reason when it is fairly offered; and by reason they would easily be governed if it were left to their choice." 1 But he saw that, unfortunately, in all party leaders there was an inevitable tendency to mislead; in some, as in Harley, because they had a belief in the efficacy of petty intrigue rather than of reason; in others, such as the more unscrupulous Whig leaders, because they understood the power of lies in politics. Swift's own political creed was strongly founded in principle, from which he never departed. As regards his opposition to Absolutism, he.. was from the first, and remained, a Whig;2 but from his perception of the necessity of maintaining, as a national institution, the doctrine and discipline of the Church, ha was drawn to act with the Tories. The meannesses and subterfuges of both parties, being ever before his eyes, constantly intensified his contempt for human nature; hence the edge of his irony--which seemed to him the most fitting weapon to use in a scene so full of knavery and folly-sometimes glanced from its real object and wounded things that he truly valued and revered.

Though irony was clearly the right artistic instrument to be wielded by one who, like Swift, based his view of life on philosophic scepticism, his intellectual position by no means justified the frame of mind suggested by the phrase saeva indignatio. Johnson seems to lay his finger on the weak point in Swift's philosophy, when he points out that it did not exclude self-deception :

He [Swift] predominated (he says) over his companions with very high ascendancy, and probably would bear none over whom he could not predominate. To give him advice was, in the style of his friend Delaney, "to venture to speak to him." This customary superiority soon grew too delicate for truth; and Swift with all his penetration allowed himself to be delighted with low flattery.3

If all man's conceptions of the external world were founded on uncertainty, and if human nature itself were the thing of unmitigated meanness, folly, and corruption

1 Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs.

2 Letter of January 10, 1721, to Pope.

3 Lives of the Poets: Swift.

that Swift assumed, while at the same time counsels of despair were to be rejected, it surely behoved the Christian philosopher to recommend, with Pascal, the suppression of all personal pride, and to accept in humility the consolations of religion. In Swift, on the contrary, the indignation with mankind that lacerated his heart became savage in exact proportion to the disappointments and sufferings which he himself experienced. While he was able to exert his great powers in promoting the political cause in which he was interested, the world, in spite of his perception of its follies, seemed to him a tolerable place; in all his arguments, and in his verse, he treats his fellowmen on an equality; it was only when he was reduced to political impotence, and his imagination infected by disease, that mankind became Yahoos to him, and the whole movement of society, saving in the little circle which surrounded him, seemed

A tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

The progress of this absorbing egotism is clearly reflected in the altering character of his verse.

Starting from 1708-about which period his poetical style begins definitely to form itself-we find his invention occupied with something as near creation as he ever attained in poetry. There is charming grace and pleasantry in his modernisation of the tale of Baucis and Philemon. Jupiter and Mercury are converted into travelling saints, and Philemon's metamorphosis from a husbandman into a parish priest-perhaps not altogether unlike the neighbours of the Vicar of Laracor-is thus described :

The cottage by such feats as these
Grown to a church by just degrees
The hermits then desired their host
To ask for what he fancied most.
Philemon, having paused awhile,
Returned them thanks in homely style :
Then said, "My house is grown so fine,
Methinks, I still would call it mine;

I'm old, and fain would live at ease;
Make me the parson, if you please."

He spoke, and presently he feels
His grazier's coat fall down his heels:
He sees, yet hardly can believe,
About each arm a pudding sleeve ;
His waistcoat to a cassock grew,
And both assumed a sable hue;
But, being old, continued just

As threadbare and as full of dust.
His talk was now of tithes and dues ;
He smoked his pipe and read the news;
Knew how to preach old sermons next,
Vamped in the preface and the text;
At christenings well could act his part,
And had the service all by heart;
Wished women might have children fast,
And thought whose sow had farrowed last;
Against dissenters would repine,

And stood up firm for right divine;

Found his head filled with many a system;

But classic authors-he ne'er missed 'em.

In 1710, when he was in London and just beginning to perceive as his Journal to Stella shows-how great was his influence with politicians, he is infinitely diverted by the humours of the town, and records his impressions of A City Shower in mock-heroic verse :----

Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town,
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The templar spruce, while every spout's abroach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet scorns to call a coach.
The tucked-up seamstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oiled umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds, by varied fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories and despondent Whigs
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Boxed in a chair, the beau important sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits;
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed,

(Those bully Greeks who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, run them through)
Laocoon struck the outside with a spear,

And each imprisoned hero quaked with fear.

His appointment to the Deanery of St. Patrick's in 1713, though, as taking him away from England, it was in itself a disappointment, was far from spoiling the gaiety of his humour, as may be seen from his truly admirable imitation of Horace's Epistle describing how the Consul Philippus amused himself with an unsophisticated Roman. Philippus is converted into Harley, and Swift's description of himself at this period is full of bonhomie :

Lewis his patron's humour knows,
Away upon his errand goes,
And quickly did the matter sift;
Found out that it was Doctor Swift,
A clergyman of special note

For shunning those of his own coat;
Which made his brethren of the gown
Take care betimes to run him down ;
No libertine; not over-nice;

Addicted to no kind of vice ;

Went where he pleased, said what he thought;

Not rich, but owed no man a groat :

In state opinions à la mode;

He hated Wharton like a toad,

Had given the faction many a wound,
And libelled all the junto round;
Kept company with men of wit,

Who oft-times fathered what he writ :

His works were hawked in every street,

But seldom rose above a sheet :

Of late indeed the paper stamp

Did very much his genius cramp ;

And since he could not spend his fire,
He now intended to retire.1

Whatever may have been the exact truth with regard to the influence that Swift exercised over Vanessa, there can be no question as to the fineness and delicacy of the compliment paid to that unfortunate woman in the poem,

1 Imitation of Horace, Book i. Epistle 7.

which, it is to be remembered, was in 1713 meant for her eye alone. No more extraordinary contrast can be imagined than the difference in style between this composition and the lines On a Lady's Dressing Room, with which in later years Swift condescended to disgrace his pen:

Cadenus, common forms apart,

In every scene had kept his heart;

Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ,
For pastime, or to show his wit.

But books, and time, and state affairs

Had spoiled his fashionable airs :

He now could praise, esteem, approve,

But understood not what was love.

His conduct might have made him styled

A father, and the nymph his child.
That innocent delight he took,
To see the virgin mind her book,
Was but the master's secret joy
In school to hear the finest boy.1

In 1714 we note the first symptoms of a change. He is now in what he considers banishment. Sickness grows upon him, and with exile and ill-health the longsuppressed egotism begins to make itself heard:--

'Tis true then why should I repine

To see my life so fast decline?

But why obscurely here alone,

Where I am neither loved nor known?
My state of health none care to learn:
My life is here no soul's concern :
And those with whom I here converse
Without a tear will tend my hearse,
Removed from kind Arbuthnot's aid,
Who knows his art but not his trade,
Preferring his regard for me

Before his credit or his fee.
Some formal visits, looks, and words,
What mere humanity affords,

I meet perhaps from three or four,
From whom I once expected more:
Which those who tend the sick for pay
Can act as decently as they;

1 Cadenus and Vanessa.