retreat in the society of "little M. D.," and there can be hardly any doubt that Swift anticipated marrying Stella, while Stella's whole life was filled with the same hope. During one of his visits to London Swift became intimate with the family of a rich merchant named Vanhomrigh, over whose daughter Hester, to whom he gave the name of Vanessa, he exerted the same kind of enchantment as he had exhibited in gaining the affections of Stella, a power indeed which Swift seems to have eminently possessed over the imagination of women, however inexplicable it may be, when we think of the bitterness and coldness of his nature. From at first directing her studies he succeeded, perhaps involuntarily on his part at first, in inspiring an ardent, beautiful, and accomplished girl with a passion so deep and intense, that the difference of age only makes more difficult to explain. He seems to have played with this attachment, alternately exciting and discouraging hopes in poor Vanessa; while his letters to Stella in Ireland grow gradually colder and more formal. On the death of her father Miss Vanhomrigh, who possessed an independent fortune, retired to a villa at Celbridge in Ireland, where Swift continued his visits, but without clearing up to one of these unhappy ladies the nature of his relations with the other. At last Vanessa, driven almost to madness by suspense and irritation, wrote to Stella to inquire into the nature of Swift's position with regard to her. The letter was intercepted by Swift, and brought back by him and thrown down without a word but with a terrible countenance, before the unhappy writer. Swift left her, and never saw her more; and poor Vanessa died a few weeks afterwards (1723), being one of the rare examples of death of a broken heart. Stella, whose health was entirely broken, implored Swift to render her the poor justice of calling her his wife; and it is said that the ceremony of marriage was privately performed in the garden, though Swift never either recognized her in public, or changed his strange rule of never living in the same house with her, or even seeing her otherwise than in the presence of a third person. This rule had been observed ever since Stella's first settlement in Ireland. This unhappy victim of Swift's eccentric selfishness-the second-died in 1728 and in the notices he wrote of her, while smarting under the agony of her recent loss, it is impossible not to see a love as intense as its manifestation had been singular and inexplicable.

§ 12. The greatest and most characteristic of Swift's prose works is the Voyages of Gulliver, a vast and all-embracing satire upon humanity itself, though many of the strokes were at the time intended to allude to particular persons and contemporary events. The general plan of this book is the following. It is written in the character of a plain, unaffected, honest ship-surgeon, who describes the strange scenes and adventures through which he passes with that

air of simple, straightforward, prosaic good faith that gives so much charm to the narratives of our brave old navigators, and which Defoe has so successfully mimicked in Robinson Crusoe. The contrast between the extravagance of the inventions and the gravity with which they are related, forms precisely the point of the peculiar humour of Swift, and is equally perceptible in other works, while it was the distinguishing feature of that singular saturnine kind of pleasantry which made his conversation so sought after. He is said never to have been known to laugh; but to have poured forth the quaintest and most fantastic inventions with an air of gravity and sternness that kept his audience in convulsions of merriment. This admirable fiction consists of four parts or voyages: in the first Gulliver visits the country of Lilliput, whose inhabitants are about six inches in stature, and where all the objects, houses, trees, ships, and animals, are in exact proportion to the miniature human beings. Indeed, one of the principal secrets of Swift's humour, as well as of the power he possesses over the imagination-I had almost said the belief of the reader, is the exquisite and watchful manner in which these proportions are preserved. The author never forgets himself in this respect; nay, he has managed to give to the passions, the ambition, the ceremonies, and the religion of his diminutive people an air of the same littleness as invests the physical objects. The invention displayed in the droll and surprising incidents is as unbounded as the natural and boná-fide air with which they are recounted; and we can hardly wonder at the exclamation of the learned bishop, who is said to have cried out, "That there were some things in Gulliver that he could not quite believe!" The second voyage is to Brobdingnag, a country of enormous giants, of about sixty feet in height, and here Gulliver plays the same part as the insect-like Lilliputians had played to him. As in the first voyage, the contemptible and ludicrous side of human things is shown by exhibiting how trifling they would appear in almost microscopic proportions, so in Brobdingnag we are made to perceive how odious and ridiculous would appear our politics, our wars, and our ambitions, to the gigantic perceptions of a more mighty race. The lesson is the same; but we learn it by looking through the other end of the telescope. The Third Part, which is generally found inferior, from the want or unity in the objects of representation, t the preceding voyages, carries Gulliver to a series of strange and fantastic countries. The first is Laputa, a flying island, inhabited by philosophers and astronomers. Here Swift intended to satirise the follies and abuses of learning and science; but independently of the fact that much of this part, as the Academy of Lagado, is borrowed from Lucian, Rabelais, and other satirists, his strokes of ridicule are not always very well directed, and fall pointless, being

levelled against imaginary follies. From Lagado the traveller goes to Glubbdubdrib and then to Luggnagg, which latter episode introduces the terrific description of the Struldbrugs, wretches who are cursed with bodily immortality without preserving at the same time their intellects or their affections.

Gulliver's last voyage is to the country of the Houyhnhnms, a region in which horses are the reasoning, civilized, and dominant beings; and where men, under the name of Yahoos, are degraded to the rank of noxious, filthy, and unreasoning brutes. The manner in which Swift has described the latter, retaining a resemblance to man in their propensities which only renders them more horrible and loathsome, shows how intense was his hatred and scorn of humanity. The satire goes on deepening as it advances; playful and amusing in the scenes of Lilliput, it grows blacker and bitterer at every step, till in the Yahoos it reaches a pitch of almost insane ferocity, which there is but too much reason to believe faithfully embodied Swift's real opinion of his fellow-creatures.

§ 13. In the Tale of a Tub he gives a burlesque allegorical account of the three great sects of Christianity, the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Calvinistic churches. These are represented with the wildest and most farcical extravagance of incident, under the form of three brothers, Peter, Jack, and Martin; and their squabbles and ultimate separation figure the Reformation and its consequences. Between the chapters of narrative are interposed what Swift calls digressions, in which the most ludicrous fancies are embodied in a degree of out-of-the-way learning not to be met with in any other of his works. Everything that is droll and familiar in ideas and language is concentrated in this extraordinary production, and many of the pleasantries are sufficiently irreverent to justify the accusation of his religious belief not being very firmly fixed. The innumerable pamphlets and political and historical tracts poured forth by Swift, as his Conduct of the Allies, the Public Spirit of the Whigs, the Last Years of Queen Anne, his contributions to journals, his Sentiments of a Church of England Man, his remarks on the Sacramental Test, and a multitude of others, being written on local and temporary subjects, are now little consulted; they all exhibit the vigour of his reasoning, the admirable force and directness of his style, and his unscrupulous ferocity of invective. They are all, whatever be their nature, party pamphlets of the most virulent kind, in which the author was never restrained by any feeling of his own dignity, or of candour and indulgence for others, from overwhelming his opponents with ridicule and abuse. He is like the Indian savage, who, in torturing his captive at the stake, cares little how he wounds and burns himself, so long as he can make his victim writhe; or, like the street ruffian, who, in hurling ordure on

66

his antagonist, is indifferent to the filth that may stick to his own fingers. The bitterness, as well as the power of these writings, are often something almost diabolical. Many of his smaller prose writings are purely satirical, as his Polite Conversation and Directions to Servants. In the former he has combined in a sort of comic manual all the vulgar repartees, nauseous jokes, and selling of bargains, that were at that time common in smart conversation; and in the latter, under the guise of ironical precepts, he shows how minute and penetrating had been his observations of the lying, pilfering, and dirty practices of servants. Perhaps the pleasantest, as they are the most innocent, of his prose pleasantries, are the papers written in the character of Isaac Bickerstaff, where he shows up, with exquisite drollery, the quackery of the astrologer Partridge. His letters are very numerous; and those addressed to his intimate friends, as Pope and Gay, and those written to Sheridan, half-friend and half-butt, contain inimitable specimens of his peculiar humour, which has been excellently described by Coleridge as anima Rabelæsii habitans in sicco." The three greatest satirical wits of modern times possess each a peculiar manner. Rabelais, with his almost frantic animal spirits, pours forth a side-shaking mixture of erudition and ingenious buffoonery; Voltaire, with his sly grin of contempt, makes everything he attacks appear at once odious and despicable; but Swift inspires us with loathing as well as with contempt. We laugh with Rabelais, we sneer with Voltaire; with Swift we despise and we abhor. He will not only be ever regarded as one of the greatest masters of English prose, but his poetical works will give him a prominent place among the writers of his age. They are, however, most strongly contrasted in their style and manner to the type most prevalent at the time, and of which Pope is the most complete representative. They have no pretension to loftiness of language, are written in the sermo pedestris, in a tone studiously preserving the familiar expression of common life. In nearly all of them Swift adopted the short octosyllable verse that Prior and Gay had rendered popular. The poems show the same wonderful acquaintance with ordinary incidents as the prose compositions, the same intense observation of human nature, and the same profoundly misanthropic view of mankind. The longest of the narrative writings Cadenus (Decanus, an anagram indicating the Dean himself) and Vanessa, is at the same time the least interesting. It gives an account, though not a very clear one, of the love-episode which terminated so fatally for poor Hester Vanhomrigh. The most likely to remain popular are the Verses on my own Death, describing the mode in which that event, and Swift's own character, would be discussed among his friends, his enemies, and his acquaintances; and perhaps there is no composition in the world which gives so easy, animated a picture, at

once satirical and true, of the language and sentiments of ordinary society. He produced an infinity of small burlesques and pleasantries, in prose and verse, as for example, The Grand Question Debated, in which he has, with consummate skill and humour, adopted the maundering style of a vulgar servant-maid. Shakspeare. himself, in Mrs. Quickly and in Juliet's Nurse, has not more accurately seized the peculiarities of the lower class. A thousand parodies, jests, punning Latin and English letters, epigrams and descriptions might be cited. Many of them are slight toys of the fancy, but they are toys executed with the greatest perfection, and in some, as the Legion Club, the verses on Bettesworth and Lord Cutts, the ferocious satire of Swift is seen in its full intensity: they are little sparkling bubbles, but they are blown from vitriolic acid.

§ 14. No member of the brilliant society of which Pope and Swift were the chief luminaries, deserves more respect, both for his intellectual and personal qualities, than DR. JOHN ARBUTHNOT (1667-1735). He was of Scottish origin, and enjoyed high reputation as a physician, in which capacity he remained attached to the court from 1709 till the death of Queen Anne. He was one of the most lovable, as well as the most learned and accomplished wits of the day, and was a chief contributor to those Miscellanies of which I have so often spoken in connection with Pope. He is supposed to have conceived the plan of that extensive satire on the abuses of learning, embodied in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, and to have indeed executed the best portions of that comprehensive though fragmentary work, and in particular the description of the pedantic education given to his son by the learned Cornelius. But the fame of Arbuthnot is more intimately connected with the inimitable History of John Bull, in which the intrigues and Wars of the Succession are so drolly caricatured. The object of the work was to render the prosecution of the war by Marlborough unpopular with the nation; but the adventures of Squire South (Austria), Lewis Baboon (France), Nic. Frog (Holland), and Lord Strutt (the King of Spain), are related with fun, odd humour, and familiar vulgarity of language. There is much of the same kind of humour as we find in the Tale of a Tub, and in Gulliver; but Arbuthnot is always good-natured, and there is no trace of that fierce bitterness and misanthropy which tinges every page of Swift. In the latter part of the History Arbuthnot details with great humour some of the political intrigues of the English ministry, and in particular the way in which the Scottish presbyterian party were tricked by the Earl of Nottingham into assenting to the bill against Occasional Conformity. The characters of the various nations and parties are conceived and maintained with consummate spirit; and perhaps the popular ideal of John Bull, with which Englishmen are so fond of identifying their personal and