Can hardly tell how to cry bo to a goose; Your Noveds and Bluturks and Omurs, and stuff, By G they don't signify this pinch of To give a young gentleman right education, nation." ↑ This has been seen, and herein lies the beauty of Swift's verses: they are pertonal; they are not developed themes, but impressions felt and observations collected. Read The Journal of a Modtrn Lady, The Furniture of a Woman's Mind, and other pieces by the dozen: they are dialogues transcribed or opinions put on paper after quitting a drawing-room. The Progress of Marriage represents a dean of fifty-two married to a young worldly coquette; do we not see in this title alone all the fears of the bachelor of St. Patrick's? What diary is more familiar and more pungent than his verses on his own death? "He hardly breathes.' 'The Dean is dead.' Before the passing bell begun, The news through half the town has run ; 'O may we all for death prepare! What has he left? and who's his heir?' + The Grand Question Debated, xv 153. * 449 When he wishes to give a description of of creating illusions, it removes thera. the morning, he shows us the streetimitates the different street cries. sweepers, the "watchful bailiffs," and When he wishes to paint the rain, the describes "filth of all hues and odors," the "swelling kennels," the "dead cats," "turnip-tops," "stinking sprats," which "come tumbling down the flood." His long verses whirl all this filth in their eddies. We smile to see poetry degraded to this use: we seem to be at a masquerade; it is a queen travestied into a rough country girl. We stop, we look on, with the sort of pleasure we feel in drinking a bitter draught. Truth is always good to know, and in the splendid piece which artists show us we need a manager to tell us the number of the hired applauders and of the supernumeraries. It would be well if he only drew up such a list! Numbers look ugly, but they only affect the mind; other things, the oil of the lamps, the odors of the side scenes, all that we cannot name, remains to be told. I cannot do more than hint at the length to which Swift carries us; but this I must do, for these extremes are the supreme effort of his despair and his genius: we must touch upon them in order to measure and know him. He drags poetry not only through the mud, but into the filth; he rolls in it like a raging madman, he enthrones himself in it, and bespatters all passersby. Compared with his, all foul words are decent and agreeable. In Aretin and Brantôme, in La Fontaine and Voltaire, there is a soupçon of pleasure. With the first, unchecked sensuality, with the others, malicious gayety, are excuses; we are scandalized, not disgusted; we do not like to see in a man a bull's fury or an ape's buffoonery; but the bull is so eager and strong, the ape so funny and smart, that we end by looking on or being amused. Then, again, however coarse their pictures may be, they speak of the accompani ments of love: Swift touches only upon the results of digestion, and that merely with disgust and revenge; he pours them out with horror and sneering_at the wretches whom he describes. He *Swift's Works, xiv. 93. ↑ A Description of a City Shower, xiv. 94 must not in this be compared to Rabe-clean and brush it often. The three lais; that good giant, that drunken brothers obeyed for some time and doctor, rolls himself joyously about on travelled sensibly, slaying "a reasonhis dunghill, thinking no evil; the able quantity of giants and dragons." dunghill is warm, convenient, a fine Unfortunately, having come up to town place to philosophize and sleep off they adopted its manners, fell in love one's wine. Raised to this enormity, with several fashionable ladies, the and enjoyed with this heedlessness, the Duchess d'Argent, Madame de Grands bodily functions become poetical. Titres, and the Countess d'Orgueil, 1 When the casks are emptied down the and to gain their favors, began to live giant's throat, and the viands are gorg- as gallants, taking snuff, swearing ed, we sympathize with so much bodily rhyming, and contracting debts, keep comfort; in the heavings of this colos ing horses, fighting duels, whoring sal belly and the laughter of this ho- killing bailiffs. A sect was established meric mouth, we see, as through a mist, who the relics of bacchanal religions, the fe cundity, the monstrous joy of nature; these are the splendors and disorders of its first births. The cruel positive mind, on the contrary, clings only to vile ness; it will only see what is behind things; armed with sorrow and boldness, it spares no ignoble detail, no ob scene word. Swift enters the dressingroom, relates the disenchantments of love, † dishonors it by a medley of drugs and physic, describes the cosmetics and a great many more things. § He takes his evening walk by solitary walls, and in these pitiable pryings has his microscope ever in his hand. Judge what he sees and suffers; this is his ideal beauty and his jesting conversation, and we may fancy that he has for philosophy, as for poetry and politics, execration and disgust. V. Swift wrote the Tale of a Tub at Sir William Temple's amidst all kind of reading, as an abstract of truth and science. Hence this tale is the satire of all science and all truth. Of religion first. He seems here to defend the Church of England; but what church and what creed are not involved in his attack? To enliven his subject, he profanes and reduces questions of dogma to a question of clothes. A father had three sons, Peter, Martin, and Jack; he left each of them a coat at his death, warning them to wear it *The Lady's Dressing-room. A Love Poem from a Physician. The Problem, and The Examination of "Held the universe to be a large suit of clothes, which invests everything that the earth is invested by the air; the air is invested by the stars, and the stars are invested by the What is that which primum mobile. some call land, but a fine coat faced with green? or the sea, but a waistcoat of watertabby?.. You will find how curious journeyman Nature has been, to trim up the vegetable beaux: observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doubiet of white satin is worn by the birch. Is not religion a cloak; honesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt; self-love a surtout: breeches; which, though a cover for lewdness vanity a shirt; and conscience a pair of as well as nastiness, is easily slipt down for the service of both? If certain ermines and furs be placed in a certain position, we style ately to consult their father's will, read it ove · . After much thought, one of the brothers, who happened to be more book-learned than the other two, said, he had found an expe dient. It is true,' said he, there is nothing in this will, totidem verbis, making mention of * Persecutions and contests of the primitive church. † Covetousness, ambition, and pride; the three vices that the ancient fathers inveigher against. A Tale of a Tub. xi. sec. 2, 79, 81. but shoulder-knots; but I dare conjecture, we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis.' This distinction was immediately approved by all; and so they fell again to examine; their evil star had so directed the matter, that the first syllable was not to be found in the whole writings. Upon which disappointment, he, who found the former evasion, took heart and said: 'Brothers, there are yet hopes, for though we cannot find them totidem verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage we shall make them out tertio modo or totidem litterBS. This discovery was also highly comxended; upon which they fell once more to Le scrutiny, and picked out S, H, O, U, L, D, E,F; when the same planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a K was not to found. Here was a weighty difficulty; but the distinguishing brother now his hand was in, proved by a very good argument, that K was a modern illegitimate letter, unknown to the learned ages, nor anywhere to be found in ancient manuscripts... Upon this all farther difficulty vanished; shoulder-knots were made clearly out to be jure paterno, and our three gentlemen swaggered with as large and flaunting ones as the best." ↑ ... Other interpretations admitted gold lace, and a codicil authorized flame-colored satin linings : ‡ purpose 451 authorized by tradition the fashion which became him, and having con trived to be left a legacy, styled him self My Lord Peter. treated like servants, were discarded His brothers, from his house; they reopered the will of their father, and began to understand it. duce his clothes to the primitive sim. Martin (Luther), to replicity, brought off a large handful of points, stripped away ten dozen yards of fringe, rid his coat of a huge quantity of gold-lace, but kept a few embroideries which could not "be got away without damaging the cloth." Jack (Calvin) tore off all in his enthusiasm, and was found in tatters, besides being envious of Martin and half mad. He then joined the Æolists, or inspired admirers of the wind, who pretend that the spirit, or breath, or wind, is heavenly, and contains all knowledge: "First, it is generally affirmed or confessed that learning puffeth men up; and secondly they proved it by the following syllogism: words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words, ergo learning is nothing but wind.. This, when blown up to its perfection, ought not to be covetously hoarded up, stifled, or hid under a bushel, but freely communicated to mankind. Upon these reasons, and others of equal weight, the wise olists affirm the gift of belching to be the noblest act of a rational creature. At certain seasons of the year, you might behold the priests among them in vast number linked together in a circular chain, with every man a pair of bellows applied to his neighbour's breech, by which they blew each other to the shape and size of a tun; and for that reason with great propriety of speech, did usually call their bodies their vessels."* ... "Next winter a player, hired for the by the corporation of fringemakers, acted his part in a new comedy, all covered with silver fringe, and according to the laudable custom gave rise to that fashion. Upon which the brothers consulting their father's will, to their great astonishment found these words: Item, charge and command my said three sons to wear no sort of silver-fringe upon or about their said coats, etc.... However, after some pause, the brother so often mentioned for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms, had found in a certain author, which he said should be nameless, that the same word, which in the will is called fringe, does also signify a broomstick: and doubtless ought to have the same interpretation in this paragraph. This another of the brothers disliked, because of that After this explanation of theology, epithet silver, which could not, he humbly con- religious quarrels, and mystical inspiceived, in propriety of speech, be reasonably rations, what is left, even of the Angli. applied to a broomstick; but it was replied upon can Church? She is a sensible, usehim that this epithet was understood in a myful, political cloak, but what else? thological and allegorical sense. However, he objected again, why their father should forbid them to wear a broomstick on their coats, a aution that seemed unnatural and impertinent; apon which he was taken up short, as one who moke irreverently of a mystery, which doubt ess was very useful and significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried into, or nicely reasoned upon." § In the end the scholastic brother grew weary of searching further "evasions," locked up the old will in a strong box,|| Like a stiff brush used with too strong a hand, the buffoonery has carried away the cloth as well as the stain. Swift has put out a fire, I allow; but, like Gulliver at Lilliput, the people saved by him must hold their nose, to admire the right application of the liquid, and the energy of the engine that saves them. Religion being drowned, Swift turns against science; for the digressions with which he interrupts his story to imitate and mock the modern sages are A Tale of a Tub, sec. 8, 146 452 most closely connected with his tale. The book opens with introductions, prefaces, dedications, and other appendices generally employed to swell books-violent caricatures heaped up against the vanity and prolixity of authors. He professes himself one of them, and announces their discoveries. Admirable discoveries! The first of their commentaries will be on in the western part of Libya there were AssEl with horns." Then follow a multitude of pitiless sarcasms. Swift has the gerius of insult; he is an inventor of irony, as Shakspeare of poetry; and as beseems an extreme force, he goes to extremes He lashes in his thought and art. reason after science, and leaves nothing of the whole human mind. With a “Tom Thumb, whose author was a Pytha- medical seriousness he establishes that gorean philosopher. This dark treatise con- vapors are exhaled from the whole tains the whole scheme of the Metempsychosis, body, which, "getting possession of the deducing the progress of the soul through all brain," leave it healthy if they are not her stages. Whittington and his Cat is the work of that mysterious rabbi Jehuda Hannasi, abundant, but excite it if they are; that containing a defence of the gemara of the Jeru- in the first case they make peaceful indisalem misna, and its just preference to that of viduals, in the second great politicians, Babylon, contrary to the vulgar opinion." * founders of religions, and deep philosoHe himself announces that he is going phers, that is, madmen, so that madto publish "A Panegyrical Essay upon ness is the source of all human genius the Number Three; a General His- and all the institutions of the universe. tory of Ears; a Modest Defence of the This is why it is very wrong to keep Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages; men shut up in Bedlam, and a commisan Essay on the Art of Canting, phi- sion appointed to examine them would losophically, physically, and musically find in this academy many imprisoned considered;" and he engages his read-geniuses "which might produce admirers to try by their entreaties to get fromable instruments for the several offices him these treatises, which will change in a state ecclesiastical, civil, and milithe appearance of the world. Then, turning against the philosophers and the critics, sifters of texts, he proves to them, according to their own fashion, that the ancients mentioned them. Can we find anywhere a more biting parody on forced interpretations: "The types are so apposite and the applications so necessary and natural, that it is not easy to conceive how any reader of a modern eye or taste could overlook them.... For first; Pausanias is of opinion, that the perfection of writing correct was entirely owing to the institution of critics; and, that he can possibly mean no other than the true critic, is, I think, manifest enough from the following description. He says, they were a race of men, who delighted to nibble at the superfluities and excrescences of books; which the learned at length observing, took warning, of their own accord, to lop the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrown from their works. But now, all this he cunningly shades under the following allegory; that the Nauplians in Argos learned the art of pruning their vines, by observing that when an Ass had browsed upon one of them, it thrived the better and bore fairer fruits. But Herodotas, holding the very same hieroglyph, speaks much plainer, and almost in terminis. He has been so bold as to tax the true critics of ignorance and malice; telling us openly, for I think nothing can be plainer, that A Tale of a Tu Introduction. 72. tary." "Is any student tearing his straw in piece meal, swearing and blaspheming, biting his . let the right grate, foaming at the mouth?.. worshipful commissioners of inspection give him a regiment of dragoons, and send him into Flan ders among the rest. You will find a third gravely taking the dimensions of his kennel; a person of foresight and insight, though kept quite in the dark.... He walks duly in one pace.. talks much of hard times and taxes and the whore of Babylon; bars up the wooder window of his cell constantly at eight o'clock, Now what a figure would dreams of fire. all those acquirements amount to if the owner were sent into the city among his brethren! of Warwick-lane should have no more concern ... Now is it not amazing to think the society for the recovery of so useful a member?.. I shall not descend so minutely, as to insist upon the vast number of beaux, fiddlers, poets, and politicians that the world might recover by Even I myself, the such a reformation. author of these momentous truths, am a person whose imaginations are hard-mouthed, and exceedingly disposed to run away with his reason, which I have observed, from long experience, to be a very light rider, and easily shaken off; upon which account my friends will never trust me alone, without a solemn promise to vent my speculations in this, or the like manner, for the universal benefit of mankind."✦ *A Tale of a Tub, sec. 3; A Digressio concerning Critics, 97. A Tale of a Tub; A Digression concern ing Madness, sec. 11, 167. in this he has no equal but De Foe. The loadstone machine which sustains the flying island, the entrance of Gulliver into Lilliput, and the inventory of his property, his arrival and maintenance among the Yahoos, carry us with them; no mind knew better the ordinary laws of nature and human life; no mind shut itself up more strictly in this knowledge; none was ever more exact or more limited. What a wretched man is he who knows | omitting no trivial at a positive detail himself and mocks himself! What explaining cookery, stabling, politics madman's laughter, and what a sob in this hoarse gayety! What remains for him but to slaughter the remainder of human invention? Who does not see here the despair from which sprang the academy of Lagado? Is there not here a foretaste of madness in this intense meditation of absurdity? His mathematician, who, to teach geometry, nakes his pupils swallow wafers on which he writes his theorems; his moralist, who, to reconcile political parties, proposes to saw off the occiput and brain of each "opposite partyman," and "to let the occiputs thus cut off be interchanged;" his economist again, who tries to reduce human excrement to its original food." Swift is akin to these, and is the most wretched of all, because he nourishes his mind, like them, on the filth and folly, and because he possesses what they have not, knowledge and disgust. It is sad to exhibit human folly, it is sadder to exhibit human perversity: the heart is more a part of ourselves than reason: we suffer less in seeing extravagance and folly than wickedness or baseness, and I find Swift more agreeable in his Tale of a Tub than in Gulliver. But what a vehemence underneath this aridity! How ridiculous our interests and passions seem, degraded to the littleness of Lilliput, or compared to the vastness of Brobdingnag? What is beauty, when the handsomest body, seen with piercing eyes, seems horrible? What is our power when an insect, king of an ant-hill, can be called, like our princes, "sublime majesty, delight and terror of the universe?" What is our homage worth, when a pigmy "is taller, by almost the breadth of a nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into his beholders?" Three-fourths of our sentiment are follies, and the weakness of our organs is the only cause of our veneration or love. A Society repels us still more than man. At Laputa, at Lilliput, amongst the horses and giants, Swift rages against it, and is never tired of abusing and reviling it. In his eyes, "igno rance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interes! and abilities lie in perverting, con founding, and eluding them."* noble is a wretch, corrupted body and soul, "combining in himself all the diseases and vices transmitted by ren generations of rakes and rascals. A lawyer is a hired liar, wont by twenty years of roguery to pervert the truth i he is an advocate, and to sell it if he is a judge. A minister of state is a go between, who, having disposed of his wife," or brawled for the public good, is master of all offices; and who, in order better to rob the money of the nation, buys members of the House of All his talent and all his passions are ssembled in this book; the positive mind has impressed upon it its form and force. There is nothing agreeable in the fiction or the style. It is the diary of an ordinary man, a surgeon, then a captain, who describes coolly and sensibly the events and objects which he has just seen, but who has no feeling for the beautiful, no appearance of admiration or passion, no delivery. Sir Joseph Banks and Captain Cook relate thus. Swift only seeks the natural, and he attains it. His art consists in taking an absurd supposition, and deducing seriously the effects which it produces. It is the logical and technical mind of a mechanician, who, imagining the decrease or increase in a wheelwork, perceives the result of the changes, and writes down the record. His whole pleasure is in seeing these results clearly, and by a solid reasoning. He marks the dimensions, and so forth, * Swift's Works, xii. Gamer's Travels. ike a good engineer and a statistician, | Part 2, ch. 6, p. 171. |
