let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and, seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

"I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

"Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require), may flay the carcase; the skin of which, artifically dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

"As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers, we may be assured, will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, then dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting-pigs.

The above are perhaps the more horrible details of this horrible proposal. The conclusion is a very fine stroke of wit, as carrying out the consistency of the irony to the greatest possible height :

"I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny, the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing."

QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Simplicity." His delight was in simplicity. His style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilised by nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by ambitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought learning.

He always understands himself, and his readers always understand him the peruser of Swift wants little previous knowledge; it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with common words and common things; he is neither required to mount elevations nor to explore profundities; his passage is always on a level, along solid ground, without asperities, without obstruction."1

The Drapier Letters were written in peculiarly familiar style Whoever wishes to model upon Swift in this respect, must not forget that his simplicity verges on coarseness.

Clearness. It is not always Swift's desire to make his meaning distinct. One of his arts is to hide it away under similitudes. When he does wish to be beyond possibility of mistake, he knows how to accomplish the object. He does not deal with subjects where single words are much open to different interpretations by different readers, and so has not much room for showing his skill in preventing ambiguity. But he is careful to make his words fit

1 Johnson, Life of Swift.

close to his ideas, and often brings out his meaning sharply, by contrasting it with what he does not mean.

Strength. His diction is emphatic and copious, and the intense force of his satire is unsurpassed. Johnson's saying, that "he pays no court to the passions, he excites neither surprise nor admiration," is a hasty judgment that needs qualification. If we accept it, we must understand by passion-sublimity; and by surprise and admiration, the elevation of sublimity. Nothing could be more surprising or impressive than the flashes of Swift's wit; and of passion, in one sense, there is enough, and more than enough, in the Drapier's Letters :

"Good God! who are this wretch's advisers? Who are his supporters, abettors, encouragers, or sharers? Mr Wood will oblige me to take fivepence-halfpenny of his brass in every payments and I will shoot Mr Wood and his deputies through the head, like highwaymen or housebreakers, if they dare to force one farthing of their coin on me in the payment of £100. It is no loss of honour to submit to the lion; but who, with the figure of a man, can think with patience of being devoured alive by a rat? He has laid a tax upon the people of Ireland of 17s. at least in the pound; a tax, I say, not only upon lands, but interest-money, goods, manufactures, the hire of handicraftsmen, labourers, and servants.

"Shopkeepers, look to yourselves!" &c.

Pathos.-Swift had such a hatred of insincere sentiment, and such a tendency to believe every open profession of sentiment to be insincere, that he seldom, if ever, wrote a word either of affection or of compassion in any work intended for publication. The only exceptions that I have remarked are in the Drapier Letters, where he expresses an indignant pity for the sufferings of Ireland, and makes a lofty profession of the disinterestedness of his public spirit. The Journal to Stella was not intended for the public eye. There he indulges without constraint in infantine expressions of fondness: Stella is "sirrah Stella," "Stellakins," "rogue Stella," "pretty Stella," "MD," "little MD," "dearest MD," "dear, roguish, impudent, pretty MD."

"How now, sirrah, must I write in a morning to your impudence!

Stay till night

And then I'll write
In black and white

By candle-light
Of wax so bright
It helps the sight
A bite, a bite!

Marry come up, Mrs Boldface."

1 Sir W. Scott is more exact-"He never attempted any species of composition in which either the sublime or the pathetic were required of him. But in every department of poetry where wit is necessary, he displayed, as the subject chanced to require, either the blasting lightning of satire, or the lambent and meteor. like coruscations of frolicsome humour.

The Ludicrous. He is pre-eminently a satirist; nobody can pretend to dispute his title of the prince of English Satirists.

In the ludicrous degradation of his victims, he makes no affectation of kin liness, and parades rather than disguises his contempt. Readers that are not subdued by the charms of his wit pronounce him coarse, insolent, unfeeling, and turn from his pages with aversion. This is one difference between him and Addison; they agree in being derisive rather than humorous.

From Addison he differs still more in the extent and force of his satire. Addison has a few pet objects of ridicule. Swift exempts from his ridicule no profession, no foible, hardly any institution, hardly any character. Clergymen, lawyers, doctors, authors, politicians, wits, demonstrative affection, coxcombry, the behaviour of ladies, bad manners, Popery, Presbyterianism, education, and, one may say in general, every individual that crosses his opinions-all come in for a cut of his stinging lash.)

There are some fair specimens of insulting sarcasm among his 'Thoughts on various subjects':

"Query, whether churches are not dormitories of the living as well as of the dead?"

"Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of diseases. originally the same trade, and still continue."

Both were

"The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word."

"A very little wit is valued in a woman, as we are pleased with a few words spoken plain by a parrot."

"A nice man is a man of nasty ideas."

"If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any."

His advice "to a very young lady on her marriage" is an excellent specimen of rough sarcastic counsel, wholesome, but not in the slightest accommodated to the palate. See p. 366.

A very favourite stroke at the free-thinkers and the wits is to set forth ironically the advantages of the Church and of Christianity:

"It is objected, as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that a set of men should be suffered, much less employed and hired, to bawl one day in seven against the lawfulness of those methods most in use towards the pursuit of greatness, riches, and pleasure, which are the constant practice of all men alive on the other six. But the objection is, I think, a little unworthy of so refined an age as ours. Let us argue this matter calmnly: I appeal to the breast of any polite free-thinker, whether, in the pursuit of gratifying a predominant passion, he has not always felt a wonderful incitement by reflecting that it was a thing forbidden; and therefore we see, in order to cultivate this taste, the wisdom of the nation has taken special care that the ladies should be furnished with prohibited silks, and the men with pro

hibited wine.

And indeed it were to be wished that some other prohibitions were promoted, in order to improve the pleasures of the town; which, for want of such expedients, begin already, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen."

He is dissatisfied with modern education :

"From frequently reflecting upon the course and method of educating youth in this and a neighbouring kingdom, with the general success and consequence thereof, I am come to this determination; that education is always the worse in proportion to the wealth and grandeur of the parents; nor do I doubt in the least, that if the whole world were now under the dominion of one monarch (provided I might be allowed to choose where he should form the seat of his empire), the only son and heir of that monarch would be the worst educated niortal that ever was born since the creation; and I doubt the same proportion will hold through all degrees and titles, from an emperor downwards to the common gentry.'

"Another hindrance to good education, and I think the greatest of any, is that pernicious custom in rich and noble families, of entertaining French tutors in their houses. These wretched pedagogues are enjoined by the father to take special care that the boy shall be perfect in his French; by the mother, that master must not walk till he is hot, nor be suffered to play with other boys, nor be wet in his feet, nor daub his clothes, and to see the dancing-master attends constantly and does his duty; the father insists that he be not kept too long poring on his book, because he is subject to sore eyes, and of a weakly constitution."

In his treatise on good manners, he is very contemptuous about the practice of duelling:

"I should be exceedingly sorry to find the legislature make any new laws against the practice of duelling; because the methods are easy and many for a wise man to avoid a quarrel with honour, or engage in it with innocence. And I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own, where the law has not been able to find an expedient.'

By nature extremely impatient of whatever was troublesome, he hated over-civility. One of his Tatlers is a coarse exaggeration of overdone hospitality. When sneering at the multiplication of ceremonies, he relates a ridiculous accident, without caring to conceal names:

"Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, whose politics and manners were much of a size, brought a son with him, about thirteen years old, to a great table at Court. The boy and his father, whatever they put on their plates, they first offered round in order to every person in company; so that we could not get a minute's quiet during the whole dinner. At last their two plates happened to encounter, and with so much violence that, being china, they broke in twenty pieces, and stained half the company with wet sweetmeats and cream."

His personal sarcasms are very contemptuous. He alludes to Defoe as "the fellow that was pilloried, I forget his name." He is merciless on poor John Dennis :

"One Dennis, commonly called 'the critic,' who had writ a threepenny pamphlet against the power of France, being in the country, and hearing of a French privateer hovering about the coast, although he were twenty miles from the sea, fled to town, and told his friends they need not wonder at his haste; for the King of France, having got intelligence where he was, had sent a privateer on purpose to catch him."

One of the special objects of his pitiless dislike was Burnet the historian. He ridiculed the 'History of my own Times' under the allegory of the 'Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish.' Swift's copy of the history has been preserved; the marginal comments are good specimens of the peculiar turn of his wit. I quote one or two as they are given in Collet's 'Relics of Literature:

Preface, p. 3. Burnet.-"Indeed, the peevishness, the ill-nature, and the ambition of many clergymen, have sharpened my spirits perhaps too much against them; so I warn my readers to take all that I say on those heads with some grains of allowance." Swift." I will take his warning." P. 28. Burnet. "The Earl of Argyle was a more solemn sort of man, grave and sober, and free of all scandalous vices." Swift." As a man is free of a corporation, he means."

P. 5. Burnet.-"Upon the King's death, the Scots proclaimed his son king, and sent over Sir George Wincan, that married my great aunt, to treat with him while he was in the Isle of Jersey." Swift.-"Was that the reason why he was sent ?"

P. 163. Burnet (speaking of 'Paradise Lost').-"It was esteemed the beautifullest and perfectest poem that ever was writ, at least in our language.” Swift.-"A mistake! for it is in English.”

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Persuasion.-Swift's pamphlet on 'The Conduct of the Allies' is said to have told with unexampled effect; to have revolutionised public feeling, and overturned a powerful Ministry. For ten years, in union with Germany and Holland, we had fought against the succession of a French prince to the Spanish throne; we had won four splendid victories, and yet seemed in no hurry to make reasonable overtures of peace. Dazzled by Marlborough's success, the people had no suspicion that the war was protracted to fill his pockets. Swift's pamphlet changed the aspect of things as by enchantment; it was read everywhere, and raised popular indignation to such a height, that, within a year after its appearance, a new Government was formed, which concluded the famous Treaty of Utrecht.

Johnson thinks that "the efficacy of this wonder-working pamphlet was supplied by the passions of its readers; that it operated by the mere weight of facts with a very little assistance from the hand that produced them." But the art of the pamphleteer lay in bringing the popular passions into exercise-in picking out, and