Harvard Classics, Volume 28 | Page 4

in it, which he intends to have for his
share, has been delayed on the way from St. James's; and he waits and
waits until nightfall, when his runners come and tell him that the coach
has taken a different road, and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into
the air with a curse, and rides away into his own country.
Swift's seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral or adorn a
tale of ambition, as any hero's that ever lived and failed. But we must
remember that the morality was lax--that other gentlemen besides
himself took the road in his day--that public society was in a strange
disordered condition, and the State was ravaged by other condottieri.
The Boyne was being fought and won, and lost--the bells rung in
William's victory, in the very same tone with which they would have
pealed for James's. Men were loose upon politics, and had to shift for
themselves. They, as well as old beliefs and institutions, had lost their
moorings and gone adrift in the storm. As in the South Sea Bubble,
almost everybody gambled; as in the Railway mania--not many
centuries ago--almost every one took his unlucky share: a man of that
time, of the vast talents and ambition of Swift, could scarce do
otherwise than grasp at his prize, and make his spring at his opportunity.
His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequent misanthropy, are
ascribed by some panegyrists to a deliberate conviction of mankind's
unworthiness, and a desire to amend them by castigating. His youth
was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down by ignoble ties, and
powerless in a mean dependence; his age was bitter, like that of a great
genius that had fought the battle and nearly won it, and lost it, and
thought of it afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man may attribute
to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, or
disappointment, or self-will. What public man--what statesman
projecting a coup--what king determined on an invasion of his
neighbour--what satirist meditating an onslaught on society or an
individual, can't give a pretext for his move? There was a French
general the other day who proposed to march into this country and put

it to sack and pillage, in revenge for humanity outraged by our conduct
at Copenhagen: there is always some excuse for men of the aggressive
turn. They are of their nature warlike, predatory, eager for fight,
plunder, dominion.
As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck--as strong a wing as ever beat,
belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested the prey out of
his claws, and cut his wings and chained him. One can gaze, and not
without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars.
That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, on the 30th
November, 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the sister
island the honour and glory; but, it seems to me, he was no more an
Irishman than a man born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo.
Goldsmith was an Irishman, and always an Irishman: Steele was an
Irishman, and always an Irishman: Swift's heart was English and in
England, his habits English, his logic eminently English; his statement
is elaborately simple; he shuns tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas
and words with a wise thrift and economy, as he used his money: with
which he could be generous and splendid upon great occasions, but
which he husbanded when there was no need to spend it. He never
indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse
imagery. He lays his opinion before you with a grave simplicity and a
perfect neatness. Dreading ridicule too, as a man of his humour--above
all an Englishman of his humour--certainly would, he is afraid to use
the poetical power which he really possessed; one often fancies in
reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he might; that he does
not speak above his voice, as it were, and the tone of society.
His 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 that reckless career at Dublin,
Swift got under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telling
in after life what quantities of books he devoured there, and how King
William taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion. It was at
Shene and at Moor Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and a dinner at
the upper servants' table, that this great and lonely Swift passed a ten

years' apprenticeship--wore a cassock that