affection, with giddiness, deafness, and ultimate insanity, which made his future life wretched, than that it was owing to eating an over quantity of stone-fruit. In this point of view, the life of Swift presents a deep moral lesson; for no man, if that were the case, ever drew down upon himself a severer chastisement; but, as regards this particular fact, it could by possibility be nothing so flagrant as was endeavored to be propagated by the report. The second statement one is unwilling to weaken, because, in itself, it is so beautiful; yet in the dean's life there are so many proofs of his making professions of patriotism and generosity to cover and screen his private purposes, that one is equally tempted to suspect a certain share of policy. The fact is thus stated:
"In an excursion from his habitation, he met with a clergyman, with whom he formed an acquaintance, which proved him to be learned, modest, well-principled, the father of eight children, and a curate at the rate of forty pounds a year. Without explaining his purpose, Swift borrowed this gentleman's black mare—having no horse of his own—rode to Dublin, resigned the prebend of Kilroot, and obtained a grant of it for this new friend. When he gave the presentation to the poor clergyman, he kept his eyes steadily fixed on the old man's face, which, at first, only expressed pleasure at finding himself preferred to a living; but when he found that it was that of his benefactor, who had resigned in his favor, his joy assumed so touching an expression of surprise and gratitude, that Swift, himself deeply affected, declared he had never experienced so much pleasure as at that moment. The poor clergyman, at Swift's departure, pressed upon him the black mare, which he did not choose to hurt him by refusing; and thus mounted for the first time on a horse of his own, with fourscore pounds in his purse, Swift again rode to Dublin, and there embarked for England, and resumed his situation at Moorpark as Sir William Temple's confidential secretary."
The incident is a charming one; and we may admit the facts as regards the clergyman to be fully true, and that the pleasure of Swift must have been great in having the opportunity of thus making a good man happy; but, in order to place the transaction on its probably correct basis, we must not forget that Swift was confessedly already most thoroughly weary of the obscurity of Kilroot, and longing for return to Moorpark. This takes a good deal of the romance out of it. Without, therefore, astonishing ourselves at the unworldly generosity of a young man abandoning his own chance in life to serve a poor and meritorious man, we may suppose to the full that Swift was glad to do the good man such a service while it jumped with his own wishes. No man was more clear-sighted than Swift as to the consequences of such things; and none could better estimate the wide difference in the mode of doing the thing, between saying, "Well, I'm tired of this stupid place; I must away again to England; but I'll try to get the living for you," and leaving the high merit of such a personal sacrifice to be attributed to him. In any way, it was rich in consequences. He left behind a family made happy; grateful hearts, and tongues that would sound his praises through the country; and what a prestige with which to return to Moorpark! He came back like a hero of romance. That, judging by the after life of the dean, is probably the true view of the affair. He did a good deed, and he took care that it presented to the public its best side.
These ten years of life at Moorpark, which ended only with the death of Sir William Temple, were every way a most important portion of Swift's life. Here he laid at once the foundation of his fame and his wretchedness. Here, with books, leisure, and as much solitude as he pleased—with the conversation of Sir William Temple, and the most distinguished literati of the age who visited him—Swift, in so auspicious an atmosphere, not only thought and studied much, but wrote a vast deal, as it were to practice his pen for great future efforts, when he felt his mind and his knowledge had reached a sufficient maturity. He informs his friend, Mr. Kendall, that he had "written, and burned, and written again upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any man in England." He wrote Pindaric Odes; translated from the classics; and exercised his powers of satire till he could confidently to himself predict the force of that "hate to fools" which he afterward assumed as his principal characteristic. Besides this, he was deeply engaged in assisting Sir William in the controversy on the superiority of ancient or modern learning, in which Temple, Boyle, Wotton, and Bentley were all involved. This occasioned Swift's "Battle of the Books," though it was not printed till some years afterward. Here, also, he wrote his famous "Tale of a Tub," which more than any other cause stopped effectually the path of his ambition toward a bishopric. Though not known avowedly as an author, Swift was now well known as a man of great ability to many literary men, and was on terms of particular friendship with Congreve.
But his literary pursuits here had not so completely engrossed him as to prevent his engaging in what, in any other man, would have been termed more tender ones; in Swift they must take some other name, be that what it may. The history of his conduct, too, with regard to every woman to whom he paid particular court, is the most extraordinary thing in all literary research; there have been several ways of accounting for it, into which it is not my intention to descend; let the causes have been what they may, they stamp his character for intense selfishness beyond all possibility of palliation. If Swift felt himself disqualified for entering into matrimonial relations from whatever cause or motive, as it is evident he did, he should have conducted himself toward women of taste and feeling accordingly; but, on the contrary, he never, in any instance, seems to have put the slightest check on himself in this respect. He paid them the most marked attentions; in some instances he wooed, with all the appearances of passion, and proposed marriage with the most eager importunity; he saw one after another respond to his warmth, and then he coolly backed out, or entered into such a tantalizing and mysterious position—where the woman had to sacrifice every thing, peace of mind being destroyed, and character put into utmost jeopardy—as wore their very hearts and lives out. He played with women as a cat does with mice. So that they were kept fast bound within his toils, cut off from all the better prospects of life, sacrificed as victims to his need of their society, he cared nothing. He was alarmed and agitated almost to madness by the fear of losing them; yet this was a purely selfish feeling; he took no measures to set their hearts at rest; he placed them in such circumstances that he could not do it; to satisfy one he must immolate another. Some of the finest and most charming women of the age were thus kept, as it were, with a string round their hearts, by which he could pluck and torture them at pleasure, and keep them walking forever over the burning plowshares of agonizing uncertainties, and the world's oblique glances. There is nothing which can ever reclaim Swift's memory, in this respect, from the most thorough contempt and indignation of every manly mind.
Every instance of what are called love-affairs, in which Swift was concerned, presents the same features, even under the softened effect of the coloring of his most laudatory biographer, Sir Walter Scott. While Swift was at Leicester, his mother was afraid of his forming an imprudent attachment to a young woman there; at which Swift, knowing himself pretty well, only laughed. His flirtations, he represented, were only "opportunities of amusement;" a "sort of insignificant gallantry which he used toward the girl in question;" a "habit to be laid aside whenever he took sober resolutions, and which, should he enter the Church, he should not find it hard to lay down at the porch." This is base language, and that of Scott is hardly better. He says, "It is probably to a habit, at first indulged only from vanity or for the sake of amusement, that we are to trace the well-known circumstances which imbittered his life and impaired his reputation."
And is this all? Are habits of indulging vanity, and of amusing one's self with the affections and the happiness of others, to be thus coolly talked of? "Circumstances which imbittered his life, and impaired his reputation," indeed! Swift had the greatest right to imbitter his own life, and impair his own reputation, if he pleased, but that is not the question; it was because he most recklessly, for the indulgence of his vanity and his self-love, imbittered the lives of those who listened to him, and impaired their reputations, that he was culpable in proportion to his brilliant powers, and placed himself thereby in the category of heartless villains. These are severe words; but I have always felt, and still can not avoid feeling, that their application to Swift is most just and necessary. Perhaps no instance of mere meanness was ever more striking than that shown in his second courtship. The lady in this case was not a simple country girl, but was Jane Waryng, the sister of an ancient college companion; to this young lady, in his affected pastoral style, he had given the
