Part 15

A while ago this used to be spoken of as the Golden or Augustan age of English literature. We do not talk in that manner now. We feel that when we get among the authors of the times of Queen Anne and the first George we are among very pleasant and very clever men, but by no means among giants. In coming down to this period from those going before it, we have an immediate sensation of having left the region of "greatness" behind us. We still find plenty of good writing, characterized by certain qualities of trimness, artificial grace, and the like, to a degree not before attained; here and there also, we discern something like real power and strength, breaking through the prevailing element; but, on the whole, there is an absence of what, except by a compromise of language, could be called "great." It is the same whether we regard largeness of imaginative faculty, loftiness of moral spirit, or vigour of speculative capacity, as principally concerned in imparting the character of "greatness" to literature. What of genius in the ideal survived the seventeenth century in England contented itself with nice little imaginations of scenes and circumstances connected with the artificial life of the time; the moral quality most in repute was kindliness or courtesy; and speculation did not go beyond that point where thought retains the form either of ordinary good sense, or of keen momentary wit. No sooner, in fact, do we pass the time of Milton than we feel that we have done with the sublimities. A kind of lumbering largeness does remain in the intellectual gait of Dryden and his contemporaries, as if the age still wore the armour of the old literary forms, though not at home in it; but in Pope's days even the affectation of the "great" had ceased. Not slowly to build up a grand poem of continuous ideal action, not quietly and at leisure to weave forth tissues of fantastic imagery, not perseveringly and laboriously to prosecute one track of speculation and bring it to a close, not earnestly and courageously to throw one's whole soul into a work of moral agitation and reform, was now what was regarded as natural in literature. On the contrary, he was a wit, or a literary man, who, living in the midst of the social bustle, or on the skirts of it, could throw forth in the easiest manner little essays, squibs, and _jeux d'esprit_, pertinent to the rapid occasions of the hour, and never tasking the mind too long or too much. This was the time when that great distinction between Whiggism and Toryism which for a century-and-a-half has existed in Great Britain as a kind of permanent social condition, affecting the intellectual activity of all natives from the moment of their birth, first began to be practically operative. It has, on the whole, been a wretched thing for the mind of England to have had this necessity of being either a Whig or a Tory put so prominently before it. Perhaps, in all times, some similar necessity of taking one side or the other in some current form of controversy has afflicted the leading minds, and tormented the more genial among them; but we question if ever in this country in previous times there was a form of controversy, so little to be identified, in real reason, with the one only true controversy between good and evil, and so capable, therefore, of breeding confusion and mischief, when so identified in practice, as this poor controversy of Whig and Tory which came in with the Revolution. To be called upon to be either a Puritan or a Cavalier--there was some possibility of complying with _that_ call and still leading a tolerably free and large intellectual life; though possibly it was one, cause of the rich mental development of the Elizabethan era that the men of that time were exempt from any personal obligation of attending even to this distinction. But to be called upon to be either a Whig or a Tory--why, how on earth can one retain any of the larger humanities about him if society is to hold him by the neck between two chairs such as these, pointing alternately to the one and to the other, and incessantly asking him on which of the two he means to sit? Into a mind trained to regard adhesiveness to one or other of these chairs as the first rule of duty or of prudence what thoughts of any high interest can find their way? Or, if any such do find their way, how are they to be adjusted to so mean a rule? Now-a-days, our higher spirits solve the difficulty by kicking both chairs down, and plainly telling society that they will not bind themselves to sit on either, or even on both put together. Hence partly it is that, in recent times, we have had renewed specimens of the "great" or "sublime" in literature--the poetry, for example, of a Byron, a Wordsworth, or a Tennyson. But in the interval between 1688 and 1727 there was not one wit alive whom society let off from the necessity of being, and declaring himself to be, either a Whig or a Tory. Constitutionally, and by circumstances, Pope was the man who could have most easily obtained the exemption; but even Pope professed himself a Tory. Addison and Steele were Whigs. In short, every literary man was bound, by the strongest of all motives, to keep in view, as a permanent fact qualifying his literary undertakings, the distinction between Whiggism and Toryism, and to give to at least a considerable part of his writings the character of pamphlets or essays in the service of his party. To minister by the pen to the occasions of Whiggism and Toryism was, therefore, the main business of the wits both in prose and verse. Out of those occasions of ministration there of course arose personal quarrels, and these furnished fresh opportunities to the men of letters. Critics of previous writings could be satirized and lampooned, and thus the circle of subjects was widened. Moreover, there was abundant matter, capable of being treated consistently with either Whiggism or Toryism, in the social foibles and peculiarities of the day, as we see in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. Nor could a genial mind like that of Steele, a man of taste and fine thought like Addison, and an intellect so keen, exquisite, and sensitive as that of Pope, fail to variegate and surround all the duller and harder literature thus called into being with more lasting touches of the humorous, the fanciful, the sweet, the impassioned, the meditative, and the ideal. Thus from one was obtained the character of a _Sir Roger de Coverley_, from another a _Vision of Mirza_, and from the third a _Windsor Forest_, an _Epistle of Heloise_, and much else that delights us still. After all, however, it remains true that the period of English literature now in question, whatever admirable characteristics it may possess, exhibits a remarkable deficiency of what, with recollections of former periods to guide us in our use of epithets, we should call great or sublime.

With the single exception of Pope, and that exception made from deference to the peculiar position of Pope as the poet or metrical artist of his day, the greatest name in the history of English literature during the early part of last century is that of Swift. In certain fine and deep qualities, Addison and Steele, and perhaps Farquhar, excelled him, just as in the succeeding generation Goldsmith had a finer vein of genius than was to be found in Johnson with all his massiveness; but in natural brawn and strength, in original energy, force, and imperiousness of brain, he excelled them all. It was about the year 1702, when he was already thirty-five years of age, that this strangest specimen of an Irishman, or of an Englishman born in Ireland, first attracted attention in London literary circles. The scene of his first appearance was Button's coffee-house: the witnesses were Addison, Ambrose Philips, and other wits belonging to Addison's little senate, who used to assemble there.

"They had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman come into the coffee-house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any of those who frequented it, and whose custom it was to lay his hat down on a table, and walk backward and forward at a good pace for half an hour or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seeming in the least to attend to anything that was going forward there. He then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away without opening his lips. After having observed this singular behaviour for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses; and the name that he went by among them was that of 'the mad parson.' This made them more than usually attentive to his motions; and one evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be just come out of the country, and at last advance towards him as intending to address him. They were all eager to hear what this dumb mad parson had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, 'Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the world?' The country gentleman, after staring a little at the singularity of his manner, and the oddity of the question, answered 'Yes, sir, I thank God I remember a great deal of good weather in my time.' 'That is more,' said Swift, 'than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all very well.' Upon saying this, he took up his hat, and without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least notice of anyone, walked out of the coffee-house; leaving all those who had been spectators of this odd scene staring after him, and still more confirmed in the opinion of his being mad."--_Dr. Sheridan's Life of Swift, quoted in Scott's Life._

If the company present had had sufficient means of information, they would have found that the mad parson with the harsh, swarthy features, and eyes "azure as the heavens," whose oddities thus amused them, was Jonathan Swift, then clergyman of Laracor, a rural parish in the diocese of Meath in Ireland. They would have found that he was an Irishman by birth, though of pure English descent; that he could trace a relationship to Dryden; that, having been born after his father's death, he had been educated, at the expense of his relatives, at Trinity College, Dublin; that, leaving Ireland in his twenty-second year, with but a sorry character from the College authorities, he had been received as a humble dependent into the family of Sir William Temple, at Sheen and Moorpark, near London, that courtly Whig and ex-ambassador being distantly connected with his mother's family; that here, while acting as Sir William's secretary, amanuensis, librarian, and what not, he had begun to write verses and other trifles, some of which he had shown to Dryden, who had told him in reply that they were sad stuff, and that he would never be a poet; that still, being of a restless, ambitious temper, he had not given up hopes of obtaining introduction into public employment in England through Sir William Temple's influence; that, at length, at the age of twenty-eight, despairing of anything better, he had quarrelled with Sir William, returned to Ireland, taken priest's orders, and settled in a living; and that again, disgusted with Ireland and his prospects in that country, he had come back to Moorpark, and resided there till 1699, when Sir William's death had obliged him finally to return to Ireland, and accept first a chaplaincy to Lord Justice Berkeley, and then his present living in the diocese of Meath. If curious about the personal habits of this restless Irish parson, they might have found that he had already won the reputation of an eccentric in his own parish and district: performing his parochial duties when at home with scrupulous care, yet by his language and manners often shocking all ideas of clerical decorum and begetting a doubt as to his sincerity in the religion he professed; boisterous, fierce, overbearing, and insulting to all about him, yet often doing acts of real kindness; exact and economical in his management of his income to the verge of actual parsimony, yet sometimes spending money freely, and never without pensioners living on his bounty. They would have found that he was habitually irritable, and that he was subject to a recurring giddiness of the head, or vertigo, which he had brought on, as he thought himself, by a surfeit of fruit while he was staying with Sir William Temple at Sheen. And, what might have been the best bit of gossip of all, they would have found that, though unmarried, and entertaining a most unaccountable and violent aversion to the very idea of marriage, he had taken over to reside with him, or close to his neighbourhood, in Ireland, a certain young and beautiful girl, named Hester Johnson, with whom he had formed an acquaintance in Sir William Temple's house, where she had been brought up, and where, though she passed as a daughter of Sir William's steward, she was believed to be, in reality, a natural daughter of Sir William himself. They would have found that his relations to this girl, whom he had himself educated from her childhood at Sheen and Moorpark, were of a very singular and puzzling kind; that on the one hand she was devotedly attached to him, and on the other he cherished a passionate affection for her, wrote and spoke of her as his "Stella," and liked always to have her near him; yet that a marriage between them seemed not to be thought of by either; and that, in order to have her near him without giving rise to scandal, he had taken the precaution to bring over an elderly maiden lady, called Mrs. Dingley, to reside with her as a companion, and was most careful to be in her society only when this Mrs. Dingley was present.

There was mystery and romance enough, therefore, about the wild, black-browed Irish parson, who attracted the regards of the wits in Button's coffee-house. What had brought him there? That was partly a mystery too; but the mystery would have been pretty well solved if it had been known that, uncouth-looking clerical lout as he was, he was an author like the rest of them, having just written a political pamphlet which was making or was to make a good deal of noise in the world, and having at that moment in his pocket at least one other piece which he was about to publish. The political pamphlet was an _Essay on the Civil Discords in Athens and Rome_, having an obvious bearing on certain dissensions then threatening to break up the Whig party in Great Britain. It was received as a vigorous piece of writing on the ministerial side, and was ascribed by some to Lord Somers, and by others to Burnet. Swift had come over to claim it, and to see what it and his former connexion with Temple could do for him among the leading Whigs. For the truth was, an ambition equal to his consciousness of power gnawed at the heart of this furious and gifted man, whom a perverse fate had flung away into an obscure vicarage on the wrong side of the channel. His books, his garden, his canal with its willows at Laracor; his dearly-beloved Roger Coxe, and the other perplexed and admiring parishioners of Laracor over whom he domineered; his clerical colleagues in the neighbourhood; and even the society of Stella, the wittiest and best of her sex, whom he loved better than any other creature on earth: all these were insufficient to occupy the craving void in his mind. He hated Ireland, and regarded his lot there as one of banishment; he longed to be in London, and struggling in the centre of whatever was going on. About the date of his appointment to the living of Laracor he had lost the rich deanery of Derry, which Lord Berkeley had meant to give him, in consequence of a notion on the part of the bishop of the diocese that he was a restless, ingenious young man, who, instead of residing, would be "eternally flying backwards and forwards to London." The bishop's perception of his character was just. At or about the very time when the wits at Button's saw him stalking up and down in the coffee-house, the priest of Laracor was introducing himself to Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, and others, and stating the terms on which he would support the Whigs with his pen. Even then, it seems, he took high ground, and let it be known that he was no mere hireling. The following, written at a much later period, is his own explanation of the nature and limits of his Whiggism at the time when he first offered the Whigs his services:--

"It was then (1701-2) I began to trouble myself with the differences between the principles of Whig and Tory; having formerly employed myself in other, and, I think, much better speculations. I talked often upon this subject with Lord Somers; told him that, having been long conversant with the Greek and Latin authors, and therefore a lover of liberty, I found myself much inclined to be what they call a Whig in politics; and that, besides, I thought it impossible, upon any other principles, to defend or submit to the Revolution; but, as to religion, I confessed myself to be a High-Churchman, and that I could not conceive how anyone who wore the habit of a clergyman could be otherwise; that I had observed very well with what insolence and haughtiness some lords of the High-Church party treated not only their own chaplains, but all other clergymen whatsoever, and thought this was sufficiently recompensed by their professions of zeal to the Church: that I had likewise observed how the Whig lords took a direct contrary measure, treated the persons of particular clergymen with particular courtesy, but showed much contempt and ill-will for the order in general: that I knew it was necessary for their party to make their bottom as wide as they could, by taking all denominations of Protestants to be members of their body: that I would not enter into the mutual reproaches made by the violent men on either side; but that the connivance or encouragement given by the Whigs to those writers of pamphlets who reflected upon the whole body of the clergy, without any exception, would unite the Church to one man to oppose them; and that I doubted his lordship's friends did not consider the consequences of this."

Even with these limitations the assistance of so energetic a man as the parson of Laracor was doubtless welcome to the Whigs. His former connexion with the stately old Revolution Whig, Sir William Temple, may have prepared the way for him, as it had already been the means of making him known in some aristocratic families. But there was evidence in his personal bearing and his writings that he was not a man to be neglected. And, if there had been any doubt on the subject on his first presentation of himself to ministers, the publication of his _Battle of the Books_ and his _Tale of a Tub_ in 1703 and 1704 would have set it overwhelmingly at rest. The author of these works (and, though they were anonymous, they were at once referred to Swift) could not but be acknowledged as the first prose satirist, and one of the most formidable writers, of the age. On his subsequent visits to Button's, therefore (and they were frequent enough; for, as the Bishop of Derry had foreseen, he was often an absentee from his parish), the mad Irish parson was no longer a stranger to the company. Addison, Steele, Tickell, Philips, and the other Whig wits came to know him well, and to feel his weight among them in their daily convivial meetings. "To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of the age" was the inscription written by Addison on a copy of his Travels presented to Swift; and it shows what opinion Addison and those about him had formed of the author of the _Tale of a Tub_.