toleration and of liberty: he saw their encouragement of the latitudinarianism which his soul abhorred-partly because it satisfied those whom he despised, partly, perhaps, because it did not satisfy uneasy doubts which he strove to hide from himself: he saw the oligarchical monopoly that the Whigs had drawn out of the Revolution. The Tories had been violent, factious, and forgetful of all judgment in the maintenance of impossible extremes: but Swift forgot or condoned their faults for the support they gave his Church, for the opposition they maintained to the abstract political theories on which the Whigs based their claim to virtue. When he broke his long silence to speak on behalf of Ireland, the keynote of all his denunciations was the repudiation of those specious "maxims" by which it was sought to experiment upon her woes"maxims" which his knowledge of Ireland told him, were there" controlled."

Great as his influence must necessarily have been, this predominant bias in his opinions enhanced it. It gave directness and force to his arguments: it made his convictions for the time part and parcel of himself, held with the tenacity of personal traits, of which he seemed no more able to divest himself than to cast off his own being. Cavil and paradox have sought to minimize the hold which Swift had upon men of his own time. He exaggerated, it has been said, his own influence with the government of Harley: he was never really trusted in the conduct of affairs: he mistook the fair speeches by which his help as a government hack was conciliated, for confidences and deference paid to an adviser and a guide. To such fancies history gives the lie. It was not merely help that his so-called patrons sought from Swift: it was to him they looked to shape their policy, to write out their credentials to the people, to interpret for them the history of their time. More than this, no man in England had before appealed to such a constituency as that aroused by Swift: for the first time a mass of opinion beyond the purview of Court and

Parliament was asked to judge between the merits of parties. In Ireland he stirred a feeling which not even the red hand of rebellion has been able to awaken either before or since. He anticipated the force of democracy: and he was the first to put into shape that political ideal which has never since failed to find an hereditary line of supporters, that of so-called Tory principles resting upon popular support.

The secret of his after-influence is akin to this. Of all the writers of last century, there is none that remains so much of a living force and personality as Swift. The questions agitated in his day are forgotten; its party struggles and its political theories have passed away but his genius is for us no mere historic memory. Some reasons for this lie on the surface. We are attracted by the commanding calmness of his humour, with its back-ground of grim earnestness. The mystery and the romance of his life, the story of its love and of its anger, of its pride and of its ruin, can never lose their hold on human interest. Even in the gloom, in the loneliness of one " dwelling in the wilderness," he is intensely English to the very centre of his being.

But beyond and above all this, he commands our attention by the stern earnestness with which he has dealt with problems that are as living for us, as when he wrote. Others have dwelt upon the same problems, have expressed something of the same cynicism, have attempted to denounce in something of his tone. The theme is an old and an inexhaustible one; the "ludibrium rerum humanarum" with its tragedy behind, the thought of which makes humour strive to be something more than mockery or laughter, and which gives another aspect to the cynic's sneer. But Swift stands on a different level from all these others, in that, while his humour is never forced or thin, his earnestness never forgets the supreme quality of self-command. He is never, but by implication, a preacher. But were we to choose a name for the one chief topic of his denunciation, it would be that given by Johnson

to the object of his hatred, which he called Cant. A preacher of our own day, with a misanthropy less scathing, but more fretful, than that of Swift, has chosen what might appear a kindred topic in the energy of his invective against Shams. But the Sham is soon fathomed and exposed. Its shell is easily pierced, and the nickname is left to suggest to weak imaginations the depreciation of all that we do not understand. The Shams of one generation are forgotten by the next, or remembered only as the dress in which it pleased our predecessors to masquerade. But who can place bounds to the dominion of Cant? Who can say into what specious theories it does not enter, over what sphere it fails to leave its trail? And yet, though the preacher cannot rid us of it, it must still blanch in all time coming, before the calm irony of Swift's humour, before the relentless tragedy of the picture that his genius has drawn. If his pride was boundless, if his anger was consuming, they have at least left to us a rich inheritance, in the discomfiture which that ever-present foe suffered at his hands.

APPENDICES

I. FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

II. NOTE ON A TALE OF A TUB

III. AUTHORSHIP OF FOUR LAST YEARS OF THE QUEEN

IV. THE MARRIAGE OF SWIFT AND STELLA

V. SWIFT'S OFFER TO ANNOUNCE THE MARRIAGE

VI. WOOD'S HALFPENCE

VII. PROCLAMATION AGAINST THE DRAPIER

VIII. EDITIONS OF GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

IX. JOURNAL OF 1727

X. THE WILL OF ESTHER JOHNSON

XI. CHARACTER OF MRS. JOHNSON

XII. LETTERS FROM THE MSS. OF THE EARL OF CORK

XIII. SWIFT'S DISEASE

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

[This fragment, written about 1727, and first printed by Deane Swift, from a copy now in Trinity College Library, is reproduced here with the alterations, which are apparently authoritative, contained in a copy of the MS. to which Mr. Forster had access.]

From them de

THE family of the Swifts are ancient in Yorkshire. scended a noted person, who passed under the name of Cavaliero Swift, a man of wit and humour. He was created an Irish Peer by King Charles the First, 20 March 1627, with the title of Viscount of Carlingford, but never was in that kingdom. Many traditional pleasant stories are related of him, which the family planted in Ireland hath received from their parents. This lord died without issue male; and his heiress, whether of the first or second descent, was married to Robert Fielding, Esquire, commonly called handsome Fielding. She brought him a considerable estate in Yorkshire, which he squandered away, but had no children. The Earl of Eglinton married another co-heiress of the same family.

Another of the same family was Sir Edward Swift, well known in the times of the great Rebellion and Usurpation, but I am ignorant whether he left heirs or no.

Of the other branch, whereof the greatest part settled in Ireland, the founder was William Swift, prebendary of Canterbury, towards the last years of Queen Elizabeth, and during the reign of King James the First. He was a divine of some distinction. There is a sermon of his extant, and the title is to be seen in the catalogue of the Bodleian Library, but I never could get a copy, and I suppose it would now be of little value.

This William married the heiress of Philpot, I suppose a Yorkshire