Letters and Journals of Jonathan Swift. Selected and Edited, with
a Commentary and Notes, by Stanley Lane-Poole. (Kegan Paul.)— Mr. Lane-Poole, as our readers may be aware, has already published in the "Parchment Library" "Selections from the Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift." It was designed to give the best specimens of his prose style ; while in the present selection "it is not the style, but Swift the man in whom we are interested." The editor adds, how- ever, what is perfectly true, that the letters are as delightful as any of Swift's works in point of style, and "possess the greatest charm that letters can have, perfect sincerity and frankness." In the volumes of correspondence, not yet complete, contained in the admirable edition of Pope published by Mr. Murray, no letters are to be found at all comparable to Swift's. They have an ease which betrays no effort, and the charm which is due to a fine sense of literary fitness. It was Pope's ambition, and Swift twits him with it, to win fame as a letter-writer; and in the efforts to secure it he acted, as all his readers know, with the most pitiful duplicity. The gravity of Pope's fault is incontestable, and we have no wish to defend him ; but when Mr. Lane-Poole writes with evident wonder of Swift's "lifelong devotion to such a creature as Pope," he fails, we think, to recognise that, in spite of his faults, the poet's friendship was eagerly Bought after, not without good reason, by the first men of his age, and that if Swift gave mach to Pope, he received also much in return. All the letters preserved here afford delight- ful reading, but the main charm of the volume are the quotations from the "Journal to Stella," a narrative unique in literature. It is scarcely too mach to say that we learn from this journal more about the anther than from all his other writings put together. Swift's talk with Esther Johnson is not so clever as the works on which his fame is founded, but it is more delightful, and shows how thoroughly he could unbend in the society of the woman he loved best. For the Journal gives a similar impression to that which we receive from conversation, and Swift's "little language," his nonsense, his expressions of tenderness, which seem to fall involuntarily, his tattle about statesmen and people of fashion, his account of his daily doings and expenses, are exactly what we might suppose him saying to "M. D." and Mrs. Dingley, in their lodgings at Laraeor. Only a small portion of the Journal, a tenth part the editor says, is given in this volume. The abridgment was probably inevitable, in order that the book might not exceed the compass allowed to the "Parchment Library ;" but much, of course, we might almost say nine-tenths, of the charm is lost by this compression, and in this age of reprints it is surprising that the Journal has not been printed in a separate and popular form. The fourth section of Mr. Lane-Poole's extracts con- sists of letters to friends in England, which "are inspired chiefly by one thought." "Swift," says the editor, "is never weary of recalling the delights of the intellectual society from which he is banished, and of contrasting with it the desolation of the world in which he is compelled to live, or rather 'to die,' as he puts it, 'in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a bole.' The general tone of the letters is that of one who had abandoned hope, who had come to look upon death as a terrible but still desirable release, and who enter- tained nothing but contempt for his surroundings." This is true enough, and is nowhere more clearly exhibited than in the letters to Pope. In one of them Swift writes :—" Going to England is a very good thing, if it were not attended with an ugly circumstance of returning to Ireland. It is a shame you do not persuade your Ministers to keep me on that side, if it were but by a Court expedient of keeping me in prison for a plotter ; but at the same time I must tell you that such journeys very much shorten my life, for a month here is longer than six at Twickenham." And in another letter, while summing up the advantages of his Irish home, where he is "absolute lord of the greatest cathedral in the Kingdom," it is easy to see that in trying to make the best of his position be is longing to escape from it. After the tragedy of " Vanessa's " death in May, 1723, it may readily be conceived that this desire was strengthened ; and of the letters quoted, all but three of the series, addressed to English friends, were written after this date ; while in the section headed, "Letters to Friends in Ireland," only one is inserted written prior to that fatal year. Mr. Lane-Poole's selections from Swift—and we include the earlier volume in this remark—may serve to introduce the most powerful writer of his age to readers hitherto unacquainted with him. The student of literature prefers complete works to extracts, when they are taken from books as famous as " Gulliver's Travels" and the "Journal to Stella ;" but the general reader will probably be satisfied with what the editor has chosen for him, and that the two pretty-looking volumes are rich in literary matter needs no saying.
Previous page
