idea that they could possibly appear either impressive or entertaining, if presented without these accompaniments. A considerable part of the pleasure we derive from the voyages of Gulliver, in short, is of the same description with that which we receive from those of Sinbad the sailor; and is chiefly neightened, we believe, by the greater brevity and minuteness of the story, and the superior art that is employed to give it an appearance of truth and probability, in the very midst of its wonders. Among those arts, as Mr. Scott has judiciously observed, one of the most important is the exact adaptation of the narrative to the condition of its supposed author.

multitude of his vulgar and farcical represen tations of particular errors in philosophy, he nowhere appears to have any sense of its true value or principles; but satisfies himself with collecting or imagining a number of fantastical quackeries, which tend to illus trate nothing but his contempt for human understanding. Even where his subject seems to invite him to something of a higher flight, he uniformly shrinks back from it, and takes shelter in common-place derision. What, for instance, can be poorer than the use he makes of the evocation of the illustrious dead-in which Hannibal is conjured up, just to say that he had not a drop of vinegar in his camp; and Aristotle, to ask two of his commentators,

dunces as themselves?" The voyage to the Houyhnhmns is commonly supposed to displease by its vile and degrading representations of human nature; but, if we do not strangely mistake our own feelings on the subject, the impression it produces is not so much that of disgust as of dulness. The picture is not only extravagant, but bald and tame in the highest degree; while the story is not enlivened by any of those numerous and uncommon incidents which are detailed in the two first parts, with such an inimitable air of probability as almost to persuade us of their reality. For the rest, we have observed already, that the scope of the whole work, and indeed of all his writings, is to degrade and vilify human nature; and though some of the images which occur in this part may be rather coarser than the others, we do not think the difference so considerable as to account for its admitted inferiority in the power of pleasing.

"The character of the imaginary traveller is ex-"whether the rest of the tribe were as great actly that of Dampier, or any other sturdy nautical wanderer of the period, endowed with courage and common sense, who sailed through distant seas, without losing a single English prejudice which he had brought from Portsmouth or Plymouth, and on his return gave a grave and simple narrative of what he had seen or heard in foreign countries. The character is perhaps strictly English, and can be hardly relished by a foreigner. The reflections and observations of Gulliver are never more refined or deeper than might be expected from a plain master of a merchantman, or surgeon in the Old Jewry; and there was such a reality given to his whole person, that one seaman is said to have sworn he knew Captain Gulliver very well, but he lived at Wapping, not at Rotherhithe. It is the contrast between the natural ease and simplicity of such a style, and the marvels which the volume contains, that forms one great charm of this memorable satire on the imperfections, follies, and vices of mankind. The exact calculations preserved in the first and second part, have also the effect of qualifying the extravagance of the fable. It is said that in natural objects where proportion is exactly preserved, the marvellous, whether the object be gigantic or diminutive, is lessened in the eyes of the spectator; and it is certain, in general, that proportion forms an essential attribute of truth, and consequently of verisimilitude, or that which renders a narration probable. If the reader is disposed to grant the traveller his postulates as to the existence of the strange people whom he visits, it would be difficuli to detect any inconsistency in his narrative. On the contrary, it would seem that he and they con duct themselves towards each other, precisely as must necessarily have happened in the respective circumstances which the author has supposed. In this point of view, perhaps the highest praise that could have been bestowed on Gulliver's Travels was the censure of a learned Irish prelate, who said the book contained some things which he could not prevail upon himself to believe."-Vol. i. pp.

340, 341.

That the interest does not arise from the satire but from the plausible description of physical wonders, seems to be farther proved by the fact, that the parts which please the least are those in which there is most satire and least of those wonders. In the voyage to Laputa, after the first description of the flying island, the attention is almost exclusively directed to intellectual absurdities; and every one is aware of the dulness that is the result. Even as a satire, indeed, this part is extremely poor and defective; nor can any thing show more clearly the author's incapacity for large and comprehensive views than his signal failure in all those parts which invite him to such contemplations. In the

His only other considerable works in prose, are the "Polite Conversation," which we think admirable in its sort, and excessively entertaining; and the "Directions to Servants," which, though of a lower pitch, contains as much perhaps of his peculiar, vigorous and racy humour, as any one of his productions. The Journal to Stella, which was certainly never intended for publication, is not to be judged of as a literary work at all

but to us it is the most interesting of all his productions-exhibiting not only a minute and masterly view of a very extraordinary political crisis, but a truer, and, upon the whole, a more favourable picture of his own mind, than can be gathered from all the rest of his writings-together with innumerable anecdotes characteristic not only of various eminent individuals, but of the private manners and public taste and morality of the times, more nakedly and surely authentic than any thing that can be derived from contemporary publications.

Of his Poetry, we do not think there is much to be said; for we cannot persuade ourselves that Swift was in any respect a poet. It would be proof enough, we think, just to observe, that, though a popular and most miscellaneous writer, he does not mention the name of Shakespeare above two or three times in any part of his works, and bas

nowhere said a word in his praise. His partial editor admits that he has produced nothing which can be called either sublime or pathetic; and we are of the same opinion as to the beautiful. The merit of correct rhymes and easy diction, we shall not deny him; but the diction is almost invariably that of the most ordinary prose, and the matter of his pieces no otherwise poetical, than that the Muses and some other persons of the Heathen mythology are occasionally mentioned. He has written lampoons and epigrams, and satirical ballads and abusive songs in great abundance, and with infinite success. But these things are not poetry;-and are better in verse than in prose, for no other reason than that the sting is more easily remembered, and the ridicule occasionally enhanced, by the hint of a ludicrous parody, or the drollery of an extraordinary rhyme. His witty verses, when they are not made up of mere filth and venom, seem mostly framed on the model of Hudibras; and are chiefly remarkable, like those of his original, for the easy and apt application of homely and familiar phrases, to illustrate ingenious sophistry or unexpected allusions. One or two of his imitations of Horace, are executed with spirit and elegance, and are the best, we think, of his familiar pieces; unless we except the verses on his own death, in which, however, the great charm arises, as we have just stated, from the singular ease and exactness with which he has imitated the style of ordinary society, and the neatness with which he has brought together and reduced to metre such a number of natural, characteristic, and common-place expressions. The Cadenus and Vanessa is, of itself, complete proof that he had in him none of the elements of poetry. It was written when his faculties were in their perfection, and his heart animated with all the tenderness of which it was ever capable-and yet it is as cold and as flat as the ice of Thulé. Though describing a real passion, and a real perplexity, there is not a spark of fire nor a throb of emotion in it from one end to the

Which keeps the peace among the gods,
Or they must always be at odds:
And Pallas, if she broke the laws,
Must yield her foe the stronger cause;
A shame to one so much ador'd
For wisdom at Jove's council board;
Besides, she fear'd the Queen of Love
Would meet with better friends above.
And though she must with grief reflect,
To see a mortal virgin deck'd
With graces hitherto unknown
To female breasts except her own:
Yet she would act as best became
A goddess of unspotted fame.
She knew by augury divine,
Venus would fail in her design:
She studied well the point, and found
Her foe's conclusions were not sound,
From premises erroneous brought;
And therefore the deduction's naught,
And must have contrary effects,
To what her treacherous foe expects."
Vol. xiv. pp, 448, 449.

The Rhapsody of Poetry, and the Legion Club, are the only two pieces in which there is the least glow of poetical animation; though, in the latter, it takes the shape of ferocious and almost frantic invective, and, in the former, shines out but by fits in the midst of the usual small wares of cant phrases and snappish misanthropy. In the Rhapsody, the following lines, for instance, near the beginning are vigorous and energetic.

"Not empire to the rising sun

By valour, conduct, fortune won;
Not highest wisdom in debates
For framing laws to govern states;
Not skill in sciences profound
So large to grasp the circle round:
Such heavenly influence require,
As how to strike the Muse's lyre.

Not beggar's brat on bulk begot;
Not bastard of a pedlar Scot;

Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes,
The spawn of bridewell or the stews;
Nor infants dropped, the spurious pledges
Of gypsies littering under hedges;
Are so disqualified by fate

To rise in church, or law, or state,
As he whom Phoebus in his ire
Has blasted with poetic fire."

Vol. xiv. pp. 310, 311.

Yet, immediately after this nervous and poetical line, he drops at once into the lowness of vulgar flippancy.

"What hope of custom in the fair,

other. All the return he makes to the warmhearted creature who had put her destiny into his hands, consists in a frigid mythological fiction, in which he sets forth. that Venus and the Graces lavished their gifts on her in her While not a soul demands your ware?" &c. infancy, and moreover got Minerva, by a trick, There are undoubtedly many strong lines, to inspire her with wit and wisdom. The style and much cutting satire in this poem; but is mere prose or rather a string of familiar the staple is a mimicry of Hudibras, without and vulgar phrases tacked together in rhyme, the richness or compression of Butler; as, for like the general tissue of his poetry. How-example, ever, it has been called not only easy but elegant, by some indulgent critics-and therefore, as we take it for granted nobody reads it now-a-days, we shall extract a few lines at random, to abide the censure of the judicious. To us they seem to be about as much poetry as so many lines out of Coke upon Littleton.

"But in the poets we may find

A wholesome law, time out of mind,
Had been confirm'd by Fate's decree,
That gods, of whatsoe'er degree,
Resume not what themselves have given,
Or any brother god in Heaven:

"And here a simile comes pat in:

Though chickens take a month to fatten,
The guests in less than half an hour,
Will more than half a score devour.
So, after toiling twenty days
To earn a stock of pence and praise,
Thy labours, grown the critic's prey,
Are swallow'd o'er a dish of tea:
Gone to be never heard of more,
Gone where the chickens went before.
How shall a new attempter learn
Of different spirits to discern.
And how distinguish which is which,
The poet's vein, or scribbling itch?"
Vol. xiv. pp. 311, 312.

Such were the libels which a Tory writer | distinguish between a promise and a bargain; for found it safe to publish under a Whig admin- he will be sure to keep the latter, when he has the istration in 1736; and we do not find that any fairest offer."-Vol. iv. pp. 149-152. national disturbance arose from their impunity, though the libeller was the most celebrated and by far the most popular writer of the age. Nor was it merely the exasperation ot bad fortune that put that polite party upon the use of this discourteous style of discussion. In all situations, the Tories have been the great libellers and, as is fitting, the great prosecutors of libels; and even in this early age of their glory, had themselves, when in power, encouraged the same licence of defamation, and in the same hands. It will scarcely be believed, that the following character of the Earl of Wharton, then actually Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was publicly printed and sold, with his Lordship's name and addition at full length, in 1710, and was one of the first productions by which the reverend penman bucklered the cause of the Tory ministry, and revenged himself on a parsimonious patron. We cannot afford to give it at full length-but this specimen will

answer our purpose.

"Thomas, Earl of Wharton, Lord Lieutenant

We have not left ourselves room now to say much of Swift's style, or of the general character of his literary genius:-But our opinion may be collected from the remarks we have made on particular passages, and from our introductory observations on the school or class of authors, with whom he must undoubtedly be rated. On the subjects to which he confines himself, he is unquestionably a strong, masculine, and perspicuous writer." He is never finical, fantastic, or absurd-takes advantage of no equivocations in argument—and puts on no tawdriness for ornament. Dealing always with particulars, he is safe from all great and systematic mistakes; and, in fact, reasons mostly in a series of small and minute propositions, in the handling of which, dexterity is more requisite than genius; and practical good sense, with an exact knowledge of transactions, of far more importance than profound and high-reaching judgment. He did not write history or philosophy, but party pamphlets and journals;not satire, but particular lampoons ;—not of Ireland, by the force of a wonderful constitution, pleasantries for all mankind, but jokes for a has some years passed his grand climateric, without particular circle. Even in his pamphlets, the any visible effects of old age, either on his body or broader questions of party are always waved, his mind; and in spite of a continual prostitution to to make way for discussions of personal or imthose vices which usually wear out both. His be- mediate interest. His object is not to show haviour is in all the forms of a young man at five- that the Tories have better principles of gov and-twenty. Whether he walks, or whistles, or talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in ernment than the Whigs, but to prove Lord each, beyond a templar of three years' standing.- Oxford an angel, and Lord Somers a fiend, to He seems to be but an ill dissembler, and an ill liar, convict the Duke of Marlborough of avarice although they are the two talents he most practises, or Sir Richard Steele of insolvency;-not to and most values himself upon. The ends he has point out the wrongs of Ireland, in the depres gained by lying, appear to be more owing to the fre- sion of her Catholic population, her want of quency, than the art of them: his lies being sometimes detected in an hour, often in a day, and al- education, or the discouragement of her inways in a week. He tells them freely in mixed dustry; but to raise an outcry against an companies, although he knows half of those that amendment of the copper or the gold coin, or hear him to be his enemies, and is sure they will against a parliamentary proposition for remitdiscover them the moment they leave him. He ting the tithe of agistment. For those ends, swears solemnly he loves and will serve you; and it cannot be denied, that he chose his means your back is no sooner turned, but he tells those about him, you are a dog and a rascal. He goes judiciously, and used them with incomparable constantly to prayers in the forms of his place, and skill and spirit. But to choose such ends, will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel-door. we humbly conceive, was not the part either He is a presbyterian in politics, and an atheist in of a high intellect or a high character; and religion; but he chooses at present to whore with a his genius must share in the disparagepapist. He has sunk his fortune by endeavouring to ruin one kingdom, and has raised it by going farment which ought perhaps to be confined to the impetuosity and vindictiveness of his temper.

in the ruin of another.

He bears the gallantries of his lady with the indifference of a stoic; and thinks them well recompensed, by a return of children to support his family, without the fatigues of being a father.

"He has three predominant passions, which you will seldom find united in the same man, as arising from different dispositions of mind, and naturally thwarting each other: these are, love of power, love of money, and love of pleasure; they ride him sometimes by turns, sometimes all together. Since he went into Ireland, he seems most disposed to the second, and has met with great success; having gained by his goverment, of under two years, five-and-forty thousand pounds by the most favourable computation, half in the regular way, and half in the prudential.

"He was never yet known to refuse, or keep a promise, as I remember he told a lady, but with an exception to the promise he then made (which was to get her a pension); yet he broke even that, and, I confess, deceived us both. But here I desire to

Of his style, it has been usual to speak with great, and, we think, exaggerated praise. It is less mellow than Dryden's-less elegant than Pope's or Addison's-less free and noble than Lord Bolingbroke's-and utterly without the glow and loftiness which belonged to our earlier masters. It is radically a low and homely style-without grace and without af fectation; and chiefly remarkable for a great choice and profusion of common words and expressions. Other writers, who have used a plain and direct style, have been for the most part jejune and limited in their diction, and generally give us an impression of the poverty as well as the tameness of their language; but Swift, without ever trespassing into figured or poetical expressions, or ever employing a

word that can be called fine, or pedantic, has that except 300l. which he got for Gulliver, he a prodigious variety of good set phrases al- never made a farthing by any of his writings. ways at his command, and displays a sort of Pope understood his trade better, and not homely richness, like the plenty of an old only made knowing bargains for his own English dinner, or the wardrobe of a wealthy works, but occasionally borrowed his friends' burgess. This taste for the plain and sub-pieces, and pocketed the price of the whole. stantial was fatal to his poetry, which subsists This was notoriously the case with three not on such elements; but was in the highest volumes of Miscellanies, of which the greater degree favourable to the effect of his humour, part were from the pen of Swift. very much of which depends on the imposing In humour and in irony, and in the talent of gravity with which it is delivered, and on the debasing and defiling what he hated, we join various turns and heightenings it may receive with all the world in thinking the Dean of St. from a rapidly shifting and always appropriate Patrick's without a rival. His humour, though expression. Almost all his works, after The sufficiently marked and peculiar, is not to be Tale of a Tub, seem to have been written easily defined. The nearest description we very fast, and with very little minute care of can give of it, would make it consist in exthe diction. For his own ease, therefore, it pressing sentiments the most absurd and is probable they were all pitched on a low ridiculous-the most shocking and atrocious key, and set about on the ordinary tone of a -or sometimes the most energetic and origifamiliar letter or conversation; as that from nal-in a sort of composed, calm, and unconwhich there was a little hazard of falling, scious way, as if they were plain, undeniable, even in moments of negligence, and from commonplace truths, which no person could which any rise that could be effected, must dispute, or expect to gain credit by announcing always be easy and conspicuous. A man-and in maintaining them, always in the fully possessed of his subject, indeed, and confident of his cause, may almost always write with vigour and effect, if he can get over the temptation of writing finely, and really confine himself to the strong and clear exposition of the matter he has to bring forward. Half of the affectation and offensive pretension we meet with in authors, arises from a want of matter, and the other half, from a paltry ambition of being eloquent and ingenious out of place. Swift had complete confidence in himself; and had too much real business on his hands, to be at leisure to intrigue for the fame of a fine writer;-in consequence of which, his writings are more admired by the judicious than if he had bestowed all his attention on their style. He was so much a man of business, indeed, and so much accustomed to consider his writings merely as means for the attainment of a practical end-dependent of the moral or satire, of which whether that end was the strengthening of a party, or the wounding a foe-that he not only disdained the reputation of a composer of pretty sentences, but seems to have been thoroughly different to all sorts of literary fame. He enjoyed the notoriety and influence which he had procured by his writings; but it was the glory of having carried his point, and not of having written well, that he valued. As soon as his publications had served their turn, they seem to have been entirely forgotten by their author;-and, desirous as he was of being richer, he appears to have thought as little of making money as immortality by neans of them. He mentions somewhere,

gravest and most familiar language, with a consistency which somewhat palliates their extravagance, and a kind of perverted ingenuity, which seems to give pledge for their sincerity. The secret, in short, seems to consist in employing the language of humble good sense, and simple undoubting conviction, to express, in their honest nakedness, sentiments which it is usually thought necessary to disguise under a thousand pretences-or truths which are usually introduced with a thousand apologies. The basis of the art is the personating a character of great simplicity and openness, for whom the conventional or artificial distinctions of society are supposed to have no existence; and making use of this character as an instrument to strip vice and folly of their disguises, and expose guilt in all its deformity, and truth in all its terrors. In

they may thus be the vehicle, a great part of the entertainment to be derived from works of humour, arises from the contrast between the grave, unsuspecting indifference of the character personated, and the ordinary feelings of the world on the subjects which he discusses. This contrast it is easy to heighten, by all sorts of imputed absurdities: in which case, the humour degenerates into mere farce and buffoonery. Swift has yielded a little to this temptation in The Tale of a Tub; but scarcely at all in Gulliver, or any of his later writings in the same style. Of his talent for reviling, we have already said at least enough, in some of the preceding pages.