Commons with the same money. A king is a practiser of all the vices, unable to employ or love an honest man, persuaded that "the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restive temper which virtue infused into a na, was a perpetual clog to public business." * At Lilliput the king chooses as his ministers those who dance best upon the tight-rope. Luggnagg he compels all those, who are presented to him, to crawl on their bellies and lick the dust. At "When the king as a mind to put any of is nobles to death in a gentle, indulgent manher, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which, being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. But in justice to this prince's great clemency, and the care he has of his subjects lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the monarchs of Europe would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution.... I myself heard him give directions that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect, a young lord of great hopes coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the King at that time had no design against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special orders." All these fictions of giants, pigmies, flying islands, are means for depriving human nature of the veils with which habit and imagination cover it, to display it in its truth and its ugliness. There is still one cloak to remove, the most deceitful and familiar. Swift must take away that appearance of reason in which we deck ourselves. He must suppress the sciences, arts, combinations of societies, inventions of industries, whose brightness dazzles us. He must discover the Yahoo in man. What a spectacle! "A: last I beheld several animals in a field. and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed. ... Their heads ar 1 breasts were covered with a thick hair, so.e frizzled, and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the forepart of their legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour.... They climbed • Gulliver's Travels, Part 3, ch. 3, p. 258. Ibid. ch. 9, p. 264. brothers. He finds in them all our According to Swift, such are our instincts. They hate each other, tear each other with their talons, with hide ous contortions and yells! such is the source of our quarrels. If they find a dead cow, although they are but five, and there is enough for fifty, they strangle and wound each other: such is a picture of our greed and our wars. They dig up precious stones and hide them in their kennels, and watch them "with great caution," pining and howling when robbed: such is the origin of our love of gold. They devour indifferently "herbs, berries, roots, the corrupted flesh of animals," preferring "what they could get by rapine or stealth," gorging themselves till they vomit or burst: such is the portrait of our gluttony and injustice. They have a kind of juicy and unwholesome root, which they "would suck with great delight," till they" howl, and grin, and chatter," embracing or scratching each other, then reeling, hiccuping, wallowing in the mud: such is a picture of our drunkenness. "In most herds there was a sort of ruling Yahoo, who was always more deformed in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest: that this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment the female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was to lick his master's feet, ... and drive was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass's flesh. . . . He usually continues in office till a worse can be found." ↑ Such is an abstract of our govern. ment. And yet he gives preference to the Yahoos over men, saying that our wretched reason has aggravated and multiplied these vices, and concluding with the king of Brobdingnag that our species is "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." ↑ * Ibid. Part 4, ch. 1, p. 286. Ibid. Part 2, ch. 6, p. 73. Five years after this treatise on man, he wrote in favor of unhappy Ireland a pamphlet which is like the last effort of his despair and his genius.* I give it almost whole; it deserves it. I know nothing like it in any literature: "It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and tabin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, an i importuning every passenger for an alms.... I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children. is, in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and there fore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation... I shall now, therefore, humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection." t When we know Swift, such a beginning frightens us : "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. "I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; ... that the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and tat 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 have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty-eight pounds. "I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers), to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat. "Those who are more thrifty (as I must con A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of the poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public, 1739. Ibid. vii. 454 455 fess the times require), may flay the carcass the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make for fine gentlemen. admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boou "As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most con venient parts of it; and butchers we ray be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, than dress ing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs, ... "I think the advantages :y the proposal which I have made, are obvious and many, as well as already observed, it would greatly lessen tha of the highest importance. For first, as I ha number of Fapists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies. hundred thousand children, from two years old Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of a and upward, cannot be computed at less than stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation's pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinedish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen ment in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture. .. Sixthly, this would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit or expense.... Many other ad. vantages might be enumerated, for instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrelled beef; the propagation of swine's flesh, and the improvement in the art of making good bacon. . . . But this, and many ... others, I omit, being studious of brevity. "Some persons of desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people who are aged, diseased, or maimed; and I have been desired to employ my thoughts, what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter; because it is very well known, that they are every day dying and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young labourers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree, that, if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labour, they have not strength to perfor it; and th the country and themselves are happily deliver ed from the evils to come.* Swift ends with the following ironic lines, worthy of a cannibal: "I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least perso al 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 A Modest Proposal, etc., 461. which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old and my wife past child-bearing."* Much has been said of unhappy great men, Pascal, for instance. I think that his cries and his anguish are faint compared to this calmn treatise. Such was this great and unhappy genius, the greatest of the classical age, the most unhappy in history, English hroughout, whom the excess of his English qualities inspired and consumed, having this intensity of desires, which is the main feature of the race, the enormity of pride which the habit of liberty, command, and success has impressed upon the nation, the solidity of the positive mind which habits of business have established in the country; precluded from power and action by his unchecked passions and his intractable pride; excluded from poetry and philosophy by the clear-sightedness and narrowness of his common sense; deprived of the consolations offered by contemplative life, and the occupation furnished by practical life; too superior to embrace heartily a religious sect or a political party, too narrow-minded to rest in the lofty doctrines which conciliate all beliefs, or in the wide sympathies which embrace all parties; condemned by his nature and surroundings to fight without loving a cause, to write without taking a liking to literature, to think without feeling the truth of any dogma, warring as a condottiere against all parties, a misanthrope disliking all men, a skeptic denying all beauty and truth. But these very surroundings, and this very nature, which expelled him from happiness, love, power, and science, raised him, in this age of French imitation and classical moderation, to a wonderful height, where, by the originality and power of his inventions, he is the equal of Byron, Milton, and Shakspeare, and shows pre-eminently the character and mind of his nation. Sensibility, a positive mind, and pride, forged for him a unique style, of terrible vehemence, withering calmness, practical effectiveness, hardened by scorn, truth and natred, a weapon of vengeance and war which made his enemies cry out * A Modest Proposal, etc. 466. and die under its point and its poison A pamphleteer against opposition and government, he tore or crushed his adversaries with his irony or his se: tences, with the tone of a judge, a sovereign, and a hangman. A man the world and a poet, he invented a cruel pleasantry, funereal laughter, a convulsive gayety of bitter contrasts; and whilst dragging the mythological trappings, as if it were rags he was obliged to wear, he created a personal poetry by painting the crude details of trivial life, by the energy of a painful grotesqueness, by the merciless revela tion of the filth we conceal. A phi losopher against all philosophy, he cre ated a realistic poem, a grave parody, deduced like geometry, absurd as a dream, credible as a law report, attractive as a tale, degrading as a dishclout placed like a crown on the head of a divinity. These were his miseries and his strength: we quit such a spectacle with a sad heart, but full of admiration; and we say that a palace is beautiful even when it is on fire. Artists will add: especially when it is on fire. CHAPTER VI. The Nobelists. I. AMIDST these finished and perfect writings a new kind makes its appeal. ance, suited to the public tendencies and circumstances of the time, the antiromantic novel, the work and the reading of positive minds, observers and moralists, not intended to exalt and amuse the imagination, like the novels of Spain and the middle ages, not to reproduce or embellish conversation, like the novels of France and the seven teenth century, but to depict real life, to describe characters, to suggest plans of conduct, and judge motives of action. It was a strange apparition, and like the voice of a people buried underground, when, amidst the splendid cor ruption of high life, this severe emanation of the middle class welled up, and when the obscenities of Mrs. Aphra Behn, still the diversion of ladies of fashion, were found on the [jects political and religious, accidental same table with De Foe's Robinson or moral, satires and novels, histories Crusoe. II. and poems, travels and pamphlets, commercial essays and statistical information, in all two hundred and ten works, not of verbiage, but of arguDe Foe, a dissenter, a pamphleteer, ments, documents, and facts, crowded a journalist, a novel-writer, successively and piled one upon another with such a hosier, a tile-maker, an accountar., prodigality, that the memory, thought, was one of those indefatigable laborers and application of one man seemed too and obstinate combatants, who, ill-small for such a labor; he died pennitreated, calumniated, imprisoned, suc- less, in debt. However we regard his reeded by their uprightness, common life, we see only prolonged efforts and sense and energy, in gaining England persecutions. Joy seems to be wantover to their side. At twenty-three, ing; the idea of the beautiful never having taken arms for Monmouth, he enters. When he comes to fiction, it was fortunate in not being hung or is like a Presbyterian and a plebeian, sent out of the country. Seven years with low subjects and moral aims, to later he was ruined and obliged to hide. treat of the adventures, and reform the In 1702, for a pamphlet not rightly conduct of thieves and prostitutes, anderstood, he was condemned to pay workmen and sailors. His whole dea fine, was set in the pillory, imprisoned light was to think that he had a service two years in Newgate, and only the to perform and that he was performing charity of Godolphin prevented his it: "He that opposes his own judg wife and six children from dying of ment against the current of the times hunger. Being released and sent as a ought to be backed with unanswerable commissioner to Scotland to treat truth; and he that has truth on his about the union of the two countries, side is a fool as well as a coward if he he narrowly escaped being stoned. An- is afraid to own it, because of the mulother pamphlet, which was again mis- titude of other men's opinions. 'Tis construed, sent him to prison, com- hard for a man to say, all the world is pelled him to pay a fine of eight hun- mistaken but himself. But if it be so, dred pounds, and only just in time he who can help it?" Nobody can help received the Queen's pardon. His it, but then a man must walk straight works were copied, he was robbed, ahead, and alone, amidst blows and and slandered. He was obliged to throwing of mud. De Foe is like one protest against the plagiarists, who of those brave, obscure, and useful printed and altered his works for their soldiers who, with empty belly and benefit; against the neglect of the burdened shoulders, go through their Whigs, who did not find him tractable duties with their feet in the mud, enough; against the animosity of the pocket blows, receive the whole day Tories, who saw in him the chief long the fire of the enemy, and somechampion of the Whigs. In the midst times that of their friends into the of his self-defence he was struck with bargain, and die sergeants, happy if it apoplexy, and continued to defend has been their good fortune to ge himself from his bed. Yet he lived hold of the legion of honor. on, but with great difficulty; poor and burdened with a family, he turned, at fifty-five, to fiction, and wrote successively Moll Flanders, Captain Singleton, Duncan Campbell, Colonel Jack, the History of the Great Plague in London, and many others. This vein exhausted, he diverged and tried another-the Complete English Tradesman, A Tour through Great Britain. Death came; *See his dull poems, amongst others Fure poverty remained. In vain had he divino, a poem in twelve books, in defence of written in prose, in verse, on all sub-every man's birthrigh by nature. De Foe had the kind of mind suita ble to such a hard service, solid, exact entirely destitute of refinement, enthu siasm, agreeableness. His imagination was that of a man of business, not of an artist, crammed and, as it were, jammed down with facts. He tells them as they come to him, without arrangement or style, like a conversa tion, without dreaming of producing an effect, or composing a phrase, employing technical terms and vulgar forms, repeating himself at need, using the same thing two or three times, not seeming to imagine that there are methods of amusing, touching, engrossing, or pleasing, with no desire but to pour out on paper the fulness of the information with which he is charged. Even in fiction his information is as precise as ir history. He gives dates, year, month, and day; notes the wind, north-east, south-west, north-west; he writes a log-book, an invoice, attorneys' and shopkeepers' bills, the number of moidores, interest, specie payments, payments in kind, cost and sale prices, the share of the king, of religious houses, partners, brokers, net totals, statistics, the geography and hydrography of the island, so that the reader is tempted to take an atlas and draw for himself a little map of the place, to enter into all the details of the history, and to see the objects as clearly and fully as the author. It seems as though our author had performed all Crusoe's labors, so exactly does he describe them, with numbers, quantities, dimensions, like a carpenter, potter, or an old tar. Never was such a sense of the real before or since. Our realists of to-day, painters, anatomists, who enter deliberately on their business, are very far from this naturalness; art and calculation crop ut amidst their too minute descriptions. De Foe creates illusion; for it is not the eye which deceives us, but the mind, and that literally: his account of the great plague has more than once passed for true; and Lord Chatham mistook his Memoirs of a Cavalier for an authentic narrative. This was his aim. In the preface to the old edition of Rubinson Crusoe it is said: "The story is told. . to the instruction of others by this xampie, and to justify and honor the wisdom of Providence. The editor believes the thing to be a just history of facts; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it." All his talents lie in this, and thus even his imperfections aid him; his lack of art becomes a profound art; his negligence, repetitions, prolixity, contribute to the illusion: we cannot imagine that such and such a detail, so minute, so dull, is invented; an inventor would have sup pressed it; it is too tedious to have been put in on purpose: art chooses, embellishes, interests; art, therefore, cannot have piled up this heap of dull and vulgar accidents; it is the truth. Read, for instance, A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, the next Day after her Death, to one Mrs Bargrave, at Canterbury, the 8th of September 1705; which Apparition re commends the perusal of Drelincourt's Book of Consolation against the Fear of Death.* The old little chap books, read by aged needlewomen, are not more monotonous. There is such an array of circumstantial and guaranteed details, such a file of witnesses quoted, referred to, registered, compared, such a perfect appearance of tradesman-like honesty, plain, vulgar common sense, that a man would take the author for an honest retired hosier, with too little brains to invent a story; no writer careful of his reputation would have printed such nonsense. In fact, it was not his reputation that De Foe cared for; he had other motives in his head; we literary men of the present time cannot guess them, being literary men only. But he wanted to sell a pious book of Drelincourt, which would not sell of itself, and in addition, to confirm people in their religious belief by advocating the appearance of ghosts. It was the grand proof then brought to bear on skeptics. Grave Dr. Johnson himself tried to see a ghost, and no event of that time was more suited to the belief of the middle class. Here, as elsewhere, De Foe, like Swift, is a man of action; effect, not noise touches him; he com posed Robinson Crusoe to warn the impious, as Swift wrote the life of the last man hung to inspire thieves with terror! In that positive and religious age, amidst these political and puritanic citizens, practice was of such im portance as to reduce art to the condi tion of its tool. Never was art the tool of a more moral or more thoroughly English work Robinson Crusoe is quite a man of his race, and might instruct it even *Compare another story of an appart American is a suffering artist; De Foe a citi Edgar Poe's Case of M. Waldemar. The zen, who has common sense. |