Harvard Classics, Volume 28 | Page 6

and whom she loves and
references above all things--above mother, above mild Dorothea, above
that tremendous Sir William in his square-toes-and periwig,--when Mr.
Swift comes down from his master with rage in his heart, and has not a
kind word even for little Hester Johnson?
Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency's condescension was
even more cruel than his frowns. Sir William would perpetually quote
Latin and the ancient classics àpropos of his gardens and his Dutch
statues and plates-bandes, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes
Laertius, Julius Caesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the Hesperides,
Maecenas, Strabo describing Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. Àpropos
of beans, he would mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans,
and that this precept probably meant that wise men should abstain from
public affairs. He is a placid Epicurean; he is a Pythagorean
philosopher; he is a wise man--that is the deduction. Does not Swift
think so? One can imagine the downcast eyes lifted up for a moment,
and the flash of scorn which they emit. Swift's eyes were as azure as
the heavens; Pope says nobly (as everything Pope said and thought of
his friend was good and noble), "His eyes are as azure as the heavens,
and have a charming archness in them." And one person in that
household, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park, saw heaven
nowhere else.
But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with Swift. He
was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins; and in a garden-seat
which he devised for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured
greedily the stock of books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and
deafness which punished and tormented him through life. He could not
bear the place or the servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condolence,
from which we have quoted a few lines of mock melancholy, he breaks
out of the funereal procession with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes
away crying his own grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness,
and forsaken by fortune, and even hope.
I don't know anything more melancholy than the letter to Temple, in

which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches
piteously towards his cage again, and deprecates his master's anger. He
asks for testimonials for orders. "The particulars required of me are
what relate to morals and learning; and the reasons of quitting your
honour's family--that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill
action. They are left entirely to your honour's mercy, though in the first
I think I cannot reproach myself for anything further than for infirmities.
This is all I dare at present beg from your honour, under circumstances
of life not worth your regard: what is left me to wish (next to the health
and prosperity of your honour and family) is that Heaven would one
day allow me the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgments at your
feet. I beg my most humble duty and service be presented to my ladies,
your honour's lady and sister."--Can prostration fall deeper? could a
slave bow lower?
Twenty years afterwards Bishop Kennet, describing the same man, says,
"Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had a bow from everybody
but me. When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before
prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was
soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond,
to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to
undertake, with my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a salary of
200L. per annum as member of the English Church at Rotterdam. He
stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going into the Queen with the red bag, and
told him aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord
Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling the time of day,
complained that it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast.
'How can I help it,' says the Doctor, 'if the courtiers give me a watch
that won't go right?' Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the best
poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation
of Homer into English, for which he would have them all subscribe:
'For,' says he, 'he shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas
for him.' Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the
room, beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him,--both went off just before
prayers." There's a little malice in the Bishop's "just before prayers."
This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is harsh, though

not altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, and to deserving men
too, in the midst of these intrigues and