at the Treasury: he had no ties with Guiscard in his past life; and by him the pension was cut down to £400, and provision for its regular payment was refused. Angry, disappointed, starving, the maddened wretch sought for some plan which would at once satisfy his craving for intrigue and his extravagance. He entered into correspondence with France, though with what motive it is hard to say. The Ministry were alarmed; St. John issued a warrant for his arrest; the Privy Councillors were summoned to the Cockpit ; and within an hour after Swift had met him and been struck by his "excited air," he was in the hands of the Queen's messenger. He had, we are told, hardly eaten a fair meal for four months. Consciousness of his guilt, or despair of regaining the revenues which he had before enjoyed, made him desperate he begged the messenger to kill him. His boast in former days that the scaffold was only for the coward, and that he carried that with him which would deliver him from the executioner, was unfulfilled; and in a half-frenzied state he was carried to Whitehall, where the Council had met. Guiscard was insolent under examination, and was at once. evasive and confused. He sought a word in private with St. John, who refused the request. The fellow was now goaded to wild fury, and probably neither thinking nor caring what he did, he made two or three thrusts at Harley with a penknife, which he had picked up from a table in an adjoining room. A noisy scuffle followed. Every one started to his feet and St. John, with an alertness that had not a little of bravado in it, attacked the unarmed wretch with his sword. The others rushed between and broke St. John's sword: the would-be assassin was at length overpowered and seized by a brawny messenger: and Harley's wound was looked to. It was not dangerous, except for the ill-state of Harley's health, harassed at the time by anxieties which he had attempted to conceal, and injured by years of over-indulgence in drink.

But, for the time, his political fortune was made.* The news spread like wildfire over London. The attempt, on the face of it, was little else than the frenzied outburst of a desperado, maddened by drink and disappointment. There was every expectation that the man attacked would speedily be restored. But a universal feeling was excited by the act. Each citizen seemed to find the air full of the daggers of hired French assassins. The Ministry, as well as Harley, rose rapidly in popularity. The people would have lynched Guiscard had they caught him, and as it was they thronged to the Tower to insult his body when death freed him from the possibility of the scaffold. Parliament passed one resolution after another, congratulating the Queen on the preservation of her Minister, and Harley on his miraculous escape. They devised a new law to meet such attempts in future, and might even have stained the statute book by an ex post facto penalty, had not Guiscard's death prevented such a signal folly.

The news reached Swift as he was lingering after dinner in Lady Catherine Morris's drawing-room. The company broke up in consternation, and Swift seemed to receive a double portion of the current alarm. For the time, he appears to us in a natural guise. The cynicism, the sarcasm, the half-captious comment, that succeed one another so quickly in the Journal, break down at once. We see him for the moment stirred to

An account of the attempt, which carefully brought out all the points most likely to rouse the nation's sympathy, was prepared by Mrs. Manley, the authoress of the Memoirs of the New Atalantis, under the eye and direction of Swift.

In Guiscard's last hours, as we are told by Swift, one heart, and one heart only, in London, felt for him. "A poor wench," who probably owed him nothing but her ruin, sent him a bottle of sack. It was feared that it might contain poison, and the keeper

refused to admit it. When the poor wretch died, his body was exposed to the crowd, and the wounds received from various ministerial hands were duly pointed out by the attendants. Swift condemns the show: but it was left for Anne herself, when she heard of it, to send summary orders to discontinue the indecency. Swift is so far affected by the feeling of the moment, that he cannot hide his regret that the childish barbarity of hanging the body in chains was prevented by a legal technicality.

the very heart, and absolutely natural in his 'grief and his anxiety. The shortness of his acquaintance with Harley is forgotten. The memory of half-humorous estrangements, and of the resentment caused by the ill-timed offer of money, is gone at once. Swift only remembers his wounded patron as one who showed him kindness after others had misled, or neglected, or suspected, or dallied with, him: as one who had always treated him with "the tenderness of a parent." During these weeks Swift's hopes and thoughts centre about the sick bed; and on Harley's recovery, he becomes his closest confidant in wielding that added power, that now was his.

CHAPTER IX.

SWIFT, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE PEACE.

May-December, 1711.

ETAT. 43-44.

The personal bond between Swift and Harley+The Ministry and the task before them-The favour of the Church secured-Death of Rochester-Harley created Earl of Oxford and Lord Treasurer-Swift's estimate of Oxford and of St. John-His intercourse with the Ministry-Other sides of his life -New intimates-His lodgings at Chelsea-Atterbury and Swift-The Club and its aims-Swift at Windsor-Visitors from Ireland-New enemies -The Duchess of Somerset, and the Windsor Prophecy-Old friends and new-Arbuthnot and Swift-A "bite" for the Maids of Honour-Life at Windsor-Sacheverell and his claims-Lord Peterborough and Swift-The Vanhomrighs-Mrs. Anne Long-Swift's carelessness as to his own interest -Proposals for a Peace-Fall of Bouchain-Dr. Hare's Sermon-The Vindication of the Duke-Negociations on foot-Prior and his MissionSwift's account of it-The Whigs and Nottingham-The Dissenters and their schemes-Swift's reply to their appeal-The Hue and Cry after Dismal-The Conduct of the Allies-Marlborough's return-A suspected plot-Parliamentary opposition-Prospects of failure-Swift's suspenseMarlborough's dismissal-Twelve new peers-The Ministry saved.

THE weeks that followed the attack on Harley drew more close that bond which had been stimulated at first by pique on Swift's side, by policy on Harley's. It was with this as with all Swift's relations to his fellow-men: every tie, be it in politics, or in literature, ripened with him into a personal friendship, just as every dispute grew, for him, into an irksome personal antipathy. Rough as was his coating of cynicism, it covered a sensitivity only too keen. As with others, so now with Harley, his attachment blinded his judgment: and to that attachment he paid the tribute of an unchanging, even when an impolitic, devotion.

Harley needed, at this moment, all the help that Swift could give him. The personal popularity which Guiscard's attack had brought was in its nature evanescent. Harley must base the ascendancy of the Tories on a sounder foundation if it were to last. The Whigs must be deprived of their monopoly of financial reputation. A specious scheme for converting the national debt into a terminable loan seemed to promise this result. The orthodox churchmen must be attached to the Tory party by some solid bonds. Swift suggested a means of doing so, by a vote of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds which was to supply fifty churches for that new and busy population which had arisen between Westminster and Temple Bar, and between Charing Cross and Soho. These were but the beginnings: more definite lines of policy were laid before long.

Harley's moderate Toryism might still have been overshadowed by Toryism of another hue. The leader of this more rigid school was Lord Rochester; but on the 3rd of May, Lord Rochester's death freed Harley from a powerful rival. It was followed before long by visible signs of Harley's increasing power. On the 24th of May, he became Earl of Oxford and Mortimer and Baron Wigmore. A week later, the new Earl was advanced to the dignity of Lord Treasurer.

In Swift's own words, Harley had grown "by persecution, turning out, and stabbing." All helped to give him a hold on Swift's affection, and to win from Swift a respect which was strangely high. Harley had an unquestionable skill in the lesser arts of statesmanship: he had some tact in parliamentary management: he had, what was more, a certain keenness of appreciation for national necessities. All these many of his contemporaries probably rated too low: but with an estimate much more certainly wrong, his apathy was mistaken by Swift for philosophy, his hesitation for calculating wisdom. "The Treasurer," says Swift, "is much the greatest Minister I ever knew regular in life, with a true sense of religion, an

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