necessary concomitant of wit; that it is by no means proper to be cited as an example of just composition. - GODWIN, WILLIAM, 1797, Of English Style, The Enquirer, p. 444.

The literary merit of the "Tale of a Tub" is great, and, in this respect, exceeding everything which he afterwards produced. The style has more nerve, more imagery, and spirit, than any other portion of his works: the wit and humour. are perfectly original, and supported throughout with undiminished vigour; but, it must be confessed, occasionally coarse and licentious; and the digressions exhibit erudition of no common kind, though not always applied in illustration of that side of the question on which justice and impartiality have since arranged themselves.-DRAKE, NATHAN, 1804, Essays Illustrative of the Tattler, Spectator and Guardian, vol. III, p. 143.

With this for my whole fortune, I was trudging through Richmond in my blue. smock-frock, and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was written "The Tale of a Tub, price threepence. The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited. I had the threepence; but, then, I could not have any supper. In I went and got the little book, which I was so impatient to read, that I got over into a field at the upper corner of Kew Gardens, where there stood a haystack. On the shady side of this I sat down to read. The book was so different from any thing I had ever read before, it was something so new to my mind, that, though I could not understand some parts of it, it delighted me beyond description, and produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read on until it was dark without any thought of supper or bed. . . . My "Tale of a Tub," which I carried about with me wherever I went, and when I-at about twenty years old-lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy, in North America, the loss gave me greater pain than I have since felt in losing thousands of pounds.-COBBETT, WILLIAM, c1810, Evening Post.

My

"The Tale of a Tub" is, in my apprehension, the masterpiece of Swift; certainly Rabelais has nothing superior, even

in invention, nor anything so condensed, so pointed, so full of real meaning, of biting satire, of felicitous analogy.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iv, ch. vii., par. 61.

An astonishing production, of which the fervid vehement style, sparkling wit, and vivacity of genius, seem to distinguish it above the happiest efforts even of his own restless pen. ROSCOE, THOMAS, 1841, ed. The Works of Jonathan Swift, vol. I, p.

42.

It is certainly his most astonishing production. You see a "virgin mind crumbling down with its own riches." It is the wildest, wittiest, wickedest, wealthiest book of its size in British literature.GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1855, A Third Gallery of Portraits, p. 222.

Although the object of the "Tale of a Tub" was undoubtedly to defend the Church of England, and to ridicule its opponents, it would be difficult to find in the whole compass of literature any production more utterly unrestrained by considerations of reverence or decorum. Nothing in Voltaire is more grossly profane than the passages in Swift about the Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the Sacrament, and the Calvinistic doctrine concerning inspiration. And although the "Tale of a Tub" is an extreme example, the same spirit pervades many of his other performances. His wit was perfectly unbridled. His unrivalled power of ludicrous combination seldom failed to get the better of his prudence; and he found it impossible to resist a jest. It must be added that no writer of the time indulged more habitually in coarse, revolting, and indecent imagery; that he delighted in a strain of ribald abuse peculiarly unbecoming in a clergyman; that he lived in an atmosphere deeply impregnated with scepticism; and that he frequently expressed a strong dislike for his profession.-LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE, 1861-71, The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, p. 19.

Swift had, indeed, little enough in common with the philosophy of Lucretius. But in both we have the same gloom of cynicism. In both there is the same profound scorn of superstition, and yet the same belief that in superstition we must find the main source of most human action.

In Swift as in Lucretius, the literary instinct has made the general and widereaching satire far more strong in its impression than the ostensible object of the book. If we read the "Tale of a Tub" with understanding of its real meaning, we have as little impression, at the end, of the quarrels of Peter and Martin and Jack, as we have, after reading the poem of Lucretius, of the niceties of the Epicurean system. Divided by eighteen centuries, there is yet much in the mental attitude of the two men that brings them close together. Swift's supposed debt to Rabelais is almost proverbial. But, after But, after all, it is more in the following of a recognised vehicle of satire, than in anything else. Swift read Rabelais, as the acknowledged master of a peculiar style of sarcasm. The style has already become antiquated and yet his adoption of it leaves the essential qualities of the "Tale of a Tub" absolutely unimpaired.-CRAIK, HENRY, 1882, The Life of Jonathan Swift, p. 112.

In style, and as an artistic whole, the "Tale of a Tub" is Swift's masterpiece. The satire is more pointed and concise than in "Gulliver," the thought more full and vigorous, the ideas and language more sustained and nervous. But to our modern taste there is much in the story of the three brothers that is painful and repellent. --POOLE, STANLEY LANE-, 1883, ed. Selections from the Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, Preface, p. xxii.

If not the most amusing of Swift's satirical works, the most strikingly original, and the one in which the compass of his powers is most fully displayed. In his kindred productions he relies mainly upon a single element of the humorous-logical sequence and unruffled gravity bridling in an otherwise frantic absurdity, and investing it with an air of sense. In the "Tale of a Tub" he lashes out in all directions. The humor, if less cogent and cumulative, is richer and more varied; the invention too, is more daringly original and more completely out of the reach of ordinary faculties. GARNETT, RICHARD, 1887, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth ed., vol,

XXII.

The very extraordinary treatise called "A Tale of a Tub" is allowed to rank among the first of its author's productions. It displays his finest qualities of

imagination and irony when they were in their freshest and most ebullient condition. The reader is carried along

so gaily on this buoyant tide of wit, that he puts the book down with regret to find it ended, when it seemed but just begun. In this, "A Tale of a Tub" forms a surprising contrast to surprising contrast to almost all the prose which had preceded it for half a century, the writers of the Restoration, even where they are most correct and graceful, being devoid of this particular sparkle and crispness of phrase.

In "A Tale of a Tub" the intellectual interest never halts for a moment. There is infinite variety, and the reader is tantalised by the prodigality of wit, never fatigued for a moment by its expression. In pure style Swift never excelled this his first important essay.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, pp. 144, 146.

The reader of such vigorous and effective English, employed with so much directness and point, cannot but sympathize with the feeling which prompted him to say in his old age, when his mind was gradually failing, "Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book!" Not only is the book his masterpiece, but it is also his best allegory; indeed one would hazard little in making the assertion that it is the best sustained allegory that ever written.-GREENE, HERBERT EVELETH, 1889, The Allegory in Spenser, Bunyan and Swift; Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. IV, p. 168.

was

I have been wandering through Swift a good deal. The hearty cursing in his "Tale of a Tub" goes straight to my midriff-so satisfying, the best of tonics. For absolute splendour too, commend me to his chapters about the Aeolists!BROWN, THOMAS EDWARD, 1893, Letters, ed. Irwin, March 10, vol. I, p. 173.

It is a mad, strange, often foul-mouthed book, with thrusts in it that go to the very marrow of all monstrous practices in all ecclesiasticisms; showing a love for what is honest and of good report, perhaps; but showing stronger love for thwacking the skulls of all sinners in high places; and the higher the place the harder is the thwack.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1895, English Lands Letters and Kings, From Elizabeth to Anne, p. 317.

THE EXAMINER

No modern leader-writer, however common-place, would write such heavy stuff now. POOLE, STANLEY LANE-, 1883, ed. Selections from the Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, Preface, p. xxv.

At the beginning of November Swift undertook the editorship of the "Examiner," and for upwards of three years he fought the battles of the Ministry as no one had ever yet fought the battles of any Ministry in the world. With a versatility unparalleled in the history of party warfare, he assailed his opponents in almost every form which satire can assume; in Essays which are still read as models of terse and luminous disquisition; in philippics compared with which the masterpieces of Cicero will, in point of vituperative skill, bear no comparison; in pamphlets which were half a century afterwards the delight of Burke and Fox: in ribald songs, in street ballads, in Grubstreet epigrams, in ludicrous parodies. He had applied his rare powers of observation to studying the peculiarities of every class in the great family of mankind, their humours, their prejudices, their passions; and to all these he knew how to appeal with exquisite propriety. He was a master of the rhetoric which casts a spell over senates and tribunals, and of the rhetoric which sends mobs yelling to the tar-barrel or the clubstick. With every weapon in the whole armoury of scorn he was equally familiar. In boisterous scurrility he was more than a match for Oldmixon. In delicate and subtle humour he was more than a match for Addison. In an age when the bad arts of anonymous polemics had been brought to perfection, his lampoons achieved a scandalous pre-eminence. His sarcasm and invective were terrific. His irony made even the Duchess of Marlborough quail; his pasquinades drove Eugene in ignominy from our shores; his broadsides made it perilous for the Opposition to show their faces in the streets. But however remarkable were his abilities as an unscrupulous assailant, his abilities as an unscrupulous advocate were not less consummate. Where his object was persuasion, he was indifferent to everything but effect. He hesitated at nothing. When the testimony of facts was against him, he distorted them beyond recognition.

When testimony was wanting, he invented it. When the statements of his opponents admitted of no confutation, he assumed the air of an honest and stout-hearted Englishman who refused to be duped. His diction-plain, masculine, incisivecame home to every one; and the monstrous effrontery of his assumptions was seldom suspected by readers whose reason was enthralled by the circumstantial conclusiveness with which he drew his deduc

tions. In truth, of all writers who have ever entered the arena of party politics, Swift had, in a larger measure than any, the most invaluable of all qualificationsthe art of making truth assume the appearance of elaborate sophistry, and the art of making elaborate sophistry assume the appearance of self evident truth. COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON, 1886, Bolingbroke, A Historical Study, and Voltaire in England, p. 59.

The style of Swift's "Examiners" is perfect of its kind and for its purpose. His own rather bald definition of a good style-"proper words in proper places' -expresses the form of these papers precisely, while their matter like the lead of a bullet, is calculated nicely, and only to serve a single object-to go straight and strong and true to its mark. The admiration Swift's political tracts excites is of the kind excited by a steam-engine

admiration of power, precision, and such exquisite adaptation of means to a single end that there is neither waste nor want, friction nor dispersion.—KING, RICHARD ASHE, 1895, Swift in Ireland, p. 61.

CONDUCT OF THE ALLIES

1711

The book is, in truth, a miracle of clear and forcible logic.-WYON, FREDERICK WILLIAM, 1876, The History of Great Britain During the Reign of Queen Anne, vol. II, p. 335.

Swift was now called upon to perform the greatest service ever rendered to an English government by a man of letters. In November, 1711, six weeks after the secret preliminaries had been signed, whilst the States of the confederacy were still doubtful as to the propriety of entering a congress on the base proposed, and whilst the public was still, as he complains, "half bewitched" against a peace, -at the end of November, the meeting of

Parliament being three times postponed to allow the utmost care to be bestowed on the work, and its statements with the conclusions founded on them to sink deeply into the public mind, appeared Swift's political masterpiece, "The Conduct of the Allies." It is impossible to exaggerate the effect produced and the service rendered by the publication of this tract. Written with simple eloquence, presenting throughout its course an unbroken chain of argument in which granting the author's premise -no flaw could be detected, and enlivened here and there with a touch of his peculiar humour, it had the merit of bringing an abstruse political question down to the level of the plainest understanding. It was disseminated with the utmost industry by the agents of Government. The first edition was all exhausted in a couple of days; the second in five hours; the third and fourth within the week. By the end of the year, a month after its first appearance, it was computed that eleven thousand copies had passed into some reader's hand; and its author relates in his correspondence with pardonable complacency how nothing of the kind had ever made so many converts; how, in the debates that followed, all the Government orators drew their arguments from it; how “every one agreed it was my book" which spirited up the court to its severe resolution against the allies; and how, on the return of peace, the first ambassador accredited to St. James's by the Bourbon King of Spain, on reaching London, "asked to be presented to Dr. Swift," as the man to whom "in all Europe" his royal master and the most Christian King were most indebted. HARROP, ROBERT, 1884, Bolingbroke, A Political Study and Criticism, pp. 113, 116.

The style and tone of this masterly pamphlet are adapted with great skill both to the popular taste and to the reason of thoughtful men.-COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON, 1893, Jonathan Swift, p. 88.

Never did publicist render any party such yeoman service as Swift rendered the Tories, and rarely did anyone meet with such scant reward. More than anything else, his "Conduct of the Allies" made the peace of Utrecht acceptable to the nation.-POLLARD, A. F., 1897, ed. Political Pamphlets, Introduction, p. xviii.

Whereas a wicked and malicious pamphlet, intitled A letter to the whole people of Ireland, by M. B. Drapier, author of the letter to the shopkeepers, &c., printed by John Harding, in Molesworth's Court, in Fishamble Street, Dublin, in which are contained several seditious and scandalous paragraphs highly reflecting upon his Majesty and his ministers, tending to alienate the affections of his good subjects of England and Ireland from each other, and to promote sedition among the people, hath been lately printed and published in this kingdom: We, the Lord Lieutenant and Council do hereby publish and declare that, in order to discover the author of the said seditious pamphlet, we will give the necessary orders for the payment of three hundred pounds sterling, to such person or persons as shall within the specified six months from this date hereof, discover the author of the said pamphlet, so as he be apprehended and convicted thereby.

GOD save the KING. -Proclamation Against the Drapier, 1724, Oct. 27.

Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause. Her trade supported, and supplied her laws; And leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved,

"The rights a Court Attacked, a poet saved." Behold the hand that wrought a nation's cure, Stretched to relieve the idiot and the poor, Proud vice to brand, or injured worth adorn, And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn. -POPE, ALEXANDER, 1737, Imitations of Horace, bk. ii, ep. i. v. 221–228.

True patriot, her [Ireland's] first, almost her last.-CROKER, JOHN WILSON, 1810, Ireland Past and Present.

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 feelings of some party who

possessed a certain 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 reprobation. In the topics which he does. take up, it is no doubt true, that he frequently inveighs against real oppression and acts of indisputable impolicy; yet it is no want of charity to say, that it is quite manifest that this 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. Drapier's letters are sufficient proof of the influence of the former principle.JEFFREY, FRANCIS LORD, 1816, The Works of Jonathan Swift, Edinburgh Review, vol. 27, p. 22.

The

upon

Believing, however erroneously, that Swift had delivered them from a great public danger, their gratitude to him knew no bounds, nor ended even with his powers of mind. "The sun of his popularity," says a great poet, "remained unclouded, even after he was incapable of distinguishing its radiance." The Drapier's Head became a favourite sign; his portrait, we are told, was engraved, woven handkerchiefs, and stuck upon medals (not of copper I presume). His health was quaffed at every banquet, his presence everywhere welcomed with blessings by the people. They bore with all the infirmities of genius, all the peevishness In vain did he show contempt and aversion to those who thus revered him in vain did he deny them even the honour of his birth-place, frequently saying, "I was not dropped in this vile country, but in England." In vain did he sneer at the "savage Old Irish." No insult on his part could weaken their generous attachment. Even at this day, as I am assured, this grateful feeling still survives; and all parties in Ireland, however estranged on other questions, agree in one common veneration for the memory

of age.

of Swift.-STANHOPE, PHILIP HENRY EARL (LORD MAHON), 1836-58, History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713-1783, vol. II., p. 67.

Is it fair to call the famous "Drapier's Letters" patriotism? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective: they are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy-the assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson with a bone in his hand, rushing on his enemies and felling them: one admires not the cause so much as the strength, the anger, the fury of the champion.-THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 1853, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century.

Because Swift takes the Irish, not the English, view of the question, because he goes to battle armed with the strength of his genius, the fire of his indignation, -he is therefore no patriot! What is it to be a patriot? To sit in the chimneycorner and make fine phrases about loving your country, or to go out and do battle for her? There was nothing in Ireland, in Swift's day, to which the affections could cling. The first thing to be done was to constitute a state worthy of love, the first steps to that end were in resistance to oppressive measures; the first feeling to be encouraged was hatred of the oppressor. It is true that Swift often spoke with contempt of the Irish, and that he regarded his appointment to the Deanery of St. Patrick's as a decree of banishment from civilization and friendship. He showed little sentimental patriotism; but he understood the duties of a patriot, and did his best to discharge them. He may sometimes have displayed the temper of Coriolanus; but, unlike the Roman, he endured unto the end.-HILL, ADAMS SHERMAN, 1868, The Character of Jonathan Swift, North American Review, vol. 106, p. 86.

The public joy knew no bounds. In a few hours Dublin presented the appearance of a vast jubilee. In a few days there was scarcely a town or a village in Ireland which was not beside itself with exultation. exultation. The whole island rang with the praises of the Drapier. It was the Drapier, they cried, who had saved them,