Yet with all this truckling and sycophancy, Swift failed to secure for himself the highest patronage in the state. It is certain the queen entertained a strong personal dislike to him; and that this was the secret of his want of preferment. He had prudence enough, however, to conceal his disappointment so far as the queen was personally concerned; but her death utterly annihilated the prospects of his party, and overwhelmed the truckling dean of St Patrick's with despair. It is insinuated by some, that Swift was privy to the designs entertained at this juncture by Bolingbroke, Ormond, and Mar, to bring in the Pretender; but there is no satisfactory evidence of this. The truth is, Swift's energy was now gone with the extinction of his hopes of preferment; he knew that he could expect nothing from his old associates the whigs, and his whole life, after this event, was "one long fit of spleen and lamentation." His exasperation burst forth after several years' silence. "In 1720," says Sir Walter Scott, "the dean again appeared on the stage as a political writer: no longer, indeed, the advocate and apologist of a ministry, but the undaunted and energetic defender of the rights of an oppressed people." Some may think it remarkable that the grievances of Ireland should have so long escaped the notice of her patriot son; that when he was in a situation to lend his countrymen so much effectual assistance, he utterly neglected to avail himself of the golden opportunity; and that when at last his eyes were so suddenly opened on the wrongs of Ireland, the oppression of its Catholic population never seems to have been once reckoned by him amongst her grievances. But the mystery is one of no very difficult solution. His Irish politics, like his other politics, were the result of personal views and feelings; his object in taking up the subject at all was not to do his countrymen good, but to harass and perplex a ministry whom he hated, and from whom he had nothing to expect. The first emanation of his spleen was a pamphlet, entitled 'A Proposal for the universal use of Irish manufactures, utterly rejecting and renouncing every thing wearable that comes from England, After this sage project, he assailed Wood's celebrated scheme for a new copper coinage, in a series of letters, signed M. B., drapier in Dublin. In both these pamphlets Swift exhibits the shallowness of his ideas as an economist, but the most perfect command of those arguments that weigh most with the vulgar,-local assertions, unmeasured personal abuse, and downright dogged misrepresentation and invective. Unquestionably his Irish pamphlets did some good to Ireland, by compelling the ministry of the day to bestow more attention on that unfortunate country than its affairs would otherwise have obtained; but it is worse than ridiculous to hear Swift characterized as "the luminary of Ireland, her true patriot, her first, almost her last;" and the unqualified assertion put forth, that the foundations of whatever prosperity we have since erected in that country, are laid in the disinterested and magnanimous patriotism of Swift! At last the dean's anxiety for the welfare of Ireland brought him over For high-church men, and policy, Hon. J. W. Croker. London, and reconciled him to enduring an interview with the premier, Walpole, whose hostility to Swift had been very significantly in dicated during the reign of the tories. Of this, however, Sir Walter innocently remarks, "the dean retained no vindictive recollection." No one better knew the advantage which may sometimes attend a treacherous memory than our Irish patriot. Repulsed with coldness by the minister, Swift next betook himself, still under cloak of zeal for Ireland, to the heir-apparent, to whom he paid his court in a manner truly worthy of the disinterested patriot and dignified churchman, namely, by pressing himself upon the good graces of the prince's paramour, the notorious Mrs Howard. All his efforts, however, to thrust himself into place and influence were vain. For a moment his hopes were excited by the death of George I. He was among the first to hasten to the levee of the new sovereign; but the star of Walpole again rose in the ascendant, and with this sign the golden dreams of preferment he had begun anew to cherish were dissipated. Swift spent the remainder of his existence in Ireland; and might have enjoyed more peace and happiness after his final retirement from the stormy arena of political life, than he had known for many years before, had he been content to devote himself to the duties of his profession, and to enjoy the learned leisure which his comparative retirement now offered him. But he was a disappointed man, and his restlessness and dissatisfaction were perpetually revealing themselves in a thousand unamiable forms. He had, too, involved himself, even from early life, in a most extraordinary series of liaisons, which appear to have imbittered his own life, as well as ruined the happiness of three amiable women. Soon after leaving college, he appears to have formed, or professed, an attachment to a Miss Jane Waryng, the sister of a fellow-student. With this lady he corresponded for a series of years under the preposterous name of Varina. She appears to have been deeply attached to the young clergyman; but, with a prudence superior to his, to have declined immediate marriage, when passionately urged upon her by her lover, before he had any means of supporting himself, much less a wife. Four years afterwards, when Swift was in possession of about £400 a-year, she appears to have reminded him of his former impatience, and fairly asked him if his affections had suffered any alteration. His reply was such as broke off all further correspondence: cool, insolent, and cunning. His next victim, the Stella of his works, was twenty years his junior. He became acquainted with her while on a visit with her mother, a widow lady, at Sir William Temple's. The influence which he obtained over this young creature's mind was extraordinary, while his treatment of her was studiously insulting and capricious. When he went to Ireland, he prevailed on this interesting girl, then not twenty, to leave her own family in England, and take lodgings in his immediate neighbourhood; and in this equivocal situation he allowed the poor girl to remain, in the vain expectation that he would ultimately act an honourable part towards her. Upon Swift's return to Ireland, after the breaking up of the tory administration, he found Stella sinking into the grave under the influence of wounded sensibilities and disappointed hopes. Swift had found a new idol while in London, in the person of a Miss Esther Vanhomrigh; and Stella had been neither blind to the altered style of his correspondence, nor deaf to the rumours which were wafted to Ireland regarding the accomplished and fascinating Miss Vanhomrigh. We shall relate the rest of this extraordinary narrative in the language of his biographer. "He employed Dr St George Ashe, bishop of Clogher, his tutor and early friend, to request the cause of her melancholy; and he received the answer which his conscience must have anticipated,-it was her sensibility to his recent indifference, and to the discredit which her own character sustained from the long subsistence of the dubious and mysterious connexion between them. To convince her of the constancy of his affection, and to remove her beyond the reach of calumny, there was but one remedy. To this communication Swift replied, that he had formed two resolutions concerning matrimony: one, that he would not marry till possessed of a competent fortune, the other, that the event should take place at a time of life which gave him a reasonable prospect to see his children settled in the world. The independence proposed, he said, he had not yet achieved, being still embarrassed by debt; and, on the other hand, he was past that term of life after which he had determined never to marry. Yet he was ready to go through the ceremony for the ease of Mrs Johnson's mind, providing it should remain a strict secret from the public, and that they should continue to live separately, and in the same guarded manner as formerly. To these hard terms Stella subscribed; they relieved her own mind at least, from all scruples on the impropriety of their connexion, and they soothed her jealousy, by rendering it impossible that Swift should ever give his hand to her rival. They were married in the garden of the deanery by the bishop of Clogher, in the year 1716." The arrangement, mean and mortifying as it was, served to support Stella's existence a few years longer. Meanwhile, Miss Vanhomrigh, unconscious of Swift's situation, had followed him to Ireland and taken up her abode near Celbridge, where she was occasionally favoured with a visit from the dean, and such attentions as served to cherish the few reviving embers of hope in her bosom. At last her impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of the connexion which subsisted betwixt her and Swift. The answer she received, and the brutal conduct of Swift himself, when informed of what she had done, were fatal blows; she sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished hopes, which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had in dulged them. From such sickening details let us turn to contemplate the literary character of this extraordinary man. The productions of Swift's pen, with a few exceptions, were of an ephemeral kind, written with a temporary and immediate object, and written with all the taste, and all the high colouring too, necessary for such a purpose. Bearing this in mind, Swift must be allowed to have been a man of rare genius and astonishing resources. The care with which posterity has collected together these hasty productions is a convincing proof of their great merit. They have probably never been equalled in their line. They are written," says a celebrated northern critic, "with great plainness, force, and intrepidity,-advance at once to the matter in dispute,-give battle to the strength of the enemy, and never seek any kind of advantage from darkness or obscurity. Their distinguishing feature, however, is the force and the vehemence of the invective in which they abound; the copiousness, the steadiness, the perseverance, and the dexterity, with which abuse and ridicule are showered upon the adversary. This, we think, was, beyond all doubt, Swift's great talent, and the weapon by which he made himself formidable. He was, without exception, the greatest and most efficient libeller that ever exercised the trade; and possessed in an eminent degree all the qualifications which it requires a clear head,—a cold heart,—a vindictive temper,—no admiration of noble qualities,—no sympathy with suffering, not much conscience,-not much consistency,-a ready wit, -a sarcastic humour,-a thorough knowledge of the baser parts of human nature,—and a complete familiarity with every thing that is low, homely, and familiar in language." His most popular and his best work is the voyages of captain Gulliver. "It is the contrast," says Scott, "between the natural ease and simplicity of the 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." His letters to Stella are admirable and interesting compositions of their kind, and upon the whole present us with the most favourable view of Swift's character. Of his poetry we need say nothing; for we apprehend few readers now-a-days will feel disposed to assign the dean a niche in the poetical temple. His verses are nothing more than rhymed prose. His style it may not be fair to criticise too rigidly, seeing, as already hinted, that he always wrote currente calamo, on the spur of the moment. When we say that it is essentially a vulgar style, we mean that it is a style fitted above all other styles to please and captivate ordinary readers, to make good his point with the multitude; and, considering with what aims and objects Swift always wrote, when we speak thus of his style we apprehend we are giving it the very highest praise. He never rises to eloquence, but he is always clear, and precise, and forcible; he affects no graces, but he commands a boundless variety of universally understood terms and expressions; and what is— we should have been better pleased to say was, but the remembrance of recent controversies forces upon us the present tense-what is then, we say, of first-rate importance to a party-writer, his vocabulary of abuse and scurrility is perfectly inexhaustible; abuse is his inspiration, and, when the occasion serves, he pours it forth with all the fertility and exuberance of true genius. Richard Savage. BORN A. D. 1698.-died a. D. 1743. THIS unfortunate genius is commonly reputed to have been the illegitimate son of an English peeress. The facts connected with his birth are thus stated: The countess of Macclesfield, a woman of a violent temper and dissolute habits, having quarrelled with the earl, her The biographer here alludes to the consistency and plausibility of the descriptions given by the travelled captain, of the marvellous wonders he had witnessed both amongst the pigmies and giants. husband, resolved to be divorced from him, and with this view declared that the child with which she was then pregnant was the offspring of adulterous intercourse with the earl of Rivers. The earl of Macclesfield obtained an act of parliament for the dissolution of his marriage, and the children of his countess were declared illegitimate. Meanwhile the countess was delivered of a son, the subject of this memoir, on the 10th of January, 1698; and the earl of Rivers so far at least countenanced the profligate mother as to stand godfather to the child at his baptism, and give him his own name. The unfortunate infant was, however, immediately committed to the care of a poor woman, who was directed to educate him as her own son, and who appears to have kept her trust in this respect with remarkable fidelity: as the youth did not discover his parentage until after his nurse's death, when the facts connected with his birth were revealed to him by some letters and papers which he discovered among the effects of his foster-parent. Savage was placed at a grammar-school near St Alban's for his education. While at this school, Earl Rivers, his reputed father, died. "He had frequently inquired for his son," says Dr Johnson, "and had always been amused with evasive answers. On his deathbed, however, he thought it his duty to provide for him, and therefore demanded a positive account with an importunity not to be diverted or denied." His mother, the same authority informs us, though no longer able to withhold an answer, "determined at least to give such as should cut him off for ever from that happiness which competence affords, and therefore declared that he was dead." Mr Galt, in his recent Lives of the Players,' has thrown some discredit on this sad tale, and we are willing that, bad as the infamous countess undoubtedly was, she should at least have the advantage of Mr Galt's ingenious advocacy. "I would rather," says he, "believe that Dr Johnson was in error, than that Nature went so far wrong. There is no shadow of evidence to show that Mrs Brett-as the alleged mother of Savage was now called, in consequence of a second marriage with Colonel Brett, who became a patentee of Drury-lane theatre was in personal communication with Earl Rivers. But, granted that she had told him, or wrote to him, that their son was dead, might it not have been the case? for, as I shall have occasion to show, besides the fact relative to Mrs Lloyd's legacy already noticed, the identity of the countess of Macclesfield's son, and Savage, the poet and player, is by no means satisfactorily established. Be it also observed, that Earl Rivers could not but know, in the long course of more than ten years, in which the child was under the direction of his grandmother, Lady Mason, that she was the proper person to ask concerning him.. But to suppose that, in so long a period, Earl Rivers, who had no objection to acknowledge the child-who was the child's godfather-never once inquired after him, is to accuse human nature, in his lordship, of as great an exception to its customs, as in the case of the mother: probability revolts at the supposition. Perhaps Lady Mason might have been by this time dead; but, as I have shown, there was no special concealment, at least from Lord Rivers, of the existence of the child, so long as he lived; nor was it likely, when the part which Mrs Lloyd acted towards him is considered, that there could have been any difficulty, so long as she was alive, of tracing him. Dr Johnson assumes that the wickedness of the mother, in this instance, |