As to the great man* whose defence you undertake, though I do not think so well of him as you do, yet I have been the cause of preventing five hundred hard things being said of him.

I am sensible I have talked too much when myself is the subject: therefore I conclude with sincere wishes for your health and prosperity, and am, sir, yours, &c., JON. SWIFT.

P.S.-You cannot but remember that in the only thing I ever published with my name, I took care to celebrate you as much as I could, and in as handsome a manner as I could,† though it was in a letter to the present Lord Treasurer. J. S.

Painful as it is to find two such men as Steele and Swift discarding the amenities of letters and of friendship, and indulging in party bickerings which ought to be left to inferior spirits, it is pleasant at least to find in both, after abusing each other in good set terms, a more generous flow of feeling and a return to something almost of tenderness. It can hardly be denied that, after the first burst of asperity of temper, there is something almost touching in the calm remonstrance of Swift and his self-vindication, which gains our sympathy, and that it is difficult to acquit Steele of characteristic warmth and hastiness, and of being for once wanting in his characteristic good nature. To appearance, at least, Swift certainly comes out the clearer of the two. All that can be said as regards Steele (if he was mistaken) is that it was a misconception acted on in a moment of irritation. What private information he may

"The Duke of Marlborough."

"In his 'Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue,' Swift says, 'I would willingly avoid repetition, having about a year ago communicated to the public much of what I had to offer upon this subject, by the hands of an ingenious gentleman, who for a long time did thrice a week divert or instruct the kingdom by his papers; and is supposed to pursue the same design at present under the title of Spectator. This author, who hath tried the force and compass of our language with so much success, agrees entirely with me in most of my sentiments relating to it; so do the greatest part of the men of wit and learning whom I have had the happiness to converse with.'"

have had that may have led him to believe his friend to have been acting with duplicity, we cannot now tell. At all events, he was naturally greatly irritated at the scurrilous abuse of the Examiner, and may not unreasonably have thought that even supposing Swift did not write personally, that with his interest with the party and the paper, others would not have attacked him if he had not given it his countenance; and we see he still calmly expresses the opinion that he was an accomplice. There are also two or three other suspicious circumstances. The cautious wording of his reply is rather remarkable, and though the not denying a charge point blank in the first instance, especially in a man of so proud a nature as Swift, is not necessarily to be construed into an argument of guilt, yet if it be strengthened by other circumstances of a suspicious tendency, some importance may reasonably be attached to it. Swift's last acknowledged contribution to the Examiner was No. 45 of the original edition, dated June 7, 1711, but we now know that in his communications to Mrs Johnson (Stella) he acknowledges having written the first part of No. 46, and his continuing to dictate and to give hints occasionally,* yet in his letters to Addison and Steele on this occasion he affects to be wholly unconnected with it. Then he makes confession here of never having ceased to be a Whig, and singularly enough seems to calculate upon Steele's sympathy on that ground, while he was notoriously allying himself with the opposite party, and among the most violent and energetic of its leaders.

"I have got an underspur-leather to write an Examiner again; and the Secretary and I will now and then send hints; but we would have it a little upon the Grub Street, to be a match for their writers."— Journal to Stella, Dec. 5, 1711.

In fact, everything with him, including literature, was obviously and, with regard to the latter, confessedly merely an instrument of self-aggrandisement; and though the world professes to make some convenient distinction between party morality and personal honour, yet it is difficult to say where the distinction is to end or to what it may lead-nor is it easy to avoid feeling the ground uncertain in dealing with those who deliberately make choice of that equivocal position. Taking these circumstances into consideration, it is difficult to feel much sympathy in the first vehement fury of Swift, which the subsequent terrible calmness in one of such an intensely irritable temperament, in the latter part of his remonstrance, might lead us to accord. Nor can we, without indignation, remember the intense malignity with which he subsequently pursued Steele,* though professing on this occasion to part with a feeling, or an appearance of partial reconciliation and good will.

As Swift is now about to disappear from the scene, some notice of him, which was deferred for the sake of convenience at the time he was connected with Steele as one of his earliest coadjutors in the Tatler, may not here be out of place. But a life involving so many topics of discussion, can only be comparatively slightly touched upon. It is a story which has been often told, with variations according to the sympathies of the narrator, and theories more or less absurd, attempting to solve the mysterious

*“If,” says Mr Thackeray, "undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he would have gone home, and, years after, written a foul epigram about you, watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon."-Humourists, Lect. 1.

problems involved in it by other mysteries, some extravagant, others not fit to be repeated, and all save one inadequate. Some have resorted to the extreme hypothesis, as the only key to the whole, of his comparative insanity all through life; whilst others, including eminent medical authorities,* have denied that he ever was insane in the popular and ordinary sense of the term. JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745) was the posthumous son of an attorney in Dublin, who held the office of Steward of the Inns of Court.† His family was connected with that of Dryden, his father being second cousin to the poet. To the kindness of his uncle, Godwin Swift, a barrister, he was indebted for his education. His early experience of dependence was keenly felt, and probably first tended to embitter his spirit, being aggravated by supposing his relative in better circumstances than he was. After a preparatory education at the famous Grammar School of Kilkenny, in his fourteenth or fifteenth year he entered the University of Dublin. To whatever cause it may be attributed, he is numbered among those of whom Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Scott are remarkable examples,

"The Closing Years of Swift's Life," by Dr Wilde of Dublin, in which an interesting volume was founded on the original design of a merely medical inquiry, suggested by another eminent medical man, into the nature of Swift's disease, at a time (1835) when his remains being exhumed owing to repairs in the cathedral of St Patrick's, gave additional interest to the subject.

† His family were of Yorkshire and clerical; and Spence reports Pope (probably by mistake) as making him by his own statement born at his mother's native place, Leicester, and being the son of a clergyman. Writing to Pope in reference to his published letters, he expresses himself, and others who highly valued him, as grieved that he should make no distinction in speaking of Ireland, between the people inhabiting what was formerly called the Pale, and the native or Celtic population. Of the former, he expresses the opinion that they "are much more civilised than many counties in England, and speak better English, and are much better bred." Pope, however, professed to trace his own family to Ireland.