stripping down a parcel of gold lace a little too hastily, he rent the main body of his coat from top to bottom; and, whereas his talent was not of the happiest in taking up a stitch, he knew no better way than to darn it again with pack-thread and a skewer. But the matter was yet infinitely worse (I record it with tears) when he proceeded to the embroidery; for, being clumsy by nature, and of temper impatient; withal, beholding millions of stitches that required the nicest hand and sedatest constitution to extricate; in a great rage he tore off the whole piece, cloth and all, and flung it into the kennel, and furiously thus continued his career:-" Ah, good brother Martin," said he, "do as I do, for the love of God; strip, tear, pull, rend, flay off all, that we may appear as unlike that rogue Peter as it is possible: I would not for a hundred pounds carry the least mark about me that might give occasion to the neighbours of suspecting that I was related to such a rascal." But Martin, who at this time happened to be extremely phlegmatic and sedate, begged his brother, of all love, not to damage his coat by any means; for he never would get such another; desired him to consider that it was not their business to form their actions by any reflection upon Peter, but by observing the rules prescribed in their father's will. That he should remember Peter was still their brother, whatever faults or injuries he had committed; and therefore they should by all means avoid such a thought as that of taking measures for good and evil from no other rule than of opposition to him. That it was true the testament of their good father was very exact in what related to the wearing of their coats: yet it was no less penal and strict in prescribing agreement, and friendship, and affection between them. And, therefore, if straining a point were at all dispensable, it would certainly be so rather to the advance of unity than increase of contradiction. Martin had still proceeded as gravely as he began, and doubtless would have delivered an admirable lecture of morality, which might have exceedingly contributed to my reader's repose both of body and mind, the true ulti mate end of ethics; but Jack was already gone a flightshot beyond his patience. And, as in scholastic disputes nothing serves to rouse the spleen of him that opposes so much as a kind of pedantic affected calinness in the respondent; disputants being for the most part like unequal scales, where the gravity of the one side advances the lightness of the other, and causes it to fly up and kick the beam; so it happened here that the weight of Martin's argument exalted Jack's levity, and made him fly out and spurn against his brother's moderation. In short, Martin's patience put Jack in a rage; but that which more afflicted him was, to observe his brother's coat so well reduced into the state of innocence; while his own was either wholly rent to his shirt, or those places which had escaped his cruel clutches were still in Peter's livery. So that he looked like a drunken beau, half rifled by bullies; or like a fresh tenant of Newgate, when he has refused the payment of garnish; or like a discovered shop-lifter, left to the mercy of Exchange women*. Like any, or like all, of these, a medley of rags, and lace, and rents, and fringes, unfortunate Jack did now appear: he would have been extremely glad to see his coat in the condition of Martin's, but infinitely gladder to find that of Martin in the same predicament with his. However, since neither of these was likely to come to pass, he thought fit to lend the whole business another turn, and to dress up necessity into a virtue. Therefore, after as many of the fox's arguments as he could muster up, for bringing Martin to reason, as he called it; or, as he meant it, into his own ragged, bob-tailed condition; and observing he said all to little purpose; what, alas! was left for the forlorn Jack to do, but, after a million of scurrilities against his brother, to run mad with spleen, and spite, and contradiction. To be short, here began a mortal breach between these two. Jack went immediately to new lodgings, and in a few days it was for certain reported that The women who kept the shops in the galleries of the Old Royal Exchange. D 2. he had run out of his wits. In a short time after, he appeared abroad, and confirmed the report by falling into the oddest whimseys that ever a sick brain conceived. How good, too, is the following, which is all we can afford to give of Jack's vagaries : : He would stand in the turning of a street, and, calling to those who passed by, would cry to one, "Worthy Sir, do me the honour of a good slap in the chaps." To another, "Honest friend, pray favour me with a handsome kick. Madam, shall I entreat a small box on the car from your ladyship's fair hands? Noble captain, lend a reasonable thwack, for the love of God, with that cane of yours over these poor shoulders." And when he had, by such earnest solicitations, made a shift to procure a basting sufficient to swell up his fancy and his sides, he would return home extremely comforted, and full of terrible accounts of what he had undergone for the public good. "Observe this stroke," said he, showing his bare shoulders: "a plaguy janisary gave it me this morning, at seven o'clock, as, with much ado, I was driving off the Great Turk. Neighbours, mind, this broken head deserves a plaster; had poor Jack been tender of his noddle, you would have seen the pope and the French king, long before this time of day, among your wives and your warehouses. Dear Christians, the Great Mogul was come as far as Whitechapel, and you may thank these poor sides that he hath not (God bless as already swallowed up man, woman, and child." It was highly worth observing the singular effects of that aversion or antipathy which Jack and his brother Peter seemed, even to an affectation, to bear against each other. Peter had lately done some rogueries that forced him to abscond, and he seldom ventured to stir out before night, for fear of bailiffs. Their lodgings were at the two most distant parts of the town from each other; and, whenever their occasions or humours called them abroad, they would make choice of the oddest unlikely times, and most uncouth rounds they could inyent, that they might be sure to avoid one another; yet, after all this, it was their perpetual fortune to meet. The reason of which is easy enough to apprehend: for, the frenzy and the spleen of both having the same foundation, we may look upon them as two pair of compasses, equally extended, and the fixed foot of each remaining in the same centre, which, though moving contrary ways at first, will be sure to encounter somewhere or other in the circumference. Besides, it was among the great misfortunes of Jack to bear a huge personal resemblance with his brother Peter. Their humour and dispositions were not only the same, but there was a close analogy in their shape, their size, and their mien. Insomuch as nothing was more frequent than for a bailiff to seize Jack by the shoulders, and cry "Mr. Peter, you are the king's prisoner." Or, at other times, for one of Peter's nearest friends to accost Jack with open arms, "Dear Peter, I am glad to see thee; pray send me one of your best medicines for the worms.' This, we may suppose, was a mortifying return of those pains and proceedings Jack had laboured in so long; and, finding how directly opposite all his endeavours had answered to the sole end and intention which he had proposed to himself, how could it avoid having terrible effects upon a head and heart so furnished as his? However, the poor remainders of his coat bore all the punishment; the orient sun never entered upon his diurnal progress without missing a piece of it. He hired a tailor to stitch up the collar so close that it was ready to choke him, and squeezed out his eyes at such a rate as one could see nothing but the white. What little was left of the main substance of the coat he rubbed every day for two hours against a rough-cast wall, in order to grind away the remnants of lace and embroidery; but at the same time went on with so much violence, that he proceeded a heathen philosopher. Yet, after all he could do of this kind, the success continued still to disappoint his expectation. For, as it is the nature of rags to bear a kind of mock resemblance to finery, there being a sort of fluttering appearance in both which is not to be distinguished at a distance, in the dark, or by shortsighted eyes, so, in those junctures, it fared with Jack and his tatters, that they offered to the first view a ridiculous flaunting, which, assisting the resemblance in person and air, thwarted all his projects of separation, and left so near a similitude between them as frequently deceived the very disciples and followers of both. It is said that one day in the latter part of his life Swift, after looking over the Tale of a Tub for some time, suddenly shut the book, and exclaimed, "Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that!" It was indeed something too good to be done over again ; so happy a feat as to forbid all hope of its ever being surpassed, and in that way tending even to repress the courage and effort by which it might have been equalled. But at this period of his life Swift's genius certainly had a fervour, exuberance, and florid gaiety which it lost in a great degree (whatever it may have gained in compensation) as he advanced in years. Here and there in the Tale of a Tub, and likewise in the Battle of the Books, the expression rises to an eloquence, and sometimes to a poetic glow, such as is not to be found in later writings either in prose or in verse. course, for instance, prefixed to the Tale, entitled 'The Author's Apology,' how lively and apt is the figure by which "the usual fate of common answerers to books that are allowed to have any merit" is illustrated : any of his In the dis They are indeed like annuals that grow about a young tree, and seem to vie with it for a summer, but fall and die with the leaves in autumn, and are never heard of more." Here is the olden and most hackneyed of all similitudes-that of the elm and the vine-made again as bright and striking as the first time it was used. In the Dedication to Prince Posterity, the different methods of |