in his virtues few equals, and in his talents no superior. In that of humor, and especially of irony, he ever was, and probably ever will be, unrivalled. He did the highest honor to his country by his parts, and was a great blessing to it by the vigilance and activity of his public spirit. His style, which generally consists of the most naked and simple terms, is strong, clear, and expressive; familiar, without vulgarity or meanness, and beautiful, without affectation or ornament. He is sometimes licentious in his satire, and transgresses the bounds of delicacy and purity. He, in the latter part of his life, availed himself of the privilege of his great wit to trifle; but when, in this instance, we deplore the misapplication of such wonderful abilities, we at the same time admire the whims, if not the dotage, of Swift. He was perhaps the only clergyman of his time who had a thorough knowledge of men and manners.-GRANGER: Biographical History.

For the qualities of sheer wit and humor Swift had no superior, ancient or modern. He had not the poetry of Aristophanes or the animal spirits of Rabelais; he was not so incessantly witty as Butler, nor did he possess the delicacy of Addison or the good-nature of Steele or Fielding, or the pathos and depth of Sterne, but his wit was perfect as such a sheer meeting of the extremes of difference and likeness and his knowledge of character was unbounded. He knew the humor of great and small, from the king down to the cook - maid. Unfortunately he was not a healthy man; his entrance into the church put him into a false position; mysterious circumstances in his personal history conspired with worldly disappointment to aggravate it; and that hypochondriacal insight into things, which might have taught him a doubt of his conclusions and the wisdom of patience, ended in making him the victim of diseased blood and angry passions. Probably there was something morbid even in his excessive coarseness. Most of his contemporaries were coarse, but not so outrageously as he. When Swift, however, was at his best, who was so lively, so entertaining, so original? He has

been said to be indebted to this and that classic, and this and that Frenchman-to Lucian, to Rabelais, and to Cyrano de Bergerac-but though he was acquainted with all these writers, their thoughts had been evidently thought by himself; their quaint fancies of things had passed through his own mind; and they ended in results quite masterly, and his own. A great fanciful wit like his wanted no helps to the discovery of Brobdingnag and Laputa. The Big and Little Endians were close to him every day, at court and at church. Swift took his principal measure from Butler, and he emulated his rhymes, yet his manner is his own. There is a mixture of care and precision in it, announcing at once power and fastidiousness, like Mr. Dean going with his verger before him, in flowing gown and five times washed face, with his nails pared to the quick. His long, irregular prose verses, with rhymes at the end, are an invention of his own, and a similar mixture is discernable even in those, not excepting a feeling of musical proportion. Swift had more music in him than he loved to let "fiddlers" suppose, and throughout all his writings there may be observed a jealous sense of power, modifying the most familiar of his impulses. After all, however, Swift's verse, compared with Pope's or with Butler's, is but a kind of smart prose. It wants their pregnancy of expression. His greatest works are "Gulliver's Travels" and the "Tale of a Tub."-LEIGH HUNT.

SWIFT'S LITERARY STYLE.

In his works he has given very different specimens both of sentiment and expression. His "Tale of a Tub” has little resemblance to his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and a vivacity of diction such as he afterwards never possessed, or never exerted. It is of a mode so distinct and peculiar that it must be considered of itself; what is true of that is not true of anything else that he has written. In his other works is found an agreeable tenor of easy language, which rather trickles than flows. His delight was in sim

plicity. That he has in his works no metaphor, as has been stated, is not true, but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice. He studied purity, and though perhaps all his strictures are not exact, yet it is not often these solecisms can be found; and whoever depends on his authority may generally conclude himself safe. His sentences are never too much dilated or contracted, and it would not be easy to find any embarrassment in the complication of his clauses, any inconsequence in his connections, or abruptness in his transitions. His style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilized by rare disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by ambitious sentences, or variegated by farsought learning. He pays no court to the passions; he excites neither surprise nor admiration. He always understands himself, and his readers always understand him. The peruser of Swift wants little previous knowledge, and it is sufficient that he is acquainted with common words and common things. He is neither required to mount elevations nor to explore profundities. His passage is always on a level or by solid ground, without asperities, without obstruction.-DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON: Lives of the Poets.

BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

Sir Walter Scott's "Life of Swift."
Macaulay's Essay on Sir William
Temple.

Thackeray's "English Humorists."
Hazlitt's "Lectures on the English
Poets," Lect. VI.

"Jonathan Swift," by Leslie Stephen,
edited in Morley's "English Men
of Letters" (1882).

Taine's "English Literature."
Dr. Bucknill's Essay in Brain for
January, 1882.

Forster's "Life of Swift" (1876).
William Monck Mason's "History
and Antiquities of the Church of
St. Patrick" (1819).

Sheridan's "Life of Swift” (1785).

INDEX.

Alfieri, Vittorio, ii. 20, 21, 118, 163, Arthur, King of Britain, i. 8, 14.

Alfonso I., II., III., IV., and V., of Athelstan, i. 7.

Alison, Sir Archibald, ii. 286, 314, 315, Augustine, St., i. 9.

Bacon, Sir Francis, i. 86, 114, 251, Blanc, Louis, ii. 426.

Beaumont, Sir George, ii. 234, 238, Booth, Barton, i. 250, 438.