squeamishness would have been unintelligi-a cassock and bands-just as he advised ble to the ancients, and would have been him to husband his shillings and put his despised by the grand feudal ages, which thousand pounds out at interest." thought none the worse of Walter Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford, for writing a jolly drinking song. But during the seventeenth century the poison of puritanical cant spread upwards from the baser parts of the social body, and infected parts which ought to have been ever free from it.

Having indicated that Swift was a mere bullying adventurer, Thackeray goes into a sketch of his life. His portrait of Temple, Swift's early patron, is admirable, for who in our time could paint like him? But though Thackeray had a vein of reflection and a range of knowledge quite beyond the reach of the Trollopes, Collinses, &c., with whom we have had to content ourselves since his death, he was always apt to view things rather as a novelist than as a scholar. Nobody would suppose from his picture of Temple, the fine gentleman and the literary dilettante, that Temple had written anything so valuable as his "Observations on the United Province of the Netherlands," which is a text-book in Holland to this day. Again it was a little shabby in him (must one say it?) to bring into such prominence the verses about Temple which young Swift wrote when in his household; or the "penitential letter" which he addressed to the somewhat cold-hearted and over-punctilious big-wig. In those days there was a deference paid to men of rank by inferiors and dependents-even when these were, as Swift, was gentlemen by descent* such as we have little experience of now, but such as some people (myself for one) much prefer to the loose, irreverent, sham independence of modern times. Swift wrote and acted precisely as any other man of genius of the same years, and in the same status, would have written and acted under the circumstances. This satire, however, against a greater satirist, is harmless compared with what follows regarding "the sincerity of Swift's religion." For once, at this point Thackeray "condescends," as the Scotch say, on a detail:

"I know of few things," he writes, "more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the bench. Gay, the author of the Beggar's Opera' Gay, the wildest of the wits about town: it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders to invest in

A fact which Swift never forgot for an hour, and which contributed to form and to prove the sincerity of his political creed.

But

Who would not suppose from this that the advice in question sprang from a grave theory of the Dean's as to his friend's best chance of getting on in the world? we have more than a dozen letters of Swift's to Gay, and the only passage corroborating Thackeray's view comes in at the fag end of one of them, obviously as a joke, and as a side sarcasm at the Irish bishops. It is a letter written from Dublin in January, 1722– 3, full of satirical hits, and easy though acrid fun; and after expressing a wish that Gay would come and settle in Ireland, Swift concludes:

"Take care of your health and money; be less modest and more active; or else turn parson, and get a bishopric here. Would to God they would send us as good ones from your side!" (Scott's "Swift,' 2nd ed. xvi. pp. 400-1).

The great writers of that day lived in an element of comedy and jolly raillery, as everybody really intimate with their correspondence knows. And this suggestion, about which Thackeray makes such a solemn pother, is only a characteristic sample of their fun. The Dean wanted his friend to live where he could see him, so he tells him to turn parson and get an Irish bishopric, having a gird meanwhile (more suo) at the Irish bishops already existing. To suppose Swift in earnest is to suppose that he thought Gay (who never got anything, in an age when almost everybody got something) capable of obtaining a preferment which he, with his mighty powers and reputation, had never been able to obtain for himself. And it supposes, also, that he was in earnest when he advised him, in the preceding clause of the sentence, to be "less modest."

What makes it more extraordinary that Thackeray should have impeached the Dean's religious sincerity, is that he had a favorite theory that hypocrisy in religion was something too awful to charge any body with. I have heard him maintain this doctrine, when he must have forgotten what he had said of Swift in the lecture before us. The charge, however, rests on mere conjecture. Nobody can know what Swift believed in his heart of hearts. Locke was as hard-headed a man as Swift, and he believed. Fielding was nearly as great a humorist, and he believed. What primâ facie presumption is there that Swift may not have believed likewise? Since he chose to enter the Church, and to profess belief, the

morists do if we viewed them in couples. They had both a certain austerity, gravity, and religiousness au fond which made their comedy more piquant-just as the grapes you gather during a ride in a Syrian lane seems more sweet because you pull them out of hedges full of the prickly pear. They both, on account of this, passed for cynics among dunces, who did not penetrate to their interior and essential tenderness. And they both, as writers, were singularly simple in their most effective passages, and combined a great nicety and delicacy of humour with the power of producing very broad and roystering humour when they pleased.

66

onus of proof that he was a hypocrite lies | Patrick's had a great deal in common, and on those who dare to bring that awful im- resembled each other in certain important putation. And it must be proof not points more than we should find many huguess-work, not inference from general facts, and facts which may be interpreted in more ways than one. But proofs Thackeray had not to bring only such vague speculations as the following: "He says of his sermons that he preached pamphlets; they have scarce a Christian character istic; they might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost: there is little or no cant he is too great and proud for that; and, in so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having put that cassock on, it poisoned him; he was strangled in his bands." As far as the first statement about the sermons is true for it is exaggerated - it is true of whole On the Stella and Vanessa question libraries of the sermons of the eighteenth cen- Thackeray is somewhat fairer than in treattury, when, as all reading men are aware, ing other aspects of Swift's life. He consermons were constantly mere moral essays; tradicts himself, no doubt, by talking of his even in Scotland, where daily fanaticism" cold heart" and "bad heart," while has always been as much in demand as daily bread. Burns has a famous passage on one of these "moral " preachers. So Swift's conformity to a growing custom of his time establishes nothing as to his faith one way or the other; while the "badness" of his sermons is an absurdity, that on the Trinity being considered excellent by good judges, and that on Sleeping in Church (Scott's "Swift," vol. viii. pp, 17-27) being at least as readable as the best of Thackeray's own "Roundabout Papers." A still more extraordinary error of Thackeray's, however, follows immediately on this unfounded charge against his spiritual honesty. Thackeray, a humorist himself the best humorist, as distinct from a caricaturist, of his age absolutely brings forward the Dean's "Modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country" as an illustration of his want of feeling and rage against children." If a dull humbug, if a puzzle-headed scribbler, a twaddling essayist, and ex-bagman, had made such a mistake, nobody would have been surprised. On the very face of it, the essay is a satire upon the misgovernment which had filled Ireland with beggars, and no more proves that Swift hated children than Lamb's toast to the memory of King Herod proves the same thing of him. The only conclusion is † See it handled with admirable delicacy by Sir that Thackeray was under the baneful spell Walter (Soott's "Swift," vol. i. p. 241, et seq.), Sir Walter has written better-more wisely, kindly, of a prejudice against Swift, and could not intelligently -on Swift than any man, Dr. Johnson see straight when the Dean was to be by no means excepted, from Lord Orrery to Dr. looked at. Yet — as I once took the liber-Life of the Dean must have new facts, or his work Wilde. Anybody who pretends to write a new ty of telling him he and the Dean of St. will be superfluous.

obliged to admit that his letters to Stella are more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching" than any "sentimental reading" in the world. But he sees that the brightest part of Swift's story" is "his love for Hester Johnson;" that "to have had so much love he must have given some; and so forth. However, Thackeray was under great difficulties in this part of the performance. It is an arduous task at any time it is an impossible task in addressing an audience of both sexes to touch on the only rational explanation which can be given of the mysterious reserve with which Swift shrank from the dades, the vivas, the aλapos. † That he even went through the form of marriage with Stella is open to doubt; that it was only a form if he did is certain; but in either case pity rather than hate is the feeling which his position must inspire in every generous mind. Stella lost only what it was not in his power to give; all the rest his tenderest friendship, his affectionate homage, the regard of his society, the place of honour at his table were hers; and Thackeray well asks in speaking of "her hard fate," "Would she have changed it?" Why, then, all this lamentation and objurgation, as if thousands

* I am thinking of the lanes near Beyrout.

of women did not go down to their graves, each of whom might bewail herself like AnIn tigone as being

ἄλεκτρον, ἁνυμέναιον, οὔτε τοῦ γάμου
μέρος λαχοῦσαν οὔτε παιδείου τροφής.

That the Vanessa episode caused Stella uneasiness is too clear; but let us be a little accurate in apportioning to the Dean his precise amount of blame in that matter. When he began his acquaintance with his neighbours the Vanhomrighs in Bury Street, he could not possibly foresee that the eldest daughter would make a dead set at a man who was more than twice her age, and with regard to whom she had abundant opportunities of knowing that one beautiful and gifted woman had already gone over to Ireland for the purpose of living near him and seeing him often:

"Vanessa, not in years a score, Dreams of a gown of forty-four; Imaginary charms can find

In eyes with reading almost blind."*

It was some time before Swift saw the state of her feelings, and knew that she loved him for more than the wit and other social qualities which made so many women fond of him. He did not seek her attach

ment:

"His conduct might have made him styled
A father, and the nymph his child.
That innocent delight he took
To see the virgin mind her book,
Was but the master's secret joy
In school to hear the finest boy."

Undoubtedly, when he discovered that it was by no means a paternal relation that the young lady contemplated, he ought to have avoided her society once and for all. But she was not the kind of woman to be so easily shaken off. So, when Swift had the weakness to shrink from that process, and to offer her his "friendship" (for there is no sign of his ever having deceived her by holding out any prospects of matrimony), she still went on making violent love to him, and settled in Ireland to be in his neighbourhood as Stella had done. The unlucky Dean" temporized" as long as he could in his difficult position not because he was hard-hearted, but because he was too goodhearted to throw overboard a woman that had a passion for him. We all know the

end: Vanessa died - her death accelerated by the disappointed feeling which she had nourished at all risks.* And this "hardhearted" man, smitten with anguish, hid himself in the South of Ireland for two months. The great, lonely, unhappy soul! He had keener feelings and more profoundly poetic depths in his nature than any genius of his age than all but the highest men of the more poetic ages before. It may be that in the meads of asphodel and the amaranthine bowers, Swift and Thackeray have met and loved, and, smiled with a tender pity at the errors which make us ignorant of each other in this world of darkness and sorrow.

From the Saturday Review, Sept. 21.
THE PEACE CONGRESS.

THE Peace Congress came to an end admirably suited to its short but lively existence. Summed up in one phrase, it was an incarnate bull; its very essence consisted in a systematic self-contradiction; it proposed to attain peace by means of universal internecine war, to quiet Europe by stirring up every existing quarrel, and precipitating every social dispute into instantaneous decision by force of numbers. In perfect har mony if the word is not rather misplaced

with this charming pro gramme, its conclusion was no conclusion at all, and its final sitting was as though a meeting of Quakers should resolve itself into a Donnybrook Fair. It stopped short of the amusement known to our American cousins as a free fight, in so far as there was no resort to physical force; but everybody spoke at once in denunciation of everybody else, and the result was that no conclusion was reached by legitimate means. However, the Peace Congress was above any such trifling consideration. To ordinary eyes the Congress ended in a confused hubbub; however, its leaders, to avoid such a self-stultification, declared that a resolution had been carried in accordance with which a Central Committee of the Cosmopolitan Confederation is to sit permanently at Geneva, and publish a newspaper. The city of Geneva is not unaccustomed to trifling disturbances on its own account, but these proceedings of

Bishop Berkeley, one of her legatess and executors, naturally knew her whole history; but it does not seem to have altered his feelings towards "Cadenus and Vanessa " (Scott's "Swift," vol. Swift, of whom he speaks affectionately long after

xiv. p. 487).

wards as "the poor dead Dean."

for

are to

the lovers of peace were rather too much lutionary cant, but may be very easily for its nerves. The Genevese not unnatu- translated into plain English. First we are rally objected to have domiciliated amongst to have "internal liberty in full." This is them a Central Committee of the United apparently meant to apply equally against States of Europe, whose avowed object the great centralized monarchies of the Conwould be to upset every existing Govern- tinent and the remnants of the aristocratic ment. A congress of lovers of peace may order in England. Then we are to have be tolerated for a week or so, even when sympathy for oppressed nationalities; that they propose a war or a revolution in almost is, the Pope is to be turned out of Rome, every European country. The naïveté of and the Russians out of Poland, and the their proposals makes the exhibition worth English out of Ireland. In the next place, endurance for the sake of the amusement to there is to be an organization of national be derived from them, and certainly their militias; and certainly nothing would make opponents ought to be the last persons to wars more bitter and more extensive in grudge them full opportunity for a display their effects than a substitution, if it were at of their interesting peculiarities; but a joke all practicable, of " national militias " persisted in with too much obstinacy be- standing armies. And finally, we comes a bore, and may turn out to have its have "the suppression of all the hindranserious aspects. The denunciation of the ces opposed by despotism to the complete Pope and of the "most pernicions of sects development of political, philosophical, and seems to have been felt as a grievance in a economical liberties"; which would justify city which makes a special boast of religious almost any revolution whatever, including toleration; but such ebullitions are a natu- certainly the reorganization of Germany on ral result of exhibiting a Garibaldi at a an entirely new scheme equally opposed to Peace Congress. One must of course take Austria and to Prussia, a new revolution in one's choice. A meeting of genuine hum- France, and a few more civil wars in Spain. drum peace-worshippers after the fashion of In short, however desirable the ends of the British platform philanthropy would be dull, Peace Congress may be in themselves, the but legitimate; but if it is desired to intro- attempt to hasten their attainment would duce new and startling effects, to bring a provide Europe with new materials for war great soldier on the stage in the character for some generations after the immediately of chief peacemaker, the brilliance of the pressing questions of the day have been setresult must be purchased at the risk of un- tled. The Genevese have a pleasant prospect expected explosions. It is like introducing if the propaganda of the new creed is to a discharge of fire-works at a flower-show; fix itself permanently within their walls and one must be prepared for some unpremedi- denounce the existing arrangements of Eutated and erratic combinations. The au- rope, internal and external, until their prothors of the invitation should not have been gramme has been accepted. Of course it is too much scandalized at little eccentricities very desirable that these questions should in their very mixed party of guests; but we be fully discussed; and if the new journal, admit that the guests were going rather too the United States of Europe, really inherits far when they proposed to make their sit- the mantle of the Peace Congress, it may tings permanent. For once and away it possibly bring to notice many social probmay be amusing to listen to the Babel of lems of vital importance to mankind. peace-preservers screaming themselves Whether it will solve them satisfactorily is hoarse at each other's absurdities; but the another question, but meanwhile the French company certainly ought to take themselves frontier is rather too near to allow this pracoff and not leave any permanent marks of tical experiment on unlimited liberty of their presence. The confession of faith of discussion to be carried on without a certain the Central Committee was anything but anxiety as to disturbing influences from withreassuring for the people amongst whom out. The Peace Congress having quarelled they proposed to reside. You invite a noisy with each other, and suggested grounds of party, and thank Heaven when they take quarrel of every one with everybody else, themselves off without having done too have probably succeeded in making their much damage to the furniture. It is an- place of meeting too hot to hold them; and noying that they propose to take lodgings it might be an unintentional service to the permanently in your house, with the ex- cause of peace if they made the holding of press intention of insulting all your most future Peace Congresses all but impracticapowerful neighbors. The principles which ble. the Congress intend to propagate are ex- In truth, however, too much has been pressed in the usual terms of modern revo- made of the profession of peace which the