ant, or his moral lessons more formal and didactic, he could not have succeeded as he did; his essays were just adapted to the times-they insinuated morality and benevolence, and supplied innocent enjoyment mingled with instruction. The lively, natural writer and companion is never lost in the teacher, nor the gay captain of horse wholly absorbed in the author."- Chambers.

Swift.

Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, was, of all the writers of the age in which he lived, the one possessing the greatest originality and power. His peculiarities, however, both as a writer and as a man, were no less marked, and mostly not of an agreeable character. Hence he has been, deservedly, less esteemed than most of his distinguished contemporaries, by those who have been free to admit his transcendent abilities.

Early Career. This unique personage in English letters was born in Dublin, of English parents, several months after the death of his father. Young Swift was supported by relatives, and sent by them to school and afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin. Here he did not improve his time after the orthodox fashion, but was chiefly occupied in writing political and personal satires. After remaining seven years at college he removed to England, and entered the service of Sir William Temple, who was a distant relative, as private secretary. He remained in this position about ten years. It was a period of wearisome, galling poverty and dependence. At Temple's death, in 1698, Swift succeeded in obtaining the vicarage of Laracor, and one or two other small appointments, in Ireland.

Life as an Author.-In 1701 Swift published a tract on The Contests and Discussions between the Nobles and Commons of Athens and Rome. This attracted the attention of Somers and Addison, then leaders of the Whig party. In 1704 he published The Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books. Swift's hopes of preferment not being gratified by the Whig party, he went over to the Tories. For nearly a year he edited The Examiner, and indulged his powers of satire in attacking Godolphin and Marlborough. He also became intimate with Bolingbroke, Oxford, and Pope. By his able pamphlet "On the Conduct of the Allies," he contributed efficiently to the adoption of the peace of Utrecht, and gained for himself the preferment of Dean of St. Patrick's, in Dublin, 1713.

Interest in Irish Affairs. After the downfall of the Tory ministry, Swift identified himself with Ireland and the Irish cause. In 1724

appeared the Drapier Letters, which produced great excitement, and caused the English Government to abandon its scheme of flooding Ireland with copper coinage. These Letters appeared anonymously, and the secret was preserved, in spite of the £300 reward offered by the Government for the detection of the author. In 1726 Swift revisited England, and published Gulliver's Travels.

Loss of Health. In 1727, having returned to Ireland, his health gave way and with it his mental faculties. He had some lucid intervals subsequently, during which he wrote A Rhapsody on Poetry, the Legion Club, some verses on his own death, and The Modest Proposal. This last was an ironical satire on the English government of Ireland, in which the author gravely proposes to relieve the public distress by making the children of the poor serve as food for the rich. For the last two or three years of his life he was hopelessly insane.

Love-Life. Any sketch, however brief, of Swift's career, would be incomplete without making some mention of his love-affairs. With all his brusqueness and proneness to satire, Swift appears to have exercised considerable powers of fascination over the other sex. There are three women, however, who figure conspicuously in the record of his life-Stella, Varina, and Vanessa. Varina, the fictitious name of Miss Jane Warying, was a young lady who at first rejected Swift's offer of marriage, but subsequently repented and renewed the proposal herself. Swift replied, however, with a refusal as decided as her own. Stella, Miss Esther Johnson, had been a waiting-maid of Lady Gifford, Temple's sister, residing with him. Swift, as Temple's secretary, had opportunities of daily intercourse with Esther, then a very young girl, and directed her studies. The attachment between them was deep and lasting,— it might almost be called an English version of the loves of Abelard and Eloise, and it is generally believed that they were privately married in 1716. This has been doubted, however, by some writers. She followed him in 1700 to Ireland and presided at his table when guests were present. She died in 1728. There is still much mystery hanging over this connection between Swift and Stella. The third lady, Vanessa, Miss Esther Vanhomrigh, was the daughter of a family in London where Swift was on terms of intimate friendship before his appointment to St. Patrick's. As in the case of Stella, Swift directed her studies, and the young pupil became so enamored of her master as to make a proposal of marriage. These advances Swift neither encouraged nor absolutely repelled. Consequently, on her mother's death in 1714, Vanessa removed also to Ireland, and thus Swift found himself in the awkward predicament of having two ardent admirers at once and in the same place. It is said that Stella, moved by jealousy of her rival, insisted upon a private marriage, and that Vanessa, having suspected as much, wrote to Stella. This led to a violent explosion of wrath from Swift, and Vanessa died a few weeks afterwards, in 1722, of a broken heart.

His Character hard to be Understood. There is, throughout Swift's entire career, and especially this phase of it, much that is to us incomprehensible. His vagaries and moodiness and reckless defiance of public opinion, however, were largely due to incipient insanity, and this may dispose us to be charitable in our judgment. Swift is one of those weird, demoniacal characters that are ever reappearing under various shapes and in various countries, doomed to see their wonderful gifts employed only in the destruction of themselves and those whom they best love.

Character as a Writer. — As a writer, Swift is without a parallel in English letters. No one since the days of Rabelais has equalled him in humor and satire, unless we except Voltaire and Heine. His style is a model of clear, forcible expression, displaying a consummate knowledge of the foibles and vices of mankind. He has no sympathy with the grander flights of the imagination; he never rises above the earth. But in his sphere he is inimitable. Much of the coarseness that disfigures his writings is due to the spirit of the age — but not all. Swift would have been coarse in any age. Gulliver's Travels is his greatest and most popular work, but, in the opinion of Hallam, the Tale of a Tub is the best. His poem Cadenus and Vanessa gives an account of the early stages of his love-affair with Miss Vanhomrigh. The word Cadenus is a mere transposition of the Latin word decanus, dean. In his manners Swift was taciturn and unmoved, even amidst the laughter that his own humor had produced, sparing no one with his satire, yet of a not unkindly disposition to those who knew him well, and as shrewd and original in his conversation as in his writings.

John Arbuthnot, M. D., 1675-1734, was one of that brilliant circle of authors and wits, of which Pope and Swift were the central figures.

The Scriblerus Club, formed in 1714, counted among its members Arbuthnot, Swift, Pope, Gray, Congreve, Atterbury, and Harley. Their object, according to Pope, was "to ridicule all the false tastes in learning, under the character of a man of capacity enough, that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each." The club did not continue long, but it gave birth to the following works: The First Book of Martinus Scriblerus (by Arbuthnot); The Travels of Gulliver (by Swift); and The Art of Sinking (by Pope).

Works. Arbuthnot's first publication was An Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Earth, and it brought him at once into notice as a first-class writer. His next productions were: On the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, and On the Regularity of the Births of Both Sexes. His most brilliant performance was a work of humor, entitled The History of John Bull, and intended to ridicule the Duke of Marlborough. "Never was a political allegory managed with more exquisite humor, or with a more skilful adaptation of character and circumstances."

Popularity. - Arbuthnot was a general favorite among the brilliant authors with whom he was associated. They were filled with jealousies of each other, but they all speak in terms of admiration and kindness of him. "He has more wit than we all have, and his humanity is equal to his wit."-Swift. "His good morals were equal to any man's, but his wit and humor superior to all mankind."-Pope. Dr. Johnson, referring back to this circle of eminent writers, says, "I think Dr. Arbuthnot the first man among them. He was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humor."

SHAFTESBURY.-Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671-1713, was a statesman and writer of illustrious descent, and of equally illustrious abilities.

Works. Shaftesbury's writings are numerous, and have been held in high estimation, notwithstanding their faults of style. His best known work is Characteristics of Men, Matters, Opinions, and Times, 3 vols., 8vo. He wrote also The Moralist, à Philosophical Rhapsody; Letters concerning Enthusiasm; Advice to an Author; Letters by a Noble Lord to a Young Man at the University; A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country; Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor; On the Judgment of Hercules; Inquiry concerning Virtue, etc.

Shaftesbury was educated under the special care of John Locke. As a statesman, he was much trusted by King William. Warburton scented infidelity in the Characteristics, but the sober judgment of subsequent and abler critics has not confirmed the suspicion. "Perhaps there is scarcely any composition of our language more lofty in its moral and religious sentiments and more exquisitely eloquent and musical in its diction [than the Moralist]."-Sir James Mackintosh,

Shaftesbury's chief fault of style is a want of simplicity: "His lordship can express nothing with simplicity. He seems to have considered it vulgar, and beneath the dignity of a man of quality, to speak like other men."- Blair.

Bolingbroke.

Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, 1678-1751, was a political writer and speaker, contemporaneous with Pope, Swift, and Addison.

Character. Bolingbroke, if not the ablest and most profound, was at least the most brilliant of the illustrious company of authors that flourished in the early part of the eighteenth century. He owed no little of his celebrity, in his own time, to his fascinating manners, the charm of his conversation, and even his personal beauty. It is not to be denied, however, that he had talents of a very high order, though he used them for ends thoroughly selfish and often ignoble, and he has left behind no monument of genius worthy of the large space which he occupied in the public estimation while he lived. His youth was notorious for its profligacy and libertinism, his meridian of public life was one of splendid intrigue rather than of statesmanship, and he bequeathed in dying a posthumous work of an irreligious character, which he had not the courage to avow when living.

Political Career, - Bolingbroke belonged to the political party which was opposed to the Duke of Marlborough and to the Hanoverian succession. He reached various high offices, ending with that of Prime Minister, in the closing year of Queen Anne. On the death of the Queen, being accused of an attempt to bring back the Stuarts, he was driven into exile, and openly entered the service of the Pretender. He was impeached for treason and attainted, but was afterwards allowed to return to England and to regain his estates, though not to enter Parliament.

Works.- Bolingbroke's literary executor, David Mallet, brought out a sumptuous edition of his lordship's works, in 1754, in 5 vols., 4to, besides 2 vols., 4to, additional, of Correspondence, State Papers, etc., which appeared in 1798. The works which obtained the greatest notoriety were The Idea of a Patriot King, Dissertations upon Parties, The State of Parties on the Accession of George I., The Spirit of Patriotism, The Study and Use of History, Reflections upon Exile.

Johnson's Verdict. — In reference to the works of a sceptical kind which Boling. broke left to Mallet to be published posthumously, Dr. Johnson said: "Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not the resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death."

"Bolingbroke's abilities were exactly of that stamp which astonish and fascinate those who come into personal contact with their possessor, more brilliant than solid, more showy than substantial. His mind was not a profound one; but what it wanted in this respect was atoned for by its readiness and acuteness. He seemed to grasp everything by intuition, and no sooner had he made himself master of a proposition or an argument, than his astonishing memory enabled him to bring forth vast stores of information and illustration at a moment's warning. Endowed with a brilliant imagination, a prodigious flow of words, a style which fascinates the reader by the incomparable beauty of the language and the bounding elasticity of the sentences, and an extraordinary power of presenting his conceptions in the clearest light-his contemporaries looked upon him as one of those rare beings who seem to be endowed with a nature superior to that of common mortality, and who stoop down to the world only to evince their mastery of all its lore, and their superiority to its inhabitants. But, dazzled as they were by the vast surface of the stream, they forgot to inquire into its depths. We, in modern times, who know nothing of the artificial splendor with which a 'form excelling human'—a manner that seemed given to sway mankind, and a most dazzling style of conversation-invested the name of Bolingbroke, are perhaps inclined, by the exaggeration of the praise once lavished on him, to do him but scanty justice."— Cunningham's Biog. Hist.

BISHOP ATTERBURY.-Francis Atterbury, 1662-1732, Bishop of Rochester, was the intimate friend and associate of Swift, Pope, Bolingbroke, and the other eminent men of that day.

Career and Character. -Being suspected of an intrigue to bring in the Pretender, on the death of Queen Anne, Atterbury was deprived of his offices and banished by George I., in 1722, and spent the remainder of his days in exile. He was a man of brilliant parts, bold and self-reliant in temper, always ready to lend a hand in a literary or a political contest, and better fitted for such work probably than for that to which he was ordained. His sermons, however, are exceedingly able, and in a literary view are among the best that we have. He took an active part in the virulent controversy between Bentley and Boyle about the authenticity of the Epistles of Phalaris, more than half of Boyle's portion being written by Atterbury. He engaged actively also in the Convocation controversy against Burnet, Hoadley, and Wake.