Swift Part 2

Opponents of the liberal school had answered by claiming his first principle as their own. They argued that religion was based upon reason, and would be strengthened instead of weakened by free inquiry. Swift virtually takes a different position. He objects to freethinking because ordinary minds are totally unfit for such inquiries. "The bulk of mankind," as he puts it, is as "well qualified for flying as thinking;"

and therefore free-thought would lead to anarchy, atheism, and immorality, as liberty to fly would lead to a breaking of necks.

Collins rails at priests as tyrants upheld by imposture. Swift virtually replies that they are the sole guides to truth and guardians of morality, and that theology should be left to them, as medicine to physicians and law to lawyers. The argument against the abolition of Christianity takes the same ground. Religion, however little regard is paid to it in practice, is in fact the one great security for a decent degree of social order; and the rash fools who venture to reject what they do not understand, are public enemies as well as ignorant sciolists.

The same view is taken in Swift's sermons. He said of himself that he could only preach political pamphlets. Several of the twelve sermons preserved are in fact directly aimed at some of the political and social grievances which he was habitually denouncing. If not exactly "pamphlets,"

they are sermons in aid of pamphlets. Others are vigorous and sincere moral discourses. One alone deals with a purely theological topic: the doctrine of the Trinity. His view is simply that "men of wicked lives would be very glad if there were no truth in Christianity at all." They therefore cavil at the mysteries to find some excuse for giving up the whole. He replies in effect that there most be mystery though not contradiction, everywhere, and that if we do not accept humbly what is taught in the Scriptures, we must give up Christianity, and consequently, as he holds, all moral obligation, at once. The cavil is merely the pretext of an evil conscience. Swift's religion thus partook of the directly practical nature of his whole character. He was absolutely indifferent to speculative philosophy. He was even more indifferent to the mystical or imaginative aspects of religion. He loved downright concrete realities, and was not the man to lose himself in an _Oh, alt.i.tudo!_ or in any train of thought or emotion not directly bearing upon the actual business of the world. Though no man had more pride in his order or love of its privileges, Swift never emphasized his professional character. He wished to be accepted as a man of the world and of business. He despised the unpractical and visionary type, and the kind of religious utterance congenial to men of that type was abhorrent to him. He shrank invariably too from any display of his emotion, and would have felt the heartiest contempt for the sentimentalism of his day. At once the proudest and most sensitive of men, it was his imperative instinct to hide his emotions as much as possible. In cases of great excitement, he retired into some secluded corner, where, if he was forced to feel, he could be sure of hiding his feelings. He always masks his strongest pa.s.sions under some ironical veil, and thus practised what his friends regarded as an inverted hypocrisy. Delany tells us that he stayed for six months in Swift's house, before discovering that the dean always read prayers to his servants at a fixed hour in private. A deep feeling of solemnity showed itself in his manner of performing public religious exercises, but Delany, a man of a very different temperament, blames his friend for carrying his reserve in all such matters to extremes. In certain respects Swift was ostentatious enough; but this intense dislike to wearing his heart upon his sleeve, to laying bare the secrets of his affections before unsympathetic eyes, is one of his most indelible characteristics. Swift could never have felt the slightest sympathy for the kind of preacher who courts applause by a public exhibition of intimate joys and sorrows; and was less afraid of suppressing some genuine emotion than of showing any in the slightest degree unreal.

Although Swift took in the main what may be called the political view of religion, he did not by any means accept that view in its cynical form. He did not, that is, hold, in Gibbon's famous phrase, that all religions were equally false and equally useful. His religious instincts were as strong and genuine as they were markedly undemonstrative. He came to take (I am antic.i.p.ating a little) a gloomy view of the world and of human nature. He had the most settled conviction not only of the misery of human life but of the feebleness of the good elements in the world. The bad and the stupid are the best fitted for life, as we find it. Virtue is generally a misfortune; the more we sympathize, the more cause we have for wretchedness; our affections give us the purest kind of happiness, and yet our affections expose us to sufferings which more than outweigh the enjoyments. There is no such thing, he said in his decline, as "a fine old gentleman;" if so and so had had either a mind or a body worth a farthing, "they would have worn him out long ago." That became a typical sentiment with Swift. His doctrine was, briefly, that: virtue was the one thing which deserved love and admiration; and yet that virtue in this hideous chaos of a world, involved misery and decay. What would be the logical result of such a creed, I do not presume to say. Certainly, we should guess, something more pessimistic or Manichaean than suits the ordinary interpretation of Christian doctrine. But for Swift this state of mind carried with it the necessity of clinging to some religious creed: not because the creed held out promises of a better hereafter, for Swift was too much absorbed in the present to dwell much upon such beliefs; but rather because it provided him with some sort of fixed convictions in this strange and disastrous muddle. If it did not give a solution in terms intelligible to the human intellect, it encouraged the belief that some solution existed. It justified him to himself for continuing to respect morality, and for going on living, when all the game of life seemed to be decidedly going in favour of the devil, and suicide to be the most reasonable course. At least, it enabled him to a.s.sociate himself with the causes and principles which he recognized as the most enn.o.bling element in the world's "mad farce;" and to utter himself in formulae consecrated by the use of such wise and good beings as had hitherto shown themselves amongst a wretched race. Placed in another situation, Swift no doubt might have put his creed--to speak after the Clothes Philosophy--into a different dress. The substance could not have been altered, unless his whole character as well as his particular opinions had been profoundly modified.

CHAPTER IV.

LARACOR AND LONDON.

Swift at the age of thirty-one had gained a small amount of cash, and a promise from William. He applied to the king, but the great man in whom he trusted failed to deliver his pet.i.tion; and, after some delay, he accepted an invitation to become chaplain and secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, just made one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. He acted as secretary on the journey to Ireland: but upon reaching Dublin, Lord Berkeley gave the post to another man, who had persuaded him that it was unfit for a clergyman. Swift next claimed the deanery of Derry, which soon became vacant. The secretary had been bribed by 1000_l._ from another candidate, upon whom the deanery was bestowed: but Swift was told that he might still have the preference for an equal bribe. Unable or unwilling to comply, he took leave of Berkeley and the secretary, with the pithy remark, "G.o.d confound you both for a couple of scoundrels." He was partly pacified, however (February 1700), by the gift of Laracor, a village near Trim, some twenty miles from Dublin. Two other small livings, and a prebend in the cathedral of St. Patrick, made up a revenue of about 230_l._ a year.[14]

The income enabled him to live; but, in spite of the rigid economy which he always practised, did not enable him to save. Marriage under such circ.u.mstances would have meant the abandonment of an ambitious career. A wife and family would have anch.o.r.ed him to his country parsonage.

This may help to explain an unpleasant episode which followed. Poor Varina had resisted Swift's entreaties, on the ground of her own ill-health and Swift's want of fortune. She now, it seems, thought that the economical difficulty was removed by Swift's preferment, and wished the marriage to take place. Swift replied in a letter, which contains all our information: and to which I can apply no other epithet than brutal. Some men might feel bound to fulfil a marriage engagement, even when love had grown cold; others might think it better to break it off in the interests of both parties. Swift's plan was to offer to fulfil it on conditions so insulting that no one with a grain of self-respect could accept. In his letter he expresses resentment for Miss Waring's previous treatment of him; he reproaches her bitterly with the company in which she lives--including, as it seems, her mother; no young woman in the world with her income should "dwindle away her health in such a sink and among such family conversation." He explains that he is still poor; he doubts the improvement of her own health; and he then says that if she will submit to be educated so as to be capable of entertaining him: to accept all his likes and dislikes: to soothe his ill-humour, and live cheerfully wherever he pleases: he will take her without inquiring into her looks or her income. "Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the other, is all I look for." Swift could be the most persistent and ardent of friends. But, when any one tried to enforce claims no longer congenial to his feelings, the appeal to the galling obligation stung him into ferocity, and brought out the most brutal side of his imperious nature.

It was in the course of the next year that Swift took a step which has sometimes been a.s.sociated with this. The death of Temple had left Esther Johnson homeless. The small fortune left to her by Temple consisted of an Irish farm. Swift suggested to her that she and her friend Mrs. Dingley would get better interest for their money, and live more cheaply, in Ireland than in England. This change of abode naturally made people talk.

The little parson cousin asked (in 1706) whether Jonathan had been able to resist the charms of the two ladies who had marched from Moor Park to Dublin "with full resolution to engage him." Swift was now (1701) in his thirty-fourth year, and Stella a singularly beautiful and attractive girl of twenty. The anomalous connexion was close, and yet most carefully guarded against scandal. In Swift's absence, the ladies occupied his apartments at Dublin. When he and they were in the same place they took separate lodgings. Twice, it seems, they accompanied him on visits to England. But Swift never saw Esther Johnson except in presence of a third person; and he incidentally declares in 1726--near the end of her life--that he had not seen her in a morning "these dozen years, except once or twice in a journey." The relations thus regulated remained unaltered for several years to come. Swift's duties at Laracor were not excessive. He reckons his congregation at fifteen persons, "most of them gentle and all simple." He gave notice, says Orrery, that he would read prayers every Wednesday and Friday. The congregation on the first Wednesday consisted of himself and his clerk, and Swift began the service, "Dearly beloved Roger, the scripture moveth you and me," and so forth.

This being attributed to Swift, is supposed to be an exquisite piece of facetiousness; but we may hope that, as Scott gives us reason to think, it was really one of the drifting jests that stuck for a time to the skirts of the famous humorist. What is certain is, that Swift did his best, with narrow means, to improve the living--rebuilt the house, laid out the garden, increased the glebe from one acre to twenty, and endowed the living with t.i.thes bought by himself. He left the t.i.thes on the remarkable condition (suggested probably by his fears of Presbyterian ascendancy) that, if another form of Christian religion should become the established faith in this kingdom, they should go to the poor--excluding Jews, Atheists, and infidels. Swift became attached to Laracor, and the gardens which he planted in humble imitation of Moor Park; he made friends of some of the neighbours; though he detested Trim, where "the people were as great rascals as the gentlemen;" but Laracor was rather an occasional retreat than a centre of his interests. During the following years Swift was often at the castle at Dublin, and pa.s.sed considerable periods in London, leaving a curate in charge of the minute congregation at Laracor.

He kept upon friendly terms with successive Viceroys. He had, as we have seen, extorted a partial concession of his claims from Lord Berkeley. For Lord Berkeley, if we may argue from a very gross lampoon, he can have felt nothing but contempt. But he had a high respect for Lady Berkeley; and one of the daughters, afterwards Lady Betty Germaine, a very sensible and kindly woman, retained his friendship through life, and in letters written long afterwards refers with evident fondness to the old days of familiarity. He was intimate, again, with the family of the Duke of Ormond, who became Lord Lieutenant in 1703, and, again, was the close friend of one of the daughters. He was deeply grieved by her death a few years later, soon after her marriage to Lord Ashburnham. "I hate life," he says characteristically, "when I think it exposed to such accidents; and to see so many thousand wretches burdening the earth when such as her die, makes me think G.o.d did never intend life for a blessing." When Lord Pembroke succeeded Ormond, Swift still continued chaplain, and carried on a queer commerce of punning with Pembroke. It is the first indication of a habit which lasted, as we shall see, through life. One might be tempted to say, were it not for the conclusive evidence to the contrary, that this love of the most mechanical variety of facetiousness implied an absence of any true sense of humour. Swift, indeed, was giving proofs that he possessed a full share of that ambiguous talent. It would be difficult to find a more perfect performance of its kind than the poem by which he amused the Berkeley family in 1700. It is the _Pet.i.tion of Mrs. Frances Harris_, a chambermaid, who had lost her purse, and whose peculiar style of language, as well as the unsympathetic comments of her various fellow-servants, are preserved with extraordinary felicity in a peculiar doggerel invented for the purpose by Swift. One fancies that the famous Mrs. Harris of Mrs. Gamp's reminiscences was a phantasmal descendant of Swift's heroine. He lays bare the workings of the menial intellect with the clearness of a master.

Neither Laracor nor Dublin could keep Swift from London.[15] During the ten years succeeding 1700, he must have pa.s.sed over four in England. In the last period mentioned he was acting as an agent for the Church of Ireland. In the others he was attracted by pleasure or ambition. He had already many introductions to London society, through Temple, through the Irish Viceroys, and through Congreve, the most famous of then living wits.

A successful pamphlet, to be presently mentioned, helped his rise to fame.

London society was easy of access for a man of Swift's qualities. The divisions of rank were doubtless more strongly marked than now. Yet society was relatively so small, and concentrated in so small a s.p.a.ce, that admission into the upper circle meant an easy introduction to every one worth knowing. Any noticeable person became, as it were, member of a club which had a tacit existence, though there was no single place of meeting or recognized organization. Swift soon became known at the coffee-houses, which have been superseded by the clubs of modern times. At one time, according to a story vague as to dates, he got the name of the "mad parson" from Addison and others, by his habit of taking half-an-hour's smart walk to and fro in the coffee-house, and then departing in silence. At last he abruptly accosted a stranger from the country: "Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the world?" "Yes, sir," was the reply, "I thank G.o.d I remember a great deal of good weather in my time." "That," said Swift, "is more than I can say. I never remember any weather that was not too hot, or too cold, or too wet, or too dry: but, however G.o.d Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all very well;" with which sentiment he vanished. Whatever his introduction Swift would soon make himself felt. The _Tale of a Tub_ appeared--with a very complimentary dedication to Somers--in 1704, and revealed powers beyond the rivalry of any living author.

In the year 1705 Swift became intimate with Addison, who wrote in a copy of his _Travels in Italy_, To _Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age, this work is presented by his most humble servant the author_. Though the word "genius" had scarcely its present strength of meaning, the phrase certainly implies that Addison knew Swift's authorship of the _Tale_, and with all his decorum was not repelled by its audacious satire. The pair formed a close friendship, which is honourable to both. For it proves that if Swift was imperious and Addison a little too fond of the adulation of "wits and Templars," each could enjoy the society of an intellectual equal. They met, we may fancy, like absolute kings, accustomed to the incense of courtiers, and not inaccessible to its charms; and yet glad at times to throw aside state and a.s.sociate with each other without jealousy.

Addison, we know, was most charming when talking to a single companion, and Delany repeats Swift's statement that, often as they spent their evenings together, they never wished for a third. Steele, for a time, was joined in what Swift calls a triumvirate; and though political strife led to a complete breach with Steele and a temporary eclipse of familiarity with Addison, it never diminished Swift's affection for his great rival.

"That man," he said once, "has virtue enough to give reputation to an age," and the phrase expresses his settled opinion. Swift, however, had a low opinion of the society of the average "wit." "The worst conversation I ever heard in my life," he says, "was that at Wills' coffee-house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to a.s.semble;" and he speaks with a contempt recalling Pope's satire upon the "little senate," of the absurd self-importance and the foolish adulation of the students and Templars who listened to these oracles. Others have suspected that many famous coteries of which literary people are accustomed to speak with unction, probably fell as far short in reality of their traditional pleasantness. Swift's friendship with Addison was partly due, we may fancy, to the difference in temper and talent which fitted each to be complement of the other. A curious proof of the mutual goodwill is given by the history of Swift's _Baucis and Philemon_. It is a humorous and agreeable enough travesty of Ovid; a bit of good-humoured pleasantry, which we may take as it was intended. The performance was in the spirit of the time, and if Swift had not the lightness of touch of his contemporaries, Prior, Gay, Parnell, and Pope, he perhaps makes up for it by greater force and directness. But the piece is mainly remarkable because, as he tells us, Addison made him "blot out four score lines, add four score, and alter four score," though the whole consisted of only 178 verses.[16] Swift showed a complete absence of the ordinary touchiness of authors. His indifference to literary fame as to its pecuniary rewards, was conspicuous. He was too proud, as he truly said, to be vain. His sense of dignity restrained him from petty sensibility. When a clergyman regretted some emendations which had been hastily suggested by himself and accepted by Swift, Swift replied that it mattered little, and that he would not give grounds by adhering to his own opinion, for an imputation of vanity. If Swift was egotistical, there was nothing petty even in his egotism.

A piece of facetiousness, started by Swift in the last of his visits to London, has become famous. A cobbler called Partridge had set up as an astrologer, and published predictions in the style of _Zadkiel's Almanac_.

Swift amused himself in the beginning of 1708 by publishing a rival prediction under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff. Bickerstaff professed that he would give verifiable and definite predictions, instead of the vague oracular utterances of his rival. The first of these predictions announced the approaching death, at 11 p.m., on March 29th, of Partridge himself.

Directly after that day appeared a letter "to a person of honour,"

announcing the fulfilment of the prediction by the death of Partridge within four hours of the date a.s.signed. Partridge took up the matter seriously, and indignantly declared himself, in a new Almanac, to be alive. Bickerstaff retorted in a humorous Vindication, arguing that Partridge was really dead; that his continuing to write almanacs was no proof to the contrary, and so forth. All the wits, great and small, took part in the joke: the Portuguese inquisition, so it is said, were sufficiently taken in to condemn Bickerstaff to the flames; and Steele, who started the _Tatler_, whilst the joke was afoot, adopted the name of Bickerstaff for the imaginary author. Dutiful biographers agree to admire this as a wonderful piece of fun. The joke does not strike me, I will confess, as of very exquisite flavour; but it is a curious ill.u.s.tration of a peculiarity to which Swift owed some of his power, and which seems to have suggested many of the mythical anecdotes about him. His humour very easily took the form of practical joking. In those days, the mutual understanding of the little clique of wits made it easy to get a hoax taken up by the whole body. They joined to persecute poor Partridge, as the undergraduates at a modern college might join to tease some obnoxious tradesman. Swift's peculiar irony fitted him to take the load; for it implied a singular pleasure in realizing the minute consequences of some given hypothesis, and working out in detail some grotesque or striking theory. The love of practical jokes, which seems to have accompanied him through life, is one of the less edifying manifestations of the tendency.

It seems as if he could not quite enjoy a jest till it was translated into actual tangible fact. The fancy does not suffice him till it is realized.

If the story about "dearly beloved Roger" be true, it is a case in point.

Sydney Smith would have been content with suggesting that such a thing might be done. Swift was not satisfied till he had done it. And even if it be not true, it has been accepted because it is like the truth. We could almost fancy that if Swift had thought of Charles Lamb's famous quibble about walking on an empty stomach ("on whose empty stomach?"), he would have liked to carry it out by an actual promenade on real human flesh and blood.

Swift became intimate with Irish viceroys, and with the most famous wits and statesmen of London. But he received none of the good things bestowed so freely upon contemporary men of letters. In 1705, Addison, his intimate friend, and his junior by five years, had sprung from a garret to a comfortable office. Other men pa.s.sed Swift in the race. He notes significantly in 1708, that "a young fellow," a friend of his, had just received a sinecure of 400_l._ a year, as an addition to another of 300_l._ Towards the end of 1704 he had already complained that he got "nothing but the good words and wishes of a decayed ministry, whose lives and mine will probably wear out before they can serve either my little hopes, or their own ambition." Swift still remained in his own district, "a hedge-parson," flattered, caressed and neglected. And yet he held,[17]

that it was easier to provide for ten men in the church, than for one in a civil employment. To understand his claims, and the modes by which he used to enforce them, we must advert briefly to the state of English politics.

A clear apprehension of Swift's relation to the ministers of the day is essential to any satisfactory estimate of his career.

The reign of Queen Anne was a period of violent party spirit. At the end of 1703, Swift humorously declares that even the cats and dogs were infected with the Whig and Tory animosity. The "very ladies" were divided into high church and low; and, "out of zeal for religion, had hardly time to say their prayers." The gentle satire of Addison and Steele, in the _Spectator_, confirms Swift's contemporary lamentations, as to the baneful effects of party zeal upon private friendship. And yet, it has been often said, that the party issues were hopelessly confounded. Lord Stanhope argues--and he is only repeating what Swift frequently said--that Whigs and Tories had exchanged principles.[18] In later years, Swift constantly a.s.serted that he attacked the Whigs in defence of the true Whig faith. He belonged indeed to a party, almost limited to himself: for he avowed himself to be the anomalous hybrid, a High-church Whig. We must therefore inquire a little further into the true meaning of the accepted shibboleths.

Swift had come from Ireland, saturated with the prejudices of his caste.

The highest Tory in Ireland, as he told William, would make a tolerable Whig in England. For the English colonists in Ireland, the expulsion of James was a condition not of party success but of existence. Swift, whose personal and family interests were identified with those of the English in Ireland, could repudiate James with his whole heart, and heartily accepted the revolution; he was therefore a Whig, so far as attachment to "revolution principles" was the distinctive badge of Whiggism. Swift despised James, and he hated Popery from first to last. Contempt and hatred with him were never equivocal, and in this case they sprang as much from his energetic sense as from his early prejudices. Jacobitism was becoming a sham, and therefore offensive to men of insight into facts. Its ghost walked the earth for some time longer, and at times aped reality; but it meant mere sentimentalism or vague discontent. Swift, when asked to explain its persistence, said that when he was in pain and lying on his right side, he naturally turned to his left, though he might have no prospect of benefit from the change.[19] The country squire, who drank healths to the king over the water, was tired of the Georges, and shared the fears of the typical Western, that his lands were in danger of being sent to Hanover. The Stuarts had been in exile long enough to win the love of some of their subjects. Sufficient time had elapsed to erase from short memories the true cause of their fall. Squires and parsons did not cherish less warmly the privileges in defence of which they had sent the last Stuart king about his business. Rather the privileges had become so much a matter of course that the very fear of any a.s.sault seemed visionary. The Jacobitism of later days did not mean any discontent with revolution principles, but dislike to the revolution dynasty. The Whig indeed argued with true party logic, that every Tory must be a Jacobite, and every Jacobite a lover of arbitrary rule. In truth a man might wish to restore the Stuarts without wishing to restore the principles for which the Stuarts had been expelled: he might be a Jacobite without being a lover of arbitrary rule; and still more easily might he be a Tory without being a Jacobite. Swift constantly a.s.serted--and in a sense with perfect truth--that the revolution had been carried out in defence of the Church of England, and chiefly by attached members of the Church. To be a sound churchman was, so far, to be pledged against the family which had a.s.sailed the Church.

Swift's Whiggism would naturally be strengthened by his personal relation with Temple, and with various Whigs whom he came to know through Temple.

But Swift, I have said, was a churchman as well as a Whig; as staunch a churchman as Laud, and as ready, I imagine, to have gone to the block or to prison in defence of his church as any one from the days of Laud to those of Mr. Green. For a time his zeal was not called into play; the war absorbed all interests. Marlborough and G.o.dolphin, the great heads of the family clique which dominated poor Queen Anne, had begun as Tories and churchmen, supported by a Tory majority. The war had been dictated by a national sentiment: but from the beginning it was really a Whig war: for it was a war against Louis, Popery, and the Pretender. And thus, the great men who were identified with the war, began slowly to edge over to the party whose principles were the war principles; who hated the Pope, the Pretender, and the King of France, as their ancestors had hated Phillip of Spain, or as their descendants hated Napoleon. The war meant alliance with the Dutch, who had been the martyrs, and were the enthusiastic defenders of toleration and free thought; and it forced English ministers, almost in spite of themselves, into the most successful piece of statesmanship of the century, the Union with Scotland. Now Swift hated the Dutch and hated the Scotch, with a vehemence that becomes almost ludicrous. The margin of his Burnet was scribbled over with execrations against the Scots. "Most d.a.m.nable Scots," "Scots h.e.l.l-hounds," "Scotch dogs," "cursed Scots still,"

"h.e.l.lish Scottish dogs," are a few of his spontaneous flowers of speech.

His prejudices are the prejudices of his cla.s.s intensified as all pa.s.sions were intensified in him. Swift regarded Scotchmen as the most virulent and dangerous of all dissenters; they were represented to him by the Irish Presbyterians, the natural rivals of his church. He reviled the Union, because it implied the recognition by the State of a sect which regarded the Church of England as little better than a manifestation of Antichrist.

And, in this sense, Swift's sympathies were with the Tories. For in truth the real contrast between Whigs and Tories, in respect of which there is a perfect continuity of principle, depended upon the fact that the Whigs reflected the sentiments of the middle cla.s.ses, the "monied men" and the dissenters; whilst the Tories reflected the sentiments of the land and the church. Each party might occasionally adopt the commonplaces or accept the measures generally a.s.sociated with its antagonists; but at bottom, the distinction was between squire and parson on one side, tradesmen and banker on the other.

The domestic politics of the reign of Anne turned upon this difference.

The history is a history of the gradual shifting of government to the Whig side, and the growing alienation of the clergy and squires, accelerated by a system which caused the fiscal burden of the war to fall chiefly upon the land. Bearing this in mind, Swift's conduct is perfectly intelligible.

His first plunge into politics was in 1701. Poor King William was in the thick of the perplexities caused by the mysterious perverseness of English politicians. The king's ministers, supported by the House of Lords, had lost the command of the House of Commons. It had not yet come to be understood that the Cabinet was to be a mere committee of the House of Commons. The personal wishes of the sovereign, and the alliances and jealousies of great courtiers, were still highly important factors in the political situation; as indeed both the composition and the subsequent behaviour of the Commons could be controlled to a considerable extent by legitimate and other influences of the Crown. The Commons, unable to make their will obeyed, proceeded to impeach Somers and other ministers. A bitter struggle took place between the two Houses, which was suspended by the summer recess. At this crisis Swift published his _Discourse on the Dissensions in Athens and Rome_. The abstract political argument is as good or as bad as nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand political treatises--that is to say, a repet.i.tion of familiar commonplaces; and the mode of applying precedents from ancient politics would now strike us as pedantic. The pamphlet, however, is dignified and well-written, and the application to the immediate difficulty is pointed. His argument is, briefly, that the House of Commons is showing a factious, tyrannical temper, identical in its nature with that of a single tyrant and as dangerous in its consequences, that it has therefore ceased to reflect the opinions of its const.i.tuents, and has endangered the sacred balance between the three primary elements of our const.i.tution, upon which its safe working depends.

The pamphlet was from beginning to end a remonstrance against the impeachments, and therefore a defence of the Whig lords; for whom sufficiently satisfactory parallels are vaguely indicated in Pericles, Aristides, and so forth. It was "greedily bought;" it was attributed to Somers and to the great Whig bishop, Burnet, who had to disown it for fear of an impeachment. An Irish bishop, it is said, called Swift a "very positive young man" for doubting Burnet's authorship; whereupon Swift had to claim it for himself. Youthful vanity, according to his own account, induced him to make the admission, which would certainly not have been withheld by adult discretion. For the result was that Somers, Halifax, and Sunderland, three of the great Whig junto, took him up, often admitted him to their intimacy, and were liberal in promising him "the greatest preferments" should they come into power. Before long Swift had another opportunity which was also a temptation. The Tory House of Commons had pa.s.sed the bill against occasional conformity. Ardent partisans generally approved this bill, as it was clearly annoying to dissenters. It was directed against the practice of qualifying for office by taking the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England without permanently conforming. It might be fairly argued--as Defoe argued, though with questionable sincerity--that such a temporary compliance would be really injurious to dissent. The Church would profit by such an exhibition of the flexibility of its opponents' principles. Pa.s.sions were too much heated for such arguments; and in the winter of 1703-4, people, says Swift, talked of nothing else. He was "mightily urged by some great people" to publish his opinion. An argument from a powerful writer, and a clergyman, against the bill would be very useful to his Whig friends. But Swift's high church prejudices made him hesitate. The Whig leaders a.s.sured him that nothing should induce them to vote against the bill if they expected its rejection to hurt the church or "do kindness to the dissenters." But it is precarious to argue from the professed intentions of statesmen to their real motives, and yet more precarious to argue to the consequences of their actions. Swift knew not what to think. He resolved to think no more. At last he made up his mind to write against the bill, but he made it up too late. The bill failed to pa.s.s; and Swift felt a relief in dismissing this delicate subject. He might still call himself a Whig, and exult in the growth of Whiggism. Meanwhile he persuaded himself that the dissenters and their troubles were beneath his notice.

They were soon to come again to the front. Swift came to London at the end of 1707, charged with a mission on behalf of his church. Queen Anne's Bounty was founded in 1704. The crown restored to the church the first-fruits and tenths which Henry VIII. had diverted from the papal into his own treasury, and appropriated them to the augmentation of small livings. It was proposed to get the same boon for the Church of Ireland.

The whole sum amounted to about 1000_l._ a year, with a possibility of an additional 2000_l._ Swift, who had spoken of this to King, the Archbishop of Dublin, was now to act as solicitor on behalf of the Irish clergy, and hoped to make use of his influence with Somers and Sunderland. The negotiation was to give him more trouble than he foresaw, and initiate him, before he had done with it, into certain secrets of cabinets and councils which he as yet very imperfectly appreciated. His letters to King, continued over a long period, throw much light on his motives. Swift was in England from November, 1707, till March, 1709. The year 1708 was for him, as he says, a year of suspense, a year of vast importance to his career, and marked by some characteristic utterances. He hoped to use his influence with Somers. Somers, though still out of office, was the great oracle of the Whigs, whilst Sunderland was already Secretary of State. In January, 1708, the bishopric of Waterford was vacant, and Somers tried to obtain the see for Swift. The attempt failed, but the political catastrophe of the next month gave hopes that the influence of Somers would soon be paramount. Harley, the prince of wire-pulling and back-stair intrigue, had exploded the famous Masham plot. Though this project failed, it was "reckoned," says Swift, "the greatest piece of court skill that has been acted many years." Queen Anne was to take advantage of the growing alienation of the church party to break her bondage to the Marlboroughs, and change her ministers. But the attempt was premature, and discomfited its devisers. Harley was turned out of office; Marlborough and G.o.dolphin came into alliance with the Whig junto; and the queen's bondage seemed more complete than ever. A cabinet crisis in those days, however, took a long time. It was not till October, 1708, that the Whigs, backed by a new Parliament and strengthened by the victory of Oudenarde, were in full enjoyment of power. Somers at last became President of the Council and Wharton Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Wharton's appointment was specially significant for Swift. He was, as even Whigs admitted, a man of infamous character, redeemed only by energy and unflinching fidelity to his party.

He was licentious and a freethinker; his infidelity showed itself in the grossest outrages against common decency. If he had any religious principle it was a preference of Presbyterians, as sharing his antipathy to the church. No man could be more radically antipathetic to Swift.

Meanwhile, the success of the Whigs meant in the first instance the success of the men from whom Swift had promises of preferment. He tried to use his influence as he had proposed. In June he had an interview about the first-fruits with G.o.dolphin, to whom he had been recommended by Somers and Sunderland. G.o.dolphin replied in vague officialisms, suggesting with studied vagueness that the Irish clergy must show themselves more grateful than the English. His meaning, as Swift thought, was that the Irish clergy should consent to a repeal of the Test Act, regarded by them and by him as the essential bulwark of the Church. Nothing definite, however, was said; and meanwhile Swift, though he gave no signs of compliance, continued to hope for his own preferment. When the final triumph of the Whigs came he was still hoping, though with obvious qualms as to his position. He begged King (in Nov. 1708) to believe in his fidelity to the church. Offers might be made to him, but "no prospect of making my fortune shall ever prevail on me to go against what becomes a man of conscience and truth, and an entire friend to the established church." He hoped that he might be appointed secretary to a projected emba.s.sy to Vienna, a position which would put him beyond the region of domestic politics.

Meanwhile he had published certain tracts which may be taken as the manifesto of his faith at the time when his principles were being most severely tested. Would he or would he not sacrifice his churchmanship to the interests of the party with which he was still allied? There can be no doubt that by an open declaration of Whig principles in church matters--such a declaration, say, as would have satisfied Burnet--he would have qualified himself for preferment, and have been in a position to command the fulfilment of the promises made by Somers and Sunderland.

The writings in question were the _Argument to prove the inconvenience of abolishing Christianity_; a _Project for the Advancement of Religion_; and the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_. The first, as I have said, was meant to show that the satirical powers which had given offence in the _Tale of a Tub_, could be applied without equivocation in defence of Christianity. The _Project_ is a very forcible exposition of a text which is common enough in all ages--namely, that the particular age of the writer is one of unprecedented corruption. It shares, however, with Swift's other writings, the merit of downright sincerity, which convinces us that the author is not repeating plat.i.tudes, but giving his own experience and speaking from conviction. His proposals for a reform, though he must have felt them to be chimerical, are conceived in the spirit common in the days before people had begun to talk about the State and the individual. He a.s.sumes throughout that a vigorous action of the court and the government will reform the nation. He does not contemplate the now commonplace objection that such a revival of the Puritanical system might simply stimulate hypocrisy. He expressly declares that religion may be brought into fashion "by the power of the administration,"

and a.s.sumes that to bring religion into fashion is the same thing as to make men religious. This view--suitable enough to Swift's imperious temper--was also the general a.s.sumption of the time. A suggestion thrown out in his pamphlet is generally said to have led to the scheme soon afterwards carried out under Harley's administration for building fifty new churches in London. A more personal touch is Swift's complaint that the clergy sacrifice their influence by "sequestering themselves" too much, and forming a separate caste. This reads a little like an implied defence of himself for frequenting London coffee-houses, when cavillers might have argued that he should be at Laracor. But like all Swift's utterances, it covered a settled principle. I have already noticed this peculiarity, which he shows elsewhere when describing himself as

A clergyman of special note For shunning others of his coat; Which made his brethren of the gown Take care betimes to run him down.

The _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_ is more significant. It is a summary of his unvarying creed. In politics he is a good Whig. He interprets the theory of pa.s.sive obedience as meaning obedience to the "legislative power;" not therefore to the king specially; and he deliberately accepts the revolution on the plain ground of the _salus populi_. His leading maxim is that the "administration cannot be placed in too few hands nor the legislature in too many." But this political liberality is a.s.sociated with unhesitating churchmanship. Sects are mischievous: to say that they are mischievous is to say that they ought to be checked in their beginning; where they exist they should be tolerated, but not to the injury of the church. And hence he reaches his leading principle that a "government cannot give them (sects) too much ease, nor trust them with too little power." Such doctrines clearly and tersely laid down were little to the taste of the Whigs, who were more anxious than ever to conciliate the dissenters. But it was not till the end of the year that Swift applied his abstract theory to a special case. There had been various symptoms of a disposition to relax the Test Acts in Ireland. The appointment of Wharton to be Lord Lieutenant was enough to alarm Swift, even though his friend Addison was to be Wharton's secretary. In December, 1708, he published a pamphlet, ostensibly a letter from a member of the Irish to a member of the English House of Commons, in which the necessity of keeping up the Test was vigorously enforced. It is the first of Swift's political writings in which we see his true power. In those just noticed he is forced to take an impartial tone. He is trying to reconcile himself to his alliance with the Whigs, or to reconcile the Whigs to their protection of himself. He speaks as a moderator, and poses as the dignified moralist above all party-feeling. But in this letter he throws the reins upon his humour, and strikes his opponents full in the face.

From his own point of view the pamphlet is admirable. He quotes Cowley's verse,

Forbid it, heaven, my life should be Weighed with thy least conveniency.

The Irish, by which he means the English, and the English exclusively of the Scotch, in Ireland, represent this enthusiastic lover, and are called upon to sacrifice themselves to the political conveniency of the Whig party. Swift expresses his usual wrath against the Scots, who are eating up the land, boasts of the loyalty of the Irish Church, and taunts the Presbyterians with their tyranny in former days. Am I to be forced, he asks, "to keep my chaplain disguised like my butler, and steal to prayers in a back room, as my grandfather used in those times when the Church of England was malignant?" Is not this a ripping up of old quarrels? Ought not all Protestants to unite against Papists? No, the enemy is the same as ever. "It is agreed among naturalists that a lion is a larger, a stronger, and more dangerous enemy than a cat; yet if a man were to have his choice, either a lion at his foot fast bound with three or four chains, his teeth drawn out, and his claws pared to the quick, or an angry cat in full liberty at his throat, he would take no long time to determine." The bound lion means the Catholic natives, whom Swift declares to be as "inconsiderable as the women and children."

Meanwhile the long first-fruits negotiation was languidly proceeding. At last it seemed to be achieved. Lord Pembroke, the outgoing Lord Lieutenant, sent Swift word that the grant had been made. Swift reported his success to Archbishop King with a very pardonable touch of complacency at his "very little" merit in the matter. But a bitter disappointment followed. The promise made had never been fulfilled. In March, 1709, Swift had again to write to the Archbishop, recounting his failure, his attempt to remonstrate with Wharton, the new Lord Lieutenant, and the too certain collapse of the whole business. The failure was complete; the promised boon was not granted, and Swift's chance of a bishopric had pretty well vanished. Halifax, the great Whig Maecenas, and the Bufo of Pope, wrote to him in his retirement at Dublin, declaring that he had "entered into a confederacy with Mr. Addison" to urge Swift's claims upon Government, and speaking of the declining health of South, then a Prebendary of Westminster. Swift endorsed this "I lock up this letter as a true original of courtiers and court promises," and wrote in a volume he had begged from the same person that it was the only favour "he ever received from him or his party." In the last months of his stay he had suffered cruelly from his old giddiness, and he went to Ireland, after a visit to his mother in Leicester, in sufficiently gloomy mood; retired to Laracor, and avoided any intercourse with the authorities at the Castle, excepting always Addison.

To this it is necessary to add one remark. Swift's version of the story is substantially that which I have given, and it is everywhere confirmed by contemporary letters. It shows that he separated from the Whig party when at the height of their power, and separated because he thought them opposed to the church principles which he advocated from first to last. It is most unjust, therefore to speak of Swift as a deserter from the Whigs, because he afterwards joined the church party, which shared all his strongest prejudices. I am so far from seeing any ground for such a charge, that I believe that few men have ever adhered more strictly to the principles with which they have started. But such charges have generally an element of truth; and it is easy here to point out what was the really weak point in Swift's position.

Swift's writings, with one or two trifling exceptions, were originally anonymous. As they were very apt to produce warrants for the apprehension of publisher and author, the precaution was natural enough in later years.

The mask was often merely ostensible; a sufficient protection against legal prosecution, but in reality covering an open secret. When in the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_ Swift professes to conceal his name carefully, it may be doubted how far this is to be taken seriously.

But he went much further in the letter on the Test Act. He inserted a pa.s.sage intended really to blind his adversaries by a suggestion that Dr.

Swift was likely to write in favour of abolishing the test; and he even complains to King of the unfairness of this treatment. His a.s.sault, therefore, upon the supposed Whig policy was clandestine. This may possibly be justified; he might even urge that he was still a Whig, and was warning ministers against measures which they had not yet adopted, and from which, as he thinks, they may still be deterred by an alteration of the real Irish feeling.[20] He complained afterwards that he was ruined--that is, as to his chances of preferment from the party--by the suspicion of his authorship of this tract. That is to say, he was "ruined"

by the discovery of his true sentiments. This is to admit that he was still ready to accept preferment from the men whose supposed policy he was bitterly attacking, and that he resented their alienation as a grievance.

The resentment indeed was most bitter and pertinacious. He turned savagely upon his old friends because they would not make him a bishop. The answer from their point of view was conclusive. He had made a bitter and covert attack, and he could not at once claim a merit from churchmen for defending the church against the Whigs, and revile the Whigs for not rewarding him. But inconsistency of this kind is characteristic of Swift.

He thought the Whigs scoundrels for not patronizing him, and not the less scoundrels because their conduct was consistent with their own scoundrelly principles. People who differ from me must be wicked, argued this consistent egotist, and their refusal to reward me is only an additional wickedness. The case appeared to him as though he had been a Nathan sternly warning a David of his sins, and for that reason deprived of honour. David could not have urged his sinful desires as an excuse for ill-treatment of Nathan. And Swift was inclined to cla.s.s indifference to the welfare of the church as a sin even in an avowed Whig. Yet he had to ordinary minds forfeited any right to make non-fulfilment a grievance, when he ought to have regarded performance as a disgrace.