Swift : Selections from his Works. Edited, with Life, Introduc-
tions, and Notes, by Henry Craik. In 2 vole. Vol. I. (Claren- don Press.)—Although the work has been done, and for the most part well done, already, it is fitting that the author of the most adequate Life of Swift should make a selection from his works. In Swift's case a selection is a matter of necessity, if the most powerful and most repulsive of satirists is to be read in families. Mr. Craik might perhaps have omitted without loss the cumber- some performances styled "Pindaric Odes," which are neither prose nor poetry, and it is to be wished that a larger space had been allowed in these " Selections " for the "Journal to Stella." It is the sole production of Swift's pen that can be justly called" delight_
fu],"—a term which assuredly does not apply either to the "Tale of a Tub" or to " Gulliver's Travels." Some abridgment may have been necessary, but Mr. Craik has, we think, excised too freely, and among other notable passages, we miss the striking character of St. John. In the art of writing admirably about nothing, Swift excels most men, and his little confidences and chit- chat are wonderfully attractive ; but the reader introduced to the "Journal" for the first time in these pages will lose much of his excellent fooling. In his notes, the editor asserts that Swift's friendship for Vanessa never interfered with that for Stella, and that his visits to the Vanhomrighs were announced without reserve. Yet he seems to have taken the utmost care to conceal from Stella his close intimacy with Hester ; and if her passion excited, as Mr. Craik says, Swift's contempt, which we do not believe, the philandering of a clergyman in a "gown of forty-four" with a girl not out of her teens when the acquaintance began, may well excite that feeling in our estimate of his conduct. In his brief notice of Vanessa in these pages, Mr. Craik writes of the Dean as having no more than a kindly interest in the young woman, a state- ment which to our thinking entirely misrepresents the connection between them. Moreover, it does not agree with a statement in the Life, where the biographer observes that after the marriage which he considers took place with Stella, Swift was "still humouring Vane,ssa's passion."
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