Chapter THE LAST (5)

This undoubted incident is no small temptation to a novelist to spin a fine romance, and affiliate the child according to his fancy. It is a strange story--a very poor widow not suckling her own child! kept three years away from a parent, lest, having borne one voyage well, the young child should not be able to bear a second! The said novelist may find sufficient reason for the mother in after years recommending him to Sir Wm. Temple, and perhaps weave into his story that the nominal mother was one intrusted with a charge not her own. Stella’s mother’s connection with the Temple family may be as rationally accounted for. The writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, already quoted, seems to have had this account of Johnston from the widow herself. “This gentlewoman (Stella’s mother) was the widow (_as she always averred_) of one Johnston a merchant, who, having been unfortunate in trade, afterwards became master of a trading sloop, which ran between England and Holland, and there died.” Then, again, to revert to the entanglement of this mystery, although it is received that there was a marriage--a private marriage, as it is said, in the garden, by the Bishop of Clogher--are there really sufficient grounds for a decision in the affirmative? It is traced only to Delany and Sheridan (who could not have known it but by hearsay), and the assertion, on suspicion, of the worst of all evidences with regard to Swift, Orrery (he only knew him in his declining years, as he confesses); but Dr Lyon, Swift’s executor, denied it; and Mrs Dingley, who came to Ireland, after Sir William Temple’s death, with Stella, and lived with her till her death, laughed at it as an idle tale. Mrs Brent, with whom the Dean’s mother lodged, and who subsequently was his housekeeper, never believed it, and often told her daughter so, who succeeded her as housekeeper. It is said the secret was told to Bishop Berkeley by the Bishop of Clogher. “But,” says Sir Walter Scott, “I must add, that if, as affirmed by Mr Monck Mason, Berkeley was in Italy from the period of the marriage to the death of the Bishop of Clogher, this communication could not have taken place.” With evidence so conflicting even as to the marriage--so uncertain--and if a marriage, as to the relationship between the parties--as to the time of discovery--and with that maddening possibility of Swift’s physical infirmity alluded to by Scott; it does appear that it is the assumption of a very cruel critical right, to fasten upon the character of Swift a charge of fiendishness and brutality towards Stella. Where there are so many charitable ways of accounting for his conduct, most of which might well move our admiration and our pity, and where the tenderness of the parties towards each other cannot for a moment be doubted (_vide_ Swift’s diary in his letters, and his most touching letter speaking of her death and burial), there is nothing more improbable, nothing more out of nature, than the acquiescence of both Swift and Stella in a condition which might well have driven both mad, if that condition had been avoidable. We have a hesitation in believing in self-made monsters. Novelists, romance-writers, and dramatists, conjure them up for their hour on the stage, but it is a novelty to admit them into a biography which professes to be true. As to Lord Orrery, the first slanderer of Swift after his death, we have a perfect contempt for his character. He sought the aged Swift for his own ends. His father had bequeathed away from him his library; in his vexation he thought to vindicate himself by an ambition to become a literary character. As Alcibiades sought Socrates, not for Socrates’ virtues, but because his wisdom might aid him in his political schemes; so Lord Orrery took the leading literary characters of the day, and especially Swift, into what companionship he might. He cajoled and flattered the old man, and at his death maligned him. There was hypocrisy, too; for it was contemptible in him to have pretended a friendship so warm, with a man whom he designated as a tyrant, a brute, and irreligious. The world are keen to follow evil report. The ill life which is told by _a friend_ is authentic enough for subsequent writers, who, like sheep, go over the hedge after their leader. The writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for November 1757, speaks as one intimately, and of long continuance, acquainted with all the circumstances of the case. He says significantly that he thinks _there are some living who have it in their power, from authentic materials_, to throw light upon the subject. That he was well acquainted with her mother we learn from the following passage: “I saw her myself in the autumn of 1742 (about a year before her death), and although far advanced in years, she still preserved the remains of a very fine face.” He minutely describes Stella’s person as one who had seen her. “Let those judge who have been so happy as to have seen this Stella, this Hetty Johnston, and let those who have not, judge from the following description”--and as one who had conversed with her: “Her mind was yet more beautiful than her person, and her accomplishments were such as to do honour to the man who was so happy as to call her daughter.” He tells the anecdote (for which he says “I have undoubted authority”) of her presence of mind and courage in firing a pistol at a robber on a ladder about to enter her room at night. He tells the time, and implies the cause of her leaving Moor Park to reside in Ireland. “As soon as she was woman enough to be intrusted with her own conduct, she left her mother, and Moor Park, and went to Ireland to reside, by the order of Sir William, who was yet alive. She was conducted thither by Swift; _but of this I am not positive_, as I am that her mother parted with her as one who was never to see her again.” Upon that fact, then, he is positive, and scrupulous of assertion where not so. May it be conjectured he had the information from the mother herself, when he saw her so near the time of her death? He asserts that Sir William often “recommended her tender innocence to the protection of Swift, _as she had no declared male relation that could be her defender_;” that “from that time when they received the proper notice of the secrets of the family, they took care to converse before witnesses, even though they had never taken such precaution before.” “Can we wonder,” he adds, “that they should spend one day in the year in fasting, praying, and tears, from this period to her death? Might it not be the anniversary of their marriage?” “Swift had more forcible reasons for not owning Stella for his wife, than his lordship (Orrery) has allowed; and that it was not his behaviour, but her own unhappy situation, that might perhaps shorten her days.” The contributor, who signs himself C.M.P.G.N.S.T.N.S., writes purposely to vindicate the character of Swift from the double slander of Lord Orrery, who impeaches “the Dean’s charity, his tenderness, and even his humanity, in consequence of his hitherto unaccountable behaviour to his Stella, and of his long resentment shown to his sister.” Lord Orrery had said that Swift had persisted in not owning his marriage from pride, because he had reproached his sister for marrying a low man, and would never see her or communicate with her after her marriage. That as Stella was also of low origin, he feared his reproaches might be thrown back upon himself. Then follows an entire contradiction of this unlikely statement or surmise of Orrery--for that, “after her husband’s and Lady Gifford’s death, she (the sister, Mrs Fenton) retired to Farnham, and boarded with Mrs Mayne, Mrs Mosse boarding there at the same time, with whom she lived in the greatest intimacy; and as she had not enough to maintain her, the Dean paid her an annuity as long as she lived--neither was that annuity a trifle.” Another correspondent in the same Magazine--for December 1757--as desirous of vindicating the Dean, yet, nevertheless, points out a supposed error with regard to the passage in which mention is made of “the unlucky epocha of that discovery,” being that of the accession of the Hanoverian family, and the loss of Swift’s hopes. “But this,” he says, “is inconsistent with Swift’s marrying her in 1716, as (in page 487) we are told he did; or in 1717, in which year, I think, Lord Orrery places this event.” We think this is being too precise. Lord Oxford was impeached and sent to the Tower in 1715, which is sufficiently near to be called the same epocha. Or even if we take the accession from the death of Queen Anne--August 1714--the disappointment must have been rankling in the mind of Swift, still fresh, at the time of the other event. He likewise notices that Sir Wm. Temple was abroad at and before Swift’s birth; but, for reasons we have given, we think this objection of no importance. No mention is made of Vanessa in the article in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. The author seems cautiously, conscientiously, to abstain from every item of Orrery’s narrative, but such as he was assured of from his own knowledge.

Johnson, in his life of Swift, speaks disparagingly of Stella’s wit and accomplishments. It was displeasing to the great lexicographer that a woman should spell badly. Bad spelling was, we apprehend, the feminine accomplishment of the day. Dr Drake, in his essay on the literature and manners of that age, says, “It was not wonderful that our women could not spell, when it may be said that our men had not yet learnt to read.”

We prefer Swift’s account of this matter. She was “versed,” he says, “in Greek and Roman history--spoke French perfectly--understood Platonic and Epicurean philosophy, and judged very well of the defects of the latter. She made judicious abstracts of the books she had read,” &c. Of her manners: “It was not safe nor prudent in her presence to offend in the least word against modesty, for she then gave full employment to her wit, her contempt, and resentment, under which stupidity and brutality were forced to sink into confusion; and the guilty person, by her future avoiding him like a bear or a satyr, was never in a way to transgress again.” She thus replied to a coxcomb who tried to put the ladies in her company to the blush: “Sir, all these ladies and I understand your meaning very well, having, in spite of our care, too often met with those of your sex who wanted manners and good sense. But, believe me, neither virtuous nor even vicious women love such kind of conversation. However, I will leave you, and report your behaviour; and whatever visit I make, I shall first inquire at the door whether you are in the house, that I may be sure to avoid you.” “She understood the nature of government, and could point out all the errors of Hobbes, both in that and religion.” This letter of Swift’s is full of her praise; but we know nothing more touching than the passage which speaks of his sickening feelings at the hour of her burial. “_January 30, Tuesday._--This is the night of the funeral, which my sickness will not suffer me to attend. It is now nine at night, and I am removed into another apartment that I may not see the light in the church, which is just over against the window of my bed-chamber.” Were these words written by a _cruel_ man!! Well, if so, we must admire a woman’s saying--as it is put by Mr Thackeray: “Ah, it was a hard fate that wrung from them so many tears, and stabbed pitilessly”--(alas, Mr Thackeray, why will you put in that odious _pitilessly?_)--“that pure and tender bosom! A hard fate; but would she have changed it? I have heard a woman say that she would have taken Swift’s cruelty to have had his tenderness.” And why, Mr Thackeray, will you say of such a man, when he was writing that they had removed him into another apartment, that he might not see the light in the church, and was praising her and loving her when he could speak or write a word--why, we ask, should you say, “in contemplation of her goodness, his _hard_ heart melts into pathos.” Your own heart was a little ossifying into hardness when you wrote this. Ah! did you wish your female audience to think how much more tender you could be yourself? and so did you offer this little apology for some hard things in your novels? We wish you had written an essay, and not read a lecture. You would have been both less _hard_ and less tender,--for, in truth, your tender passages in this life of Swift, are very well to the purpose, to catch your audience; but they are “nihil ad rem.” And your appeal to the “pure and tender bosoms,” all against poor Swift, as a detestable cannibal,--how, in his _Modest Proposal_, “he rages against children,” and “enters the nursery with the tread and gaiety of an ogre,” how he thought the “loving and having children” an “unreasonableness,” and “love and marriage” a “folly,” because in his Lilliputian kingdom the state removed children from their parents and _educated_ them; and you wind up your appeal so lovingly, so charmingly, so devotedly, so insinuatingly to your fair audience, upon the blessings of conjugal love and philoprogenitiveness, that you must be the dearest of lecturers, the pet of families, the destroyer of ogres; and, as to that monster Swift, the very children should cry out, as they do in the _Children in the Wood_, “Kill him again, Mr Thackeray.” And this you did, knowing all the while that the _Modest Proposal_ was a patriotic and political satire--one of real kindness to the people, whose children he supposes, in the depth of his feeling and his satire and bitter irony, the Government should encourage the getting rid of, rather than, in defiance of all his (the Dean’s) schemes for the benefit of Ireland, they should be made a burthen to their parents, and miserable themselves. All this you knew very well: it was shabby and shameful of you by your mere eloquence to make this grave irony appear or be felt as a reality and a cruelty, and tack on to it an importation from Lilliput of a state edict, as if it were one in Swift’s mind with the _Modest Proposal_. Yes,--you knew, the while these your words were awakening detestation of Swift, you were oratorising a very great sham--all nonsense--stuff--that would never pass current but through the stamp of lectureship. You knew how the witty Earl Bathurst, a kind father with his loved children about him, as good-naturedly as you should have done, received Swift’s benevolently intended satire. “A man who has nine children to feed,” says Lord Bathurst to Swift, “can’t long afford _alienos pascere nummos_; but I have four or five that are very fit for the table. I only wait for the Lord Mayor’s Day to dispose of the largest, and shall be sure of getting off the youngest whenever a certain great man (Sir R. Walpole) makes another entertainment at Chelsea.” Here are your false words to win all feminine sympathy. “In fact, our great satirist was of opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, and illustrated the theory by his own practice and example--God help him!--which made him about the most wretched being in God’s world.” How cruel was this in you, under some of the probabilities, and all the possibilities that may be, ought to be, charitably referred to Swift’s case--in his loves or his friendships, be they what they will, for Stella and Vanessa. Vanessa--have we then all this while forgotten Vanessa? Hers is indeed a curious story. It is told in Swift’s poem of “Cadenus and Vanessa,” and published after her death, at the dying orders of Vanessa herself.

At the time Swift was moving in the higher circles in London, he appears to have been remarkable for the gracefulness of his manners and his conversational powers. These accomplishments won for him many friendships in the female society in which he found himself. Indeed, in his letters, his female correspondence possesses a great charm, and speaks very highly in favour of the wit and accomplishments of the really well-educated women of the day. Swift lived in great familiarity with the Vanhomrighs. The eldest daughter (another Esther), ardent by nature, and desirous of improving her mind, earnestly gave herself up to Swift’s converse and instruction. The result on her part was love, on Swift’s friendship: it is possible he may have felt something stronger; but, with an inconsistency, those who charge him with a tenderer feeling deny him the power of entertaining it. The story is too well known to be repeated here. She confessed her passion, and he insisted upon friendship only. She followed him to Ireland. She so expressed her state of mind to him by letter, that Swift had certainly reason to apprehend fatal consequences, if he altogether broke off his intimacy. If it be true that Swift was by nature cold, it is some excuse for imprudence that he did not easily suspect, or perhaps know, the dangerous and seducing power of an attachment warmer than friendship. It is evident _he_ professed nothing more. Whatever be the case in that respect, there is no reason to charge upon either an improper intimacy. Mr Thackeray thinks the two women died, killed by their love for, and treatment by, Swift. It is possible love, and disappointed love, may have hastened both their deaths, and made the wretchedness of Swift. On all sides, the misery was one for compassion, and such compassion as may charitably cover much blame. But even the story of Vanessa is told differently. There is little certainty to go upon, but enough for any man who pleases to write vilely on. Lord Orrery is very unmerciful on the character of Vanessa. He, in downright terms, charges her with having thrown away her virtue and her religion, preferring passion to one and wit to the other. This certainly gives him a good latitude for maligning his friend. Did he ever give his friend Swift a piece of his mind, and say to him, he thought him a rascal, and would discontinue his friendship? Oh, no; it was pleasanter and very friendly to tell all his spiteful things, after the Dean was dead, to “his Ham,” that they might be handed down to the world from “father to son,” and so the world must know “you would have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of very virtuous women, who attended him from morning till night, with an obedience, an awe, and an assiduity, that are seldom paid to the richest or the most powerful lovers; no, not even to the Great Seignior himself.” Yet the facetious father of “my Ham” never saw Stella, and knew perhaps as little of the seraglio. Sir Walter Scott says, as others also, we believe, that, upon Vanessa’s applying to Stella herself to know the nature of the undefined connection between her and Swift, she received from Stella an acknowledgment of the marriage. If this were true, it would of course settle that question; but Lord Orrery, from whom the first statement of the marriage came, and who would readily have seized such a confirmation of his tale, says no such thing. On the contrary, he says Vanessa wrote the letter to Cadenus, not to Stella, and that Swift brought his own written reply, and, “throwing down the letter on her table, with great passion hastened back to his horse, carrying in his countenance the frowns of anger and indignation.” How are we to trust to accounts so different? “She did not,” he adds, “survive many days (he should have said weeks, but days tells more against _his friend_) the letter delivered to her by Cadenus, but during that short interval she was sufficiently composed to cancel a will, _made in Swift’s favour_, and to make another,” &c. Who will not ask the question,--_Was_ there a will made in Swift’s favour? It is against probability; for be it remembered, that the same story was told with respect to Stella’s will, and it has been clearly proved that her will was such as Swift wished her to make. Nor was it at all consistent with Swift’s character, proud as he was, and always so cautious to avoid any scandal on Stella’s account, that he would have allowed _her_ to make a will in his favour; and it would have been still more revolting to his pride to have accepted a legacy from Vanessa.

Orrery treats poor Vanessa worse even than he does his friend. He conjectures her motives as against Swift, and writes of her death, “under all the agonies of despair,” which, unless he were present at the last scene, he is not justified in doing, and reviles her with a cruel uncharitableness. The worst that ought to be said of this miserable love and perplexing friendship is said by Scott--“It is easy for those who look back on this melancholy story to blame the assiduity of Swift or the imprudence of Vanessa. But the first deviation from the straight line of moral rectitude is, in such a case, so very gradual, and on the female side the shades of colour which part esteem from affection, and affection from passion, are so imperceptibly heightened, that they who fail to stop at the exact point where wisdom bids, have much indulgence to claim from all who share with them the frailties of mortality.”

More than a hundred and fifty years ago this sad tale, whatever it was in reality, yet now a mystery, was acted to the life in this strange world. The scandal of few real romances seldom lasts so long. It is time to cease pursuing it with feelings of a recent enmity; it is a better charity to hope, that all that was of difference, of vexation, of misery, nay, of wrong, has become as unsubstantial as their dust, and that they are where all that was of love is sure to be, for love is eternal. Poor Vanessa’s dust may still rest in peace. Swift’s and Stella’s have not been allowed the common repose of the grave. Their bodies have been disturbed. The phrenologists have been busy with the skulls, and their unhallowed curiosity has been rewarded with a singular refutation of their doctrine. The peculiarities of Swift’s skull are--“the extreme lowness of the forehead, those parts which the phrenologists have marked out _as the organs of wit, causality, and comparison, being scarcely developed at all_, but the head rose gradually from benevolence backwards. The portion of the occipital bone assigned to the animal propensities, philoprogenitiveness and amativeness, &c., appeared excessive.”

There is something very shocking in this disturbance of the dead. We are inclined to join in Shakespeare’s imprecation on the movers of bones. Swift’s larynx has been stolen, and is now, they say, in possession of the purloiner in America. We wish it had Swift’s human utterance, that the thief might wish he had no ears. An itinerant phrenologist is now hawking about Pope’s skull. Matthews’ thigh-bone has circulated from house to house. If ghosts ever visit nowadays our earth, we could wish them to come armed each with a stout stick, and act upon the phrenologists the “Fatal Curiosity.”

Johnson’s line--

“And Swift expires a driveller and a show,”

if it was not justified, as it certainly was not, during the Dean’s last years, in his melancholy state, may be justified as a prophecy, and fulfilled when his skull was handed about from fashionable house and party, and exhibited as a show.

Before we entirely quit the subject of Swift’s amours, it is necessary to mention a serious offer of marriage which he certainly made, about the year 1696. The lady--Miss Jane Waring--did not at first receive his advances very warmly. After four years the courtship came to an end. It seems Miss Waring became more complying as Swift cooled. In a letter he complained of her want of any real affection for him. It is so worded as to imply some doubts of her temper and judgment. He writes as a man would do who considers himself rather bound in honour than by love, and still offers marriage--upon terms. These terms, those who profess to be conversant in love proprieties, as in other branches of criticism, say no woman could comply with. We do not profess to determine cases of that nature. We apprehend all kinds of terms have been complied with on both sides without impeachment in the Court of Love. This offer of marriage, however, militates against Sir Walter Scott’s hypothesis of physical unfitness, and rather strengthens the argument and statements of the writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. We believe the exact date of the supposed marriage has not been given. If it did take place, what if it should be possible it was on the day--his birthday (or what he pleases to call his birthday)--at the recurrence of which he bewailed his birth by reading the chapter in Job? Nor must we omit, as it shows the shallow grounds upon which defamation often rests, a charge of violation made against Swift at Kilroot, because such a charge was found to have been really made against one J. S., as it appeared in a magistrate’s books. J. S. might have stood for Jonathan Swift--let him, therefore, bear the iniquity. It might have been fastened upon any or all of the numerous family of Smith, or any other J. S. in the world. It is curious that the first propagator, who, possibly with truth, denied having made the charge, as he might have said the letters J. S. only--as did the register--and unwittingly left the appropriation to his listeners;--it is curious, we observe, that this man became raving mad, and was an inmate in Swift’s hospital. The idle tale has been disproved, and but one of his worst maligners repeats it.

There are no passages in this portion of Mr Thackeray’s Lectures more odious, and more repugnant to our taste and feeling, than those which charge Swift with irreligion; nor are they less offensive because the author says--“I am not here, of course, to speak of any man’s religious views, except in so far as they influence his literary character, his life, his humour.” This denying latitude really means quite the contrary to its preface; for, since religion does concern every man’s _life_, and he writes or reads the life, he need not have said he had nothing (of course) to do with it, under any exceptions. But it serves the purposes of assuming a reluctance to touch upon the subject, and of charging upon the necessity of the case the many free and unnecessary animadversions upon Swift’s character as a priest of the Church of England.

The lecturer far outdoes the false friend Orrery, who, speaking of his _Gulliver_, says, “I am afraid he glances at religion.” It is true, he goes rather far to set up his friend the Dean as an example of punishment by Providence, which punishment he admires and confesses as according to righteous ways. His lordship might have pitied, if angels weep. Not a bit of it. “Here,” he says, “a reflection naturally occurs, which, without superstition, leads me tacitly to admire and confess the ways of Providence. For this great genius, this mighty wit, who seemed to scorn and scoff at all mankind, lived not only to be an example of pride punished in his own person, and an example of terror to others, but lived to undergo some of the greatest miseries to which human nature is liable.” Is this an instance of the charity which “covereth a multitude of sins,” and which saith, “Judge not”? If his lordship had exercised on this occasion _his superstition_, which he thus adroitly puts aside, he would pretty much have resolved Swift’s sins into a _material_ necessity. Thus he philosophises on vice and virtue as effects--“These effects take their sources from causes almost mechanical.”

Mr Thackeray is still more severe--more unjust. He will not allow his strictness in his religious duties, not even his family devotions, to pass as current coin; they are shams and counterfeits. The Swift too proud to lie, was enacting hypocrisy in all this; and how lucidly conclusive the argument! Would any modern lecturer like to be tried by it? “The boon-companion of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends of his life, and the recipients of his confidence and affection, must have heard many an argument, and joined in many a conversation, over Pope’s port or ‘St John’s’ burgundy, which would not bear to be repeated at other men’s boards.” “_Must_ have heard.”!! Had the lecturer been an eye and ear witness, he could not have said more. Yet this _must_ is a very little must indeed. A letter of Bolingbroke’s, and another from Pope to Swift, which the lecturer, as he ought to have done, had doubtless read, perfectly reduces the little _must_ to nothing at all. Swift, it seems, had written to Pope in some way to convert him from Popery. Pope’s reply parries off the Dean’s shafts by wit, and the letter is very pleasant. Not so Bolingbroke; and as he was of too free a spirit to be false, and a hypocrite, at the time he wrote his reply he was not that bold speculator in atheistical arguments which he may have afterwards been; or if he was a hypocrite, that alternative defends Swift, for it shows the improbability of the arguments over the burgundy having been in their familiar converse; for Bolingbroke was at least no fool to contradict himself before Swift. These are his remarkable words, defending himself from the appellation of a freethinker, in its irreligious sense: “For since the truth of Christianity is as evident as matters of fact, on the belief of which so much depends, ought to be, and agreeable to all our ideas of justice, these freethinkers (such as he had described) must needs be Christians on the best foundation--on that which St Paul himself established (I think it was St Paul), _Omnia probate, quod bonum est tenete._” It is not needful for us to vindicate Bolingbroke, nor even to express any great satisfaction at this passage; our purpose is to show Swift’s religious sincerity, and the probable nature of the conversations with Pope and Bolingbroke from these letters.

But to the excess of severity in the lecturer. He contrasts “Harry Fielding and Dick Steele” with Swift for religious sincerity. These “were,” he says, “especially loud, and I _believe fervent_, in their expressions of belief.” He admits them to have been _unreasoning_, and Church of England men. “But Swift, his mind had had a different schooling, and possessed a very different logical power. _He_ was not bred up in a tipsy guardroom, and did not learn to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could conduct an argument from beginning to end. He could see forward with a fatal clearness. In his old age, looking at the _Tale of a Tub_, when he said, ‘Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!’ I think he was admiring, not the genius, but the consequences to which the genius had brought him--a vast genius, a magnificent genius--a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and strong, to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood, and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into the hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of men; an awful, an evil spirit:” and yet Mr Thackeray would make this evil spirit a spirit of truth, of logical power, of brightness to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood; in fact, that irreligion was the natural result of true good logical reasoning, and therefore Swift had no religion. We have no business to charge the lecturer with irreligious sentiments; indeed we feel assured that he had no irreligious motive whatever in the utterance of this passage; nor could he have had, with any discretion, before a mixed modern audience: in the hurry of his eloquence, he overlooked the want of precise nicety of expression due to such a subject. We could wish that he had otherwise worded this passage, which, to the minds of the many, will certainly convey a notion that the legitimate conclusion of reasonable logical arguments is infidelity. Yet more. “Ah! man! you educated in the Epicurean Temple’s library--you whose friends were Pope and St John--what made you to swear to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a life-long hypocrisy before Heaven, which you adored with such real wonder, humility, and reverence? For Swift’s was a reverent spirit; for Swift could love and could pray.” But his love, according to the lecturer, was cruelty, and his prayer a sham!! Let no man ever own a friend, however he became his friend, of dubious opinions. The lecturer is cautious. Miss Martineau sent her mind into a diseased cow, and it was healed. Pope and Bolingbroke _must_ have sent theirs into Swift, and he was Bolingbroked and Poped to the utmost corruption and defilement. We may here as well ask how poor Swift was positively to know the ultimate sceptical opinions of Bolingbroke? They were published in his works, by Mallet, after his lordship’s death.

Johnson doubted not the sincerity of Swift’s religion. He vindicates the _Tale of a Tub_, which Mr Thackeray makes a text for his vituperation, from “ill intention.” “He was a Churchman rationally zealous.” “To his duty as a Dean he was very attentive.” “In his church he restored the practice of weekly communion, and distributed the sacramental elements in the most solemn and devout manner with his own hands. He came to his church every morning, preached commonly in his turn, and attended the evening anthem, that it might not be negligently performed.” Swift himself spoke disparagingly of his sermons. Mr Thackeray does more than take him at his word; he pronounces that “they have scarce a Christian characteristic. They might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffeehouse almost. There is little or no cant; he is too great and too proud for that; and, so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest.” Is Mr Thackeray really a judge of “Christian characteristics?” or does he pronounce without having read Swift’s sermon on the Trinity, so much and so deservedly admired, and certainly of a Christian character? But of these sermons quite as good a judge is Samuel Johnson as our lecturer, who says, “This censure of himself, if judgment be made from those sermons which have been printed, was unreasonably severe.” Johnson ascribes the suspicion of irreligion to his dread of hypocrisy. Mr Thackeray makes hypocrisy his religion. Even the essayist in the _Times_, who considers him a madman from his birth, admits him to have been “sincerely religious, scrupulously attentive to the duties of his holy office, vigorously defending the position and privileges of his order: he positively played into the hands of infidelity, by the steps he took, both in his conduct and writings, to expose the cant and hypocrisy which he detested as heartily as he admired and practised unaffected piety.” If, then, according to this writer, there was a mistake, it was not of his heart. What different judgments, and of so recent dates--a sincerely religious man, of practical unaffected piety, and, _per contra_, a long-life hypocrite before Heaven. We may well say, “Look on this picture and on this.” Reflect, reader, upon the double title-page to _Life of Tiberius_, on the mysteries of every man’s life; and the seeming contradictions which can never be explained here. A simple truth might explain them, but truth hides itself, and historians and biographers cannot afford time for accurate search, nor the reading world patience for the delays which truth’s narrative would demand.

The _Tale of a Tub_, it has been said, was the obstacle to Swift’s preferment--it may have been the ostensible excuse. If the Duchess of Somerset went down on her knees to prevent a bishopric being offered him, another excuse was wanted than the real one. It was ascribed to Swift that he had ridiculed her red hair: such a crime is seldom forgiven. But the “_spretæ injuria formæ_” will not be producible as an objection. This _Tale of a Tub_ has been often condemned and excused, and will be while literature lasts, and is received amongst persons of different temperaments. There are some so grave that wit is condemned by them before they know the subject upon which it is exercised. To many it is folly, because beyond their conception. We know no reason why the man of wit should not be religious; if there be, wit is a crime; yet it is a gift of nature, and so imperative upon the possessor that he can scarcely withhold it. It is his genius. Wit has its logical forms of argument. Errors in religion, as in manners, present themselves to the man of wit both in a serious and ludicrous light; the two views combine, there is the instant flash for illumination or destruction. The corruptions in a church, as in that of Rome, being the growth of ages, engrafted into the habits and manners of a people, are not to be put down by solemn sermons only: arguments in a new and captivating manner must be adopted, and applied to the ready understanding and familiar common-sense of those on whom more grave and sedate argumentation is lost.

The Reformers were not remiss to take wit as an ally. Even now, those who are temporarily shocked at the apparent lightness with which it was employed in former days, as they read works such as the _Tale of a Tub_ may have received with it solid arguments, never so vividly put to them, and which are still excellent preservatives against Romanism. The enemy who does not like it will call it ribaldry, buffoonery, and magnify it into a deadly sin. The vituperation of it marks its power. This kind of writing, even on the gravest subjects, is more defensible than those who are hurt by it will admit. In a state of warfare, and church is militant, we must not throw away legitimate arms. If wit be a gift, it is a legitimate weapon, and a powerful one. It deals terrible blows on the head of hypocrisy. We owe to it more perhaps than we think. It may be fairly asked, Were the _Provincial Letters_ injurious to the cause of religion? The _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_ helped to demolish some strongholds of iniquity. Rabelais, disgusting as he is to modern readers in too many parts, was acceptable to bishops and archbishops. They pardoned much for the depth of sense, knowledge of mankind, and solid learning in the curate of Meudon. There are offences against taste, that are not necessarily offences against religion. There is many an offensive work, especially in modern literature, where taste is guarded and religion hurt. Is there a natural antipathy between wit and religion, or between wit and morals? We trust not; for by it all mankind may be reached--at least those who can be reached by no other appeal, to whom that may be the first, though not the last. In times of controversy all must come into the field, the light-armed as well as the heavy-armed, and they must use their own weapons. David slew Goliath with a pebble and a sling. He had tried these; they were scorned by the giant, but they slew him. But this genius of art is imperative, and unless you shut the church-doors against it, and anathematise it (and to do so would be dangerous), it will throw about its weapons. Danger cannot put it down. It has its minor seriousness, though you see it not; it has its deep wisdom, and such an abundance of gravity, that it can afford to play with it. It bids the man endowed with it use it even upon the scaffold, as did Sir Thomas More. Admit, that, if it is a power for good or evil, that very admission legitimatises it. The infidel, the scoffer, will use it, and he will be in the enemy’s camp. Yes, we must have, in the gravest cause, our sharpshooters too. There have been buffoons for the gravest purposes as for the vilest. It is well to be cautious in condemning all. Demosthenes could not prevail upon the people of Athens to give attention to him where their safety was concerned, and he abandoned his seriousness, and told them a story of the “shadow of an ass.” Buffoonery may be a part put on--the disguise, but the serious purpose is under it. Brutus was an able actor. A man may be allowed to put on a madness, when it would be death to proclaim himself, so as to be believed, in his senses. What shall we say of the grave buffoon, the wittiest, the wisest, the patriotic, who risked his life to play the fool, because he knew it was the only means of convincing the people, when he, Aristophanes, could not get an actor to take the part of Cleon, and took it himself, not knowing but that a cup of poison awaited him when the play was ended? It is as well to come to the conclusion that the wit, even the buffoon, may be respectable--nay, give them a higher name--even great characters. Their gifts are instincts, are meant for use. As the poet says, they cut in twain weighty matters: “_Magnas plerumque secant res_.” We fear that if we were to drive the lighter soldiers of wit out of the religious camp, those enlisted on the opposite side would set up a shout, rush in, and, setting about them lustily, have things pretty much their own way. Apply this as at least an apology for Swift. You must have the man with his wit--it was his uncontrollable passion. And, be it remembered, when he conceived, if not wrote, the _Tale of a Tub_, he was in the riotous spirit of his youth. And abstract from it its wondrous argument, deep sense of illustration, and weigh them, how ponderous the mass is, how able to crush the long age-constructed machinery of designing Popery! But heavy as is the abstract, it would have lain inert matter, but for those nicely-adjusted springs of wit, which, light as they seem, lift buoyantly the ponderous power, that it may fall where directed. If any have a Romish tendency, we would recommend him to read the _Tale of a Tub_, without fear that it will take religion out of his head or his heart. We perfectly agree with Johnson as to the _intention_, in contradiction to Mr Thackeray, who says, “The man who wrote that wild book could not but be aware what must be the sequel of the propositions he laid down.” And thus is it cruelly added, “It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostacy out to hire.” Charity, which “believeth all things,” never believed that.

The virtues reign by turns in this world of ours. Each one is the Queen Quintessence of her time, and commands a fashion upon her subjects. They bear the hue of her livery in their aspects. What is in their bosoms it is not so easy to determine; their tongues are obedient to the fashion, and often join in chorus of universal cant. Philanthropy is now the common language, we doubt if it is the common doing, of the age. We are rather suspicious of it, not very well liking its connections, equality and fraternity, and suspect it to be of a spurious breed, considering some of its exhibitions on the stage of the world within the memory of many of us. As the _aura popularis_ has been long, and is still blowing rather strong from that quarter, it may appear “brutal” to say a syllable _per contra_. There never was a fitter time to lift up the hands and eyes in astonishment at Swift’s misanthropy. See the monster, how he hated mankind! Perhaps he was a misanthrope. That he was a good hater we verily believe, but for a misanthrope he was one of the kindest to those who deserved and needed his assistance. It is said of him that he made the fortunes of forty families--that when he had power, he exerted it to the utmost, perseveringly, to advance the interests of this or that man, and did many acts of benevolence secretly and delicately;--witness his payment to Mrs Dingley of £52 per annum, which he made her believe was her own; and he paid it as her agent for money in the funds, and took her receipt accordingly, and this was not known till after his death. Very numerous are the anecdotes of this nature, but here we have no space for them. Such misanthropes are not very bad people--even though, detesting the assumption of uncommon philanthropy, they put on now and then a little roughness, as Swift undoubtedly did, and many very kind people very often do. But he wrote _Gulliver_, that bitter satire on mankind, for which Mr Thackeray the lecturer is greatly shocked at him. “As for the moral, I think it is horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous; and, giant and great as this Dean is, I say we should hoot him.” Certainly hoot him--pelt him out of your _Vanity Fair_, which, though bad enough, is far too good for him, for the law there is to treat bad mankind very tenderly, and to make the good come off but second best, and look a trifle ridiculous. There have been strong vigorous satirists, universally read and admired, and made the stock literature of all countries too, and the authors have been hitherto thought highly moral and dignified characters; and they were personal, too, as ever Swift was (not that we admire his personalities--they were part his, and part belonged to his time), and their language as coarse. What are we to say of Juvenal, if we condemn Swift on that score? What of his sixth and tenth satires? The yahoo for mankind is not more hideous than the Tabraca monkey, which so frightfully represents men’s old age, in that famous tenth satire on the “Vanity of Human Wishes.” It is, indeed, a morbid philanthropy, a maudlin philanthropy, that will not give detested vices the lash. What is brutal vice?--degraded human nature, such as our police courts have of late exhibited it, our Cannons, and kickers, and beaters of women--the burkers of our times, murderers for the sake of body-selling, to whom yahoos are as far better creatures. Yet, in our philanthropic days, we must not compare man to low animals. Indeed, we make companion of the faithful dog--we pet the obedient horse--we love them--and we are better for the affection we bestow, and it is in a great degree perhaps reciprocal; but such brutes in human shape, we shrink from comparing our dumb friends with them. They have made themselves an antipathy to human nature, and our nature an antipathy to them.

One would think, to hear some people talk about this _Gulliver_, that Swift had originated such hideous comparisons with the brute creation, and that he alone had brought his _animali parlanti_ on the stage. Chaucer, whom everybody loves, makes the cock say, as thus Dryden says it for him:--

“And I with pleasure see
Man strutting on two legs, and aping me.”
_Cock and Fox._

But let us put the matter thus: In depicting the lowest vices of human nature, Swift, like Hogarth, made them appear more odious, and the former less offensive, by at least ideally or rather formally removing them from our species. The transforming them to brutes in something _like_ human shape, renders the human image less distinct; covers them with a gauze, through which you can bear the sight, and contemplate what brutalised human nature may become. The satirist Hogarth is as strong, and by too near a resemblance, more disgusting, yet is he a great moralist. Is the Yahoo of Swift worse, or so offensive to our pride, as the heroes and heroines of “Beer and Gin Alley,” or the cruelty scenes of Hogarth? Yet who ever called these doings of the painter-satirist “shameful, unmanly, blasphemous.” Hoot _him_, Mr Lecturer, hoot both or neither. No--the hoot of the Lecturer was nothing but a little oratorical extravagance, for an already indignant audience, touched upon that tender modern virtue, general philanthropy. Out of his lectures, the lecturer is a true, good, loving, kind-hearted, generous man; his real “hoot” would sound as gently as the “roar” of any “sucking dove.” But at a lecture-table, the audience must be indulged in their own ways. The lecturer puts by his nature and puts on his art. He is acting the magician for the moment, and not himself, and thus his art excuses to him this patting on the back our mock philanthropy; _mock_, for it is out of nature, and not real. Honest genuine nature is indignant, and has an impulse as its instinct to punish villany. Who ever read history, and did not wish a Cæsar Borgia hanged? Philanthropists are very near being nuisances; they go out of the social course, which runs in circles--at first small ones too, home. There is room for the exercise of plenty of charity, amiableness, goodness; where is the need a man should burthen himself with the whole census? We live for the most part in circles, and if we do good, true, and serviceable duty within them, it little matters if some, with a pardonable eccentricity, deem them magic circles, and that all on the outside of the circumference are fiends ready to leap in open-mouthed to devour them. Professing philanthropists are apt to have too little thought of what is nearest, and to stretch out beyond the natural reach of their arms. They are breakers into other people’s circles, and perpetually guilty of a kind of affectionate burglary--and therefore not punishable, but to be pitied as a trifle insane. Poor Swift! how his friends wept at his last sad condition, which the hard hearts who knew him not, a century and a half after, choose to call Heaven’s punishment, and his misery a “remorse.” How his true friends grieved for him! and such friends, too--men of generous natures that lift humanity out of that, its vexatious condition, which provokes universal satire. He had a circle of friends whom he dearly loved, and who as dearly loved him. No matter how many yahoos go to the whipping-post. Take care of the home circles, and ever keep the temper sweet in that temperate zone, which the natural course of society has provided for you; and be sure the world won’t be a bit worse off, if you light your cigar at your own hearth, and pleasantly write a pretty sharp satire on the world at large. We know not if it is not a fair position to lay down, that all satirists are amiable men; our best have been eminently so. Poor gentle Cowper, in his loving frenzy, wielded the knout stoutly, and had it been in his religion, would have whipped himself like a pure Franciscan; and yet he loved his neighbour. And it is our belief that Swift was good and amiable, and as little like a yahoo as those who depict him as one. Nature gave him a biting power, and it was her instinct that made him use it; and what if he exaggerated? It is the poet’s licence. What did Juvenal? and what did he more than Juvenal? Oh, this at once bold and squeamish age!--bold to do bad things, and to cry out against having them told or punished, but delighting in dressing up an imaginary monster and ticketing it with the name of Jonathan Swift, dead a century ago!!