The Ludicrous. He is pre-eminently a satirist; nobody can pretend to dispute his title of the prince of English Satirists.

In the ludicrous degradation of his victims, he makes no affectation of kin liness, and parades rather than disguises his contempt. Readers that are not subdued by the charms of his wit pronounce him coarse, insolent, unfeeling, and turn from his pages with aversion. This is one difference between him and Addison; they agree in being derisive rather than humorous.

From Addison he differs still more in the extent and force of his satire. Addison has a few pet objects of ridicule. Swift exempts from his ridicule no profession, no foible, hardly any institution, hardly any character. Clergymen, lawyers, doctors, authors, politicians, wits, demonstrative affection, coxcombry, the behaviour of ladies, bad manners, Popery, Presbyterianism, education, and, one may say in general, every individual that crosses his opinions-all come in for a cut of his stinging lash.

There are some fair specimens of insulting sarcasm among his 'Thoughts on various subjects':

"Query, whether churches are not dormitories of the living as well as of the dead?"

'Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of diseases. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue."

"The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word."

"A very little wit is valued in a woman, as we are pleased with a few words spoken plain by a parrot."

"A nice man is a man of nasty ideas,"

"If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any."

His advice "to a very young lady on her marriage" is an excellent specimen of rough sarcastic counsel, wholesome, but not in the slightest accommodated to the palate. See p. 366.

A very favourite stroke at the free-thinkers and the wits is to set forth ironically the advantages of the Church and of Christianity :

"It is objected, as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that a set of men should be suffered, much less employed and hired, to bawl one day in seven against the lawfulness of those methods most in use towards the pursuit of greatness, riches, and pleasure, which are the constant practice of all men alive on the other six. But the objection is, I think, a little unworthy of 80 refined an age as ours. Let us argue this matter calmly: I appeal to the breast of any polite free-thinker, whether, in the pursuit of gratifying a predominant passion, he has not always felt a wonderful incitement by reflecting that it was a thing forbidden; and therefore we see, in order to cultivate this taste, the wisdom of the nation has taken special care that the ladies should be furnished with prohibited silks, and the men with pro

hibited wine. And indeed it were to be wished that some other prohibitions were promoted, in order to improve the pleasures of the town; which, for want of such expedients, begin already, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen."

He is dissatisfied with modern education :

"From frequently reflecting upon the course and method of educating youth in this and a neighbouring kingdom, with the general success and consequence thereof, I am come to this determination; that education is always the worse in proportion to the wealth and grandeur of the parents; nor do I doubt in the least, that if the whole world were now under the dominion of one monarch (provided I might be allowed to choose where he should form the seat of his empire), the only son and heir of that monarch would be the worst educated mortal that ever was born since the creation; and I doubt the same proportion will hold through all degrees and titles, from an emperor downwards to the common gentry.'

"Another hindrance to good education, and I think the greatest of any, is that pernicious custom in rich and noble families, of entertaining French tutors in their houses. These wretched pedagogues are enjoined by the father to take special care that the boy shall be perfect in his French; by the mother, that master must not walk till he is hot, nor be suffered to play with other boys, nor be wet in his feet, nor daub his clothes, and to see the dancing-master attends constantly and does his duty; the father insists that he be not kept too long poring on his book, because he is subject to sore eyes, and of a weakly constitution."

In his treatise on good manners, he is very contemptuous about the practice of duelling:

"I should be exceedingly sorry to find the legislature make any new laws against the practice of duelling; because the methods are easy and many for a wise man to avoid a quarrel with honour, or engage in it with innocence. And I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own, where the law has not been able to find an expedient."

By nature extremely impatient of whatever was troublesome, he hated over-civility. One of his Tatlers is a coarse exaggeration of overdone hospitality. When sneering at the multiplication of ceremonies, he relates a ridiculous accident, without caring to conceal names :

"Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, whose politics and manners were much of a size, brought a son with him, about thirteen years old, to a great table at Court. The boy and his father, whatever they put on their plates, they first offered round in order to every person in company; so that we could not get a minute's quiet during the whole dinner. At last their two plates happened to encounter, and with so much violence that, being china, they broke in twenty pieces, and stained half the company with wet sweetmeats and cream.'

His personal sarcasms are very contemptuous. He alludes to Defoe as "the fellow that was pilloried, I forget his name." He is merciless on poor John Dennis :

"One Dennis, commonly called 'the critic,' who had writ a threepenny pamphlet against the power of France, being in the country, and hearing of a French privateer hovering about the coast, although he were twenty miles from the sea, fled to town, and told his friends they need not wonder at his haste; for the King of France, having got intelligence where he was, had sent a privateer on purpose to catch him."

One of the special objects of his pitiless dislike was Burnet the historian. He ridiculed the 'History of my own Times' under the allegory of the Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish.' Swift's copy of the history has been preserved; the marginal comments are good specimens of the peculiar turn of his wit. I quote one or two as they are given in Collet's 'Relics of Literature' :

Preface, p. 3. Burnet." Indeed, the peevishness, the ill-nature, and the ambition of many clergymen, have sharpened my spirits perhaps too much against them; so I warn my readers to take all that I say on those heads with some grains of allowance." Swift." I will take his warning." P. 28. Burnet..-" The Earl of Argyle was a more solemn sort of man, grave and sober, and free of all scandalous vices." Swift.-" As a man is free of a corporation, he means."

P. 5. Burnet.-"Upon the King's death, the Scots proclaimed his son king, and sent over Sir George Wincan, that married my great aunt, to treat with him while he was in the Isle of Jersey." Swift.-"Was that the reason why he was sent ?

P. 163. Burnet (speaking of 'Paradise Lost').—"It was esteemed the beautifullest and perfectest poem that ever was writ, at least in our language." Swift.-"A mistake! for it is in English.”

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Persuasion.-Swift's pamphlet on 'The Conduct of the Allies' is said to have told with unexampled effect; to have revolutionised public feeling, and overturned a powerful Ministry. For ten years, in union with Germany and Holland, we had fought against the succession of a French prince to the Spanish throne; we had won four splendid victories, and yet seemed in no hurry to make reasonable overtures of peace. Dazzled by Marlborough's success, the people had no suspicion that the war was protracted to fill his pockets. Swift's pamphlet changed the aspect of things as by enchantment; it was read everywhere, and raised popular indignation to such a height, that, within a year after its appearance, a new Government was formed, which concluded the famous Treaty of Utrecht.

Johnson thinks that "the efficacy of this wonder-working pamphlet was supplied by the passions of its readers; that it operated by the mere weight of facts with a very little assistance from the hand that produced them." But the art of the pamphleteer lay in bringing the popular passions into exercise-in picking out, and

showing in strong light, facts that were escaping general noticein relieving the public from the fascination of military success, and fixing their eyes on the other side of the picture.

If the Conduct of the Allies' gained its end by a skilful presentation of facts in a calm statement, the Drapier Letters were performances of a very different kind. A Mr Wood, a large owner of mines, had obtained from Government a patent for issuing, under certain regulations, a copper coinage of halfpence for Ireland. In Ireland, then as now, there was strong jealousy of England; and Swift, striking in against the project, took full advantage of the national feeling. The need of a copper coinage was glaring and urgent he could say nothing on that score; but he represented that the Irish Houses of Parliament had previously requested leave to coin and issue the needful money, and had been refused. What was refused to the nobility and gentry of Ireland had been granted to this man-" a mean ordinary man, a hardware dealer," Swift makes no attempt to argue the justice of the proceeding. He heaps abuse upon Wood,1 asserts against him audaciously groundless charges, pictures the most unreasonable consequences of the measure, and pours out hot appeals to the passions of his readers.

The following quotations illustrate the kind of reasoning he used. When to these ludicrous exaggerations of the inconvenience of exchange the simple answer was made that nobody would be obliged to take more than fivepence-halfpenny in copper, Swift blustered about confining the liberty of the subject. But for the strong feeling existing against England, which blinded the Irish to every consideration of reason, the Drapier would have been laughed at. As it was, had the Government refused to give way, his violent and hot exaggerations would have raised an armed rebellion, and his apparent patriotism made him a national hero :—

"Suppose you go to an alehouse with that base money, and the landlord gives you a quart for four of those halfpence, what must the victualler do? his brewer will not be paid in that coin; or, if the brewer should be such a fool, the farmers will not take it from them for their bere, because they are bound by their leases to pay their rent in good and lawful money of Eng land; which this is not, nor of Ireland neither; and the 'squire their landlord will never be so bewitched to take such trash for his land; so that it must certainly stop somewhere or other; and wherever it stops, it is the same thing, and we are all undone."

"If a squire has a mind to come to town to buy clothes, and wine, and spices, for himself and family, or perhaps to pass the winter here, he must bring with him five or six horses well laden with sacks, as the farmers bring their corn; and when his lady comes in her coach to our shops, it must be followed by a car loaded with Mr Wood's money. And I hope we shall have the grace to take it for no more than it is worth."

1 See p. 372.

"And let me in the next place apply myself particularly to you who are the poorer sort of tradesmen. Perhaps you may think you will not be so great losers as the rich if these halfpence should pass; because you seldom see any silver, and your customers come to your shops or stalls with nothing but brass, which you likewise find hard to be got. But you may take my word, whenever this money gains footing among you, you will be utterly undone. If you carry these halfpence to a shop for tobacco or brandy, or any other thing that you want, the shopkeeper will advance his goods accordingly, or else he must break and leave the key under the door. 'Do you think I will sell you a yard of tenpenny stuff for twenty of Mr Wood's halfpence? no, not under 200 at least; neither will I be at the trouble of counting, but weigh them in a lump.' I will tell you one thing further, that if Mr Wood's project should take, it would ruin even our beggars; for when I give a beggar a halfpenny, it will quench his thirst, or go a good way to fill his belly; but the twelfth part of a halfpenny will do him no more service than if I should give him three pins out of my sleeve.”

JOSEPH ADDISON, 1672-1719.

Speaking of the age of William and Anne, Macaulay says"There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write well found such easy admittance into the most distinguished society, and to the highest honours of the State." Nobody profited more than Addison by this accident of the times. His abilities were very soon recognised by the Whig leaders. The son of Lancelot Addison, Rector of Lichfield, educated at Charterhouse and Magdalen College, Oxford, he was dissuaded from his design of entering the Church by Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax, who procured him a pension from King William, and sent him to travel in France and Italy (1699-1702). Returning to England on the death of William, which had stopped his pension, he gained some reputation by a poem commemorating the victory of Blenheim (1704); and, having thus proved his value to a party, was in 1705 made Under-Secretary of State. Thereafter he held various political offices: was appointed Keeper of the Records of Ireland in 1709; Secretary to the Regency on the demise of Queen Anne in 1714; one of the Lords of Trade under George I.; one of the Chief Secretaries of State in 1717. From these high posts he drew a large income, while he had considerable leisure for writing. He died in 1719, leaving one daughter by the Countess Dowager of Warwick, whom he had married three years before, and who added little to his comfort while he was alive.

Addison's first prose composition, his 'Dialogues on Medals,' was written during his Continental travels. In 1702 he published an account of his travels in Italy, remarkable for happy allusions to ancient Roman history and literature. His fame as a prose writer rests on his contributions to periodical papers