The Age of Pope

CHAPTER V.

JONATHAN SWIFT – JOHN ARBUTHNOT

The booksellers who employed the most famous man of letters then living (1777), to write the Lives of the Poets, selected the authors whose biographies were to accompany the poems they proposed to publish. They did not know the difference between versemakers and poets; but they probably did know what authors of the rhyming tribe were likely to prove the most popular. Dr. Johnson, who was then in his sixty-ninth year, was willing to write the Lives to order. He added, indeed, three or four names to the list which had been given him; but he made no protest, and contented himself, as he told Boswell, in saying that a man was a dunce when he thought that he was one.

Among the biographies included by Johnson in the Lives, appears the illustrious name of Swift. He was far indeed from being a dunce; but just as certainly he was not a poet, unless the title be given to him by courtesy. On the other hand, Swift ranks among the most distinguished prose writers of his time – many critics consider him the greatest – and he therefore finds his natural place in the prose section of this volume.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).

Swift's life is an extraordinary psychological study, but it will suffice to state here the bare outline of his career. He was a posthumous child, and born in Dublin of English parents, November 30th, 1667. When a year old he was kidnapped by his nurse out of pure affection, and carried off to Whitehaven, where she remained with the child for three years. At the age of six the boy was sent to Kilkenny school, and there he had William Congreve (1670-1729), the future dramatist, for a schoolfellow. Neither at school nor at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a boy of fifteen, did Swift distinguish himself, and he left the University in disgrace. At the Revolution he found a refuge with his mother at Leicester, and she, through a family relationship, obtained a position for her boy in the house of Sir William Temple (1628-1698), who was accounted a great man in his own day, and was famous alike for statecraft and literature. By many readers he will be best remembered as the husband of the charming Dorothy Osborne, whose innocently sweet love-letters have not lost their freshness in the lapse of two centuries.

There was a degree of servitude in Swift's position of secretary, which galled his proud spirit. But Temple, so far from treating him unkindly, introduced him to the King, and employed him in 'affairs of great importance.' In 1694 he left Temple, went to Dublin, took holy orders, and lived as prebend of Kilroot on £100 a year. In 1696 he resigned the office and returned to Moor Park, where he remained until Sir William Temple's death, in 1699. There he studied hard, ran up a steep hill daily for exercise, and cultivated the acquaintance of Esther Johnson, the 'Stella' destined to take a strange part in Swift's history, then a mere girl, and a companion of Temple's sister, who lived with him after his wife's death.

Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric odes, one of which led Dryden to say, and the prediction was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts.

Here is one fair illustration of his flights as an ode writer, and the reader will not ask for more:

'Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,Which is perhaps, as hard to imagine rightAs to paint Echo to the sight,I would not draw the idea from an empty name;Because, alas! when we all die,Careless and ignorant posterity,Although they praise the learning and the wit,And though the title seems to showThe name and man by whom the book was writ,Yet how shall they be brought to knowWhether that very name was he, or you, or I?Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise,And water-colours of these days:These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetryIs at a loss for figures to expressMen's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy,And by a faint description makes them less.Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it?Look where exalted Virtue and Religion sit,Enthroned with heavenly Wit!Look where you seeThe greatest scorn of learned Vanity!(And then how much a nothing is mankind!Whose reason is weighed down by popular air.Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death,And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath,Which yet whoe'er examines right will findTo be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!)And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there,Far above all reward, yet to which all is due;And this, ye great unknown! is only known in you.'

It is remarkable that at the very time Swift was perpetrating these lyrical atrocities, he was at work on the Tale of a Tub, which is generally regarded as the most masterly effort of his genius. A critic has said that Swift's poetry 'lacks one quality only – imagination,' but verse without imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house without windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and no license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet. Enough that he became a master of rhyme, and used it with extraordinary facility. Dr. Johnson's estimate of Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:

'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, ease and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style; they consist of proper words in proper places.'

The merits with which Swift's verse is credited are, therefore, not poetical merits, unless we accept what Schlegel calls the miserable doctrine of Boileau, that the essence of poetry consists in diction and versification.

The great bulk of Swift's verse is suggested by the incidents of the hour. No subject is too trivial for his pen; but the poems which are addressed to Stella, and others which, like Cadenus and Vanessa, and On the Death of Dr. Swift, have a personal interest, are by far the most attractive. We see the best side of Swift when he addresses Stella, whether in verse or prose. The birthday rhymes he delighted to write in her praise have the mark of sincerity, and there is true feeling in the lines which describe her as a ministering angel in his sickness:

'When on my sickly couch I lay,Impatient both of night and day,Lamenting in unmanly strains,Called every power to ease my pains;Then Stella ran to my reliefWith cheerful face and inward grief;And though by Heaven's severe decreeShe suffers hourly more than me,No cruel master could requireFrom slaves employed for daily hire,What Stella, by her friendship warmed,With vigour and delight performed;My sinking spirits now suppliesWith cordials in her hands and eyes,Now with a soft and silent treadUnheard she moves about my bed.I see her taste each nauseous draughtAnd so obligingly am caught,I bless the hand from whence they came,Nor dare distort my face for shame.'

The poem in which Swift imagines what will take place upon his death, is full of satiric humour, combined with that vein of bitterness that is never long absent from his writings. His humour is always allied to sadness; his mirth often sounds like a cry of misery. In this poem he pictures his gradual decay, and how his special friends, anticipating the end, will show their tenderness by adding largely to his years:

'He's older than he would be reckoned,And well remembers Charles the Second.He hardly drinks a pint of wine,And that I doubt is no good sign.His stomach too begins to fail,Last year we thought him strong and hale,But now he's quite another thing,I wish he may hold out till Spring.'

No enemy can match a friend, Swift adds, in portending a great misfortune:

'He'd rather choose that I should dieThan his prediction prove a lie,No one foretells I shall recover,But all agree to give me over.'

So he dies, and the first question asked is, 'What has he left and who's his heir?' and when these questions are answered, the Dean is blamed for his bequests. The news spreads to London and is told at Court:

'Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,Cries, "Is he gone? 'tis time he should."'

But the loss of the Dean will cause a brief regret to his most intimate friends:

'Poor Pope will grieve a month; and GayA week; and Arbuthnot a day.St. John himself will scarce forbearTo bite his pen and drop a tear.The rest will give a shrug, and cry,"I'm sorry – but we all must die."'

Why grieve, indeed, at the death of friends, since no loss is more easy to supply, and in a year the Dean will be forgotten, and his wit be out of date.

'Some country squire to Lintot goes,Inquires for "Swift in Verse and Prose."Says Lintot, "I have heard the name;He died a year ago." "The same."He searches all the shop in vain."Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,I sent them with a load of booksLast Monday to the pastrycook's.To fancy they could live a year!I find you're but a stranger here.The Dean was famous in his time,And had a kind of knack at rhyme.His way of writing now is past,The town has got a better taste."'

Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this poem, which is of considerable, but not of wearisome length. Perhaps ten or twelve pieces, in addition to those already mentioned, will repay the student's attention. One of the worthiest is a Rhapsody on Poetry. Baucis and Philemon, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith, and will please every reader. It was much altered from the original draught at Addison's suggestion; but the alterations are not improvements.43 The City Shower is a piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. Mrs. Harris's Petition is an admirable bit of fooling; Mary the Cook-Maid's Letter, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is the amusing talk of 'my lady's waiting-woman' in The Grand Question Debated.

It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through Swift's poems, without being repelled again and again by the filth in which it pleases him to wade. The Beast's Confession, which has been reprinted in the Selections from Swift (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like The Lady's Dressing-Room, Strephon and Chloe, and other poems of the class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description of the Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private life Swift appears to have been not only moral in conduct, but refined in conversation, and he is even said to have rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself always apprehensive of the calamity under which he became at last 'a driveller and a show.' 'I shall be like that tree,' he said once to the poet Young, 'I shall die at the top.'

It has been already said that The Tale of a Tub was written at Moor Park. It appeared in 1704, and although published anonymously and never owned, the book effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment in the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without reason, to make its author a bishop.

It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who takes, as Swift took throughout life, a misanthropical view of human nature, and who agrees with the cynical judgment of Carlyle, that men are mostly fools. Swift, however, did not consider fools useless, but observes that they 'are as necessary for a good writer as pen, ink, and paper.' Never was volume written which betrayed in larger characters the opinions and disposition of its author. Swift was consistent in defending the National Church as a political institution; but in the Tale of a Tub he does so with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the skill. The author maintains that in his ridicule of the Church of Rome and of Protestant dissenters, he is only displaying the abuses which deform the Christian Church; but no defence can be urged for his wild and irreverent method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of Swift's satire from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr. Leslie Stephen observes, may be supposed to guide our decision. 'Imagine the Tale of a Tub to be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a Rabelais perfectionné. Can anyone doubt that the believer would be scandalized, and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? Would not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons, even though directed against his enemies?'44

Although the wit poured out with such profusion in the Tale of a Tub, in so far as it offends the moral sense, fails to give pleasure, the reader is astonished, as Swift in later life was himself, at the genius displayed in this allegory, the argument of which may be told in a few words.

A man is supposed to have three sons by one wife, and all at a birth. On his deathbed he leaves to each of them a new coat, which he says will grow with their growth, and last as long as they live. In his will he leaves directions, saying how the coats are to be used, and warning them against neglecting his instructions. For some years all goes well, the will is studied and followed, and the brothers, Peter (the Church of Rome), Martin (the Church of England), and Jack (the Calvinist), live in unity. How by degrees they misinterpret their father's will, how Peter begins by adding topknots to his coat, and afterwards grows so scandalous that his brothers resolve to leave him, and then fall out between themselves, is told with abundant wit. A great part of the volume consists of digressions written in Swift's most vigorous style, and with the cynical humour in which he has no competitor.

It is always interesting to observe the influence of a work of genius on other minds, and in connection with the Tale of a Tub a story told of his boyhood by William Cobbett is worth recording:

'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, '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, "Tale of a Tub, price threepence." The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited… It was something so new to my mind that though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought of supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he could see no longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and 'tumbled down' by the side of a haystack, 'where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'

One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has also recorded the impression made upon him by this wonderful book. At the age of eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I am reading once more the work I have read oftener than any other prose work in our language… What a writer! Not the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon or Goldsmith had the power of saying more forcibly or completely whatever he meant to say.' 'Simplicity,' said Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most things in human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style, observes that 'he never attempted to round his sentences by redundant words, aware that from the simplest and the fewest arise the secret springs of genuine harmony.'

The volume containing the Tale of a Tub had also within its covers the Battle of the Books, which was suggested by a controversy that originated in France, and had been carried on by Sir W. Temple in England, as to the relative merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out of this, too, arose a discussion by some savants, with Richard Bentley (1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head, with regard to the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris, a subject discussed in Macaulay's essay on Temple in his usually brilliant style. Swift, in the Battle of the Books sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the nominal editor of the Epistles, who, in the famous Reply to Bentley, fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat, which takes place in the Homeric style, the enemies of the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are slain by one lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved by Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close pinioned to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till down they fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the piece is delightful, and it matters not a whit for the enjoyment of it, that the wrong heroes gain the victory.

In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and in one of them, the Argument against Abolishing Christianity, he found ample scope for the irony of which he was so consummate a master.

'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest objects; and if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak evil of dignities, abuse the Government, and reflect upon the ministry; which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious consequence;' and he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months' time the Bank and East India Stock may fall at least one per cent. And since that is fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'

An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from Swift's pen, is of literary interest. Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted the death, upon a certain day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and almanac maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced, and he was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite a loud protest from the poor man that he was not only alive, but well and hearty. The town took up the joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started the Tatler in the following year (1709), found it of advantage to assume the name of Bickerstaff, which these squibs had made so popular. Swift loved practical jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a mission from the Irish Church, and hoping for Church preferment himself. With the latter object in view he published the Sentiments of a Church of England Man (1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being unable to gain for the Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by their English brethren, and foiled, too, in his ambition, Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never loved, and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some years with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power in the country.

Some time before his return to London in 1710, a weekly Tory paper had been started by Bolingbroke and Prior called The Examiner, and in opposition to it, upon September 14th in that year, Addison produced the Whig Examiner which lived a brief life of five numbers and died on the 8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd November, after thirteen numbers of the Examiner had been published, Swift took up the pen, and from that date to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never before had a political journal exercised such power. In his change of party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous in his methods of pursuing it, and to gain his ends told lies with a vigour that has rarely been surpassed. He is never delicate in his treatment of opponents, and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes with a sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of every method most effective in controversy, should have been valued by the statesmen of the day is not surprising. When he forsook the Whig camp there was no opponent to pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility, could grapple with an enemy like this.

Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of a despot. He was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst into tears by rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should sing or he would make her.' 'I was at court and church to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make all the lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord Treasurer into the House of Commons to call out the principal Secretary of State in order to say that he would not dine with him if he intended to dine late. He relates, too, how he warned St. John not to appear cold to him, for he would not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw anything to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words, and not to put him in pain by the change of his behaviour, for it was what he would hardly bear from a crowned head. 'If we let these great ministers pretend too much,' he says, 'there will be no governing them.' And in a letter to Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and fortune that I might be treated like a lord … whether right or wrong it is no great matter; and so the reputation of great learning does the work of a blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'

It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on Swift's feats as a political writer; for us the most interesting fact connected with the years 1710-14 is that during that eventful period of Swift's life, in which he was hobnobbing with Ministers of State and doing them infinite service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments his inimitable Journal to Stella, and gaining the love which ended so tragically, of Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange chapter in Swift's life is closely bound up with his literary history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.

At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years her senior, had seen Esther Johnson growing up into womanhood. He had been to her as a master, a position he always liked to assume towards women.45 When he settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her companion, Mrs. Dingley, should also live there. Her preceptor, in his regard for propriety, appears never to have seen Esther apart from the useful Dingley, and his letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate humour they contain was meant for her alone. Swift never writes as a lover, but the kind of love he gave to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for life. If there were moments when she wished to escape from his power, the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his fascination, she was held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh, who was about ten years younger than Stella, felt the same spell, and having a far less restrained nature than Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion which devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they were, Swift had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he was linked by strong ties of companionship, and to her, according to some authorities, he was secretly married. Whether this were the case or not she had the larger claims upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed, Vanessa must be the victim.

In Cadenus and Vanessa (1713) a poem which every student of Swift will read, the author strove to achieve an impossibility. His aim was to ignore the lover and to assume the character of a master to an intelligent and favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His dignity and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.