Harvard Classics, Volume 28 | Page 7

triumphs. His journals and a
thousand anecdotes of him relate his kind acts and rough manners. His
hand was constantly stretched out to relieve an honest man--he was
cautious about his money, but ready.--If you were in a strait would you
like such a benefactor? I think I would rather have had a potato and a
friendly word from Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for
a guinea and a dinner. He insulted a man as he served him, made
women cry, guests look foolish, bullied unlucky friends, and flung his
benefactions into poor men's faces. No; the Dean was no Irishman--no
Irishman ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart.
It is told, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean of St. Patrick's
performed his family devotions every morning regularly, but with such
secrecy that the guests in his house were never in the least aware of the
ceremony. There was no need surely why a church dignitary should
assemble his family privily in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of heathen
persecution. But I think the world was right, and the bishops who
advised Queen Anne, when they counselled her not to appoint the
author of the "Tale of a Tub" to a bishopric, gave perfectly good advice.
The man who wrote the arguments and illustrations in that wild book,
could not but be aware what must be the sequel of the propositions
which he laid down. The boon companion of Pope and Bolingbroke,
who chose these as the friends of his life, and the recipients of his
confidence and affection, must have heard many an argument, and
joined in many a conversation over Pope's port, or St. John's burgundy,
which would not bear to be repeated at other men's boards.
I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift's
religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look
out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the "Beggar's
Opera"--Gay, the wildest of the wits about town--it was this man that
Jonathan Swift advised to take orders--to invest in a cassock and
bands--just as he advised him to husband his shillings and put his
thousand pounds out at interest. The Queen, and the bishops, and the
world, were right in mistrusting the religion of that man.

I am not here, of course, to speak of any man's religious views, except
in so far as they influence his literary character, his life, his humour.
The most notorious sinners of all those fellow-mortals whom it is our
business to discuss--Harry Fielding and Dick Steele, were especially
loud, and I believe really fervent, in their expressions of belief; they
belaboured freethinkers, and stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of
occasions, going out of their way to bawl their own creed, and
persecute their neighbour's, and if they sinned and stumbled, as they
constantly did with debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behaviour,
they got upon their knees and cried "Peccavi" with a most sonorous
orthodoxy. Yes; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty
and undoubting Church of England men; they abhorred Popery,
Atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in general; and hiccupped
Church and State with fervour.
But Swift? His mind had had a different schooling, and possessed a
very different logical power. He was not bred up in a tipsy guard-room,
and did not learn to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could
conduct an argument from beginning to end. He could see forward with
a fatal clearness. In his old age, looking at the "Tale of a Tub," when he
said, "Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book!" I think
he was admiring not the genius, but the consequences to which the
genius had brought him--a vast genius, a magnificent genius, a genius
wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and strong,--to seize, to know, to see,
to flash upon falsehood and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into
the hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of men,--an awful,
an evil spirit.
Ah man! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, you whose
friends were Pope and St. John--what made you to swear to fatal vows,
and bind yourself to a life-long hypocrisy before the Heaven which you
adored with such real wonder, humility, and reverence? For Swift was a
reverent, was a pious spirit--for Swift could love and could pray.
Through the storms and tempests of his furious mind, the stars of
religion and love break out in the blue, shining serenely, though hidden
by the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of his life.

It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his
own scepticism, and that