He who, but a few months before, was willing to have hazarded all the horrors of a civil war, for the chance of keeping his party in office, sunk instantly into pitiable and unmanly despondency upon the final disgrace of that party. We are unwilling to believe, and we do not in fact believe, that Swift was privy to the designs of Bolingbroke, Ormond, and Mar, to bring in the Pretender on the Queen's demise, and are even disposed to hold it doubtful whether Oxford concurred in those measures; but we are sure that no man of common firmness could have felt more sorrow and despair, if the country had been conquered by a lawless invader, than this friend of the Act of Settlement did upon the quiet and regular transmission of the sceptre to the appointed heir; and the discomfiture of those ministers who are proved to have traitorously conspired to accomplish a counter revolution, and restore a dynasty which he always affected to consider as justly rejected. How all this sorrow is to be reconciled to the character of a good Revolution Whig, we leave it to the learned editor, who has invested him with that character, to discover. To us it merely affords new evidence of the selfishness and ambition of the individual, and of that utter and almost avowed disregard of the public, which constituted his political character. Of the sorrow and despondency itself, we need produce no proofs, for they are to be found in every page of his subsequent writings. His whole life, indeed, after this event, was ore long fit of spleen and lamentation: and, to the very end of his days, he never ceases bewailing the irreparable and grievous calamity which the world had suffered in the death of that most imbecile princess. He speaks of it, in short, throughout, as a pious divine might be supposed to speak of the fall of primeval man from the state of innocence. The sun seems darkened for ever in his eyes, and mankind degenerated beyond the toleration of one who was cursed with the remembrance of their former dignity! And all this for what?-because the government was, with the full assent of the nation, restored to the hands of those whose talents and integrity he had once been proud to celebrate or rather, because it was taken from those who would have attempted, at the evident risk of a civil war, to defeat that solemn settlement of which he had always approved, and in virtue of which alone the late Sovereign had succeeded;-because the liberties of the nation were again to be secured in peace, under the same councils which had carried its glories so high in war-and the true friends of the Revolution of 1688 to succeed to that patronage which had previously been exercised by its virtual enemies! Such were the public calamities which he had to lament as a patriot;-and the violence done to his political attachments seems to have been of the same character. His two friends were Bolingbroke and Oxford: and both these had been abusing each other, and endeavouring to supplant each other, with all their might, for a long period of time; and, at last, one of them did this good office for the other, in the most insult. ing and malignant manner he could devise: and yet the worthy Dean had charity enough to love them both just as dearly as ever. He was always a zealous advocate, too, for the Act of Settlement; and has in twenty places expressed his abomination of all who could allow themselves to think of the guilt of calling in the Pretender. If, therefore, he could love and honour and flatter Bolingbroke, who not only turned out his beloved Oxford, but actually went over to the Pretender, it is not easy to see why he should have been so implacable towards those older friends of his, who only turned out Bolingbroke in order to prevent the Pretender from being brought in. On public grounds, in short, there is nothing to be said for him;-nor can his conduct or feelings ever receive any explanation upon such principles. But every thing becomes plain and consistent when we look to another quarter-when we consider, that by the extinction of the Tory party, his hopes of preferment were also extinguished; and that he was no longer to enjoy the dearer delight of bustling in the front of a triumphant party— of inhaling the incense of adulation from its servile dependants-and of insulting with im punity the principles and the benefactors he had himself deserted. That this was the true key to his feelings, on this and on every other occasion, may be concluded indeed with safety, not only from his former, but from his after life. His Irish politics may all be referred to one principlea desire to insult and embarrass the govern ment by which he was neglected, and with which he despaired of being reconciled :—A single fact is decisive upon this point. While his friends were in power, we hear nothing of the grievances of Ireland; and to the last we hear nothing of its radical grievance, the oppression of its Catholic population. His object was, not to do good to Ireland, but to vex and annoy the English ministry. To do this however with effect, it was necessary that he should speak to the interests and the feelings of some party who possessed a cer tain degree of power and influence. This unfortunately was not the case in that day with the Catholics; and though this gave them only a stronger title to the services of a truly brave or generous advocate, it was sufficient to silence Swift. They are not so much as named above two or three times in his writings-and then only with scorn and reproba tion. In the topics which he does take up, it is no doubt true, that he frequently inveighs against real oppression and acts of indisput able impolicy; yet it is no want of charity to say, that it is quite manifest that these were not his reasons for bringing them forward, and that he had just as little scruple to make an outcry, where no public interest was concerned, as where it was apparent. It was sufficient for him, that the subject was likely to excite popular prejudice and clamour, or that he had some personal pique or animosity to gratify. The Drapier's letters are a suffi cient proof of the influence of the former 78 principle; and the Legion Club, and the numberless brutalities against Tighe and Bettesworth, of the latter. Every body is now satisfied of the perfect harmlessness, and indeed of the great utility of Wood's scheme for a new copper coinage; and the only pretexts for the other scurrilities to which we have alluded were, that the Parliament had shown a disposition, to interfere for the alleviation, in some inconsiderable particulars, of the intolerable oppression of the tithe system, -to the detriment, as Swift imagined, of the order to which he himself belonged; and that Mr. Tighe had obtained for a friend of his own, a living which Swift had wished to secure for one of his dependants. to accede to the even the inconsistencies of honest minds, wo His main object in all this, we make no doubt, was personal pique and vengeance; yet it is probable, that there was occasionally, or throughout, an expectation of being again brought into the paths of power and preferment, by the notoriety which these publications enabled him to maintain, and by the motives which they held out to each successive ministry, to secure so efficient a pen in their favour. That he was willing to have made his peace with Walpole, even during the reign of George I., is admitted by Mr. Scott,-though he discredits the details which Of Swift's personal character, his ingenious Lord Chesterfield and others have given, apparently from very direct authority, of the biographer has given almost as partial a repterms up and a bit is upon which he was willing resentation, as of his political conduct;-a tracing the principles of that conduct;that he paid his court most assiduously to certain, great part of it indeed has been anticipated, successor of that Prince, both while he was the same etter arrogance and disdain of mankind, Prince of Wales, and after his accession to leading to ptial oofligate ambition and scurrility in the throne. The manner in which he paid public life, and beford to domineering and selfish his court, too, was truly debasing, and espe- habits in private.re, we His character seems to have cially unworthy of a High-Churchman and a been radically overbewhom aring and tyrannical;public satirist. It was chiefly by flatteries for though, like other most tyrants, he could stoop and assiduity to his mistress, Mrs. Howard! low enough where his in no douterests required it, it with whom he maintained a close correspond- was his delight to exacted ancan implicit compli ence, and upon whom he always professed ance with his humours anly, 171d fancies, and to mainly to rely for advancement. When impose upon all around him woman, George I. died, Swift was among the first to serving and accommodating the judge kiss the hands of the new sovereign, and in- habits, without the slightest reend (Mrgard to their dulged anew in the golden dreams of prefer- convenience or comfort. Wheren her over he came, ment. Walpole's recal to power, however, the ordinary forms of society were rds: Y to give way soon overcast those visions; and he then wrote to his pleasure; and every thing, you caven to the to the mistress, humbly and earnestly entreat- domestic arrangements of a family broke) they be introply, but to be susing her, to tell him sincerely what were his pended for his caprice. If he was tot the lest that the chances of success. She flattered him for duced to a person of rank, he insistedlearly an a while with hopes; but at last he discovered first advances and the first visit shouldrange und be made that the prejudice against him was too strong to him. If he went to see a friend ines and k the coun to be overcome; and ran back in terrible hu- try, he would order an old tree to be the same. cut down, hould giv dow-and mour to Ireland, where he railed ever after if it obstructed the view from his wingceptible with his usual vehemence against the King, was never at his ease unless he was the Queen, and the concubine. The truth, it to give nicknames to the lady of thhancellor house, seems, was, that the latter was disposed to fa- and make lampoons upon her acqua of the Yintance. vour him; but that her influence with the King On going for the first time into any famir the dragon he cursed himhours was subordinate to that of the Queen, who frequently prescribed beforehand the made it a principle to thwart all applications for their meals, sleep, and exercise: an which were made through that channel. sisted rigorously upon the literal fulfilmeyer, w Such, we think, is a faithful sketch of the the capitulation. From his intimates he hereafter, un political career of this celebrated person;-formly exacted the most implicit submisons, and on and if it be correct in the main, or even in to all his whims and absurdities; and carrished in any material particulars, we humbly conceive his prerogative so far, that he sometimes use most that a more unprincipled and base course of to chase the Grattans and other accommodating proceeding never was held up to the scorn friends, through the apartments of the Dean and ridicule of mankind. To the errors and ery, and up and down stairs, driving them like the task of obmselves to his allowed din which at of rners ome or. to your honour's mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself any farther than for infirmities. under circumstances of life not worth your regard. This is all I dare beg at present from your honour, What is left me to wish (next to the health and prosperity of your honour and family), is, that Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgments at your feet for so many fayours I have received; which, whatever effect they have had upon my fortune, shall never fail to have the greatest upon my mind, in approving myself, upon all occasions, your honour's most obedient and most dutiful servant."-Vol. xv. pp. 230, 231. horses, with a large whip, till he thought he | excuse my many weaknesses and oversights, much had enough of exercise. All his jests have more to say any thing to my advantage. The parthe same character of insolence and coarse- and learning, and the reasons of quitting your ticulars expected of me are what relate to morals ness. When he first came to his curate's honour's family, that is, whether the last was ochouse, he announced himself as "his mas-casioned by any ill actions. They are all left entirely ter;"-took possession of the fireside, and ordered his wife to take charge of his shirts and stockings. When a young clergyman was introduced to him, he offered him the dregs of a bottle of wine, and said, he always kept a poor parson about him to drink up his dregs. Even in hiring servants, he always chose to insult them, by inquiring into their qualifications for some filthy and degrading office. And though it may be true, that his after conduct was not exactly of a piece with those preliminaries, it is obvious, that as no man of proper feelings could submit to such impertiBy far the most characteristic, and at the nence, so no man could have a right to indulge same time most discreditable and most interin it. Even considered merely as a manner esting part of Swift's history, however, is that assumed to try the character of those with which relates to his connection with the three whom he lived, it was a test which no one unfortunate women, whose happiness he ru but a tyrant could imagine himself entitled to apply; and Swift's practical conclusion from ined, and whose reputation he did what was in him to destroy. We say, the three women it was just the reverse of what might be ex--for though Varina was cast off before he pected. He attached himself to those only had fame or practice enough in composition who were mean enough to bear this usage, to celebrate her in song, like Stella or Vanessa, and broke with all who resented it. While her injuries seem to have been nearly as great, he had something to gain or to hope from the and altogether as unpardonable as those of the world, he seems to have been occasionally other two. Soon after leaving college, he less imperious; but, after he retired to Ireland, he gave way without restraint to the native appears to have formed, or at best professed, an attachment to a Miss Jane Waryng, the arrogance of his character; and, accordingly, sister of a fellow-student, to whom his assiduconfined himself almost entirely to the society ities seemed to have rendered him acceptable, of a few easy-tempered persons, who had no and with. whom he corresponded for a series talents or pretensions to come in competition of years, under the preposterous name of Vawith his; and who, for the honour of his ac- rina. There appear to be but two letters of this quaintance, were willing to submit to the docorrespondence preserved, both written by minion he usurped. Swift, one in the height of his passion, and the other in its decline-and both extremely characteristic and curious. The first is dated in 1696, and is chiefly remarkable for its extreme badness and stupidity; though it is full enough of love and lamentation. The lady, it seems, had long before confessed a mutual flame; but prudential considerations made her averse to an immediate union,-upon which the lover raves and complains in the following deplorable sentences,-written, it will be observed, when he was on the borders of thirty, and proving, along with his early poems, how vely his faculties. A singular contrast to the rudeness and arrogance of this behaviour to his friends and dependants, is afforded by the instances of extravagant adulation and base humility, which occur in his addresses to those upon whom his fortune depended. After he gets into the society of Bolingbroke and Oxford, and up to the age of forty, these are composed in something of a better taste; but the true models are to be found in his addresses to Sir late he came to the use of William Temple, the first and most honoured of his patrons, upon whose sickness and recovery he has indited a heroic epistle and a Pindaric ode, more fulsome and extravagant than any thing that had then proceeded from "Madam-Impatience is the most inseparable the pen even of a poet-laureate; and to whom, quality of a lover, and indeed of every person who after he had left his family in bad humour, is in pursuit of a design whereon he conceives his he sends a miserable epistle, entreating a cer- greatest happiness or misery to depend. It is the tificate of character, in terms which are scarce- same thing in war, in courts, and in common busily consistent with the consciousness of de-ness. Every one who hunts after pleasure, or fame, serving it; and are, at all events, infinitely or fortune, is still restless and uneasy till he has hunted down his game; and all this is not only inconsistent with the proud and peremptory very natural, but something reasonable too: for a tone which he assumed to those who would violent desire is little better than a distemper, and bear with it. A few lines may be worth therefore men are not to blame in looking after quoting. He was then full twenty-seven years a cure. I find myself hugely infected with this of age, and a candidate for ordination. After malady, and am easily vain enough to believe it has some very good reasons to excuse it. For inexplaining this, he adds― deed, in my case, there are some circumstances which will admit pardon for more than ordinary disquiets. That dearest object upon which all my prospect of happiness entirely depends, is in perpetual danger to be removed for ever from my "I entreat that your honour will consider this, and will please to send me some certificate of my behaviour during almost three years in your family; wherein I shall stand in need of all your goodness to sight. Varina's life is daily wasting; and though one just and honourable action would furnish health to her, and unspeakable happiness to us both, yet some power that repines at human felicity has that influence to hold her continually doating upon her cruelty, and me on the cause of it. "Would to Heaven you were but a while sensible of the thoughts into which my present distractions plunge me; they hale me a thousand ways, and I not able to bear them. It is so, by Heaven: The love of Varina is of more tragical consequence than her cruelty. Would to God you had treated and scorned me from the beginning. It was your pity opened the first way to my misfortune; and now your love is finishing my ruin: and is it so then? In one fortnight I must take eternal farewell | of Varina: and (I wonder) will she weep at parting, a little to justify her poor pretences of some affection to me? your health be otherwise than it was when you told me the doctors advised you against marriage, as what would certainly hazard your life. Are they or you grown of another opinion in this particular? are you in a condition to manage domestic affairs, with an income of less (perhaps) than 3001. a-year? (it must have been near 5001.) have you such an inclination to my person and humour, as to comply with my desires and way of living, and endeavour to make us both as happy as you can? can you bend your love and esteem and indifference to others the same way as I do mine? shall I have so much power in your heart, or you so much gov. ernment of your passions, as to grow in good humour upon my approach, though provoked by a —— ? have you so much good nature as to endeavour by soft words to smooth any rugged humour occasioned by the cross accidents of life? shall the place wherever your husband is thrown Surely, Varina, you have but a very mean be more welcome than courts or cities without opinion of the joys that accompany a true, honour-him? In short, these are some of the necessary meable, unlimited love; yet either nature and our an- thods to please men, who, like me, are deep read in cestors have highly deceived us, or else all other the world; and to a person thus made, l'should be sublunary things are dross in comparison. Is it proud in giving all due returns towards making possible you can be yet insensible to the prospect her happy."-Vol. xv. pp. 247, 248. of a rapture and delight so innocent and so exalted? By Heaven, Varina, you are more experienced and have less virgin innocence than I. Would not your conduct make one think you were hugely skilled in all the little politic methods of intrigue? Love, with the gall of too much discretion, is a thousand times worse than with none at all. It is a peculiar part of nature which art debauches, but cannot improve. "Farewell, madam; and may love make you a while forget your temper to do me justice. Only remember, that if you still refuse to be mine, you will quickly lose, for ever lose, him that has resolved to die as he has lived, all yours, JoN. SWIFT."Vol. xv. pp. 232-237. He then tells her, that if every thing else were suitable, he should not care whether her person were beautiful, or her fortune large. "Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the other, is all I look for. I desire, indeed, a plentiful revenue, but would rather it should be of my own; though I should bear from a wife to be reproached for the greatest."-Vol. xv. pp. 248. To complete the picture of his indifference, or rather his ill-disguised disinclination, he adds "The dismal account you say I have given you of my livings I can assure you to be a true one; and, since it is a dismal one even in your own opinion, you can best draw consequences from it.. The place where Dr. Bolton lived is upon a living which he keeps with the deanery; but the place of residence for that they have given me is within a mile of a town called Trim, twenty miles from hence; and there is no other way but to hire a house at Trim, or build one on the spot: the first is hardly to be done, and the other I am too poor to perform at present."—Vol. xv. p. 246. Notwithstanding these tragic denunciations, he neither died-nor married-nor broke off the connection, for four years thereafter; in the latter part of which, having been at last presented to two livings in Ireland, worth near 400l. a year, the lady seems to have been reduced to remind him of his former impatience, and fairly to ask him, whether his affections had suffered any alteration. His answer to this appeal is contained in the The lady, as was to be expected, broke off second letter;-and is, we think, one of the all correspondence after this letter-and so most complete patterns of meanness, selfish-ended Swift's first matrimonial engagement, ness, and brutality, we have ever met with. and first eternal passion!-What became of The truth undoubtedly was, that his affections the unhappy person, whom he thus heartlessly were estranged, and had probably settled by abandoned, with impaired health, and mortithis time on the unfortunate Stella: but in-fied affections, after a seven-years' courtship, stead of either fairly avowing this inconstaney, is nowhere explained. The fate of his next. or honourably fulfilling engagements, from victim is at least more notorious. which inconstancy perhaps could not release him, he thinks fit to write, in the most frigid, insolent, and hypocritical terms, undervaluing her fortune and person, and finding fault with her humour; and yet pretending, that if she would only comply with certain conditions which he specifies, he might still be persuaded to venture himself with her into the perils of matrimony. It will be recollected, that when he urged immediate marriage so passionately in 1696, he had no provision in the world, and must have intended to live on her fortune, which yielded about 100l. a year, and that he thought her health as well as happiness would be saved by the match. In 1700, when he had got two livings, he addresses her as fol sire, therefore, you will let me know if Esther Johnson, better known to the reader of Swift's works by the name of Stella, was the child of a London merchant, who died in: her infancy; when she went with her mother, who was a friend of Sir W. Temple's sister, to reside at Moorpark, where Swift was then domesticated. Some part of the charge of her education devolved upon him;-and though he was twenty years her senior, the interest with which he regarded her, appears to have ripened into something as much like affection as could find a place in his selfish bosom. Soon after Sir William's death, he got his Irish livings, besides a considerable legacy;and as she had a small independence of her own, it is obvious that there was nothing to prevent their honourable and immediate union. Some cold-blooded vanity or ambition, how ever, or some politic anticipation of his own sense to pretend that it was the want of mopossible inconstancy, deterred him from this ney that prevented him from fulfilling his Onward and open course; and led him to an engagements. Stella was then twenty-six, arrangement which was dishonourable and and he near forty-five; and both had hitherto absurd in the beginning, and in the end pro-lived very far within an income that was now ductive of the most accumulated misery. He more than doubled. That she now expected prevailed upon her to remove her residence to be made his wife, appears from the pains from the bosom of her own family in Eng- he takes in the Journal indirectly to destroy land, to his immediate neighbourhood in Ire- that expectation; and though the awe in land, where she took lodgings with an elderly which he habitually kept her, probably precompanion, of the name of Mrs. Dingley-vented her either from complaining, or inavowedly for the sake of his society and pro- quiring into the cause, it is now certain that tection, and on a footing of intimacy so very a new attachment, as heartless, as unprincistrange and unprecedented, that whenever he pled, and as fatal in its consequences as either left his parsonage house for England or Dub- of the others, was at the bottom of this cruel lin, these ladies immediately took possession, and unpardonable proceeding. and occupied it till he came back.-A situa- During his residence in London, from 1710 tion so extraordinary and undefined, was liable to 1712, he had leisure, in the intervals of his of course to a thousand misconstructions; and political labours, to form the acquaintance of must have been felt as degrading by any Miss Esther Vanhomrigh, whose unfortunate woman of spirit and delicacy: and accord-love he has recorded, with no great delicacy, ingly, though the master of this Platonic se- under the name of Vanessa. This young raglio seems to have used all manner of paltry lady, then only in her twentieth year, joined and insulting practices, to protect a reputation to all the attractions of youth, fashion, and which he had no right to bring into question, elegance, the still more dangerous gifts of a -by never seeing her except in the presence lively imagination, a confiding temper, and a of Mrs. Dingley, and never sleeping under capacity of strong and permanent affectionthe same roof with her,-it is certain both Swift, regardless of the ties which bound him that the connection was regarded as indeco- to Stella, allowed himself to be engaged by rous by persons of her own sex, and that she those qualities; and, without explaining the herself felt it to be humiliating and improper. nature of those ties to his new idol, strove by Accordingly, within two years after her set- his assiduities to obtain a return of affectiontlement in Ireland, it appears that she encou- while he studiously concealed from the unraged the addresses of a clergyman of the happy Stella the wrong he was conscious of name of Tisdall, between whom and Swift doing her. We willingly borrow the words there was a considerable intimacy; and that of his partial biographer, to tell the rest of a she would have married him, and thus sacri- story, which, we are afraid, we should tell ficed her earliest attachment to her freedom with little temper ourselves. and her honour, had she not been prevented "While Vanessa was occupying much of his by the private dissuasions of that false friend, time, and much doubtless of his thoughts, she is who did not choose to give up his own claims never once mentioned in the Journal directly by to her, although he had not the heart or the name, and is only twice casually indicated by the nonour to make her lawfully his own. She title of Vanhomrigh's eldest daughter. There was, was then a blooming beauty, of little more therefore, a consciousness on Swift's part, that his attachment to his younger pupil was of a nature than twenty, with fine black hair, delicate which could not be gratifying to her predecessor, features, and a playful and affectionate char- although he probably shut his own eyes to the conacter. It seems doubtful to us, whether she sequences of an intimacy which he wished to conoriginally felt for Swift any thing that could ceal from those of Stella. Miss Vanhomrigh, in properly be called love-and her willingness the mean while, conscious of the pleasure which to marry another in the first days of their Swift received from her society, and of the advanconnection, seems almost decisive on the ages of youth and fortune which she possessed, and ignorant of the peculiar circumstances in which subject: but the ascendancy he had acquired he stood with respect to another, naturally, and over her mind, and her long habit of submit- surely without offence either to reason or virtue, ting her own judgment and inclinations to gave way to the hope of forming an union with a man whose talents had first attracted her admirahis, gave him at least an equal power over her, and moulded her pliant affections into tion, and whose attentions, in the course of their mutual studies, had, by degrees, gained her affectoo deep and exclusive a devotion. Even tions, and seemed to warrant his own. The friends before his appointment to the Deanery of St. continued to use the language of friendship, bu Patrick's, it is utterly impossible to devise with the assiduity and earnestness of a warmer any apology for his not marrying her, or allow-passion, until Vanessa rent asunder the veil, by in ing her to marry another; the only one thatimating to Swift the state of her affections; and in he ever appears to have stated himself, viz. this, as she conceived, she was justified by his own favourite, though dangerous maxim, of doing that the want of a sufficient fortune to sustain the which seems in itself right, without respect to the expenses of matrimony, being palpably absurd common opinion of the world. We cannot doubt in the mouth of a man born to nothing, and that he actually felt the shame, disappointment, already more wealthy than nine-tenths of his guilt, surprise, expressed in his celebrated poem, order: but, after he obtained that additional though he had not courage to take the open and manly course of avowing those engagements with preferment, and was thus ranked among the Stella, or other impediments which prevented him well beneficed dignitaries of the establish- from accepting the hand and fortune of her rival.inent, it was plainly an insult upon common | Without, therefore, making this painful but just |