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cabinet, who appear to have courted him with uncommon assiduity.*

Henceforward to the death of the Queen, the most vigorous and important period of his life, we find him constantly fighting on their side, and maintaining their cause in all the various warfare of pamphlets, poems, and weekly papers. In this conflict. of talents Addison, Burnet, Steele, Rowe, and Congreve marshalled themselves on the side of the Whigs: the chief Tory champions were Bolingbroke, Atterbury, Prior, Freind, and King. The latter had already published twelve numbers of the Examiner,' when Swift joined their party. That paper was instantly consigned to his sole management, and within the ensuing six months he wrote thirty-two additional numbers, when he left it to be continued by Mrs. Manley and other hands. In 1711, he published his

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Johnson seems to doubt a little, whether he was ever fully admitted to Harley's confidence, though he owns he was one of the sixteen ministers, or agents of the ministry, who met weekly at each other's houses, and were united by the name of Brothers.' He appears, indeed, to have sympathised with the October Club, a number of Tories (about a hundred) sent from the country to parliament, who called loudly for more changes and stronger efforts than Harley, not quick by nature and slower by irresolution, was disposed to make. Harley was "a Tory only by necessity, or for convenience; and, when he had power in his hands, had no settled purpose for which he should employ it. Forced to gratify to a certain degree the Tories who supported him, but unwilling to make his reconcilement to the Whigs utterly desperate, he corresponded at once with the two expectants of the crown, and kept (as has been observed) the succession undetermined. Not knowing what to do, he did nothing; and, with the fate of a double dealer, at last he lost his power, but kept his enemies."

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Letter to the October Club,' which put an end to their unconstitutional cabals. The year following, appeared his Letter to Harley on Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue, of which Johnson speaks with little commendation; and, also, his celebrated political tract, entitled The Conduct of the Allies.' Of this latter publication, of which the object was to persuade the nation to a peace, in an age far less populous and book-buying than the present eleven thousand copies were sold in less than a month! To it's propagation, indeed, no agency of power or of influence was wanting. It was followed by his Barrier Treaty,' and his insulting 'Remarks on the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction to the Third Volume of his History of the Reformation.' By these labours, though his wit (in Dr. Johnson's judgement) was successfully encountered by that of Addison, he certainly turned the stream of popularity against the Whigs, and appears for a time to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation. But, notwithstanding his services, he remained without preferment till 1713, when he was made Dean of St. Patrick's.

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There is great reason to imagine, that the temper of Swift occasioned his English friends to wish him promoted at a distance. His spirit was ever untractable, and the motions of his genius irregular. He assumed the airs rather of a patron, than of a friend; affected to dictate, instead of advising; and was elated with the appearance of enjoying ministerial confidence.

Reflexions of this kind will account for his missing an English mitre, though he himself ascribed his

disappointment to a joint application of Archbishop Sharp, whom he calls the harmless tool of others' hate,' and the Duchess of Somerset.

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The Prelate, according to Swift's own account, had represented him to the Queen, in consequence of his Tale of a Tub,' as not a Christian;' and the Duchess, by producing his bitter copy of verses called the Windsor Prophecy,' had confirmed the royal displeasure. Her Majesty, therefore, gave away the bishopric contrary to her first intentions. Swift, however, kept himself within some tolerable bounds, while he spoke of his Sovereign; but his indignation knew no limits, when he mentioned his two confederated foes.

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His Public Spirit of the Whigs,' printed about this time in answer to Steele's Crisis,' animadverted with so much severity and contempt upon the Scottish nation, that the Sixteen Peers in a body went up to the Queen, and demanded reparation. A Proclamation was accordingly issued, offering 3001. for the discovery of the author, and orders were issued to prosecute the printer; but, by some management, the storm was averted.

If this indecorous but witty work however, distinguished as it is by a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and a vivacity of diction, which he subsequently either never possessed or never exerted,* lost him a mitre, it gained him the friendship of Addison, Arbuthnot, Berkeley, Congreve, Garth, Gay, Parnell, Prior, and Pope.

He had little reason to rejoice in the land, where

* As being unlike Dr. Swift's general strain of composition, and for other reasons, it has been ascribed to Lord Somers by his biographer Mr. Cooksey.

his lot had fallen: for upon his arrival in Ireland, to take possession of his deanery, he found the violence of party reigning in that kingdom to the highest degree. The rabble had been taught to regard him as a Jacobite; and they even carried their detestation so far, as to throw stones at him on his way through the streets. His chapter, also, received him with extreme reluctance. He was thwarted in all his measures, avoided as a pestilence, opposed as an invader, and marked out as a public enemy. Fewer talents, and less firmness, must have yielded to such opposition. But so strange are the revolutions of the world, that he lived to govern this very rabble with absolute sway.

His first step was, to reduce to obedience his reverend brethren of St. Patrick's; in which he succeeded so effectually, that shortly after his arrival not a single member of that body offered to contradict him, even in trifles. On the contrary, they all held him in the highest veneration. Having established himself in his deanery, by passing through certain customs and formalities, or (to use his own words) 6 Through all vexations,

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Patents, instalments, abjurations,
First-fruits, and tenths, and chapter-treats,

Dues, payments, fees, demands, and-cheats,'

in the beginning of the year 1714, he returned to England. There he found his great friends at the helm, particularly Oxford and Bolingbroke, much disunited among themselves, and their royal mistress sinking under the joint operations of distress and decay. After fruitlessly exerting his skill to effect a reconciliation in the cabinet, he saw that all was lost,' and retired to a friend's house at Letcombe in Berk

shire, where he wrote his Free Thoughts on the present State of Affairs.' The Queen's death, however, not only put a stop to it's publication, but closing all his views in England, sent him back to his Irish deanery oppressed with grief and discontent.

In a letter to Gay he observes: "Nothing so much contributed to my ease, as the turn of affairs after the Queen's death; by which all my hopes being cut off, I could have no ambition left, unless I would have been a greater rascal than happened to suit with my temper. I, therefore, sat down quietly at my morsel, adding only thereto a principle of hatred to all succeeding measures and ministries by way of sauce to relish my meat." "I have seen a letter," says Arbuthnot to Pope, "from Dean Swift: he keeps up his noble spirit; and, though like a man knocked down, you may behold him still with a stern countenance, and aiming a blow at his adversaries " "His first recourse," Dr. Johnson informs us," was to piety. The thoughts of death rushed upon him at this time with such incessant importunity, that they took possession of his mind, when he first waked, for many years together."

From 1714 to 1720, his spirit of politics and patriotism he closely confined within his own breast. His attendance upon the public service of the church was uninterrupted: and, indeed, regularity was peculiar to him in all his actions.

His works, during this period, are few in number, and of small importance: Poems to Stella, and Trifles to Dr. Sheridan, fill up a great portion of the interval. Part of it, however, as Lord Orrery supposes, he devoted to Gulliver's Travels.' His mind was, likewise, fully occupied by an affecting private incident:

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