No. II. CHARACTER OF SWIFT. "Go forward, and be chok'd with thy ambition." SHAKSPEARE: 1 Hen. VI. SWIFT was a man like the cardinal we have quoted, "Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking in short, of inordinate pride, yet not above little vanities, though he denied it, and never above spunging for a dinner. A slave to ambition, to believe him as painted in his own verses, one would suppose him the old Corycian of Virgil, content with a garden and unbought feasts. "Thus, in a sea of folly tost, My choicest hours of life are lost; Those cares that haunt the court and town." All this, while he was tearing himself to pieces at losing the high reward of his services, which he thought within his reach. That that was a mitre, and not the dean's stall he afterwards obtained, appears from numberless little allusions in letters as far back as 1712, when he was advancing to the height of his favour with the Tories. Even while thanking Lady Orkney for a writing-table, he cannot help saying, "I plainly see, that, if you were first minister, it would have been a cathedral."* Yet, after a thousand hopes of better fortune, he was dismissed by those whom he thought he had saved by his abilities alone, growling to Ireland, when his fondest object was preferment in England; and there he continued to growl for thirty years more, and yet, during the whole time, breathing homilies in the shape of letters, de contemptu mundi; nursing and exhibiting an outrageous spleen, which he denied to have the least power over him. His boast was, independence of all those persons and things which he most courted; and, whenever vexed or thwarted in the pursuit which led him from Ireland, he was always, according to himself, ready to forego it, and return with equanimity to a country which he pretended to love, yet cordially hated. During all this time he played the most consummate actor, in a part not new or original, indeed, but requiring cunning and uncommon impudence to succeed in it. A part copied from that assumed disguise of the virtuous Kent, of whom it was said, that "having been praised for bluntness, he did affect a saucy roughness." Hence, rogue, knave, and fool were ever at his tongue's end, or his pen's point, and gave him a character for most intrepid independence; though, in reality, nothing but designing impudence. For it † King Lear. * Works, xi. 247. was a finesse easily seen through (and only foolishly submitted to by his superiors), of exacting from people of the highest consequence of both sexes, that they should always make him the first advances. This, too, was conveyed in an affected sauciness of language which generally succeeded (and was, therefore, often repeated) in persuading the world of his independence. He used it, therefore, as an admirable channel of flattery while professing the most homely freedom, the better to deceive those on whom he had designs. It is astonishing how this sort of stratagem took; and no wonder it turned his head, and completed his own self-deception as to other parts of his character. Thus he says to Lord Carteret when Lord-Lieutenant, and whom he most egregiously flattered: "I told your excellency that you were to run my errands; I expect you will tell your successor how impartial I am in giving you characters of clergymen, and that you let your said successor know that you lament having done nothing for Mr. Robert Grattan, and give him such a recommendation that he may have something to mend his fortune. And I desire, that I, who have done with courts, may not be used as a courtier."* Hence, too, the following specimen of the same artful flattery, under the same rough exterior, to Queen Caroline when princess, disgusts as much as it amusest: "I am sorry I have no complaints to make of Her Royal Highness, therefore, I think I may * Works, xii. 28. 382. In a letter to Mrs. Howard. let you tell her, that every grain of virtue and good sense in one of her rank, considering the bad education among flatterers and adorers, is worth a dozen in any inferior person. Now, if what the world says be true, that she excels all other ladies, at least a dozen times, then multiply one dozen by the other, you will find the number to be 144." If this did not deserve a bishopric, I don't know what could. But the honest dean was disappointed notwithstanding. In another letter to the same lady, he says, his deafness will force him away, and then the queen will have the misfortune not to see him, and he, the satisfaction never to have seen her since she was queen. And although she were a thousand queens, he will not lose his privilege of never seeing her but when she commands it." It is evident, that he here expected Mrs. Howard to lay these letters before the queen, and that he should be commanded; but they were not even noticed, and that they were not, did not diminish his virtuous indignation. With the same designing policy, whenever the great men did not show him sufficient attention, he boasted, that "he could be perfectly content with his present fortune, small as it was‡, and return to his willows at a day's notice, without the least reluctance."§ "Contempt in Ireland," says he, "will be no mortification to me. When I was last there, I was alone half the time, retired to one scurvy acre of ground, and I always left it with regret. I am as well re * Works, xii. 233. † Ibid. xii. 349. Little more than 2007. a year, if so much. § Sheridan's Life of Swift, i. 139. ceived and known at court, as perhaps any man ever was of my level. I have formerly been the like: I left it then, and, perhaps, will leave it now (when they please to let me), without any concern but what a few months will remove." This was to Archbishop King, 1st Oct. 1711. In another letter to the same: "I thank God I am not very warm in my expectations, and know courts too well to be surprised at disappointments.” In adopting this policy, although he might be sincere in displaying what, after all, were merely strong proofs of the pride and vanity, the ambition of a selfish nature, not of a really high and generous character, he knew that he turned a sound general principle to his own advantage. His biographer, Sheridan, says, "he had long beheld with indignation the mean condescensions and homages paid by men of genius to scoundrels in power, and titled fools, and was determined to afford a striking example in himself of a contrary conduct, by reclaiming the rights due to superiority of talents over those of birth and fortune; and, in one of his 'Tatlers,' says, 'If those who possess great endowments of mind would set a just value on themselves, they would think no man's acquaintance whatsoever a condescension, nor accept it from the greatest upon unworthy or ignominious terms.'" Nothing can be more just; but how does he himself act upon it? He struts into a court drawingroom like a peacock with his tail erect, upon which, instead of eyes, you find inscribed, "Behold, I am a man of genius and superior talents, and possess great endow |