most bitter misanthropy, was in active life a steady patriot, a warm friend, and a bountiful patron. He had also this remarkable fate as a political writer, that, although his publishers were in four instances subjected to arrest and examination, although large rewards were twice offered for discovery of the author of works generally and truly ascribed to him,— yet he never personally felt the grasp of power;

"For not a Judas could be found,

To sell him for three hundred pound."

In allusion to this circumstance, he once said, he was three times near being hanged, and that people supposed he could bring in the Pretender in his hand, and place on him the crown.

While Swift stooped to partisanship, it was not to be expected that he should decline any of the arts by which a Court party may be maintained. Accordingly we find him regular in his attendance upon Mrs. Masham, the Queen's favourite; and after reading the contemptuous notices that occur in some of his Whig letters as "one of the Queen's dressers, who, by great intrigue and flattery, had gained an ascendant over her," it is very edifying to find him writing periodical accounts of the progress of her pregnancy, and " praying God to preserve her life, which is of great importance to the nation," &c.

No part of Swift's character is, more admirable than his zeal in assisting and bringing forward all who seemed to cultivate literature with success. He relieved the necessitous, he supported the dependent, and insisted that more distinguished genius should receive from his powerful friends that kindness and distinction to which it was so well entitled. Nor was the benefit of Swift's protection limited to literary characters. All his friends, and even the friends of those friends, had the benefit of his intercession. He made the fortune of Barber the printer, who became afterwards lordmayor of London, and a man of great wealth. He recommended Dr. Freind to be physician-general to the army in Spain. In short, he laid the basis of the fortunes of upwards of forty persons; and, as is frequently the case, "he found himself able to forward the interest of every one, excepting only his own." When in their intimacy the ministry called him Jonathan, and he retorted that he supposed they would leave him Jonathan as they found him, the expression in

directly implied expectation as well as reproach; nor did all the kindness and complacence of the lord-treasurer prevent Swift from expressing peevishness on the delay which occurred in making some honourable provision for his future life.

Alluding to the charge of "base perfidy," and such-like unbecoming expressions, made use of by Lord Brougham, in his sketch of Sir Robert Walpole, and to the language employed by Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, it has been well said: "But Swift is dead, as Jeffrey well knew when he reviewed his works." Mr. Wilde has this stinging passage upon another writer, who, taking things for granted, has fallen into many mis-statements : The last libeller of Swift, Mr. William Howitt, has laboured with great ingenuity, in his Homes and Haunts, to traduce the character and revive the worst stories ever told of the eccentric Dean, and has even made one or two abortive efforts to be witty at his expense. With the epithets of selfish tyranny,' 'wretched shuffler,'' contemptible fellow,' &c., showered upon him by Mr. Howitt, we need not interfere; they sufficiently explain the tone and character of his book. Swift seems to have had a presentiment of such writers when he penned the following lines:

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'Hated by fools, and fools to hate,
Be this my motto and my fate.""

SWIFT'S MISANTHROPY.

When Pope had completed the Iliad and the Odyssey, Swift wrote to him, congratulating him on the drudgery of translation, and at the same time exhibiting that vein of misanthropy which, as Warton said, dishonoured him as a man, a Christian, and a philosopher :

"I am exceedingly pleased that you have done with translations; Lord Treasurer Oxford often lamented that a rascally world should lay you under the necessity of misemploying your genius for so long a time. But since you will now be so much better employed, when you think of the world, give it one lash the more at my request. I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities; and all my love is towards individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor such a one, and Judge such a one. "Tis so with physicians, (I will not speak of my own trade,)

soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years (but do not tell), and so I shall go on till I have done with them. I have got materials towards a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy, (though not in Timon's manner,) the whole building of my travels is erected; and I never will have peace of mind until all honest men are of my opinion: by consequence, you are to embrace it immediately, and procure that all who deserve my esteem may do so too. The matter is so clear, that it will admit of no dispute; nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point."

Pope, without formally stating his dissent from his friend, contrived to show him that he disapproved of his view of human nature; his reply concludes with these words: "I really enter as fully as you can desire into your principle of love of individuals: and I think the way to have a public spirit, is first to have a private one; for who can believe (said a friend of mine) that any man can care for a hundred thousand people, who never cared for one? No ill-humoured man can ever be a patriot, any more than a friend."

Yet, in Swift's correspondence, the misanthrope is frequently lost in the good-natured man, as in his letters to Gay and Dr. Sheridan. Lord Orrery often heard Swift say, "When I sit down to write a letter, I never lean upon my elbow till I have finished it." By which expression he meant, that he never studied for particular phrases or polished paragraphs: his letters, therefore, are the truer representations of his mind. They are written in the warmth of his affections, and when they are considered in the light of kindness and sincerity, they illustrate his character in a very high degree.

Swift says of himself in one of his letters to Bolingbroke: -"All my endeavours to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts; whether right or wrong is no great matter. And so the reputation of wit and great learning does the office of a blue ribbon or coach-and-six."

A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delany, who interrupted Archbishop King and Swift in a conversation which

left the prelate in tears, and from which Swift rushed away with marks of strong terror and agitation in his countenance; upon which the Archbishop said to Delany, "You have just inet the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question." Yet, at this time all the great wits of England had been at his feet. All Ireland had shouted after him, and worshipped as a liberator the greatest Irish patriot and citizen. The most famous statesman, and the greatest poets of his day, had applauded him, and done him homage; and at this time writing over to Bolingbroke from Ireland, he says: "It is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called to the best, and not to die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”

Pope relates that when B- told Swift he loved him more than all his friends and relations, the Dean made him no manner of answer, but said afterwards, "The man's a fool." Pope once said to him, "There's a lady, Doctor, that longs to see you, and admires you above all things." "Then I despise her heartily!" said he.

Charles Fox had a theory about Swift, that he could not have written the heaps of nonsense he entertained his friends with, unless he had been at heart a good-natured man. All, at any rate, were agreed as to his wonderful and unequalled fascination in society, at such times as he pleased to exert it.

Mr. Monck Mason may be considered to have vindicated Swift from "personal envy, faction, and national prejudice. In fact, the reputation of Swift had been again and again rendered next to infamous by Scotch compliments, buried under Johnson's criticisms, and absolutely damned by Irish panegyric. Notes and Queries, 2nd S. vol. vi.

SWIFT AT MOOR PARK.

Moor Park and House lie at the base of the hills which bound the heaths towards Farnham, in Surrey; and near a place of earlier celebrity, Waverley Abbey. The house is a spacious mansion of three stories; and near its east end is the sun-dial, beneath which the heart of Sir William Temple was buried his body was interred in Westminster Abbey. The park and gardens were much altered early in the present century: the latter were in the formal Dutch style, and were the great delight of William Cobbett, who when a boy

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many a time walked over from Farnham to see the stately gardens. At the entrance of the Park, near the Waverley gate, is a cottage, where Swift is said to have first seen Stella, and where, the people in the neighbourhood tell you, Jonathan used to sleep when he resided at Moor Park with Sir William Temple. The age of the cottage, however, scarcely supports this fame; and, were it old enough, Swift is not likely to have slept there.

Many depreciatory sketches have been drawn of the kind of life Swift led at the household of his great patron; and irksome as much of it was, in this service Swift laid in a store of knowledge for his after-life, which was, indeed, roughhewn here. Mr. Thackeray, who is not very tender towards Temple, concedes that Swift's initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his knowledge of polite life, his acquaintance with literature even, which he could not have pursued very sedulously during his reckless career at Dublin, were got under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telling in after-life what quantities of books he devoured there; as well as of describing the garden-seat which he devised for his study.

Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious deal of veneration from his household, and to have been coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled by the people round about him, as delicately as any of the plants he loved. When he fell ill in 1693, the household was aghast at his indisposition: mild Dorothea, his wife, the best companion of the best of

men

"Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great,

Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate."

As for Dorinda, his sister,

"Those who would grief describe, might come and trace
Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face.

To see her weep, joy every face forsook,

And grief flung sables on each menial look.

The humbled tribe mourned for the quickening soul
That furnished life and spirit through the whole."

"Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting the menials into a mourning livery, a fine image? One of the menials wrote it, who did not like the Temple livery nor those twenty pound wages."-(Thackeray.)