ay, that would have done very well; two shillings-tarts, a shilling: but you will drink a glass of wine with me, though you supped so much before your usual time only to spare my pocket?"-No, we had rather talk with you than drink with you.-"But if you had supped with me, as in all reason you ought to have done, you must then have drunk with me.-A bottle of wine, two shillings -two and two is four, and one is five: just two-and-six-pence a-piece. There, Pope, there's half a crown for you, and there's another for you, Sir; for I won't save any thing by you, I am determined 2." - This was all said and done with his usual seriousness on such occasions; and, in spite of every thing we could say to the contrary, he actually obliged us to take the money 3.'

In the intercourse of familiar life he indulged his disposition 130 to petulance and sarcasm, and thought himself injured if the licentiousness of his raillery, the freedom of his censures, or the petulance of his frolicks were resented or repressed 4. He predominated over his companions with very high ascendency, and probably would bear none over whom he could not predominate 5. To give him advice was, in the style of his friend Delany, 'to venture to speak to him.' This customary superiority soon grew

Hearne, describing a feast given in 1706 by the Lord Mayor to Marlborough, says:-' The claret cost 1s. 6d. per bottle.' Hearne's Remains, i. 121.

* Swift wrote to Pope in 1729:-'I give my Vicar a supper and his wife a shilling to play with me an hour at backgammon once a fortnight.' Works, xvii, 221. The shilling was, no doubt, the equivalent of the supper. See also ib. xviii. 230 for his daily allowance to a Prebendary whom he was going to visit.

3 Bolingbroke, in 1716, thus describes another of his peculiarities :'If I could have half an hour's conversation with you, you would stare, haul your wig, and bite paper more than ever you did in your life.' Ib. xvi. 256.

4 He wrote to Archbishop King from London in 1711:-'I can rally much safer here with a great minister of state or a duchess than I durst do there [in Ireland] with an attorney or his wife.... I say things every day at the best tables which I should be turned out of company for, if I were

in Ireland.' Ib. xv. 410.

5 'Swift kept every friend, and I believe every man living that he conversed with, in some degree of awe.' Delany, p. 18. He wrote to Pope in 1723:-'I choose my companions among those of least consequence, and most compliance.' Works, xvi. 411. Nine years later he wrote to Gay:-'I differ from you, for I would have society if I could get what I like, people of middle understanding and middle rank, very complying, and consequently such as I can govern.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 268.

This had not always been his habit. In 1713 Steele wrote to him of 'the agreeable qualities I once so passionately delighted in in you.' Works, xvi. 45. In 1714 Arbuthnot wrote to him:- 'That hearty, sincere friendship, that plain and open ingenuity in all your commerce, is what I am sure I never can find in another.' Ib. p. 192. In 1718 Addison wrote to him :-'I always honoured you for your good nature.' 16. p. 293.

too delicate for truth; and Swift, with all his penetration, allowed himself to be delighted with low flattery 1.

131 On all common occasions he habitually affects a style of arrogance, and dictates rather than persuades. This authoritative and magisterial language he expected to be received as his peculiar mode of jocularity; but he apparently flattered his own arrogance by an assumed imperiousness, in which he was ironical only to the resentful, and to the submissive sufficiently serious.

132 He told stories with great felicity, and delighted in doing what he knew himself to do well. He was therefore captivated by the respectful silence of a steady listener, and told the same tales too often 3.

133 He did not, however, claim the right of talking alone; for it was his rule, when he had spoken a minute, to give room by a pause for any other speaker. Of time, on all occasions, he was an exact computer, and knew the minutes required to every common operation 5.

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Orrery, p. 5. 'I verily think he might have said with Ramsay's Cyrus:-"I hated flattery, but was not insensible to delicate praise."" Delany, p. 15.

'Dr. Swift does not hate praise; he only dislikes it when 'tis extravagant or coarse.' POPE, Spence's Anec. p. 256. See ante, SWIFT, IOI.

2

Johnson at first wrote:-'assumes a style of superiority.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 63.

'Swift had a mixture of insolence in his conversation.' YOUNG, Spence's Anec. p. 334.

3 He told a story admirably well, and the most effectual way of paying court to him was to listen with attention, although he sometimes told them too often.' Delany, p. 218.

Among Swift's 'Resolutions when I come to be old, written in 1699' is the following: - Not to tell the same story over and over to the same people.' Works, ix. 215. In 1719 he wrote:-'I have gone the round of all my stories three or four times with the younger people, and begin them again.' Ib. xvi. 326.

* Deane Swift, p. 366. See also in Lines to a Lady (Works, xiv. 270)

the passage beginning:

'Conversation is but carving.' 'Swift would not interrupt any body while speaking.' YOUNG, Spence's Anec. p. 375.

Perhaps he wrote The Tatler, No. 264, where the writer proposes that at a club 'a watch, which divides the minute into twelve parts ..., shall lie upon the table, as an hour-glass is often placed near the pulpit to measure out the length of a discourse. I shall be willing to allow a man one round of my watch, that is a whole minute to speak in; but if he exceeds that time it shall be lawful for any of the company to look upon the watch, or to call him down to order.' If he wrote this paper he did not act up to the part where he says:- 'The life of man is too short for a story-teller.'

For Johnson's respect for the rights of others in conversation see John. Misc. i. 169, ii. 166.

5' His hours of walking and reading never varied. His motions were guided by his watch, which was held in his hand, or placed before him upon his table.' Orrery, p. 68. For Johnson's love of computation see John. Letters, ii. 321.

It may be justly supposed that there was in his conversation, 134 what appears so frequently in his letters, an affectation of familiarity with the Great, an ambition of momentary equality sought and enjoyed by the neglect of those ceremonies which custom has established as the barriers between one order of society and another. This transgression of regularity was by himself and his admirers termed greatness of soul. But a great mind disdains to hold any thing by courtesy, and therefore never usurps what a lawful claimant may take away. He that encroaches on another's dignity puts himself in his power: he is either repelled with helpless indignity, or endured by clemency and condescension 2.

Of Swift's general habits of thinking, if his letters can be sup-185 posed to afford any evidence, he was not a man to be either loved or envied 3. He seems to have wasted life in discontent, by the rage of neglected pride and the languishment of unsatisfied desire. He is querulous and fastidious, arrogant and malignant; he scarcely speaks of himself but with indignant lamentations, or of others but with insolent superiority when he is gay, and with angry contempt when he is gloomy. From the letters that pass between him and Pope it might be inferred that they, with Arbuthnot and Gay, had engrossed all the understanding and virtue of mankind, that their merits filled the world; or that there was no hope of more. They shew the

I

Ante, SWIFT, 52; post, GRAY, 3. 'My Lord Oxford desired Swift to introduce Dr. Parnell to him; which he refused upon this principle:-That a man of genius was a character superior to that of a Lord in high station.' Delany, p. 29. For Oxford's going 'to inquire for Parnell' see ante, PARNELL, 5.

Swift wrote in 1726:-'I have a cloud of witnesses, with my Lord Bolingbroke at their head, to prove I never practised or possessed such a talent as civility.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 85.

* Swift has been justly blamed for this fault by his two illustrious biographers, both of them men of spirit at least as independent as his, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott.' MACAULAY, Hist. of Eng. vii. 72. For Scott's criticism see Swift's Works, i.

3 Steele wrote of him in The Englishman, Feb. 15, 1714, No. 57:I forbear giving him what he deserves; for no other reason but that I know his sensibility of reproach is such as that he would be unable to bear life itself under half the ill language he has given me.'

* Post, POPE, 172, 284. Pope, writing to Swift in 1725, describes Arbuthnot as 'reviewing a world he has long despised every part of, but what is made up of a few men like yourself.' Works, xvii. 7.

Gay wrote to Swift in 1730:-'Ido not hate the world, but I laugh at it; for none but fools can be in earnest about such a trifle.' Ib. p. 277.

'In all Pope's letters, as well as in those of Swift, there runs a strain of pride, as if the world talked of nothing butthemselves.' GOLDSMITH, Works, iv. 85.

age involved in darkness, and shade the picture with sullen emulation.

136 When the Queen's death drove him into Ireland he might be allowed to regret for a time the interception of his views, the extinction of his hopes, and his ejection from gay scenes, important employment, and splendid friendships2; but when time had enabled reason to prevail over vexation the complaints, which at first were natural, became ridiculous because they were useless. But querulousness was now grown habitual, and he cried out when he probably had ceased to feel. His reiterated wailings persuaded Bolingbroke that he was really willing to quit his deanery for an English parish; and Bolingbroke procured an exchange, which was rejected 3, and Swift still retained the pleasure of complaining.

137 The greatest difficulty that occurs, in analysing his character, is to discover by what depravity of intellect he took delight in revolving ideas from which almost every other mind shrinks with disgust. The ideas of pleasure, even when criminal, may solicit the imagination; but what has disease, deformity, and filth upon which the thoughts can be allured to dwell? Delany is willing to think that Swift's mind was not much tainted with this gross corruption before his long visit to Pope. He does not consider

* Richter, writing of 'the letters of the friendship between a Swift, an Arbuthnot, and a Pope,' continues :'Have not many others felt themselves, like me, warmed and encouraged by the touching quiet love of these manly hearts, which, though cold, cutting, and sharp to the outer world, yet laboured and throbbed in their common inner world warmly and tenderly for one another?" Richter's Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces, translated by E. H. Noel, 1871, i. 53.

* Ante, SWIFT, 66 n.

3 Bolingbroke, in July, 1732, informed him that the Rector of Burghfield, Berkshire, a few miles from his Lordship's seat at Buckleberry, a living worth £400 a year, 'over and above a curate paid,' with an 'extremely good parsonage house,' was willing to change preferments, if it could be effected. Works, xviii. 15. See also Warton's Pope, vi. 15. 'The living,' Swift answered, 'is just

too short by £300 a year.' Works, xviii. 28. A year later he wrote to Pope:-'Neither can I have conveniences in the country for three horses and two servants, and many others, which I have here at hand. I am one of the governors of all the hackney coaches, carts and carriages round this town, who dare not insult me, like your rascally waggoners or coachmen, but give me the way; nor is there one lord or squire for a hundred of yours to turn me out of the road, or run over me with their coaches and six. Then I walk the streets in peace, without being justled, nor even without a thousand blessings from my friends the vulgar.' Ib. p. 123.

The defilement became much more conspicuous upon his return from his first long visit to Mr. Pope. Before this era I had found his ideas and his style remarkably delicate and pure. I remember his falling into a how he degrades his hero by making him at fifty-nine the pupil of turpitude, and liable to the malignant influence of an ascendant mind. But the truth is that Gulliver had described his Yahoos before the visit, and he that had formed those images had nothing filthy to learn 3.

I have here given the character of Swift as he exhibits himself 138 to my perception; but now let another be heard who knew him better. Dr. Delany, after long acquaintance, describes him to Lord Orrery in these terms:

'My Lord, when you consider Swift's singular, peculiar, and most variegated vein of wit 3, always rightly intended (although not always so rightly directed), delightful in many instances, and salutary, even where it is most offensive; when you consider his strict truth, his fortitude in resisting oppression and arbitrary power; his fidelity in friendship, his sincere love and zeal for religion, his uprightness in making right resolutions, and his steadiness in adhering to them; his care of his church, its choir,

furious resentment with Mrs. Johnston [sic] for a very small failure of delicacy. [In his Journal to Stella there were at times very large failures.] It must be owned that he set out very ill, and that his Salamander is the vilest production of the most defiled muse. But I think it will appear from his works that, as if he had taken a surfeit of pollution, he abstained from it for many years together. Unhappily, he relapsed about 1723, and from that time became I dare not say what.' Delany, p. 75. Delany is not consistent. It was in 1726 that Swift visited Pope. Ante, SWIFT, 83. For Pope's corruption see post, POPE, 360.

The Salamander was written in 1705. Works, xiv. 63. Swift wrote to Stella in 1711 :-'You remember The Salamander; it is printed in the Miscellany. Ib. ii. 383. He wrote to her the same year of a dinner at St. John's: 'I give no man liberty to swear or talk b-dy, and I found some of them were in constraint, so I left them to themselves.' Ib. p. 260. In his Hints towards an Essay on Conversation he speaks of 'those odious topics of immodesty and indecencies.' Ib. ix. 177.

The petition in his Evening Prayer [ante, SWIFT, 121 n. 1], 'Cleanse, we beseech Thee, the thoughts of our

hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit' (ib. ix. 294), was never answered.

* Miss Byron, in Sir Charles Grandison, 1754, ii. 83, says:'Swift, for often painting a dunghill, and for his abominable Yahoo story, was complimented with a knowledge of human nature; but I hope that the character of human nature, the character of creatures made in the image of the Deity, is not to be taken from the overflowings of such dirty imaginations.'