ponents, and best calculated for the purposes and to this praise they are justly entitled. This was left for them to do, and they did it well. They were invited to it by the circumstances of their situation, and do not seem to have been possessed of any such bold or vigor. ous spirit, as either to neglect or to outgo the invitation. Coming into life immediately after the consummation of a bloodless revolution, they had in view. The nation, too, was now for the first time essentially divided in point of character and principle, and a much greater proportion were capable both of writing in support of their own notions, and of being influenced by what was written. Add to all this, that there were real and serious defects in the style and manner of the former gener-effected much more by the cool sense, than ation; and that the grace, and brevity, and vivacity of that gayer manner which was now introduced from France, were not only good and captivating in themselves, but had then all the charms of novelty and of contrast; and it will not be difficult to understand how it came to supplant that which had been established of old in the country,-and that so suddenly, that the same generation, among whom Milton had been formed to the severe sanctity of wisdom and the noble independence of genius, lavished its loudest applauses on the obscenity and servility of such writers as Rochester and Wycherly. This change, however, like all sudden changes, was too fierce and violent to be long maintained at the same pitch; and when the wits and profligates of King Charles had sufficiently insulted the seriousness and virtue of their predecessors, there would probably have been a revulsion towards the accustomed taste of the nation, had not the party of the innovators been reinforced by champions of more temperance and judgment. The result seemed at one time suspended on the will of Dryden-in whose individual person the genius of the English and of the French school of literature may be said to have maintained a protracted struggle. But the evil principle prevailed! Carried by the original bent of his genius, and his familiarity with our older models, to the cultivation of our native style, to which he might have imparted more steadiness and correctness for in force and in sweetness it was already matchless he was unluckily seduced by the attractions of fashion, and the dazzling of the dear wit and gay rhetoric in which it delighted, to lend his powerful aid to the new corruptions and refinements; and in fact, to prostitute his great gifts to the purposes of party rage or licentious ribaldry. the angry passions of the nation, they seem to have felt that they were born in an age of reason, rather than of feeling or fancy; and that men's minds, though considerably divided and unsettled upon many points were in a much better temper to relish judicious argument and cutting satire, than the glow of enthusiastic passion, or the richness of a luxuriant imagination. To those accordingly they made no pretensions; but, writing with infinite good sense, and great grace and vivacity, and, above all, writing for the first time in a tone that was peculiar to the upper ranks of society, and upon subjects that were almost exclusively interesting to them, they naturally figured, at least while the manner was new, as the most accomplished, fashionable, and perfect writers which the world had ever seen; and made the wild, luxuriant, and humble sweetness of our earlier authors appear rude and untutored in the comparison. Men grew ashamed of admiring, and afraid of imitating writers of so little skill and smartness; and the opinion became general, not only that their faults were intolerable, but that even their beauties were puerile and barbarous, and unworthy the serious regard of a polite and distinguishing age. These, and similar considerations, will go far to account for the celebrity which those authors acquired in their day; but it is not quite so easy to explain how they should have so long retained their ascendant. One cause undoubtedly was, the real excellence of their productions, in the style which they had adopted. It was hopeless to think of surpassing them in that style; and, recommended as it was, by the felicity of their execution, it required some courage to depart from it, and to recur to another, which seemed to have been so lately abandoned for its sake. The age which succeeded, too, was not the The sobriety of the succeeding reigns al-age of courage or adventure. There never layed this fever of profanity; but no genius was, on the whole, a quieter time than the arose sufficiently powerful to break the spell reigns of the two first Georges, and the greatthat still withheld us from the use of our own er part of that which ensued. There were peculiar gifts and faculties. On the contrary, two little provincial rebellions indeed, and a it was the unfortunate ambition of the next fair proportion of foreign war; but there was generation of authors, to improve and perfect nothing to stir the minds of the people at the new style, rather than to return to the old large, to rouse their passions, or excite their one;-and it cannot be denied that they did imaginations-nothing like the agitations of improve it. They corrected its gross indecen- the Reformation in the sixteenth century, or cy-increased its precision and correctness of the civil wars in the seventeenth. They -made its pleasantry and sarcasm more pol- went on, accordingly, minding their old busi ished and elegant-and spread through the ness, and reading their old books, with great whole of its irony, its narration, and its re- patience and stupidity: And certainly there flection, a tone of clear and condensed good never was so remarkable a dearth of original sense, which recommended itself to all who talent-so long an interregnum of native gehad, and all who had not any relish for higher nius-as during about sixty years in the beauties. middle of the last century. The dramatic This is the praise of Queen Anne's wits-art was dead fifty years before-and poetry merely to the imagination, but to the actual experience of almost every individual.—All these, and several other circumstances, have so far improved or excited the character of our nation, as to have created an effectual demand for more profound speculation, and more serious emotion than was dealt in by the writers of the former century, and which, if it has not yet produced a corresponding supply in all branches, has at least had the effect of decrying the commodities that were previously in vogue, as unsuited to the altered condition of the times. seemed verging to a similar extinction. The | which it gave occasion-the genius of Edfew sparks that appeared, too, showed that mund Burke, and some others of his land of the old fire was burnt out, and that the altar genius-the impression of the new literature must hereafter be heaped with fuel of another of Germany, evidently the original of our quality. Gray, with the talents, rather of a lake-school of poetry, and many innovations eritic than a poet-with learning, fastidious- in our drama-the rise or revival of a more ness, and scrupulous delicacy of taste, instead evangelical spirit, in the body of the people of fire, tenderness, or invention-began and -and the vast extension of our political and ended a small school, which we could scarce- commercial relations, which have not only ly have wished to become permanent, admir- familiarized all ranks of people with distant able in many respects as some of its produc- countries, and great undertakings, but have tions are being far too elaborate and artifi-brought knowledge and enterprise home, not cial, either for grace or for fluency, and fitter to excite the admiration of scholars, than the delight of ordinary men. However, he had the merit of not being in any degree French, and of restoring to our poetry the dignity of seriousness, and the tone at least of force and energy. The Whartons, both as critics and as poets, were of considerable service in discrediting the high pretensions of the former race, and in bringing back to public notice the great stores and treasures of poetry which lay hid in the records of our older literature. Akenside attempted a sort of classical and philosophical rapture, which no elegance of language could easily have rendered popular, but which had merits of no vulgar order for those who could study it. Goldsmith wrote with perfect elegance and beauty, in a style of mellow tenderness and elaborate simplicity. He had the harmony of Pope without his quaintness, and his selectness of diction without his coldness and eternal vivacity. And, last of all, came Cowper, with a style of complete originality,—and, for the first time, made it apparent to readers of all descriptions, that Pope and Addison were no longer to be the models of English poetry. In philosophy and prose writing in general, the case was nearly parallel. The name of Hume is by far the most considerable which cecurs in the period to which we have alluded. But, though his thinking was English, his style is entirely French; and being naturally of a cold fancy, there is nothing of that eloquence or richness about him, which characterizes the writings of Taylor, and Hooker, and Bacon-and continues, with less weight of matter, to please in those of Cowley and Clarendon. Warburton had great powers; and wrote with more force and freedom than the wits to whom he succeeded-but his faculties were perverted by a paltry love of paradox, and rendered useless to mankind by an unlucky choice of subjects, and the arrogance and dogmatism of his temper. Adam Smith was nearly the first who made deeper reasonings and more exact knowledge popular among us; and Junius and Johnson the first who again familiarized us with more glowing and sonorous diction-and made us feel the tameness and poorness of the serious style of Addison and Swift. This brings us down almost to the present times-in which the revolution in our literature has been accelerated and confirmed by the concurrence of many causes. The agitations of the French revolution, and the discussions as well as the hopes and terrors to Of those ingenious writers, whose characteristic certainly was not vigour, any more than tenderness or fancy, SWIFT was indisputably the most vigorous-and perhaps the least tender or fanciful. The greater part of his works being occupied with politics and personalities that have long since lost all interest, can now attract but little attention, except as memorials of the manner in which politics and personalities were then conducted. In other parts, however, there is a vein of peculiar humour and strong satire, which will always be agreeable-and a sort of heartiness of abuse and contempt of mankind, which produces a greater sympathy and animation in the reader than the more elaborate sarcasms that have since come into fashion. Altogether his merits appear to be more unique and inimitable than those of any of his contemporaries; and as his works are connected in many parts with historical events which it must always be of importance to understand, we conceive that there are none, of which a new and careful edition is so likely to be acceptable to the public, or so worthy to engage the attention of a person qualified for the undertaking. In this respect, the projectors of the present publication must be considered as eminently fortunate the celebrated person who has here condescended to the functions of an editor, being almost as much distinguished for the skill and learning re quired for that humbler office, as for the creative genius which has given such unexampled popularity to his original compositions and uniting to the minute knowledge and patient research of the Malones and Chalmerses, a vigour of judgment and a vivacity of style to which they had no pretensions. In the exercise of these comparatively humble functions, he has acquitted himself, we think, on the present occasion, with great judgment and ability. The edition, upon the whole, is much better than that of Dryden. It is less loaded with long notes and illustrative quota tions; while it furnishes all the information fax; and, under that ministry, the members that can reasonably be desired, in a simple of which he courted in private and defended and compendious form. It contains upwards in public, he received church preferment to of a hundred letters, and other original pieces of Swift's never before published-and, among the rest, all that has been preserved of his correspondence with the celebrated Vanessa. Explanatory notes and remarks are supplied with great diligence to all the passages over which time may have thrown any obscurity; and the critical observations that are prefixed to the more considerable productions, are, with a reasonable allowance for an editor's partiality to his author, very candid and ingenious. The Life is not every where extremely well written, in a literary point of view; but is drawn up, in substance, with great intelligence, liberality, and good feeling. It is quite fair and moderate in politics; and perhaps rather too indulgent and tender towards individuals of all descriptions-more full, at least, of kindness and veneration for genius and social virtue, than of indignation at baseness and profligacy. Altogether, it is not much like the production of a mere man of letters, or a fastidious speculator in sentiment and morality; but exhibits throughout, and in a very pleasing form, the good sense and large toleration of a man of the world—with much of that generous allowance for the "Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise," which genius too often requires, and should therefore always be most forward to show. It is impossible, however, to avoid noticing, that Mr. Scott is by far too favourable to the personal character of his author; whom we think, it would really be injurious to the cause of morality to allow to pass, either as a very dignified or a very amiable person. The truth is, we think, that he was extremely ambitious, arrogant, and selfish; of a morose, vindictive, and haughty temper; and, though capable of a sort of patronizing generosity towards his dependants, and of some attachment towards those who had long known and flattered him, his general demeanour, both in public and private life, appears to have been far from exemplary. Destitute of temper and magnanimity and, we will add, of principle, in the former; and, in the latter, of tenderness, fidelity, or compassion. The transformation of a young Whig into an old Tory-the gradual falling off of prudent men from unprofitable virtues, is, perhaps, too common an occurrence, to deserve much notice, or justify much reprobation. But Swift's desertion of his first principles was neither gradual nor early-and was accomplished under such circumstances as really require to be exposed a little, and cannot well be passed over in a fair account of his life and character. He was bred a Whig under Sir William Temple-he took the title publicly in various productions; and, during all the reign of King William, was a strenuous, and indeed an intolerant advocate of Revolution principles and Whig pretensions. His first patrons were Somers, Hortland, and Hali the value of near 400l. a year (equal at least to 1200l. at present), with the promise of still farther favours. He was dissatisfied, however, because his livings were not in England; and having been sent over on the affairs of the Irish clergy in 1710, when he found the Whig ministry in a tottering condition, he temporized for a few months, till he saw that their downfal was inevitable; and then, without even the pretext of any public motive, but on the avowed ground of not having been sufficiently rewarded for his former services, he went over in the most violent and decided manner to the prevailing party; for whose gratification he abused his former friends and benefactors, with a degree of virulence and rancour, to which it would not be too much to apply the term of brutality; and, in the end, when the approaching death of the Queen, and their internal dissensions made his services of more importance to his new friends, openly threatened to desert them also, and retire altogether from the scene, unless they made a suitable provision for him; and having, in this way, extorted the deanery of St. Patrick's, which he always complained of as quite inadequate to his merits, he counselled measures that must have involved the country in a civil war, for the mere chance of keeping his party in power; and, finally; on the Queen's death, retired in a state of despicable despondency and bitterness to his living, where he continued, to the end of his life, to libel liberty and mankind with unrelenting and pitiable rancour-to correspond with convicted traitors to the constitution they had sworn to maintain-and to lament as the worst of calamities, the dissolution of a ministry which had no merit but that of having promised him advancement, and of which several of the leading members immediately indemnified themselves by taking office in the court of the Pretender. As this part of his conduct is passed over a great deal too slightly by his biographer; and as nothing can be more pernicious than the notion, that the political sins of eminent persons should be forgotten in the estimate of their merits, we must beg leave to verify the comprehensive sketch we have now given, by a few references to the documents that are to be found in the volumes before us. Of his original Whig professions, no proof will probably be required; the fact being notorious, and admitted by all his biographers. Abundant evidence, however, is furnished by his first successful pamphlet in defence of Lord Somers, and the other Whig lords impeached in 1701;-by his own express declaration in another work (vol. iii. p. 240), that "having been long conversant with the Greek and Latin authors, and therefore a lover of liberty, he was naturally inclined to be what they call a Whig in politics;"-by the copy of verses in which he deliberately designates himself "a Whig, and one who wears a gown ;"—by his exulting statement to Tisdal, whom he reproaches with being a Tory, and says "To | vowing revenge." In a few weeks aftercool your insolence a little, know that the the change being by that time complete-he Queen, and Court, and House of Lords, and takes his part definitively, and makes his aphalf the Commons almost, are Whigs, and the proaches to Harley, in a manner which we number daily increases:"-And, among in- should really imagine no rat of the present numerable other proofs, by the memorable day would have confidence enough to imitate. verses on Whitehall, in which, alluding to the In mentioning his first interview with that execution of King Charles in front of that eminent person, he says, "I had prepared building, he is pleased to say, with more zeal him before by another hand, where he was than good prosody, 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. "That theatre produced an action truly great, 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, a tolerably decisive fact, that this change took place just when the Whig ministry went out of power, and their adversaries came into full possession of all the patronage and interest of the government. The whole matter, 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 Mr. St. John and me acquainted; and spoke so "Oct. 7. He (Harley) told me he must bring many things of personal kindness and esteem, that I am inclined to believe what some friends had told me, that he would do every thing to bring me over, He desired me to dine with him on Tuesday; and, St. James's coffee-house in a Hackney-coach. after four hours being with him, set me down at 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 I know not what to make of it, unless to shew the rascals of the other party, that they used a man unwor thily 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. Nov. 8. Why should the Whigs think I came to England to leave them? But who the devil cares least to any of them all? Rot them, ungrateful what they think? Am 1 under obligations in the 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 military force, in order to make it impossible that their principles should ever again acquire a preponderance in the country. It is impossible, we conceive, to give any other meaning to the advice contained in his "Free Thoughts on the State of Affairs," which he wrote just before the Queen's death, and which Bolingbroke himself thought too strong for publication, even at that critical period. His leading injunction there, is to adopt a system of the most rigorous exclusion of all Whigs from every kind of employment; and that, as they cannot be too much or too soon in the Journal, he "libelled them all round." While he was thus abusing men he could not have ceased to esteem, it is quite natural, and in course, to find him professing the greatest affection for those he hated and despised. A thorough partisan is a thorough despiser of sincerity; and no man seems to have got over that weakness more completely than the reverend person before us. In every page of the Journal to Stella, we find a triumphant statement of things he was writing or saying to the people about him, in direct contradiction to his real sentiments. We may quote a line or two from the first passage that pre-disabled, they ought to be proceeded against sents itself. "I desired my Lord Radnor's brother to let my lord know I would call on him at six, which I did; and was arguing with him three hours to bring him over to us; and I spoke so closely, that I believe he will be tractable. But he is a scoundrel; and though I said I only talked from my love to him, I told a lie; for I did not care if he were hanged: but every one gained over is of consequence."-Vol. iii. p. 2. We think there are not many even of those who have served a regular apprenticeship to corruption and jobbing, who could go through their base task with more coolness and hardihood than this pious neophyte. 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 with as strong measures as can possibly con- While he thus stooped to the dirtiest and most dishonourable part of a partisan's drudgery, 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 wounding, 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 |