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Passages already quoted illustrate the extravagance of his humour, as it appears in epigrammatic paradox, and in the application of very homely language to affairs usually treated with stiff dignity. His Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the Moon,' is, as we should expect from the title, full of extravagant fun- -so extravagant that the satire is converted into humour. In the passage quoted concerning the Irish and French wars (p. 349), the satire is predominant; but very often he loses sight of his polemical purpose, and gives a loose rein to his powers of ludicrous invention. The metaphorical description of the discoveries of the great psychologist (p. 348) is a fair example. Here is another :

"If these labours of mine shall prove successful, I may, in my next journey that way, take an abstract of their most admirable tracts in navigation, and the mysteries of Chinese mathematics; which outdo all modern invention at that rate, that it is inconceivable; in this elaborate work I must run through the 365 volumes of Augro-machi-lanquaro-zi, the most ancient mathematician in all China; from thence I shall give a description of a fleet of ships of a hundred thousand sail, built at the expense of the emperor Tangro the XVth.; who, having notice of the general deluge, prepared these vessels, to every city and town in his dominions one, and in bulk proportioned to the number of its inhabitants; into which vessel all the people, with such movables as they thought fit to save, and with a hundred and twenty days' provisions, were received at the time of the flood; and the rest of their goods being put into great vessels made of China ware, and fast luted down on the top, were preserved unhurt by the water: these ships they furnished with six hundred fathom of chain instead of cables, which being fastened by wonderful arts to the earth, every vessel rid out the deluge just at the town's end; so that when the waters abated, the people had nothing to do but to open the doors made in the ship-sides and come out, repair their houses, open the great China pots their goods were in, and so put themselves in statu quo."

One of the most striking features in our author's wit is his power of irony. Of this power he received very disagreeable proof his ironical proposal, 'The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,' was praised by the extreme High-fliers as an admirable idea, and the mocking author imprisoned when they discovered to their fury how they had been cheated; and eleven years later, his ironical Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover' was misinterpreted by the Government, and much to his surprise, he was incarcerated as a genuine Jacobite. We have quoted the opening of the latter piece. The following is a portion of the mock declamation of his 'Shortest Way:'

"It is now near fourteen years that the glory and peace of the purest and most flourishing church in the world has been eclipsed, buffeted, and disturbed, by a sort of men who God in His providence has suffered to insult over her, and bring her down; these have been the days of her humiliation and tribulation. She was born with an invincible patience, the reproach of the wicked, and God has at last heard her prayers, and delivered her from the oppression of the stranger.

"And now they find their day is over, their power gone, and the throne of this nation possessed by a royal, English, true, and ever-constant member of, and friend to the Church of England. Now that they find they are in danger of the Church of England's just resentments; now they cry out peace, union, forbearance, and charity, as if the Church had not too long harboured her enemies under her wing, and nourished the viperous brood, till they hiss and fly in the face of the mother that cherished them.

"No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past, your day of grace is over; you should have practised peace, and moderation, and charity, if you expected any yourselves.

"We have heard more of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you are the church established by law, as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our church-doors, and the church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not; where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that could not take oaths as fast as you made them? that having sworn allegiance to their lawful and rightful King, could not dispense with that oath, their King being still alive, and swear to your new hodge-podge of a Dutch government? These have been turned out of their livings, and they and their families left to starve; their estates double taxed, to carry on a war they had no hand in, and you got nothing by. What account can you give of the multitudes you have forced to comply, against their consciences, with your new sophistical politics, who, like new converts in France, sin because they can't starve? And now the tables are turned upon you, you must not be persecuted, 'tis not a Christian spirit!

"Your management of your Dutch monarch, whom you reduced to a mere king of cl-s, is enough to give any future princes such an idea of your principles, as to warn them sufficiently from coming into your clutches; and, God be thanked, the Queen is out of your hands, knows you, and will have a care of you."

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Defoe, as is testified by every page of his writings, excelled in the graphic presentation both of concrete things and of states of mind. He did not attempt comprehensive formal delineations of complicated scenes, and so does not exhibit Descriptive method in its most difficult application; yet he must be allowed to be one of our greatest masters of single descriptive touches.

One variety of descriptive method, indeed, he may be said to have employed, and that with the highest success-the presentation of scenes from the traveller's point of view. He puts before us the various features of a country as they turn up in his narrative. There is no full description of Robinson Crusoe's island in any one place, but particular is added to particular as they occurred to Robinson himself, and before the close of the narrative we know the island from shore to shore. He acts upon the same plan in all his narratives. One of his narratives in particular, his Voyage Round the World,' is framed expressly for descriptive purposes; in that work his main object is to present a systematic

body of his multifarious knowledge concerning foreign countries, foreign trade, and foreign adventures, by sea and by land.

It is worthy of remark that he observes the cardinal rule of description, the inaugural presentation of a comprehensive view. He fills in the picture by degrees, but he begins by drawing the general outline. One of the first things that Robinson Crusoe does is to go to the top of a hill and view the country:—

"After I had with great labour and difficulty got to the top, I saw my fate, to my great affliction, viz., that I was in an island environed every way with the sea, no land to be seen except some rocks, which lay a great way off, and two small islands, less than this, which lay about three leagues to the west. I found also that the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw good reason to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom, however, I saw none."

Another thing worth observing in his descriptions is that he has a Herodotean knack of giving numerical measures of extent, and of indicating the lie of a country by a reference to the points of the compass. This is one of his arts for giving an air of reality

to his narratives.

The Narrative art of so successful a story-teller as Defoe deserves careful study. He chooses the simplest form of narration, the record by an individual of incidents that have happened within his personal knowledge. His narratives are all autobiographical. In his Memoirs of a Cavalier,' and others of his works, he mingles general accounts of public transactions that the Cavalier took part in with the narrative of personal adventures; but it is in the narrative of personal adventures that the interest of the work consists.

The question arises, Does he show any art beyond the accumulation of interesting incidents: does he show skill in the order of presenting them? Apart from the question of interest,-which, it is superfluous to say, Defoe sustains with unique power, his narrative is eminently perspicuous. He has, to be sure, no complicated difficulties to overcome, but he observes all the conditions of perspicuity for the simple forms of narrative that he professes: when he shifts the scene, he gives the reader distinct intimation of the change; when new agents are introduced, their appearance is expressly announced; and he does not depart from the order of events without an apology and ample explanation. And as he is tolerably exact in his measurement of space, so he is tolerably exact in his measurement of time: the assigning of definite dates also helps to keep up the air of reality. We have mentioned these various items of lucidity without qualification: it should be added, that though Defoe observes these conditions in the main, his nar

ratives were for the most part written hurriedly, and the close reader finds an occasional confusion.

For popular Exposition, apart from his general felicity of language, Defoe had two strong cards: a multifarious, and, comparatively speaking, inexhaustible command of examples and comparisons. His 'Complete English Tradesman' is a manual of advice that still finds readers.

JONATHAN SWIFT, 1667-1745.

The author of 'Gulliver's Travels,' the eccentric Dean of St Patrick's in Ireland, has been all but universally acknowledged as the most vigorous and grammatical writer of English anterior to Johnson.

He was born in Dublin, the posthumous son of Jonathan Swift, a native of Yorkshire, said to be second cousin to the poet Dryden; and was educated by the charity of an uncle at the school of Kilkenny, and at Trinity College, Dublin. He entered the world, at the age of twenty-one, as private secretary to Sir William Temple, who had married a relative of his mother. This post he held, with a brief interval, for eleven years, remaining in the Moor Park family till the death of Sir William in 1699. Again thrown on his own resources, he was for a short time chaplain in the family of Lord Berkeley, and from him obtained in 1700 the livings of Laracor and Rathbeggin in the diocese of Meath. He rose to no higher preferment till made Dean of St Patrick's by his Tory friends in 1713.

Like other literary men of the time, he took an interest in politics, and wrote with a political aim. His first publication, 'Dissensions in Athens and Rome,' appeared in 1701, when the author was thirty-four years of age: it relates the evil consequences of dissensions between Nobles and Commons in the ancient states, and points a moral against the quarrelsome behaviour of the English Commons. The anonymous Tale of a Tub,'-a satire on religious dissensions and the self-sufficiency of the different Churches, filled out with numerous satirical digressions on various subjects, -was written about 1696, and first published in 1704. Along with the Tale of a Tub' appeared 'The Battle of the Books-a burlesque on Temple's opponents in the Ancient versus Modern controversy. In 1708 he took a leading place among the wits by his ridicule of John Partridge, the Philomath or Astrologer. This performance made the name of Isaac Bickerstaff one of the most popular in town, for which reason it was assumed by Steele when he began the 'Tatler.' From 1710 to 1714, the four last years of Queen Anne's reign, he was the chief

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literary support of the Tory Administration, writing the 'Conduct of the Allies,' the Letter to the October Club,' the Examiner,' and other telling compositions. His 'Journal to Stella' was written during his residence in London at this period. When George came to the throne, and the power of government passed to the Whigs, he retired to his Irish deanery. Ten years thereafter he made a great sensation in the political world, and gained unexampled popularity in Ireland, by his 'Drapier's Letters,' written against Wood's patent for a copper coinage. The letters raised such a commotion that the patent had to be revoked. Gulliver's Travels' was published in 1726-27, and “was received with such avidity that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could be made."

Swift's relations with Stella and Vanessa-Miss Johnson and Miss Vanhomrigh-are too complicated to be here entered upon at length. Stella passed as a daughter of Sir William Temple's steward, but was believed to be the natural daughter of Sir William himself. When Swift went to Ireland he persuaded her to come and live near him under the charge of Mrs Dingley, kept up with her all the intimacy of a Platonic friendship, and latterly was united to her by a private marriage, though the connection was for some reason or other never publicly acknowledged. His relations with Miss Vanhomrigh were less mysterious, but more tragical. As her literary tutor, he suffered or encouraged her to fall passionately in love with him. Warm-hearted and impetuous, she made him an offer of marriage; and when he equivocated and urged delay, she threw reserve aside, and pursued the unusual suit with warm entreaty and argument. She died of a broken heart, on discovering the Dean's intimacy with Stella.

Swift is described by Sir Walter Scott as "in person tall, strong, and well made, of a dark complexion, but with blue eyes, black and bushy eyebrows, nose somewhat aquiline, and features which remarkably expressed the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind."

It needed considerable constitutional strength to support the astonishing force of his character; yet there would seem to have been some radical disorder in his system. From our earliest records of his behaviour, he was excessively irritable, at times even savagely so. He could not endure to accommodate himself to people; he either gloomily held his tongue, or overbore opposition with fierce impatience. We can hardly explain this without supposing some radical distemper; it may have been the uneasy beginnings of the brain disease that afterwards unhinged his

reason.

Taken as a whole, his writings leave upon our minds a wonder

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