The Age of Pope

'But friendship in its greatest height,A constant rational delight,On Virtue's basis fixed to lastWhen love's allurements long are past,Which gently warms but cannot burn,He gladly offers in return;His want of passion will redeemWith gratitude, respect, esteem;With that devotion we bestowWhen goddesses appear below.'

And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman who confessed the 'inexpressible passion' she had for him, and that his 'dear image' was always before her eyes. 'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that prodigious awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming compassion shines through your countenance which moves my soul.' Swift had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging a friendship with Vanessa, and when she followed him to Dublin, in the neighbourhood of which she had some property, he knew not how to escape from the snare his own folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and esteem,' but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a guest;' the same cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain. According to a report, the authority of which is doubtful, Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in 1723, asking if she was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent the letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he rode to Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and left again without saying a word. The blow was fatal, and Vanessa died soon afterwards, revoking her will in Swift's favour and leaving to him the legacy of remorse. Having told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return to the Journal to Stella, which dates from September 2nd, 1710, to June 6th, 1713.

Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was writing every day for Esther Johnson's sake would be read and enjoyed by thousands who care little or nothing for the party questions upon which the strenuous efforts of his intellect were expended. The early years of the eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than this Journal. Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and ease of style, the tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in its 'little language,' and the illustrations it supplies incidentally of the manners of the court and town, these are some of the charms that make us turn again and again to its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's egotism and trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys or Montaigne, and can imagine the eagerness with which the Letters were read by the lovely woman whose destiny it was to receive everything from Swift save the love which has its consummation in marriage. The style of the Journal is not that of an author composing, but of a companion talking; and it is all the more interesting since it reveals Swift's character under a pleasanter aspect than any of his formal writings. We see in it what a warm heart he had for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and with what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors, while receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers himself.

In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus Club, an association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot, and Gay, and it was about this time that his friendship with Pope began. The members proposed writing a satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to Dublin as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion of the Scriblerus wits by writing Gulliver's Travels (1726), a book that has made his name known throughout Europe, and in all the lands where English literature is read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use of hints and descriptions which he had met with in the course of his reading, this is one of the most original works of fiction ever written, and one of the wittiest. Yet like almost everything that Swift wrote, it is deformed by grossness of expression, and in the latter portion by a malignant contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased imagination. The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags, purified from coarse allusions, are the delight of children; but the description of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites disgust and indignation. He said that his object in writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has succeeded.

'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the sanest and healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of probability, too – for there are degrees of probability, proper even to the wildest fiction – the fourth part of Gulliver is inferior to the three others… The mind rejects, as utterly impossible, the supposition of a nation of horses, placed in houses which they could not build, fed with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save, possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that milk in vessels which they could not make, and, in short, performing a hundred purposes of rational and social life for which their external structure altogether unfits them.'46

Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so outraged in the story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.

Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence of little people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants 'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details, make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.' It is curious to note that Swift, who made a strange vow in early life 'not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly,' should have done more to delight them than any author of his century, with the exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope wrote a joint letter to Swift on the appearance of the Travels, pretending that they did not know the author, and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery… It has passed Lords and Commons nemine contradicente, and the whole town, men, women, and children, are quite full of it.' A book which attained in the author's lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the Travels, Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once, about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me.'

The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's History. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.

In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, 'mention a pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy till a law were made for burning everything that came from England, except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'

"Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum – "

The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer. Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the prosecution was dropped.

Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the issue of the Drapier's Letters, purporting to come from a Dublin draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known perfectly well from whom the Letters came, but no one would betray Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter 'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that the writer is not afraid of plain speaking. After saying that the king cannot compel the subject to take any money except it be sterling gold or silver, he adds:

'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his accomplices, charging us with disputing the King's prerogative by refusing his brass, can have no place – because compelling the subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the King's prerogative, and I am very confident, if it were so, we should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his Majesty, as from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from some, who seem to think we have neither common sense nor common senses. But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our fellow-subjects, and not our masters. One great merit I am sure we have which those of English birth can have no pretence to – that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse climate – the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do not consent – a ruined trade – a House of Peers without jurisdiction – almost an incapacity for all employments – and the dread of Wood's halfpence. But we are so far from disputing the king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give a patent to any man for setting his royal image and superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to Japan; only attended with one small limitation – that nobody alive is obliged to take them.'

With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter, Swift undertakes to show that Walpole is against Wood's project 'by this one invincible argument, that he has the universal opinion of being a wise man, an able minister, and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the King his master; and that as his integrity is above all corruption, so is his fortune above all temptation.'

Swift's arguments in the Drapier's Letters are sophistical, his statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice sometimes shameless, as, for instance, in recommending what is now but too well known as 'boycotting.' The end, however, was gained, and the Dean was treated with the honours of a conqueror. On his return from England in 1726, a guard of honour conducted him through the streets, and the city bells sounded a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with something like royal honours, and when Walpole talked of arresting him, he was told that 10,000 soldiers would be needed to make the attempt successful. The Dean's hatred of oppression and injustice had its limits. He defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from every kind of power.

In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate style, which makes his amazing satire the more appalling, Swift published A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them Beneficial to the Public. A more hideous piece of irony was never written; it is the fruit of an indignation that tore his heart. The Proposal is, that considering the great misery of Ireland, young children should be used for food. 'I grant,' he says,'this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. 'A very worthy person, he says, considers that young lads and maidens over twelve would supply the want of venison, but 'it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty; which I confess has always been with me the strongest objection against any project, how well soever intended.' The business-like way in which the argument is conducted throughout, adds greatly to its force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this satire, and nothing that surpasses it in power.

The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this pamphlet. Two years before he had paid his last visit to the country where, as he said in a letter to Gay, he had made his friendships and left his desires. On the death of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to gain some preferment there through the aid of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of George II., and returned to 'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage invective against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his sæva indignatio:

'Could I from the building's topHear the rattling thunder drop,While the devil upon the roof(If the devil be thunder-proof)Should with poker fiery redCrack the stones and melt the lead;Drive them down on every skull,While the den of thieves is full;Quite destroy that harpies' nest,How might then our isle be blest!'

It should be observed at the same time that even in his declining days, when his heart was heavy with bitterness, Swift indulged in practical jokes and in the most trivial pursuits. Vive la bagatelle was his cry, but it was the cry of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser pursuits of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew nothing. His hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain. Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital for lunatics,

'And showed by one satiric touchNo nation needed it so much.'

A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice' of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that Swift's 'philosophy of life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of our nature – revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'47

This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain streams – these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence. Doubtless, as a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his language is admirably fitted for that end. What more then, it may be asked, can be needed? The reply is, that in composition, as in other things, there are different orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be a low kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and light,' to quote a phrase of his own, which distinguish our greatest prose writers. It lacks also the elevation which inspires, and the persuasiveness that convinces while it charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison, Swift, apart from his Letters, has none of Addison's attractiveness. No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn and contempt; but its author cannot express, because he does not possess, the sense of beauty.

Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of letters. He wrote neither for literary fame nor for money. His ambition was to be a ruler of men, and in imperious will he was strong enough to make a second Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret, 'how I governed Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift, "quæsitam meritis sume superbiam."' As a political pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was savagely in earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant. If argument was against him he used satire; if satire failed he tried invective; his armoury was full of weapons, and there was not one of them he could not wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the ministers who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have already said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's commanding genius gives even to his most trivial productions a measure of vitality. The student of our eighteenth century literature is arrested by the man and his works, and to treat either him or them with indifference would be to neglect a significant chapter in the history of the time.

John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).

John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the Queen Anne wits, and the warm friend of Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose, in 1667. He studied medicine at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's degree at St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen, to seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published an Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, and having won high reputation as a man of science, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years later he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne; and it was not long before he had as high a repute among men of letters as with men of science. He suffered frequently from illness; but no pain, it has been said, could extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had sent Gay there on one occasion, and thither in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains… He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'

There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only was his equal, and in classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like Othello, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a kindred spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.' His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said he had every virtue which could make a man amiable; Berkeley wrote of him as a great philosopher who was reckoned the first mathematician of the age and had the character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and Chesterfield, who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible imagination' were at every one's service, added that 'charity, benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said and did.'

Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is to be gleaned from the correspondence of his friends, and it is only of late years that an attempt has been made to write the doctor's biography, and to collect his works.48 To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult and a doubtful task – several of Arbuthnot's writings having been produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay. So indifferent was he to literary fame, that his children are said to have made kites of papers in which he had jotted down hints that would have furnished good matter for folios. His most famous work is The History of John Bull (1713), which Macaulay considered the most humorous political satire in the language. It was designed to help the Tory party at the expense of the Duke of Marlborough, whose genius as a military leader was probably equal to that of Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke' in the virtues which form a noble character. The irony and dry humour of the satire remind one of Swift, and, like Arbuthnot's Art of Political Lying, is so much in Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be excused for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St. Patrick's.

The History of John Bull is not fitted to attain lasting popularity. It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant satire of living men and passing events can be but vaguely imagined by readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat, and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his neighbours to be hen-pecked, 'which was impossible by such a mild-spirited woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by such wily men of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and Lord Strutt of Spain, and also that other tradesmen should be willing to join John and Nic Frog, the linen-draper of Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and Frog, or Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was scarce possible so effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's splendid achievements as by parodying them under the history of a suit conducted by a wily attorney who made every advantage gained over the defendant a reason for protracting law procedure, and enhancing the expense of his client.' In this long lawsuit everybody is represented as gaining something except John Bull, whose ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of John Bull originated with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him is not known.

Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club, and wrote the larger portion of the Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus (1741), the design of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule false tastes in learning, in the character of a man 'that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he is right; but the Memoirs contain some humorous points which, if they do not create merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the language, that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as iota.' He also taught him as a diversion 'an odd and secret manner of stealing, according to the custom of the Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so well that he practised it till the day of his death.' Martin studies logic, philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the soul is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides in the stomach of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in the fingers of fiddlers, and in the toes of rope-dancers. His discoveries, it may be added, are made 'without the trivial help of experiments or observations.'