SWIFT SWIMMING. 



483 



he exercises his satire against Dryden and Bentley. 

 In 1708, appeared his Sentiments of a Church of 

 England Man, in respect to Religion and Govern- 

 ment ; Letter concerning the Sacramental Test ; 

 Argument for the Abolition of Christianity ; and 

 Predictions for the year 1708, by Isaac Bickerstaff, 

 Esq. Of these pieces, the first two set the seal to 

 his adhesion to the tories, while the others exhibit 

 that inimitable talent for irony and grave humour 

 which forms his principal distinction. In 1710, 

 being engaged by the Irish prelacy to obtain a re- 

 mission of the first-fruits and twentieths, payable 

 by the Irish clergy to the crown, he was introduced 

 to Harley, afterwards earl of Oxford, and to secre- 

 tary St John, subsequently lord Bolingbroke. He 

 gained the confidence of these leaders, and took a 

 leading share in the famous tory periodical, entitled 

 the Examiner. Although immersed in politics, he 

 did not neglect literature, and, in 1711, published 

 a Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascer- 

 taining the English Tongue, in a letter to the earl 

 of Oxford, the object of which was to establish an 

 institution to secure the purity of the language. 

 Several political tracts appeared about this time 

 from his pen. A bishopric in England was the 

 object of his ambition ; but archbishop Sharpe, on 

 the ground, it is said, of his Tale of a Tub, having 

 infused into the mind of queen Anne suspicions of 

 his orthodoxy, the only preferment his ministerial 

 friends could give him, was the Irish deanery of St 

 Patrick's, to which he was presented in 1713. 

 The dissensions between Oxford and Bolingbroke, 

 whom he in vain attempted to reconcile, and the 

 death of the queen, which soon followed, put an 

 end to his prospects, and condemned him to un- 

 willing residence for life in a country which he dis- 

 liked. He accordingly returned to Dublin, and 

 introduced a meritorious reform into the chapter of 

 St Patrick's, over which he obtained an authority 

 never before possessed in his station. In 1716, he 

 was privately married to Miss Johnson; but the 

 ceremony was attended with no acknowledgment 

 which could gratify the feelings of the victim of 

 his pride and cruelty. The ascendency which he 

 acquired over Miss Hester Vanhomrigh, another 

 accomplished female, was attended with circum- 

 stances still more censurable. He became ac- 

 quainted with this lady in London, in 1712; and 

 as she possessed, with a large fortune, a taste for 

 literature, Swift took pleasure in affording her 

 instruction. The pupil became enamoured of her 

 tutor, and even proposed marriage to him ; but 

 being probably at that time engaged to Stella, he 

 avoided a decisive answer. That he, however, felt 

 her attractions, seems obvious from his Cadenus 

 and Vanessa, the longest and most finished of his 

 poems of fancy. This affair terminated fatally; 

 for, discovering his secret union with Stella, the 

 unfortunate lady never recovered the shock, but 

 died fourteen months after, in 1723. She previously 

 cancelled a will she had made in his favour, and 

 left it in charge to her executors (one of whom was 

 bishop Berkeley) to publish all the correspondence 

 between her and Swift, which, however, never 

 appeared. After residing some time in Ireland 

 without attending to public affairs, in 1720, he was 

 roused, by the illiberal manner in which Ireland 

 was governed, to publish a Proposal for the uni- 

 versal Use of Irish Manufactures, which rendered 

 him very popular. His celebrated Letters fol- 

 lowed, under the name of M. B. Drapier, in which 

 he ably exposed the job of Wood's patent for a 



supply of copper coinage. A large reward was 

 offered for the discovery of the author ; but none 

 took place, and the dean became the public idol of 

 the Irish people. It was about this time that he 

 composed his famous Gulliver's Travels, which 

 appeared in 1726, exhibiting a singular union of 

 misanthropy, satire, irony, ingenuity, and humour. 

 In the same year he joined Pope in three volumes 

 of miscellanies, leaving the profit to the poet. On 

 the death of George I., he paid his court to the 

 new king and queen. But he was disappointed ; 

 and the death of Stella, about this time, who had 

 been long languishing in a state of decline, com- 

 pleted his chagrin. When her health was ruined, 

 he offered to acknowledge her as his wife ; but she 

 replied, " It is too late." He allowed her to make 

 a will in her maiden name, in which she consigned 

 her property to charitable uses. From the death 

 of this injured female, his life became much retired, 

 and the austerity of his temper increased. He 

 continued, however, for some years, to exercise 

 both his patriotic and his splenetic feelings, in 

 various effusions of prose and verse, arid was 

 earnest in his exertions to better the condition of 

 the wretched poor of Ireland ; in addition to which 

 endeavours he dedicated a third of his income to 

 charity. Some of his most striking poems were 

 written about this time, including his celebrated 

 Verses on his own Death, formed on one of the 

 maxims of Rochefoucault. He kept little company 

 at this advanced period, but with inferiors, whom 

 he could treat as he pleased, and especially a knot 

 of females, who were always ready to administer 

 the most obsequious flattery. In 1736, he had an 

 attack of deafness and giddiness. The fate, which, 

 owing to his constitutional infirmities, he had 

 always feared, at length reached him ; the faculties 

 of his mind decayed before his body, and a gradual 

 decay of reason settled into absolute idiocy early in 

 1742. He died in 1745, in his seventy-eighth year. 

 He bequeathed the greatest part of his fortune to 

 an hospital for lunatics and idiots. Pride, misan- 

 thropy, and stern inflexibility of temper, formed the 

 basis of his character, which was strangely com- 

 pounded of sincerity, arrogance, implacability, care- 

 lessness of giving pain, and a total want of candour 

 as a politician or partisan. Of his obdurate and 

 unfeeling nature, besides his treatment of his wife 

 and Miss Vanhomrigh (for which various reasons, 

 including secret constitutional infirmities, have 

 been conjectured), his utter abandonment of an 

 only sister, simply for marrying a tradesman, and 

 many other instances, might be adduced. Even 

 his whim and humour was indulged with a most 

 callous indifference to the pain which he might 

 inflict, or the sensibilities he might wound. As a 

 writer, he was original, and has, perhaps, never 

 been exceeded in grave irony, which he veils with 

 an air of serious simplicity, admirably calculated to 

 set it off. He also abounds in ludicrous ideas, 

 which often deviate, both in his poetry and prose, 

 into very unpardonable grossness. His style forms 

 the most perfect example of easy familiarity that 

 the language affords ; but, although admirable for 

 its pureness, clearness, and simplicity, it exhibits 

 none of the glow of genius, its highest merits con- 

 sisting in its extreme accuracy and precision. His 

 works have been often printed, and in various 

 forms : the latest and best edition is that of Sir 

 Walter Scott, in 19 vols., 8vo. (Edinburgh, 1821). 

 SWIMMING is one of the most important 

 brain lies of irvinnaitics, both in a physical and 

 2H2 



