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restored at the end of the war.

On his refusal, Copenhagen was

bombarded till at last the Danes gave way. The fleet was surrendered, and the British Government, on the plea that it had been driven to use force, refused to be bound by its offer to restore the ships ultimately to their owners. There were many in England who found fault with the whole proceeding, and even George III seems to have been very much of their opinion. Speaking to the gentleman who had carried to the Crown Prince the message asking him to give up the fleet, the old King asked whether he found the Prince upstairs or downstairs. He was on the ground floor, please your Majesty,' was the reply. 'I am glad of it for your sake,' said the King; 'for if he had half my spirit, he would have kicked you downstairs.'" (Gardiner's Student's History of

England, p. 860.)

15. 1.—Poetical power. Although Swift wrote many clever rimes and witty verses, his poetical powers were very slight, and the real reason why he was afraid to use them was because he did not possess them. No great writer ever made more clearly a false start in literature than did Swift. As the most convincing proot of Bacon's lack of poetic genius lies in his own verse-writing, so no one can read Swift's early poems without mentally saying Amen to Dryden's famous remark, "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet." It was not the brutality of Dryden's statement that galled Swift; it was its truth. Let readers examine Swift's early Pindaric Odes, and judge for themselves.

15. 10.-Sir William Temple. The elegant essayist, littérateur and dilettante, born 1628, died 1698.

15. 23.-Mantua væ, etc. From Vergil, Ecl. ix. 28. “Alas, Mantua, too near the wretched Cremona!" An excellent quip. 19. 10.-Moxa. "A soft woolly mass prepared from the young leaves of Artemisia Chinensis, and used as a cautery by burning it on the skin; hence, any substance used in a like manner, as cotton impregnated with niter, amadou." (Webster's Dict.) Amadou is a spongy substance growing on trees.

20. 25.-Plates-bandes. Flower-beds.

20. 26.-Epicurus. The founder of the Epicurean philosophy (see W. Wallace's admirable exposition of this system). He was born on the island of Samos in 337, or, as some say, in 341 B.C.

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He removed to Athens about 307. His personal character was amiable and virtuous, and the real nature of his philosophical teaching has been commonly misrepresented. He died 270 B.C.

20. 26. Diogenes Laertius. This name was ascribed to a kind of scrap-book, labeled "Lives and Doctrines of Famous Philosophers." Of Laertius himself we know nothing.

20. 27.-Semiramis [Legendary and Mythical]. The wife of Ninus, founder of the Assyrian kingdom-a woman of great beauty, passion, and power. She is supposed to have flourished

about 2200 B.C.

20. 27.—Hesperides. These were the daughters of the Night, who guarded the golden apples belonging to Here or Juno. [See any Classical Dictionary, or Professor Gayley's excellent book, Classic Myths in English Literature, published by Ginn & Co.]

21. 1. Mæcenas. Gaius Cilnius Mæcenas, born between 74 and 64 B.C., died 8 B.C. He was a statesman, but chiefly famous as a patron of literary men. He was a friend of young Octavian and his most trusted counsellor. He created and formed the center of a literary circle at Rome, which included Vergil, Horace, and others. 21. 1.-Strabo. A Greek geographer, born 63 B.C., died after 21 A.D. He traveled extensively, wrote histories, and particularly a geography in seventeen books.

21. 3.-Pythagoras. A Greek philosopher, supposed to have been born at Samos about 582 B.C. He is chiefly known on account of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. He laid the greatest stress on simplicity and self-restraint in living.

23. 1.-Bishop Kennet. White Kennett, D.D., bishop of Peterborough (1660-1728). Sir Walter Scott published this description of Swift from a MS. in the British Museum. Scott says: "The picture is powerfully drawn, though with a coarse and invidious pencil."-Swift's Works, ed. Scott, I. 125.

26. 4.-Bolingbroke. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751). His philosophical views exerted a powerful influence on contemporary men of letters; shown most prominently perhaps in Pope's Essay on Man. He was titled in 1712, and was Prime Minister in 1714. A brilliant and rather shallow man.

26. 13.-Gay. The well-known poet (1688–1732). 28. 5.-Peccavi. I am a sinner.

29. 8.-Consciousness of his own scepticism. We shall probably never know the exact attitude of Swift toward religious dogmasperhaps he did not know himself. His mind was apparently skeptical by nature, but he abhorred and despised free-thinkers, and belaboured them soundly. He was the most powerful champion of Christianity the age of Anne produced, but he certainly derived little peace and consolation from it for his own suffering soul. He may have thought that the Church was a necessary social institution, and hence regarded its assailers as little better than anarchists. At times we are inclined to class him as a skeptic, as Thackeray does; but when we read his beautiful and passionate Prayers for Mrs. Johnson," we have to make many reservations. 29. 22.—Abudah. He was a wealthy merchant of Bagdad, who figures in Tales of the Genii, by James Ridley (1736-65). Abudah meets with strange adventures in his quest for a talisman which he is driven to seek by the threats of a little old hag who haunts him by night and makes his life miserable. At last he finds that the inestimable talisman is to obey God and to keep his commandments; and he also discovers that all his wonderful adventures have been only a dream. "And there too was Abudah, the merchant, with the terrible old woman hobbling out of the box in his bedroom."-Dickens.

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30. 8.-Sava indignatio. "According to the precise instructions of his Will, Swift was buried privately, on the 22nd of October, at twelve o'clock at night: and, likewise by his own instructions, on a tablet of black marble over his grave in the Cathedral, in 'large letters, deeply cut, and strongly gilded,' there were inscribed the words

HIC DEPOSITUM EST CORPUS
JONATHAN SWIFT, S. T. P.
HUJUS ECCLESIÆ CATHEDRALIS

DECANI:

UBI SÆVA INDIGNATIO

ULTERIUS COR LACERARE NEQUIT.
ABI VIATOR

ET IMITARE, SI POTERIS,

STRENUUM PRO VIRILI LIBERTATIS VINDICEM.

OBIIT ANNO (1745)

MENSIS (OCTOBRIS) DIE (19)

ÆTATIS ANNO (78)."`

-Craik's Life of Swift, II. 258.

Possibly no greater contrast in tombstone inscriptions can be found than that exhibited by the graves of Swift and of his beloved friend and contemporary humourist, Gay, and it well illustrates the difference in temper of their comic genius. Swift, in his final and terrible indictment against the sufferings of life, is a strange contrast to Gay, who laughs from his tomb as he laughed through life,

"Life is a jest, and all things show it.

I thought so once, and now I know it."

There never lived a more consistent pessimist than Swift, and it is hardly just for Thackeray to hint that Swift rages at life because of his personal disappointments. His pessimism went far deeper than that.

30. 17.-Drapier's Letters. The first of these letters, signed "M. B. Drapier," appeared in 1724; they were addressed to the Irish people, and immediately exerted a powerful influence. He advised them not to touch the copper money coined by one William Wood ("Wood's half-pence "), who received a Government patent, July 12, 1722. This business was a political "job" of the most perfidious kind, and was killed by Swift's fiery letters. Whether Swift's motive was pure and disinterested patriotism or not, we do not know. He raged at seeing another example of human baseness and treachery, and fought it as only Swift could fight when aroused. At any rate he succeeded, and became the idol of the Irish, who rightly looked upon him as their champion. For a good discussion of this whole matter, see Craik's Life of Swift, Chapter XIII, "Swift as Irish Patriot."

30. 24.-Samson.

See the book of Judges, Chapter XV. 31. 11.-Modest Proposal. This famous satire was published in 1729, and ranks as one of Swift's best pieces. Underneath the laughably extravagant "proposal," one sees the moral indignation and the moral power of the author. The object of this satire was not to "rage against children"; it was to show that many Irish children were destined to a worse fate even than being eaten. For mock gravity, sustained tone, and underlying tragic earnestness, this essay is unsurpassed in English. Nor does Swift always "rage against marriage." In his Letter to a Very Young Lady

on her Marriage, he brutally attacks the kind of marriages that he often witnessed; but he holds up a high ideal of what marriage should really be, and emphasises the virtues of true companionship. Swift's brutality and contemptuous manner in this notable letter does not wholly conceal from the judicious its solid wisdom. 32. 16.—“Roasting." This slang word has enjoyed unusual vitality and long life.

32. 19.-On nait rôtisseur. One is born a cook-cooks are born, not made.

33. 27.-Mr. Macaulay has quoted the charming lines of the poet. In Macaulay's Essay on Addison, he says, "About thirty years before 'Gulliver's Travels' appeared, Addison wrote these lines:—

'Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infert
Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus,
Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes
Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam.'"'

["And now towering he rushes forward into the midst of their lines this awful leader of the Pygmies, who, heavy in his gait, overtops all others with his giant-like bulk and rises above them half an ell."]

34. 1.-The mast of some great ammiral. Paradise Lost, i. 293, 294.

34. 17.-Unpronounceable country. The country of the Houyhnhnms. Perhaps we should pronounce the word "Whinnems," as it is doubtless meant to suggest the whinny of a horse.

35. 35-Decision of meers. Meer, or mere, is a boundary. 38. 29.—Drapier Bickerstaff Gulliver. "Bickerstaff" was the name assumed by Swift in his famous "Predictions" in ridicule of Partridge, the almanac-maker.

41. 24. A sentimental Champollion. Jean François Champollion (1790-1832), a famous linguist, discovered a key to hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt.

44. 1.-Harley's and Peterborough's.

Robert Harley was the

first Earl of Oxford and Lord High Treasurer, receiving both title and place from Queen Anne in 1711. He died in 1724. Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, was born in 1658, and died in

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