it was the Drapier who had taught them to be patriots. Had Swift rescued the country from some overwhelming calamity, had he done all and more than all that the Edipus of story is fabled to have done for the city of Amphion, popular gratitude could not have gone further. Medals

were struck in his honour. A club, the professed object of which was to perpetuate his fame, was formed. His portrait stamped on medallions, or Woven on handkerchiefs, was the ornament most

cherished by both sexes. When he appeared in the streets all heads were uncovered. If for the first time he visited a town, it was usual for the Corporation to receive him with public honours. Each year, as his birthday came round, it was celebrated with tumultuous festivity. "He became," says Orrery, "the idol of the people of Ireland to a degree of devotion that in the most superstitious country scarcely any idol ever attained." "Spirit of Swift!" exclaimed Grattan on that memorable day when he brought forward his Declaration of Legislative Independence, "Spirit of Swift! your genius has prevailed; Ireland is now a nation." Even now no true Irishman ever pronounces his name without reverence.-COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON, 1893, Jonathan Swift, p. 188.

"The Drapier's Letters" are epochmaking in that they first taught Ireland the policy and the power of union, of dogged inert resistance, and of strategically organized and directed agitation. Their effect was, in fact, commensurate with their power, and their power of its kind was supreme. It is the power of a deft, vigorous, intent and unerring-eyed wielder of hammer, who hits each nail on the head and home without one single feint, or flourish, or one single short, or weak, or wasted stroke. Swift's consummate mastery of the art which conceals art was never shown to such perfection as in these letters, whose naked simplicity is so like naked truth as to be confounded with it. It is, in fact, incontestable that Swift's service to Ireland deserves the distinction he gives it in his epitaph. Look at it how you will, either from the point of view of the need of the service, or of its righteousness, or of its greatness, or of its difficulty, and Swift's work in Ireland is his supreme achievement. When "in the reign of Queen

Anne he dictated for a time the policy of the English nation," he had at his back a powerful and compact party, all the influence (then enormous) of the Court, Harley's serviceable cunning and the brilliant intellect of Bolingbroke. But of his work in Ireland he might say with literal truth, “Alone I did it!"'-KING, RICHARD ASHE, 1895, Swift in Ireland, pp. 108, 202.

The "Drapier's Letters" are as much superior to Junius as Junius is superior to Wilkes.-PAUL, HERBERT, 1900, The Prince of Journalists, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 47, p. 80.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

1726

Here is a book come out, that all our people of taste run mad about; 'tis no less than the united work of a dignified clergyman, an eminent physician, and the first poet of the age; and very wonderful it is, God knows!-great eloquence have they employed to prove themselves beasts, and shew such veneration for horses, that since the Essex quaker, nobody has appeared so passionately devoted to that species; and to say truth, they talk of a stable with so much warmth and affection, I cannot help suspecting some very powerful motive at the bottom of it.-MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY, 1726, Letter to the Countess of Mar.

It

"Gulliver's Travels," I believe, will have as great run as John Bunyan. is in everybody's hands. Lord Scarborough, who is no inventor of stories, told me that he fell in company with a master of a ship, who told him that he was very well acquainted with Gulliver; but that the printer had mistaken; that he lived in I lent Wapping, and not in Rotherhithe.

the book to an old gentleman who went immediately to his map to search for Lilliput.-ARBUTHNOT, JOHN, 1726, Letter to Swift, Nov. 8.

About ten days ago a book was published here of the Travels of one Gulliver, which has been the conversation of the whole town ever since: the whole impression sold in a week; and nothing is more diverting than to hear the different opinions people give of it, though all agree in liking it extremely. 'Tis generally said that you are the author, but I am told the bookseller declares he knows not from what hand it came. From the

highest to the lowest it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery. You may see by this you are not much injured by being supposed the author of this piece. If you are, you have disobliged us, and two or three of your best friends, in not giving us the least hint of it. Perhaps I may all this time be talking to you of a book you have never seen, and which has not yet reached Ireland; if it have not I believe what we have said will be sufficient to recommend it to your reading, and that you will order me to send it to you.-GAY, JOHN, 1726, Letter to Swift, Nov. 17.

“Gulliver's Travels" is a book in which the author seems to have called up all his vigilance and skill in the article of style: and, as the plan of his fiction led to that simplicity in which he delighted, no book can be taken as a fairer specimen of the degree of cultivation at which the English language had at that time arrived. was perhaps the man of the most powerful mind of the time in which he lived. GODWIN, WILLIAM, 1797, Of English Style, The Enquirer, p. 446.

Swift

This singular work displays a most fertile imagination, a deep insight into the follies, vices, and infirmities of mankind, and a fund of acute observation on ethics, politics, and literature. Its principal aim appears to have been to mortify the pride of human nature, whether arising from personal or mental accomplishments: the satire, however, has been carried too far, and degenerates into a libel on the species. The fourth The fourth part, especially, notwithstanding all that has been said in its defence by Sheridan and Berkeley, apparently exhibits such a malignant wish to degrade and brutalize the human race, that with every reader of feeling and benevolence it can occasion nothing but a mingled sensation of abhorrence and disgust. Let us hope, though the tendency be such as we have described, that it was not in the contemplation of Swift; but that he was betrayed into this degrading and exaggerating picture, by that habitual and gloomy discontent which so long preyed upon his spirits, which at length terminated in insanity, and which forever veiled from his eyes the fairest portion of humanity.-DRAKE, NATHAN, 1804, Essays Illustrative of the Tattler, Spectator and Guardian, vol. III, p. 148.

The genius of Swift converted the sketch of an extravagant fairy tale into a narrative, unequalled for the skill with which it is sustained, and the genuine spirit of satire of which it is made the vehicle.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1814, Memoirs of Jonathan Swift.

It would, perhaps, be too much to say that the author had an express design to blacken and culminate human nature, but at least his work displays evident marks of a diseased imagination and a lacerated heart-in short, of that frame of mind. which led him in the epitaph he composed for himself, to describe the tomb as the abode, Ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit. We rise, accordingly, from "Gulliver's Travels," not as from the work of De Foe, exulting in our nature, but giddy, and selfish, and discontented, and, from some parts, I may almost say brutified. The general effect, indeed, of works of satire and humour is perhaps little favourable to the mind, and they are only allowable, and may be read with profit, when employed as the scourges of vice or folly.-DUNLOP, JOHN, 1814-42, The History of Fiction, vol. II, p. 421.

He has taken a new view of human nature, such as a being of a higher sphere might take of it; he has torn the scales from off his moral vision; he has tried an experiment upon human life, and sifted its pretensions from the alloy of circumstances; he has measured it with a rule, has weighed it in a balance, and found it, for the most part, wanting and worthless, in substance and in show. Nothing solid, nothing valuable is left in his system but virtue and wisdom. What a libel is this upon mankind! What a convincing proof of misanthrophy! of misanthrophy! What presumption and what malice prepense, to show men what they are, and to teach them what they ought to be! What a mortifying stroke, aimed at national glory, is that unlucky incident of Gulliver's wading across the channel and carrying off the whole fleet of Blefuscu! After that, we have only to consider which of the contending parties was in the right. What a shock to personal vanity is given in the account of Gulliver's nurse Glumdalelitch! Still, notwithstanding the disparagement to her personal charms, her good nature remains the same amiable quality as before. I cannot see the harm, the misanthropy,

the immoral and degrading tendency of this. The moral lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition is amusing. HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1818, Lectures on the English Poets, Lecture vi.

I think "Gulliver's Travels" the great work of Swift.-COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1818, Wit and Humour; Miscellanies, Esthetic and Literary, ed. Ashe, p. 128. When I was a child scarce any book delighted me more than "Gulliver's Travels;" I have never read it since. I suppose that the charm was in the wonders that it related. Swift's style is plain, and without simile or metaphor, which is a great merit; no author whose power is in the original thought resorts to simile or metaphor.-BRIDGES, SIR SAMUEL EDGERTON, 1834, Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 274.

The part of Dean Swift's satire which relates to the "Stulbrugs" may possibly occur to some readers as bearing upon this topic. That the staunch admirers of that singularly-gifted person should have been flung into ecstasies on the perusal of this extraordinary part of his writings, need not surprise us. Their raptures were full easily excited; but I am quite clear they have given a wrong gloss to it, and heaped upon its merits a very undeserved praise. They think that the picture of the Stulbrugs was intended to wean us from a love of life, and that it has well accomplished its purpose. I am very certain that the dean never had any such thing in view, because his sagacity was far too great not to perceive that he only could make out this position by a most undisguised begging of the question. How could any man of the most ordinary reflection expect to wean his fellowcreatures from love of life by describing a sort of persons who at a given age lost their faculties and became doting, drivelling idiots? Did any man breathing ever pretend that he wished to live, not only for centuries, but even for threescore years and ten, bereaved of his understanding, and treated by the law and by his fellowmen as in hopeless incurable dotage? The passage in question is much more likely to have proceded from Swift's exaggerated misanthropy, and to have been designed as an antidote to human pride, by showing that our duration is necessarily limited, if, indeed, it is not rather to be regarded as the work of mere

whim and caprice.-BROUGHAM, HENRY LORD, 1835, A Discourse of Natural Theology, Sect. v, note.

The most admirable satire ever conveyed in a narrative, and the most plausible disguise that fiction ever bore. So well is the style of the old English navigators copied so much does there seem of their honest simplicity and plain common sense

so consistent is every part of the story

so natural all the events after the first improbability, --that the fable, even in its wildest flights, never loses an air of real truth.-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. 228. Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute!

Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred,-born Of him, the Master-Mocker of Mankind, Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen, Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,Do we not place it in our children's hands, Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?

- BULWER-LYTTON, EDWARD GEORGE LYTTON LORD, 1842, Eva and Other Poems.

Undoubtedly the greatest and most durable monument of Swift's style and originality of conception. "Gulliver" being a work of universal satire, will be read as long as the corruptions of human nature render its innumerable ironic and sarcastic strokes applicable and intelligible to human beings; and even were the follies and basenesses of humanity so far purged away that men should no longer need the sharp and bitter medicine of satire, it would still be read with little less admiration and delight for the wonderful richness of invention it displays, and the exquisite art with which the most impossible and extravagant adventures are related-related so naturally as to cheat us into a momentary belief in their reality.-SHAW, THOMAS B., 1847, Outlines of English Literature, p. 230.

What a surprising humour there is in these descriptions! How noble the satire is here! How just and honest! How perfect the image! perfect the image! Mr. Macaulay has quoted the charming lines of the poet, where the king of the pigmies is measured by the same standard. We have all read in Milton of the spear that was like "the mast of some tall amiral," but these images are surely likely to come to the

comic poet originally. The subject is before him. He is turning it in a thousand ways. He is full of it. As for the humour and conduct of this famous fable, I suppose there is no person who reads but must admire; as for the moral, I think it horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous; and giant and great as this Dean is, I say we should hoot him. Some of this audience may not have read the last part of Gulliver, and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons about to marry and say "Don't."-THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 1853, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century.

With what power, what genius in ludicrous invention, these stories are written, no one needs to be reminded. Schoolboys, who read for the story only, and know nothing of the satire, read "Gulliver" with delight; and our literary critics, even while watching the allegory and commenting on the philosophy, break down in laughter from the sheer grotesqueness of some of the fancies, or are awed into pain and discomfort by the ghastly significance of others. Of Swift we may surely say, that, let our literature last for ages, he will be remembered in it, and chiefly for his fictions, as one of the greatest and most original of our writers -the likest author we have to Rabelais, and yet with British differences. In what cases one would recommend Swift is a question of large connexions. To all strong men he is and will be congenial, for they can bear to look round and round reality on all sides, even on that which connects us with the Yahoos. Universality is best.-MASSON, DAVID, 1859, British Novelists and Their Styles, p. 94.

The reason few persons were angry at Gulliver was that the satire was seldom felicitous enough to wound. Sometimes it is obscure, sometimes revolting and extravagant, and is invariably feeblest when most elaborate. The genius of the book is in the original and diverting incidents, and especially in the skill with. which the fabulous is converted into the real. This must always have been the charm of the work, which flags, as Jeffrey remarked, whenever the satire predominates over the story.-ELWIN, WHITWELL, 1871, ed. The Works of Alexander Pope, vol. vii, p. 86, note.

What Swift has really done is to provide for the man who despises his species a number of exceedingly effective symbols for the utterance of his contempt. A child is simply amused with Bigendians and Littleendians; a philosopher thinks that the questions really at the bottom of Church quarrels are in reality of more serious import; but the cynic who has learnt to disbelieve in the nobility or wisdom of the great mass of his species finds a most convenient metaphor for expressing his disbelief. In this way "Gulliver's Travels" contains a whole gallery of caricatures thoroughly congenial to the despisers of humanity.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1882, Swift (English Men of Letters), p. 176.

Chivalrous feeling could scarcely breathe in the same atmosphere as Gulliver.-COURTHOPE, WILLIAM JOHN, 1885, The Liberal Movement in English Literature, p. 112.

Swift, always among the most original of writers, is nowhere more thoroughly himself than in his enchanting romance of Lemuel Gulliver. Whether we read it, as children do, for the story, or as historians, for the political allusions, or as men of the world, for the satire and philosophy, we have to acknowledge that it is one of the wonderful and unique books of the world's literature.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 160.

Swift's great work, after storming the outposts of human policy and human learning, breaks at last in a torrent of contempt and hatred on the last stronghold of humanity itself. The strength of Swift's work as a contribution to the art of fiction lies in the portentous gravity and absolute mathematical consistency wherewith he develops the consequences of his modest assumptions. In the quality of their realism the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag are much superior to the two later and more violent satires; he was better fitted to ridicule the politics of his time than to attack the "men of Gresham," of whose true aims and methods he knew little or nothing; and the imagination stumbles at many of the details of the last book. But the wealth of illustration whereby he maintains the interest of his original conception of pigmies and giants is eternally surprising

and delightful.-RALEIGH, WALTER, 1894, The English Novel, p. 137.

By a singular dispensation of Providence we usually read the "Travels" while we are children; we are delighted with the marvelous story, we are not at all injured by the poison.--SIMONDS, WILLIAM EDWARD, 1894, Introduction to the Study of English Fiction, p. 44.

So ends "Gulliver's Travels." In the verses which he wrote on the subject of his own death, Swift said that perhaps he "had too much satire in his vein," but added that:

"His satire points at no defect

But what all mortals may correct." The imperfections and contradictions in the "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms" are obvious. There is a total want of probability in the general conception, and the Houyhnhnms are made to do many things which it was physically impossible for them to perform. It is difficult to believe that, as some have said, the Houyhnhnm represents Swift's ideal of morality. Houyhnhnm and Yahoo are alike imperfect, and Swift falsely assumes that the natural affections are opposed to reason, instead of showing how the one should be influenced by the other. It is a counsel of despair.-AITKEN, GEORGE A., 1896, Gulliver's Travels, p. 396, note.

His modern fame mainly rests on "Gulliver's Travels," the object of which, as he said, apart from the three hundred pounds realized, was to vex the world. The sixth chapter of "A Voyage to Brobdingnag" in this immortal book stands unrivalled, unless by More's "Utopia," as an ironical description of English political institutions of the time.

AUBREY, W. H. S., 1896, The Rise and Growth of the English Nation, vol. III, p. 112. The book has maintained its popularity in spite of, rather than on account of its satire, and the first two voyages at least may be read with delight, even by those who know nothing of the persons and events which are held up to ridicule. -DENNIS, G. RAVENSCROFT, 1899, ed. The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift.

JOURNAL TO STELLA

It is a wonderful medley, in which grave reflections and important facts are at random intermingled with trivial occurrences and the puerile jargon of the most

intimate tenderness.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1814, Memoirs of Jonathan Swift.

Never, surely, was there a stranger picture of human character than Swift's daily record of his hopes and fears, his love and his ambition, his small miseries, strange affectations, and tender communings. But it is not an elevating picture as we look upon it; neither the reverend doctor nor the young lady to whom this journal is really addressed rises in our estimation. We are almost inclined to apologize even for the licentiousness of St. John, when we find it plainly recorded for the instruction and amusement of this young lady by her middle-aged companion. The explanation that the manners of Queen Anne's reign were grosser than ours, and that people were much more accustomed to plain speaking, is not at all satisfactory. There are indelicate allusions enough in the Spectator, and in Lady Montague's letters; but nothing like what we find in this journal, written in confidence to a young lady for whom Swift professed the most platonic affection. Coarse jokes and coarse oaths, the plainest allusions and double meanings of the broadest kind, are all mingled together in this strange medley of wit, vanity, affection, and secret history.-MACKNIGHT, THOMAS, 1863, The Life of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, p. 128.

The delightful, fantastic, secret, childish, infinitely tender babblement, never weary of repeating itself, welling up amidst and around the records of the ruggedest affairs of State, like perennial springs of pure sweet water in a region of savage rocks. He was fighting Titanically a Titanic battle; and night and morning, in bed before he rose, in bed before he slept, he found refreshment of innocent love. The sternest cynics and peace in these infantine outpourings have such soft places in their heart of hearts! incomparably softer than the softness of unctuous sentimentalists; liquid with living fountains where these are boggy with ooze.-THOMSON, JAMES, 187681, Essays and Phantasies, p. 284.

In reading the "Journal to Stella" we may fancy ourselves waiting in a parliamentary lobby during an excited debate. One of the chief actors hurries out at intervals; pours out a kind of hasty bulletin; tells of some thrilling incident,