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leproaches with being a Tory, and says "To cool your insolence a little, know that the Queen, and Court, and House of Lords, and half the Commons almost, are Whigs, and the number daily increases:"-And, among innumerable other proofs, by the memorable verses on Whitehall, in which, alluding to the execution of King Charles in front of that building, he is pleased to say, with more zeal than good prosody,

"That theatre produced an action truly great,

vowing revenge." In a few weeks after-the change being by that time complete-he takes his part definitively, and makes his approaches to Harley, in a manner which we should really imagine no rat of the present day would have confidence enough to imitate. In mentioning his first interview with that eminent person, he says, "I had prepared him before by another hand, where he was very intimate, and got myself represented (which I might justly do) as one extremely ill used by the last ministry, after some obligation, because I refused to go certain lengths they would have me." (Vol. xv. p. 350.) About the same period, he gives us farther lights into the conduct of this memorable conversion, in the following passages of the Journal.

"I must tell you a great piece of refinement in Harley. He charged me to come and see him often; I told him I was loath to trouble him, in so much business as he had, and desired I might have refused, and said, "That was no place for friends.' leave to come at his levee; which he immediately

"I believe never was any thing compassed so soon and purely done by my personal credit with Mr. Harley; who is so excessively obliging, that 1 know not what to make of it, unless to shew the rascals of the other party, that they used a man unworthily who had deserved better. He speaks all the kind things of me in the world.-Oct. 14. I stand with the new people ten times better than ever I did with the old, and forty times more caressed." Life, vol. i. p. 126.

On which eternal acclamations wait," &c. Such being the principles, by the zealous profession of which he had first obtained distinction and preferment, and been admitted to the friendship of such men as Somers, Addison, and Steele, it only remains to be seen on what occasion, and on what considerations, he afterwards renounced them. It is, of itself, Mr. St. John and me acquainted; and spoke so "Oct. 7. He (Harley) told me he must bring a tolerably decisive fact, that this change many things of personal kindness and esteem, that took place just when the Whig ministry went I am inclined to believe what some friends had told out of power, and their adversaries came into me, that he would do every thing to bring me over. full possession of all the patronage and inter-He desired me to dine with him on Tuesday; and, est of the government. The whole matter, St. James's coffee-house in a Hackney-coach. after four hours being with him, set me down at however, is fairly spoken out in various parts of his own writings:-and we do not believe there is anywhere on record a more barefaced avowal of political apostasy, undisguised and unpalliated by the slightest colour or pretence of public or conscientious motives. It is quite a singular fact, we believe, in the history of this sort of conversion, that he nowhere pretends to say that he had become aware of any danger to the country from the continuance of the Whig ministry-nor ever presumes to call in question the patriotism or penetration of Addison and the rest of his former associates, who remained faithful to their first professions. His only apology, in short, for this sudden dereliction of the principles which he had maintained for near forty years -for it was at this ripe age that he got the first glimpse of his youthful folly-is a pretence of ill usage from the party with whom he had held them; a pretence-to say nothing of its inherent baseness-which appears to be utterly without foundation, and of which it is enough to say, that no mention is made, till that same party is overthrown. While they remain in office, they have full credit for the sincerity of their good wishes (see vol. xv. p. 250, &c. ):—and it is not till it becomes both safe and profitable to abuse them, that we hear of their ingratitude. Nay, so critically and judiciously timed is this discovery of their unworthiness, that, even after the worthy author's arrival in London in 1710, when the movements had begun which terminated in their ruin, he continues, for some months, to keep on fair terms with them, and does not give way to his well considered resentment, till it is quite apparent that his interest must gain by the indulgence. He says, in the Journal to Stella, a few days after his arrival, "The Whigs would gladly lay hold on me, as a twig, while they are drowning-and their great men are making me their clumsy apologies. But my Lord Treasurer (Godolphin) received me with a great deal of coldness, which has enraged me so, that I am almost

Nov. 8. Why should the Whigs think I came what they think? Am 1 under obligations in the to England to leave them? But who the devil cares least to any of them all? Rot them, ungrateful dogs. I will make them repent their usage of me, before I leave this place. They say the same thing here of my leaving the Whigs; but they own they cannot blame me, considering the treatment I have had," &c. &c.

If he really ever scrupled about going lengths with his Whig friends (which we do believe), he seems to have resolved, that his fortune should not be hurt by any delicacy of this sort in his new connection;-for he took up the cudgels this time with the ferocity of a hireling, and the rancour of a renegade. In taking upon himself the conduct of the paper called "The Examiner," he gave a new character of acrimony and bitterness to the contention in which he mingled-and not only made the most furious and unmeasured attacks upon the body of the party to which it had formerly been his boast that he belonged, but singled out, with a sort of savage discourtesy, a variety of his former friends and benefactors, and made them, by name and description, the objects of the most malignant abuse. Lord Somers, Godolphin, Steele, and many others with whom he had formerly lived in intimacy, and from whom he had received obligations, were successively attacked in public with the most rancorous personalities, and often with the falsest insinuations: In short,

as he has himself emphatically expressed it | substantially absolute by the assistance of a in the Journal, he "libelled them all round." military force, in order to make it impossible While he was thus abusing men he could not that their principles should ever again acquire have ceased to esteem, it is quite natural, and a preponderance in the country. It is imposin course, to find him professing the greatest sible, we conceive, to give any other meanaffection for those he hated and despised. A ing to the advice contained in his "Free thorough partisan is a thorough despiser of Thoughts on the State of Affairs," which he sincerity; and no man seems to have got over wrote just before the Queen's death, and that weakness more completely than the rev- which Bolingbroke himself thought too strong erend person before us. In every page of for publication, even at that critical period. the Journal to Stella, we find a triumphant His leading injunction there, is to adopt a sysstatement of things he was writing or saying tem of the most rigorous exclusion of all to the people about him, in direct contradic- Whigs from every kind of employment; and tion to his real sentiments. We may quote a that, as they cannot be too much or too soon line or two from the first passage that pre- disabled, they ought to be proceeded against sents itself. "I desired my Lord Radnor's with as strong measures as can possibly conbrother to let my lord know I would call on sist with the lenity of our government; so him at six, which I did; and was arguing that in no time to come it should be in the with him three hours to bring him over to us; power of the Crown, even if it wished it, to and I spoke so closely, that I believe he will choose an ill majority in the House of Combe tractable. But he is a scoundrel; and mons. This great work, he adds very explicthough I said I only talked from my love to him, itly, could only be well carried on by an I told a lie; for I did not care if he were hang- entire new-modelling of the army: and espeed: but every one gained over is of conse- cially of the Royal Guards,—which, as they quence."-Vol. iii. p. 2. We think there are then stood, he chooses to allege were fitter to not many even of those who have served a guard a prince to the bar of a high court of regular apprenticeship to corruption and job- justice, than to secure him on the throne. bing, who could go through their base task (Vol. v. p. 404.) This, even Mr. Scott is so with more coolness and hardihood than this little able to reconcile with the alleged Whig pious neophyte. principles of his author, that he is forced to observe upon it, that it is "daring, uncom promising counsel; better suited to the genius of the man who gave it, than to that of the British nation, and most likely, if followed, to have led to a civil war." After this admission, it really is not very easy to understand by what singular stretch of charity the learn ed editor conceives he may consistently hold, that Swift was always a good Revolution Whig as to politics, and only sided with the Tories-reluctantly, we must suppose, and with great tenderness to his political opponents-out of his overpowering zeal for the Church.

These few references are, of themselves, sufficient to show the spirit and the true motives of this dereliction of his first principles; and seem entirely to exclude the only apology which the partiality of his biographer has been able to suggest, viz. that though, from first to last, a Whig in politics, he was all along still more zealously a High-Churchman as to religion; and left the Whigs merely because the Tories seemed more favourable to ecclesiastical pretensions. It is obvious, however, that this is quite inadmissible. The Whigs were as notoriously connected with the Low-Church party when he joined and defended them, as when he deserted and reviled them ;-nor is this anywhere made the specific ground of his revilings. It would not have been very easy, indeed, to have asserted such a principle as the motive of his libels on the Earl of Nottingham, who, though a Whig, was a zealous High-Churchman, or his eulogies on Bolingbroke, who was pretty well known to be no churchman at all. It is plain, indeed, that Swift's High-Church principles were all along but a part of his selfishness and ambition; and meant nothing else than a desire to raise the consequence of the order to which he happened to belong. If he had been a layman, we have no doubt he would have treated the pretensions of the priesthood, as he treated the persons of all priests who were opposed to him, with the most bitter and irreverent disdain. Accordingly, he is so far from ever recommending Whig principles of government to his High-Church friends, or from confining his abuse of the Whigs to their tenets in matters ecclesiastical, that he goes the whole length of proscribing the party, and proposing, with the desperation of a true apostate, that the Monarch should be made

While he thus stooped to the dirtiest and most dishonourable part of a partisan's drudge ry, it was not to be expected that he should decline any of the mean arts by which a Court party may be maintained. Accordingly, we find him regular in his attendance upon Mrs. Masham, the Queen's favourite; and, after reading the contemptuous notices that occur of her in some of his Whig letters, as "one of the Queen's dressers, who, by great intrigue and flattery, had gained an ascendant over her," it is very edifying to find him writing periodical accounts of the progress of her pregnancy, and "praying God to preserve her life, which is of great importance to this nation," &c. &c.

A connection thus begun upon an avowed dissatisfaction with the reward of former services, cannot, with consistency, be supposed to have had any thing but self-interest as its foundation: and though Swift's love of power, and especially of the power of wound. ing, was probably gratified by his exertions in behalf of the triumphant party, no room is left for doubting that these exertions were substantially prompted by a desire to better

here; and then I will drive them to give me a sum of money." And a little after-"I shall be sadly cramped, unless the Queen will give me a thousand pounds. I am sure she owes me a great deal more. Lord Treasurer rallies me upon it, and, I am sure, intends it-but quando?" And again-"Lord Treasurer uses me barbarously. He laughs when I mention a thousand pounds-though a thousand pounds is a very serious thing." It appears, however, that this modest request never was complied with; for, though Bolingbroke got the Queen's warrant for it, to secure Swift's attachment after he had turned out Harley, yet her majesty's immediate death rendered the gift unavailing.

nis own fortune, and that his opinion of the merits of the party depended entirely upon their power and apparent inclination to perform this first of all duties. The thing is spoken out continually in the confidential Journal to Stella; and though he was very angry with Harley for offering him a bank note for fifty pounds, and refused to be his chaplain, this was very plainly because he considered these as no sufficient pay for his services by no means because he wished to serve without pay. Very soon after his profession of Toryism, he writes to Stella-"This is the last sally I shall ever make; but I hope it will turn to some account. I have done more for these, and I think they are more honest than the last." And a little after-"My new If any thing were wanting to show that his friends are very kind; and I have promises change of party and his attachment to that enough. To return without some mark of which was now uppermost, was wholly foundistinction, would look extremely little; and ded on personal, and in no degree on public I would likewise gladly be somewhat richer than considerations, it would be supplied by the I am." At last, he seems to have fairly asked innumerable traits of personal vanity, and the for the see of Hereford (Vol. xvi. p. 45.); and unrestrained expressions of eulogy or abuse, when this is refused, he says, "I dined with according as that vanity was gratified or Lord Treasurer, who chid me for being absent thwarted, that are scattered over the whole three days. Mighty kind with a p-! Less journal and correspondence,--and which are of civility, and more of interest!" At last, utterly irreconcileable with the conduct of a when the state of the Queen's health made man who was acting on any principle of dig the duration of the ministry extremely pre- nity or fairness. With all his talent and all carious, and the support of their friends more his pride, indeed, it appears that Swift exessential, he speaks out like a true Swiss, and hibited, during this period of favour, as much tells them that he will run away and leave of the ridiculous airs of a parvenu-of a lowthem, if they do not instantly make a provi- bred underling brought suddenly into contact sion for him. In the Journal to Stella, he with wealth and splendour, as any of the base writes, that having seen the warrants for three understrappers that ever made party disgustdeaneries, and none of them for him, he had ing. The studied rudeness and ostentatious gone to the Lord Treasurer, and "told him I arrogance with which he withheld the usual had nothing to do but to go back to Ireland tribute of respect that all well-bred persons immediately; for I could not, with any reputa- pay to rank and office, may be reckoned tion, stay longer here, unless I had something among the signs of this. But for a fuller pichonourable immediately given to me. He after-ture, we would refer to the Diary of Bishop wards told me he had stopped the warrants, and hoped something might be compassed for me," &c. And in the page following we find, that all his love for his dear friend the Lord "Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house, and had a bow from every body but me. When I came to Treasurer, would not induce him ever to see the antichamber to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift him again, if he was disappointed in this ob- was the principal man of talk and business, and ject of ambition. "The warrants for the acted as a master of requests. He was soliciting deaneries are still stopped, for fear I should the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother the Duke be gone. Do you think any thing will be of Ormond, to get a chaplain's place established in done? In the mean time, I prepare for my that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and the garrison of Hull for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in journey, and see no great people;-nor will I published sermons to pay fees. He was promising see Lord Treasurer any more, if I go." (Vol. iii. Mr. Thorold to undertake with my Lord Treasurer, p. 207.) It is under this threat that he extorts that, according to his petition, he should obtain a the Deanery of St. Patrick's,-which he ac- salary of 2001. per annum as minister of the English cepts with much grumbling and discontent, Esq., going in with the red bag to the Queen, and church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, and does not enter into possession till all hope told him aloud he had something to say to him from of better preferment seems for the time at an my Lord Treasurer. He talked with the son of end. In this extremity he seems resolved, Dr. Davenant to be sent abroad, and took out his however, to make the most of it; and finding pocket-book, and wrote down several things, as that the expenses of his induction and the memoranda, to do for him. He turned to the fire, and took out his gold watch, and telling the time of usual payments to government on the occasion come to a considerable sum, he boldly said he was too fast.'the day, complained it was very late. A gentleman -How can I help it,' says resolves to ask a thousand pounds from the the doctor, if the courtiers give me a watch that ministers, on the score of his past services, in won't go right?' Then he instructed a young noorder to make himself easy. This he an-bleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. nounces to Stella soon after the appointment. "I hope in time they will be persuaded to give me some money to clear off these debts. They expect I shall pass the next winter

Kennet, who thus describes the demeanour of this politic partisan in the year 1713.

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Pope (a papist), who had begun a translation of them all subscribe; for,' says he, the authot Homer into English verse, for which he must have shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.' Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen,

came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him: both went off just before prayers.' Life, vol. i. p. 139, 140.

We are very unwilling, in any case, to ascribe to unworthy motives, what may be sufficiently accounted for upon better considerations; but we really have not charity enough to impute Swift's zealous efforts to prevent the rupture between Harley and Bolingbroke, or his continued friendship with both after that rupture took place, to his personal and disinterested affection for those two individuals. In the first place, he had a most manifest interest to prevent their disunion, as that which plainly tended to the entire dissolution of the ministry, and the ruin of the party on which he depended; and, as to his remaining the friend of both after they had become the most rancorous enemies of each other, it must be remembered that they were still respectively the two most eminent individuals with whom he had been connected; and that, if ever that party should be restored to power, from which alone he could now look for preferment, he who stood well with both these statesmen would have a double chance of success. Considering, indeed, the facility with which he seems to have cast off friendships far more intimate than the inequality of their condition renders it possible that those of Oxford or Bolingbroke could be with him, whenever party interest interfered with them;-considering the disrespect with which he spoke of Sir William Temple's memory, after he had abjured his principles;-the coarseness with which he calls Lord Somers "a false deceitful rascal," after having designated him as the modern Aristides, for his blameless integrity; -and the unfeeling rancour with which he exposes the personal failings and pecuniary embarrassments of Steele, with whom he had been long so closely united;-it would seem to require something more than the mere personal attachment of a needy pamphleteer to two rival peers, to account for his expressions of affection for both, after one had supplanted the other. The natural solution, indeed, seems to lie sufficiently open. After the perfidy he had shown to the Whig party, and the virulence with which he had revenged his own apostasy, there was no possibility of his being again received by them. His only chance, therefore, was in the restoration of the Tories, and his only policy to keep well with both their great leaders.

decessor in vain. The following, too, are the terms in which Bolingbroke, at that very time, thought there was no impropriety, and could be no offence, in writing of Oxford, in a private confidential letter to this his dear devoted friend. "Your state of late passages is right enough. I reflect upon them with indignation; and shall never forgive myself for having trusted so long to so much real pride and awkward humility;-to an air of such familiar friendship, and a heart so void of all tenderness;-to such a temper of engrossing business and power, and so perfect an incapacity to manage one, with such a tyrannical disposition to abuse the other," &c. &c. (Vol. xvi. p. 219.) If Swift's feelings for Oxford had borne any resemblance to those which Mr. Scott has imputed to him, it is not conceivable that he should have continued upon a footing of the greatest cordiality with the man who, after supplanting him, could speak in those terms of his fallen rival. Yet Swift's friendship, as they called it, with Bolingbroke, continued as long as that with Oxford; and we find him not only giving him his advice how to act in the government which had now fallen entirely into his hands, but kindly offering, "if his own services may be of any use, to attend him by the beginning of winter." (Id. p. 215.) Those who know of what stuff political friendships are generally made, indeed, will not require even this evidence to prove the hollowness of those in which Swift was now connected. The following passage, in a letter from Lewis, the most intimate and confidential of all his coadjutors, dated only a week or two before Oxford's disgrace, gives a delicious picture, we think, of the whole of those persons for whom the learned Dean was thus professing the most disinterested attachment, and receiving, no doubt, in return, professions not less animated and sincere. It is addressed to Swift in July, 1714.

"I meet with no man or woman, who pretend the great point. Our female friend (Mrs. Masham) upon any probable grounds to judge who will carry told the dragon (Lord Oxford) in her own house, last Thursday morning, these words: You never did the Queen any service, nor are you capable of doing her any. He made no reply, but supped with her and Mercurialis (Bolingbroke) that night at her own house. His revenge is not the less meditated for that. He tells the words clearly and distinctly to all mankind. Those who range under his banner, call her ten thousand bitches and kitchenwenches. Those who hate him do the same.

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Mr. Scott, indeed, chooses to represent him from my heart, I grieve that she should give such as actuated by a romantic attachment to Lord loose to her passion; for she is susceptible of true friendship, and has many social and domestic virOxford, and pronounces an eloquent encomium tues. The great attorney (Lord Chancellor Haron his devoted generosity in applying for court) who made you the sham offer of the Yorkleave of absence, upon that nobleman's dis-shire living, had a long conference with the dragon grace, in order to be able to visit him in his on Thursday, kissed him at parting, and cursed him retirement. Though he talks of such a visit, at night!"-vol. xvi. p. 173, 174. however, it is certain that he never did pay it; and that he was all the time engaged in the most friendly correspondence with Bolingbroke, from whom the very day after he had kicked out his dear friend with the most undisguised anger and contempt, he condescended to receive an order for the thousand pounds he had so long solicited from his pre

The death of Queen Anne, however, which happened on the 1st of August thereafter, speedily composed all those dissensions, and confounded the victors and the vanquished in one common proscription. Among the most miserable and downcast of all the mourners on that occasion, we confess we were somewhat surprised to find our reverend author.

good office for the other, in the most insulting and malignant manner he could devise: and yet the worthy Dean had charity enough to love them both just as dearly as ever. He was always a zealous advocate, too, for the Act of Settlement; and has in twenty places expressed his abomination of all who could allow themselves to think of the guilt of calling in the Pretender. If, therefore, he could love and honour and flatter Bolingbroke, who not only turned out his beloved Oxford, but actually went over to the Pretender, it is not easy to see why he should have been so implacable towards those older friends of his, who only turned out Bolingbroke in order to prevent the Pretender from being brought in. On public grounds, in short, there is nothing

feelings ever receive any explanation upon such principles. But every thing becomes plain and consistent when we look to another quarter-when we consider, that by the extinction of the Tory party, his hopes of preferment were also extinguished; and that he was no longer to enjoy the dearer delight of bustling in the front of a triumphant partyof inhaling the incense of adulation from its servile dependants-and of insulting with impunity the principles and the benefactors he had himself deserted.

He who, but a few months before, was willing to have hazarded all the horrors of a civil war, for the chance of keeping his party in office, sunk instantly into pitiable and unmanly despondency upon the final disgrace of that party. We are unwilling to believe, and we do not in fact believe, that Swift was privy to the designs of Bolingbroke, Ormond, and Mar, to bring in the Pretender on the Queen's demise, and are even disposed to hold it doubtful whether Oxford concurred in those measures; but we are sure that no man of common firmness could have felt more sorrow and despair, if the country had been conquered by a lawless invader, than this friend of the Act of Settlement did upon the quiet and regular transmission of the sceptre to the appointed heir; and the discomfiture of those ministers to be said for him;-nor can his conduct or who are proved to have traitorously conspired to accomplish a counter revolution, and restore a dynasty which he always affected to consider as justly rejected. How all this sorrow is to be reconciled to the character of a good Revolution Whig, we leave it to the learned editor, who has invested him with that character, to discover. To us it merely atfords new evidence of the selfishness and ambition of the individual, and of that utter and almost avowed disregard of the public, which constituted his political character. Of the sorrow and despondency itself, we need That this was the true key to his feelings, produce no proofs, for they are to be found on this and on every other occasion, may be in every page of his subsequent writings. concluded indeed with safety, not only from His whole life, indeed, after this event, was his former, but from his after life. His Irish ore long fit of spleen and lamentation: and, politics may all be referred to one principleto the very end of his days, he never ceases a desire to insult and embarrass the governbewailing the irreparable and grievous calam- ment by which he was neglected, and with ity which the world had suffered in the death which he despaired of being reconciled :—A of that most imbecile princess. He speaks single fact is decisive upon this point. While of it, in short, throughout, as a pious divine his friends were in power, we hear nothing might be supposed to speak of the fall of of the grievances of Ireland; and to the last primeval man from the state of innocence. we hear nothing of its radical grievance, the The sun seems darkened for ever in his eyes, oppression of its Catholic population. His and mankind degenerated beyond the tolera- object was, not to do good to Ireland, but to tion of one who was cursed with the remem- vex and annoy the English ministry. To do brance of their former dignity! And all this this however with effect, it was necessary for what?-because the government was, with that he should speak to the interests and the the full assent of the nation, restored to the feelings of some party who possessed a cerhands of those whose talents and integrity he tain degree of power and influence. This had once been proud to celebrate or rather, unfortunately was not the case in that day because it was taken from those who would with the Catholics; and though this gave them have attempted, at the evident risk of a civil only a stronger title to the services of a truly war, to defeat that solemn settlement of which brave or generous advocate, it was sufficient he had always approved, and in virtue of to silence Swift. They are not so much as which alone the late Sovereign had succeed- named above two or three times in his writed;-because the liberties of the nation were ings-and then only with scorn and reprobaagain to be secured in peace, under the same tion. In the topics which he does take up, it councils which had carried its glories so high is no doubt true, that he frequently inveighs in war-and the true friends of the Revolution against real oppression and acts of indisputof 1688 to succeed to that patronage which able impolicy; yet it is no want of charity to had previously been exercised by its virtual say, that it is quite manifest that these were enemies! Such were the public calamities not his reasons for bringing them forward, and which he had to lament as a patriot;-and that he had just as little scruple to make an the violence done to his political attachments outcry, where no public interest was concernseems to have been of the same character. ed, as where it was apparent. It was suffiHis two friends were Bolingbroke and Oxford and both these had been abusing each other, and endeavouring to supplant each other, with all their might, for a long period of time; and, at last, one of them did this

cient for him, that the subject was likely to excite popular prejudice and clamour,-or that he had some personal pique or animosity to gratify. The Drapier's letters are a suffi cient proof of the influence of the former

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