BOOKS.

THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT..

Marry years have passed away since Mr. Murray's list of "Works in Preparation" contained the announcement of The Life and Works of Dean Swift, edited by Mr. John Forster. In the pre- face to the life now before us there is no allusion to a new edition of Swift's works, and we may therefore conclude that no attempt will be made to supersede the edition published by Sir Walter Scott in 1824. Scott's Life of Swift is a biography of high excellence. It is written in the healthy, manly tone which marks all Sir Walter's works, and shows, as might be anticipated, a fine appre- ciation of Swift's marvellous genius, and a generous sympathy with his character. Had Scott possessed more leisure, and had he been fortunate enough to secure the treasures of which Mr. Forster is the lucky possessor, the necessity for another biography would probably not have existed. But Scott's Life, charming though it be, has many faults of omission and commission, and an elaborate biography of Swift from the pen of one of our most accomplished writers will be a welcome and permanent addition to literature.

To the student of the period, one of the most interesting in our annals, Mr. Forster's biography promises to be invaluable. Swift belongs to the age of Queen Anne as a politician, as well as a man of letters. He was a leader in the State, although he never occupied an official post, and so powerful was his pen in those days of rancorous political warfare, that he was feared and courted by all parties. As a political satirist, Swift is probably unrivalled. His irony is terrible ; when he shows his teeth, he scares his antagonists ; when he bites, he bites to the bone ; and there is in his writings what poor, unhappy Vanessa sometimes discovered in his face,—a severity which strikes his opponents dumb. "Swift," said Pope, "has the best brains in the nation," and the judgment ' of a century and a half has confirmed Pope's saying. As a satirist, he was as great a master in prose as his friend was in verse, and his satire was the agent by which he carried important measures and swayed the action of great statesmen. He enjoyed, and at times chuckled over, the power that he wielded, obliged Lords and Secretaries of State to make him the first advances, and showed plainly his sense of an affront. "If we let these great Ministers pretend too much," he said once, "there will be no governing them." There is, no doubt, a good deal of merry exaggeration in Swift's celebrated Journal, but it is evident from it that his relationship with Harley and St. John was of the most intimate kind, and that while they were officially the rulers of the country, Swift was often the adviser, and something more than the adviser, of their public acts. It is, therefore, to the life of Swift and to his varied writings that we must look for muck of our knowledge of the age ; and if we may venture to judge from a single volume, Mr. Forster's biography will throw considerable light upon the period. The author expects also to alter, in great measure, the current opinion of Swift's character. Scott was said to be a "little blind "to the Dean's public and private faults. Mr. Forster, on the other hand, considers that the Dean has been traduced. Few men, he writes, "who have been talked about so much are known

* 27e Life of Jonathan Swift. By John Forster. Vol. I., 1667-1711. London : John Murray. 18M. so little, His writings and his life are connected so closely, that to judge of either fairly with an imperfect knowledge of the other- is not possible ; and only thus can be excused what Jeffrey hardily said, and many have too readily believed, that he was an apostate in politics, infidel or indifferent in religion, a defamer of humanity, the slanderer of statesmen who had served him, and de- stroyer of the women who loved him." Some of these accusations will be better examined when we have read the whole of Mr. Forster's narrative, and understand his line of defence ; others- will receive some, although necessarily an imperfect notice in the- present article. Meanwhile it may be well here to mention some- of the valuable acquisitions of which Mr. Forster has been enabled to make use in the preparation of this biography. One of the reasons amongst many why Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope must, if it be ever completed, supersede all others, is that it contains- several hundred letters hitherto unprinted ; Mr. Forster is also aided in his pleasant task by having more than a hundred and fifty new letters placed athis disposal. He has likewise obtained. additions to the fragment of autobiography first printed by Mr. Deane Swift, and has been enabled to settle some -ques- tions raised by that fragment in connection with Swift's uni- versity career from one of the rolls of Trinity College, which fell- accidentally into his hands. Two original letters clear up the wild story about the Kilroot living, others "show clearly Swift's course- as to questions which led to his separation from the Whigs," and others "place it beyond doubt that Lord Somers as early as the- close of 1707 had urged his appointment to the see of Waterford.' Many a literary man devoted to a particular subject has been surprised to find how materials have accumulated on his hands, but Mr. Forster seems to have been more than commonly fortunate. At the dispersion of Mr. Mon& Mason's library, he was the happy purchaser of Swift's note-books, of a large number of unpublished pieces in prose and verse, of several letters, and of a series of contemporary printed tracts for illustration of the- life in Ireland, which he was afterwards able to complete by the- whole of the now extremely rare Wood Broadsides. At Mr. Mit- ford's sale, he obtained the copy of the Life by Hawkesworth, once. in the possession of Malone, "enriched with those MS. notes by Dr. Lyon, who had charge of Swift's person in his last illness, on- which Nichols and Malone, who partially used them, placed the- highest value." He obtained also papers of considerable in- terest once in the possession of Mrs. Whiteway ; had access to the manuscript collections of Mr. Andrew Fountaine, a descendant of Swift's friend, and found among them some precious and hitherto unknown fragments ; got possession of an unpublished. journal in Swift's handwriting, "singular in its character and of extraordinary interest ;" and obtained, through the late Mr. Booth, the bookseller, "the large-paper copy of the first edition of Gulliver interleaved for alterations and additions by the- author, and containing, besides all the changes, erasures, and substitutions adopted in the later editions, several in- teresting passages, mostly in the Voyage to Laputa, which have never yet been given to the world." Sir Walter Scott relates how much good service was re'ndered him during his Swift researches by a distinguished Irith clergyman and man of letters, the Bev. Edward Berwick; from this gentle- man's son, the President of Galway College, Mr. Forster has also. received valuable aid, the most important service rendered being- access to the correspondence of Swift with his friend, Knightley Chetwode, of Woodbrooke, during the seventeen years which followed his appointment to the Deanery of St. Patrick's, " the richest addition to the correspondence of this most masterly of English letter-writers since it was first collected." All these valuable "finds" are recorded in the preface, and in the body of the work we meet with others, less important perhaps, but not a little exciting and delightful to a book-hunter and student of Swift..

Mr. Forster's careful researches have enabled 'him to correct several important errors. Swift's university career has given rise- to much controversy. Mr. Forster considers it "more than likely" that he was a frequent offender in neglecting to attend the college chapel, in missing night-rolls or halls, and in haunting the town streets ; but by one of his lucky discoveries, he is able to- give Swift an ascertained place among his fellow-students from- the Dublin College Roll-call, Easter, 1685, a fac-simile of which *- is printed in the biography, and shows that in all but philosophy he compares favourably with the best, that there was no particular disgrace in the mode in which he obtained his degree, and no- ground for connecting his unhappy time at college with the manner in which the degree was granted, or with anything but considerations altogether personal. Swift's intellectual gains at Dublin are thus summed up by his biographer

Amid all these varying accounts of opportunities lost and retrieved, one thing can yet be said with certainty, that before he left the college, Swift had qualified himself for a Master's degree, and that he did not leave it without more than a competent acquirement in learning. He was never a profound scholar, nor perhaps entitled to the praise of a very exact one ; but as early as in his first two years after quitting Dublin, he showed easy and varied knowledge of the principal classical writers, could use fluently the Latin language, was accomplished in French, and had a mass of general reading in nearly every department of philosophy and letters, seldom equalled in its range and extent, perhaps never in the penetrating insight with which its leading subjects were mastered."

Swift's life under the roof of Sir William Temple has been per- haps nearly as much distorted by biographers as his college life at Dublin. Lord Macaulay, who, with all his charming gifts as a

literary essayist, is too often guilty, like M. Talus, of exaggera- tion and misrepresentation, has drawn a picture of Swift which in some parts resembles a caricature. His amusing inaccuracy is shown by the fact pointed out by Mr. Forster, that at the time -when Swift is described as flirting with Stella, Lady Giffard's waiting-maid, in the servants' hall, Esther Johnson was little

over seven years of age. Stella's mother appears to have been a friend and companion, assuredly not a servant, in the house ; and there is no evidence, as the biographer observes, that either of her daughters (for Esther had a younger sister, Ann), "waited on Anybody but themselves."

Mr. Forster gives no credit to the well-known story, accepted by Scott, of the rongh and rude way in which Swift took pos- session of his living at Laracor, but he seems to accept the well- known story, which is equally characteristic of Swift, and perhaps not better substantiated, of the rector commencing service one Wednesday wi,th only his clerk Roger in the desk, and reading

Atceordingly, "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places." On another and far more important point Mr. Forster differs from Scott, for he observes that he can End no evidence of a marriage between Esther Johnson and Swift, that is at all reasonably sufficient.

And perhaps, as the reviewer is not bound to follow his author steadily, and can but touch upon the topics which seem of pro- minent interest, this may be the best place to note what Mr. Forster has to say with regard to the most interesting passage in Swift's life, his connection with Stella. In the present volume, we read, of course, but a part of the life-long and most pathetic- ally tender intercourse which linked Esther's. fate so closely to that of this strange man, whose conduct with regard to women has hitherto appeared well-nigh inexplicable. Mr. Forster attempts no solution of what he says must still be called the mystery of Swift's life, but he maintains that Stella's lot was after all a happy one. The whole story is so familiar that it is un- necessary to repeat it, but it may be well to remind our readers that Swift, who was fourteen years older than Stella, had, known her as a child, that an affectionate intercourse had existed between them which, in the early days, resembled no doubt that of a grown-up brother for a, little sister ; that as she grew into woman- hood, Stella became singularly attractive ; that by Swift's advice, she and her inseparable companion, Mrs.Dingley, a respectable and common-place woman older than Swift, went to Ireland, occupying Swift's Dublin residence when he was in London, and when he re- turned living in a lodging of their own ; thathe is said never to have seen Esther alone, and only to have visited her at stated times ; that nevertheless he addressed her in his journal in the most endear- ing and playful way possible, showing a tenderness of feeling and a depth of affection which were sufficient to win the heart of any woman, and could net but have fascinated a girl accustomed to confide in Swift from her childhood, living constantly in his neighbourhood, and seeing no one who could compete with him in fascination of manner or in intellectual power ; that by Swift's advice, she declined an offer made to her by a respectable clergy- man named Tisdall, and that her refusal of the " Tisdall fellow," as Swift contemptuously calls him, which happened in her twenty- second year, only served to connect her future more completely with that of Swift, without changing the relationship between them. Why was this affection, so deep and so constant, allowed to be wasted ? Why did these two, who were drawn together by such tender ties, continue to live apart, so near in one sense, so remote from each other in another? The riddle may possiblybe explained on Scott's theory, but we have yet to learn whether Mr. Forster accepts that, or any other. The novelty of the biographer's argument is to be found in the following statement. The allusion the reader will come upon immediately is from a letter of Swift to Tisdall, in which he observes, "Time takes off the lustre of virgins in all , other eyes but mine," and the time referred to by the writer is the termination of the Tisdall suit :—

" The limit as to their intercourse expressed by him, if not before known to her, she had now been made aware of ; and it is not open to us to question that she accepted it with its plainly-implied conditions of Affection, not Desire. The words in all other eyes but mine' have a touching significance. In all other eyes but his, time would take from her lustre ; her charms would fade ; but to him, through womanhood as in girlhood, she would continue the same. For what she was surrender- ing, then, she knew the equivalent, and this, almost overlooked in other biographies, will be found in the present to fill a largo place. Her story has indeed been always told with too much indignation and pity. Not with what depresses or degrades, but rather with what consoles and exalts, we may associate snob a life. This young, friendless girl, of mean birth and small fortune, chose to play no common part in the world ; and it was not a sorrowful destiny, either for her life or her memory, to be the star to such a man as Swift, the Stella to even such an Astrophel."

In another place, alluding to the inimitable Journal, "which was written for one person's private pleasure, and has had indestructible attractiveness for every one since ; which has no parallel in litera- ture for the historic importance of the men and events that move along its pages, or the homely vividness of the language that describes them," Mr. Foster remarks :— "Such letters from such a man were no ordinary tribute ; but far beyond the magnitude or interest of the incidents related was the per- sonal spell exerted over herself. To the girl who frons her childhood had known the writer for playfellow, teacher, friend, and companion, their thousand innocent, half-childish, fantastic, fascinating touches of personal attachment may well have come to represent for her the Charm and the Sufficiency of life. Her own contentment that this should be so, there appears to be no reason to doubt."

Now it must be remembered that we know comparatively little of Stella during the many long years of her lonely life beyond what Swift tells us. She was young, beautiful, and every way attractive when she refused TisdalL Who can doubt that she had a woman's heart and a woman's hopes as that when occupying the master's house during his absence, she had many and many a yearning to be mistress there ? And who can question the bitter- ness of the feelings with which she must have returned with Dingley to their lonely lodgings ? How long the mornings must have seemed in Dingley's society, how eagerly she must have looked forward to the afternoon hour when Swift was accustomed to call, how distressed she may have been at times at the false position she occupied in the eyes of the world, how jealous and unhappy she must have felt at the intimations dropped about Vanessa, how severe the internal conflict when her rival came to Ireland, may all be readily imagined. Indeed, no effort of the imagination is required to realise the unhealthy and unnatural situation of Stella, who must have been as strangely constituted as Swift himself, to find in this novel kind of attachment "the charm and the sufficiency of life." Mr. Forster observes that Stella chose to play no common part in the world, but it may well be doubted whether this young girl—for she was quite young when her destiny was fixed—had any power of choice in the matter. It was not the deliberate election of a strange lot, but rather, if we read her story aright, the subjection of an affec- tionate woman to the imperious will of an attractive man who possessed the strongest intellect of his age. This opinion may be modified when we read more about Esther Johnson in the second volume of the biography, but nothing Mr. Forster has said at present is sufficient to assure us that Esther Johnson's was "not a sorrowful destiny." Of Swift's rela- tion to Hester Vanhomrigh we may have something to say on the publication of Mr. Forster's second volume, but it is worth while nentioning here, in illustration of the unpardonable care- lessness of a popular writer, that Lord Campbell, in his memoir of Lord Cowper, observes that in the Journal to Stella, Swift "studiously and systematically suppresses his visits to Mrs. Van- homrigh and his acquaintance with her daughter." Mr. Forster was so surprised to read this, that he had the curiosity to count the number of times such visits are recorded, and found that "besides allusions to her in which she is not expressly mentioned, Mrs. Vanhomrigh appears by name no less than seventy-three times."

The topics of interest accumulated in this interesting volume are so many, that it is impossible to do justice to them within our limited space. It would be easy, for instance, to fill a column or two with what Mr. Forster has to tell us of the Journal, which has never yet been printed in its integrity, or without omitting in large measure the "little language," which is so characteristic of the writer. "Do you know what," says Swift to Stella, "when I am writing in our, language, I make up my mouth just as if I were speaking it ; I caught myself at it just now." And in order that Mr. Forster's readers may catch Swift at it, he has reprinted a number of passages from Scott's edition and then from the original MS. The nonsense in which Swift indulged is so abun- dant, that we do not wonder grave editors were puzzled, and

hesitated before transferring it to their pages. One peasage, by way of illustration, shall be taken from Scott, and followed by the original MS. Swift writes, according to Scott :— " I am going out and mrst carry this in my pocket, to give it at some general post house. I will tilk farther with you at night. I suppose in my next I shall answer a letter from M. D. that will be sent me on Tuesday. On Tuesday it will be four weeks since I had your last. Farewell, M. D.

(Original MS) "I am going out and must carry zis in my Pottick to give it at some general post-house. I will talk further with oo at night. I suppose in my next I shall answer a letter from M D that will be sent me. On Tuesday it will be four weeks since I had your last Farewell mine deelest rife deelest char Ppt, MDMDMD Ppt, F W, Lele M D, Me, Me, Me, Me aden, F W 3f D, Lazy ones, Lele, Lele, all a Lele."

Mr. Forster has not much to say as to Swift's change of party. There is no doubt he left the Whigs, who had treated him badly, in the hope that he would be better treated by the Tories, a course of conduct imitated by his friend Prior, and one familiar to most of the politicians of the day. Harley and St. John, although they well knew Swift's value and gave him the strongest marks of con- fidence, had no power to make him a bishop. The Church was looked upon chiefly as a profession, and men quite as unfitted as Swift attained to high preferment ; but they had, at least, avoided -scandal, and had not wit enough to offend, like Swift, by the pub- lication of a Tale of a Tub, an act which permanently prejudiced the Queen against him. The mistake of Swift's life was his taking holy orders at all. No man, probably, was less fitted for a clergy- man, no man was ever better qualified to take high rank as a statesman or a diplomatist.

We must close a necessarily inadequate notice of a valuable work with the remark that this biography will not, it is to be feared, prove attractive to readers who, without any special tastes, are accustomed to apply at Mudie's for the last new books. No one knows better than Mr. Forster how to gain attention to a literary biography—witness his Life of Goldsmith—but in the present instance the writer seems to be overweighted by his materials ; he has so much to say, so many errors to point out, so many objections to meet, so many allusions to explain, that the narrative is occasionally impeded and does not move freely. The author never stops without a cause, or without having some note- worthy fact to state, but nevertheless the reader, instead of being driven smoothly along the road, finds himself suddenly pulled up. The literary student will enjoy this heartily, for he is sure to gain some generous refreshment at these halting-points, but the general reader, whose interest in Swift is comparatively slight, and whose knowledge of the age is superficial, will hardly appre- ciate the wealth of illustration Mr. Forster has at his command. If we have pointed out a fault, it is one which few writers are capable of committing.