing Christianity3; and the defence of the Sacramental Test *.

The Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man is written with great coolness, moderation, ease, and perspicuity. The Argument against abolishing Christianity is a very happy and judicious irony. One passage in it deserves to be selected.

'If Christianity were once abolished, how could the freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning be able to find another subject so calculated, in all points, whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine, or distinguish themselves, upon any other subject? We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topick we have left. Who would ever have suspected Asgills for a wit, or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials? What other subject, through all art or nature, could have produced Tindal' for a profound author, or furnished him with readers? It is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns and distinguishes the writer. For had an hundred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and oblivion.'

' Works, viii. 239; Craik, p. 168. 2 Predictions for the Year 1708. By Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., Works, viii. 437; Craik, p. 170. For astrology see ante, BUTLER, 47; DRYDEN, 191.

3 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, Works, viii. 61; Craik, p. 162.

Works, viii. 339; Craik, p. 167. Swift wrote of it to Archbishop King:- Some parts of it are very well, and others puerile.' Works, xv. 307.

5 John Asgill is placed among the

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The reasonableness of a Test is not hard to be proved; but 32 perhaps it must be allowed that the proper test has not been chosen '.

The attention paid to the papers published under the name of 33 Bickerstaff induced Steele, when he projected The Tatler, to assume an appellation which had already gained possession of the reader's notice 2.

In the year following he wrote A Project for the Advancement 34 of Religion3, addressed to Lady Berkeley, by whose kindness it is not unlikely that he was advanced to his benefices. To this project, which is formed with great purity of intention, and displayed with spriteliness and elegance, it can only be objected that, like many projects, it is, if not generally impracticable, yet evidently hopeless, as it supposes more zeal, concord, and perseverance than a view of mankind gives reason for expecting 5.

'Lord Eldon said much the same in 1828, when in vain he opposed the abolition of the test. 'He had never desired to retain the sacramental test, if any other equivalent security could be substituted.' Twiss's Eldon, 1846, ii. 206.

By this Act all officers, civil and military, had to receive the sacrament according to the Church of England within six months after their admission. Blackstone's Commentaries, ed. 1775, iv. 58.

In a debate in the House of Commons in 1736, it was stated that on account of 'the terrible indecencies some have been guilty of upon such occasions, it is the common practice for the curate to desire the legal communicants to divide themselves from those who come for the sake of devotion.' Parl. Hist. ix. 1050.

Swift wrote on Nov. 25, 1711:-'I was early with the Secretary to-day, but he was gone to his devotions, and to receive the sacrament; several rakes did the same; it was not for piety, but employments; according to act of parliament.' Works, ii. 412. The Secretary was St. John (Bolingbroke), Johnson's scoundrel, who charged a blunderbuss against religion and morality.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 268. Hume and Gibbon must have taken the test for the offices they held. Swift opposed its abolition

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in Ireland. Works, viii. 345. For Dryden's exclusion by it see ante, DRYDEN, 136.

2 In the Preface to vol. iv Steele writes:-'I have in the Dedication of the first volume made my acknowledgments to Dr. Swift, whose pleasant writings, in the name of Bickerstaff, created an inclination in the town towards anything that could appear in the same disguise.' For Swift's Bickerstaff papers see Works, viii. 437-end. Pope addresses him in The Dunciad, i. 19:—

'O Thou! whatever title please thine car,

Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!'

3 Works, viii. 78. Swift begins his Project with a mystification, for he describes it as 'By a Person of Quality.'

Ante, SWIFT, 22. In his Dedication he says that she has been 'grafted into a family, which the unmeasurable profusion of ancestors for many generations had too much eclipsed.' Works, viii. 80.

5 The great Reformer was to be the Queen. She should begin with her "domestics of the middle and lower sort,' and 'oblige them to a constant weekly attendance, at least, on the service of the Church ... and to the appearance, at least, of temperance and chastity.' She should next re

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He wrote likewise this year A Vindication of Bickerstaff1, and an explanation of an Ancient Prophecy, part written after the facts, and the rest never completed, but well planned to excite

amazement.

Soon after began the busy and important part of Swift's life. He was employed (1710) by the primate of Ireland 3 to solicit the Queen for a remission of the First Fruits and Twentieth parts to the Irish Clergy. With this purpose he had recourse to Mr. Harley, to whom he was mentioned as a man neglected and oppressed by the last ministry, because he had refused to cooperate with some of their schemes. What he had refused has

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form 'those of higher rank. Morality and religion would soon become fashionable Court virtues.' Works, viii. p. 85. Hypocrisy would, no doubt, be increased, but 'hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice.' lb. p. 97. He attacks the London magistrates who often enrich themselves by encouraging the grossest immoralities; to whom all the bawds of the ward pay contribution for shelter and protection from the laws.' lb. p. 94. All taverns should be cleared at midnight; 'no woman should be suffered to enter them upon any pretence whatsoever,' and the landlords should be 'obliged, upon the severest penalties,' to limit the quantity of drink. 76. p. 100. See also post, SWIFT, 138 n.

Steele praised this pamphlet in The Tatler for April 21, 1709. He quoted this Tatler in his Apology occasioned by his Expulsion from the House of Commons. Parl. Hist. vi. 1300.

John Wesley, who was to begin his reformation, not with the Sovereign but the people, was a boy of six when Swift published his Project.

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1 Works, viii. 472.

A Famous Prediction of Merlin, the British Wizard, ib. p. 480. One of the prophecies never completed was that 'Norway's Pryd again shall marry.' 'Norway's Pryd' was Queen Anne, the widow of Prince George of Denmark.

3 Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh. Swift wrote of him :-'It has been affirmed that originally he

was not altogether devoid of wit, till it was extruded from his head to make room for other men's thoughts.' Works, ix. 269.

The Pope had claimed the firstfruits of all benefices, 'the first year's whole profits'-and the tenths-'the tenth part of the annual profit.' On the Reformation this revenue was annexed to the Crown. 'In Charles II's time it went chiefly among his women and his natural children." As the valuation had not been raised, the amount paid 'was in most places not above the fifth part of the true value.' In England the whole amounted to about £16,000 a year. By statute 2 Anne, c. II, it was applied to the augmentation of poor livings, under the title of Queen Anne's Bounty. Blackstone, 1775, i. 284; Burnet's Hist. iv. 32.

A like indulgence was sought for the Irish Church. 'The twentieth parts,' writes Swift, 'are twelve pence in the pound, paid annually out of all benefices, as they were valued at the Reformation.' The total yearly revenue paid to the Crown amounted to £3,000. Works, xv. 362. In his Change in the Queen's Ministry he says that it was 'the first fruits and tenths that he solicited.' Ib. iii. 184. In July, 1711, the twentieth parts were remitted, and the first-fruits granted for buying impropriations

church land in the hands of a layman'). Ib. xv. 437.

5 'I got myself represented as one extremely ill-used by the last ministry after some obligations, because I re

never been told; what he had suffered was, I suppose, the exclusion from a bishoprick by the remonstrances of Sharpe, whom he describes as the harmless tool of others' hate,' and whom he represents as afterwards 'suing for pardon '.'

Harley's designs and situation were such as made him glad of 37 an auxiliary so well qualified for his service; he therefore soon admitted him to familiarity, whether ever to confidence some have made a doubt 3; but it would have been difficult to excite his zeal without persuading him that he was trusted, and not very easy to delude him by false persuasions.

He was certainly admitted to those meetings in which the first 38 hints and original plan of action are supposed to have been formed, and was one of the sixteen Ministers, or agents of the Ministry, who met weekly at each other's houses, and were united by the name of Brother*.

Being not immediately considered as an obdurate Tory 5, he 39 conversed indiscriminately with all the wits, and was yet the friend of Steele, who in The Tatler, which began in 1710, confesses the advantages of his conversation', and mentions something contributed by him to his paper. But he was now im

fused to go certain lengths they would have me. This happened to be in some sort Mr. Harley's own case.' Works, xv. 364. See also ib. ii. 29. For his gross flattery of Halifax in 1709 with a view to preferment see his two letters to him in Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 201. For Harley, Earl of Oxford, see ante, PRIOR, 21, 35; CONGREVE, 28.

Ante, SWIFT, 26 n.

2 He told me that their great difficulty lay in the want of some good pen to keep up the spirit raised in the people.' Works, iii. 185.

3 Orrery, p. 44. Swift wrote on Nov. 11, 1710:- Mr. St. John told me that Mr. Harley complained he could keep nothing from me, I had the way so much of getting into him. I knew that was a refinement.' Works, ii. 77. (Refinement, in this sense, is defined by Johnson as 'artificial practice.') Lewis (ante, Gay, 13) wrote to Swift on Aug. 6, 1713 of Harley :-' His mind has been communicated more freely to you than any other.' 16. xvi. 58.

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* Ante, PRIOR, 45.

5 In 1716 Swift wrote that he 'was always a Whig in politics.' Works, xvi. 267. He always defended the Revolution. In 1724 he wrote:-'All government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.' Ib. vi. 422. See also ib. iii. 255, vii. 477, viii. 266, xvi. 345; Letters to Chetwode, p. 88; post, SWIFT, 115.

It began on April 12, 1709.

7A certain uncommon way of thinking, and a turn in conversation peculiar to that agreeable gentleman, rendered his company very advantageous to one whose imagination was to be continually employed upon obvious and common subjects, though at the same time obliged to treat of them in a new and unbeaten method.' The Tatler, Preface to vol. iv. Dec. 14, 1710, Swift wrote:-' The ministry hate to think that I should help Steele; ... and I frankly told them I would do it no more.' Works, ii. 107.

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On

Description of the Morning in

merging into political controversy; for the same year produced The Examiner, of which Swift wrote thirty-three papers1. In argument he may be allowed to have the advantage; for where a wide system of conduct and the whole of a publick character is laid open to enquiry, the accuser having the choice of facts must be very unskilful if he does not prevail; but with regard to wit, I am afraid none of Swift's papers will be found equal to those by which Addison opposed him 2.

40 Early in the next year he published A Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue, in a Letter to the Earl of Oxford3, written without much knowledge of the general nature of language, and without any accurate enquiry into the history of other tongues. The certainty and stability which, contrary to all experience, he thinks attainable, he proposes to secure by instituting an academy; the decrees of which every man would have been willing, and many would have been proud to disobey, and which, being renewed by successive elections, would in a short time have differed from itself.

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He wrote the same year A Letter to the October Clubs, a number of Tory gentlemen sent from the country to Parliament, who formed themselves into a club, to the number of about a hundred,

Town, No. 9, and Description of a
City Shower, No. 238.

Ante, SMITH, 2 n.; KING, 13;
PRIOR, 22. Swift wrote all the num-
bers from 13 to 45. Works, iii. 252.
On July 17, 1711, he wrote to Stella:-
'No, I don't like anything in The
Examiner after the 45th, except the
first part of the 46th; all the rest is
trash.' Ib. ii. 303. See also ib. p. 393.

"The last Whig Examiner was on Oct. 12, 1710. Addison's Works, iv. 390. Swift's first Examiner appeared on Nov. 2.

3 Ante, ROSCOMMON, 14; PRIOR, 15; Works, ix. 133. It was published, not the next year, but in 1712. In Johnson's Works, 1825, viii. 202, the mistake is corrected by a silent transposition of paragraphs. Swift wrote on May 10, 1712:-'My letter is now printing, and I suffer my name to be put at the end of it, which I never did before in my life.' Works, iii. 26. See also ib. ii. 282, 486, xv. 435, 492, xvi. 5, and post, SWIFT, 75 n. 2.

'Les membres de ce corps auraient

eu un grand avantage sur les premiers qui composèrent l'Académie française. Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Addison etc. avaient fixé la langue anglaise par leurs écrits; au lieu que Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, Cotin, nos premiers académiciens, étaient l'opprobre de notre nation.' VOLTAIRE, Œuvres, xxiv. 145. Dryden died twelve years before Swift published his Proposal. See also John. Misc. i. 436.

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'Nay, it were no difficult contrivance, if the public had any regard to it, to make the English tongue immutable, unless hereafter some foreign nation shall invade and overrun us.' BENTLEY, Works, ed. 1836, ii. 13.

5 Works, iv. 79. It was published in January 1711-12. On Jan. 28 Swift wrote:-'It does not sell. ... Like a true author I grow fond of it because it does not sell.' On Feb. I he added:-'It begins now to sell.' Ib. ii. 468, 471.

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