addresses to women are, as might be expected, singularly unfortunate. He says truly of himself that he 'could praise, esteem, approve, But understood not what it was to love.' He can never get out of his satiric pulpit, and while saluting his mistresses as nymphs, he lectures them as school-girls. His verses to Stella, whom he came as near to loving as was for him possible, and whose death certainly hastened his mental ruin, are as unimpassioned as those to Vanessa, with whose affections he merely trifled. Swift's tendency to dwell on the meaner, and even the revolting facts of life, pardonable in his prose, is unpardonable in those tributes to Venus Cloacina, in which he intrudes on a lady's boudoir with the eye of a surgeon fresh from a dissecting-room or an hospital. His society verses are like those of a man writing with his feet, for he delights to trample on what others caress. Often he seems, among singing birds, a vulture screeching over carrion. Of Swift's graver satiric pieces, the Rhapsody on Poetry has the fatal drawback of suggesting a comparison with The Dunciad. In The Beast's Confession, vivid and trenchant though it be, the author appears occasionally to intrude on the gardens of Prior and Gay. Had he been an artist in verse, he might have written something in English more like the sixth satire of Juvenal than Churchill ever succeeded in doing. But Swift despised art: he rode rough-shod, on his ambling cynic steed, through bad double rhyme and halting rhythm, to his end. War with the cold steel of prose was his business his poems are the mere side-lights and pastimes of a man too grim to join heartily in any game. Only here and there among them, as in the strange medley of pathos and humour on his own death, there is a flash from the eyes which Pope-good hater and good friend-said were azure as the heavens, a touch of the hand that was never weary of giving gifts to the poor and blows to the powerful, a reflection of the universal condottiere, misanthrope and sceptic, who has a claim to our forbearance in that he detested, as Johnson and as Byron detested, cowardice and cant. : J. NICHOL A DESCRIPTION OF THE MORNING. WRITTEN IN APRIL 1709, AND FIRST PRINTED IN THE TATLER. Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach * * * * The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door The youth with broomy stumps began to trace And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half the street. Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees: The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands, And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands. HORACE, BOOK IV. ODE IX. ADDRESSED TO ARCHBISHOP KING. 1718. Virtue conceal'd within our breast Is inactivity at best: But never shall the Muse endure To let your virtues lie obscure; Or suffer Envy to conceal Your steady soul preserves her frame, Into the arms of death would run; With life, his country or his friend. APOLLO'S EDICT. OCCASIONED BY NEWS FROM PARNASSUS.' Ireland is now our royal care, We lately fix'd our viceroy there. And follow where he leads the way: And when you'd make a hero grander, No son of mine shall dare to say, The bird of Jove shall toil no more Your guides to true simplicity. When Damon's soul shall take its flight, If Anna's happy reign you praise, Whene'er my viceroy is address'd, When poets soar in youthful strains, 1 Referring to some verses in which Swift had described Lord Cutts under the form of salamander. When you describe a lovely girl, Cupid shall ne'er mistake another, The blessing of another line. Then, would you paint a matchless dame, Invoke not Cytherea's aid, Nor borrow from the blue-eyed maid; FROM CADENUS AND VANESSA.' In a glad hour Lucina's aid Produced on earth a wondrous maid, To try a new experiment. She threw her law-books on the shelf, And thus debated with herself. Since men allege, they ne'er can find Which raise a flame that will endure For ever uncorrupt and pure ; 1 A lady whom Swift had praised as a 'happy composition' of innocence, breeding, wit, &c. * The Countess of Donegal, daughter to the first earl of Granard. |