panion of his life, his secretly wedded bride, ever exercised a mild influence over his affections "And rose, where'er he turned his eye, The morning star of memory." But his acquaintanceship with Vanessa (Mrs. Vanhomrigg) was purely of that description supposed to have been introduced by Plato. For my part, having embraced celibacy, I am perhaps little qualified for the discussion of these delicate matters; but I candidly confess, that never did Goldsmith so win on my good opinion, by his superior knowledge of those recondite touches that ennoble the favourite character of a respectable divine, as when he attributes severe and uncompromising tenets of monogamy to Dr. Primrose, vicar of Wakefield; that being the next best state to the one which I have adopted myself, in accordance with the Platonic philosophy of Virgil, and the example of Paul: "Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat ; Eneid. VI. The covetousness of this world had no place in the breast of Swift, and never, consequently, was his mind liable to be shaken from its basis by the inroads of that overwhelming vice, avarice. Broad lands and manorial possessions he never sighed for; and, as Providence had granted him a competency, he could well adopt the resignation of the poet, and exclaim, "Nil amplius oro." Nothing amused him more than the attempt of his friend Doctor Delany to excite his jealousy by the ostentatious display of his celebrated villa, which, as soon as purchased, he invited the Dean to come and admire. We have the humorous lines of descriptive poetry which were composed by Swift on the occasion, and were well calculated to destroy the doctor's vanity. The estate our satirist represents as liable to suffer "an eclipse of the sun" whenever 66 a crow" or other small opaque body should pass between it and that luminary. plantations "might possibly supply a toothpick;" 1 The Such were the sentiments of utter derision with which he contemplated the territorial aggrandisement so dear to the votaries of Mammon; nor is it foreign from this topic to remark, that the contrary extreme of hopeless poverty not having ever fallen to his lot, one main cause of insanity in high minds was removed. Tasso went mad through sheer distress and its concomitant shame; the fictions of his romantic' love for a princess of the court of Ferrara are all fudge: he had at one time neither fire nor a decent coat to his back; and he tells us that, having no lamp in his garret, he resorted to his cat to lend him the glare of her eyes: "Non avendo candele per iscrivere i suoi versi!" Intemperance and debauchery never interfered with the quiet tenour of the Dean's domestic habits; and hence the medical and constitutional causes of derangement flowing from these sources must be considered as null in this case. I have attentively perused the best record extant of his private life— his own "Journal to Stella," detailing his sojourn in London; and I find his diet to have been such as I could have wished. "London, Oct. 1711. Mrs. Vanhomrigg has changed her lodgings-I dined with her to-day. I am growing a mighty lover of herrings; but they are much smaller here than with you. In the afternoon I visited an old major-general, and ate six oysters."-Letter 32. p. 384, in Scott's edition of Swift. "I was invited to-day to dine with Mrs. Vanhomrigg, with some company who did not come; but I ate nothing but herrings."—Same letter, p. 388. "Oct. 23, 1711. I was forced to be at the secretary's office till four, and lost my dinner. So I went to Mrs. Van's, and made them get me three herrings, which I am very fond of. And they are a light victuals" (sic in orig.)—Letter 33. p. 400. He further shews the lively interest he always evinced for fish diet by the following passage, which occurs in a publication of his printed in Dublin, 1732, and entitled "An Examination of certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enormities in this City of Dublin. By Dr. Jonathan Swift, D.D." "The affirmation solemnly made in the cry of Herrings! is directly against all truth, viz. 'Herrings alive, ho!' The very proverb will convince us of this; for what is more frequent in ordinary speech than to say of a neighbour for whom the bell tolls, He is dead as a herring! And pray, how is it possible that a herring, which, as philosophers observe, cannot live longer than one minute three seconds and a half out of water, should bear a voyage in open boats from Howth to Dublin, be tossed into twenty hands, and preserve its life in sieves for several hours?" The sense of loneliness consequent on the loss of friends, and the withdrawal of those whose companionship made life pleasant, is not unfrequently the cause of melancholy monomania; but it could not have affected Swift, whose residence in Dublin had estranged him long previously from those who at that period died away. Gay, his bosom friend, had died in December 1732; Bolingbroke had retired to France in 1734; Pope was become a hypochondriac from bodily infirmities; Dr. Arbuthnot was extinct; and he, the admirer and the admired of Swift, John of Blenheim, the illustrious Marlborough, had preceded him in a madhouse! "Down Marlborough's cheeks the tears of dotage flow." A lunatic asylum was the last refuge of the warrior, -if, indeed, he and his fellows of the conquering fraternity were not candidates for it all along intrinsically and professionally, "From Macedonia's madman to the Swede." Thus, although the Dean might have truly felt like one who treads alone some deserted banquet-hall (according to the beautiful simile of the Melodist), still we cannot, with the slightest semblance of probability, trace the outbreak of his madness to any sympathies of severed friendship. If Swift ever nourished a predominant affectionif he was ever really under the dominion of a ruling passion, it was that of pure and disinterested love of country; and were he ever liable to be hurried into insane excess by any overpowering enthusiasm, it was the patriot's madness that had the best chance of prostrating his mighty soul. His works are the imperishable proofs of the sincere and enlightened attachment which he bore an island connected with him by no hereditary recollections, but merely by the accident of his birth at Cashel. |