exhausted." Originality, indeed, appears to have | with Addison, wrote an occasional paper for the been a cardinal point with Swift; and to this Tatler and daily jotted down for Stella's enquality almost exclusively he owes the continu- lightenment the state of his health and the weaance of his fame. He boasts that he was never ther, the names of new acquaintances and the known to steal a hint. The party questions he conduct of old, the dishes he had eaten, the discussed are comparatively without interest; as geography of his lodgings, the nick-nacks he had an essayist he has been superseded by more grace-purchased to bring to Ireland and the stage of ful and versatile pens; as a rhymster, the higher his progress in a political despatch, in the advolevel of taste condemns him to neglect; but as the cacy of a petition, or the composition of a lamauthor of Gulliver's Travels his renown is firmly poon. He expresses violent anger towards all based. Though intended as a local satire, the whose treatment dissatisfies him and frankly talks novelty of the conception and the verisimilitude of going to bed "rolling resentments in his mind." of the execution mark this work as one of true This diary exhibits the greatest activity of mind genius, whose standard value is only diminished and consciousness of ability and an extraordiby the occasional blemishes of a low and per-nary mixture of a satirical, inquiring, ambitious verted taste. It exhibits the same circumstan- and convivial temper, with so little of the enthutial felicity in description which Caleb Williams siasm of the poet, the tenderness of the lover or does in events. Besides this capo d'opera of the spirituality of the divine, that we can seldom satirical writing, Swift vindicated himself more realize that its author ever had any legitimate explicitly elsewhere; facts, however, do not war- claim to either title. rant the complacency of his statement.

He spared a hump or crooked nose
Whose owners set not up for beaux,
True genuine dulness moved his pity
Unless it offered to be witty.
Those who their ignorance confessed
He ne'er offended with a jest,
But laughed to hear an idiot quote

A verse from Horace learned by rote.

Dryden's prediction that Swift would never be a poet seems to us to have been verified; and this opinion we infer not only from his versified but his prose compositions. His facility in the use of language, his "knack of rhyming," and the various odes and other metrical pieces which are found in his collected works, do not invalidate our position. The term poet has now more than a technical meaning. It is used to designate a certain species of character and tone of mind, and is often applied to those who have not written verse and, perhaps, never written at all. A deep sense of the beautiful and intimate relations with the human, the natural and the divine, arising from earnestness of feeling and spirituality of perception, are qualities now regarded as essential to the office of poet. In these Swift was singularly deficient. All that gave point to, or yet redeem his verses are their cleverness of diction and their wit. No poet could habitually write such prose. It is utterly destitute of glow; there are no kindling expressions; the flow of words never accidentally becomes rhythmical from the loftiness of the sentiment, as in Burke,

It is conceded that the most satisfactory part of Swift's life, at least in his own estimation, were his busy years in London, of which, spent in the service of party leaders of this epoch, we have a full account in the "Journal to Stella"-a record which confirms our preconceived notion of his character. It shows his devotion to the actual by its brief chronicle of the events of each day with few comments or fancies to enliven the summary; his egotism by the importance he attaches to the least thing that concerns himself; his want of refinement by the coarseness of the epithets; his arbitrary tendency by its tone, and his deficient ideality by the absence of beautiful sentiment or graceful expression. His rela- or its pathetic sweetness, as in Dickens. And tion to Stella is only to be inferred from the fa- yet, of its kind, Swift's style is unsurpassed. miliarity and confidence of its revelations; it im- For perspicuity, directness and freedom from inplies intimacy rather than tenderness. To know volution or bombast, it is a model. It is exactly how a man passes his time is, however, no slight such a style as is desirable for the man of afassistance to the interpretation of his life and fairs, whose object is to address the common genius. According to this journal. Swift was in sense of mankind, and to be equally understood a constant whirl of political and social excite- by the cultivated and the vulgar. Without ornament and a rainy or an ill day he, therefore, ment, and just raised above the colloquial by the found quite "apathetic." He dined with minis-arrangement of words, only the worth or the ters, envoys, lords and duchesses,-visited Con- salient points of the thought lend it the least atgreve in his blindness, called for his letters at traction. To this very absence of elegance and Steele's office, chatted with Rowe and Prior at fervor in style, may be ascribed Swift's popularone coffee-house and joined Harley in anathema-ity. Queen Anne's reign has been called the tizing the opposition at another, supped often age of the wits. Prior circumstances rendered

VOL. XV-19

Sen

So weak thou art that fools my power despise,
And yet so strong thou triumph'st o'er the wise!
Thy nets are laid with such peculiar art
They catch the cautious, let the rash depart;
Most nets are filled for want of thought and care,
But too much thinking brings us to thy snare.

that period the reverse of an earnest one. timent was at a discount and sense at a premium. Social follies prevailed; party feeling ran high. Fanaticism and debauchery had each been carried to extremes; and the reaction caused strength of mind and clearness of thought to be admired. Hence Swift. with his vigor of statement, his How, by his wit and wisdom, he built up a universally intelligible language, and, especially, mental supremacy and thus attached to himself his caustic irony and stinging repartee, was the these fresh and devoted hearts, is evident in the very writer to effect a public, weary of lackadai-case of Stella by the fact that he was the presical versewrights and croaking bigots, and alike ceptor of her childhood, and the exclusive coundistrustful of enervating taste and morbid enthu-sellor of her mature years; while Vanessa says

siasm.

of him

When men began to call me fair
You interposed your timely care:
You early taught me to despise
The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes,
Showed where my judgment was misplaced,
Refined my fancy and my taste.

fession.

Your lessons found the weakest part,

Aimed at the head, and reached the heart.

It is true, in the celebrated verses descriptive of this unhappy love, he says, that at the discovery, he

Unfortunately Swift was not content with intellectual empire. He sought and keenly enjoyed a sway over hearts; and to this desire, unnaturally aggravated by causes already suggested, we ascribe his conduct toward Stella and Vanessa. There is not a trace of genuine amatory feeling in his poems. Compare his love-verses It will not do to gloss over the inevitable conwith those of Petrarch, Barry Cornwall, Mrs. sequences of obligations like these, voluntarily Norton, or any other sincere votary of the tender conferred upon a susceptible and candid girl. passion, and this fact will be apparent. Every He must have instinctively anticipated her concircumstance related of his intercourse with the unhappy women whose affections he won, his own allusions to them in verse and prose, and their actions and expressions with reference to him indicate that the love of power and not the delights of mutual love actuated him. He sought to wind himself, as it were, into their souls, to become a moral necessity, to call out all the recogfelt within him rise nition of which they were capable, to be the Shame, disappointment, grief, surprise. motive and the arbiter of their inward life, and the consciousness of having attained this appears Yet, with heartless egotism, he goes on, year to have satisfied him. while they, more soulful after year, fostering a hopeless attachment, conand human, pined, in vain, for the endearments, cealing from one his relation with the other, unthe entire confidence and the realized sympa- til forced into a nominal marriage with Stella, thies of love. It is said that Richter sought in- and the bitter truth flashed upon the wretched timate association with interesting women for Vanessa, whom he leaves to wrestle alone with the express purpose of discovering materials for her misery until death gives her a welcome reromantic art. Swift did the same apparently for lease! The most exacting sentiment which ever the mere gratification of self-love. As far as he inspired a man, could require no more complete was capable of passion it was intellectual, spent self-dedication than these fair beings gave the itself in words, and a kind of philosophical dal- object of their love. Stella existed only for liance with sentiment but torturing to its objects. him; and an humble neighbor of Vanessa deDoubtless he liked the companionship of both scribes her as passing all her time in walking in Stella and Vanessa, and from his own peculiar the garden, reading and writing, and never seemnature could but feebly understand the agonizing ing happy except during the visits of Swift. uncertainties and wearisome suspense to which his equivocal behaviour subjected them; but these considerations are quite insufficient to excuse the positive inhumanity of his course. That his view of love was rather metaphysical than natural-a thing more of the will than the heart, and inspired by reflection instead of sentiment, is manifest not only by his conduct but in his writings. Thus in his apostrophe to love he says—

In all I wish, how happy I should be
Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee!

Byron in one of his letters says, with an evident
and characteristic appreciation of this waste of
feeling: "Swift, when neither young, nor hand-
some, nor rich, nor even amiable, inspired the
two most extraordinary passions upon record,
Vanessa's and Stella's.

Vanessa, aged scarce a score,
Sighs for a gown of forty-four.

He requited them bitterly; for he seems to have broken the heart of the one and worn out

that of the other; and he had his reward, for he died a solitary idiot in the hands of servants."

them as a companion as well as useful to their cause as a writer. He managed his financial inThe source both of Swift's errors and triumphs terests with precision and economy from a very was a love of power. We are convinced that clear sense of the value of money as an agent of this is the key to the puzzle which, at first, seems power. He sent forth his tracts, epigrams and to baffle inquiry in regard to his anomalous satirical tales anonymously, not heeding reputaconduct. There is always a vindicatory princi- tion, but enjoying keenly the secret pleasure of ple at work in life and nature. Where any ele- impressing himself on other minds and leading ment is thwarted in one direction it will assert public opinion by his will. He had a fondness itself elsewhere; the root which meets a rock for patronage on the same principle, and boasted gnarls itself upward in fibrous convolutions; the that thirty men of note owed their advancement stream, impeded in its onward flow, either gushes to his personal influence; among whom were into a fountain or expands into a lake; the dis- Parnell, Berkeley, Congreve, Rowe and Steele. appointed bard transforms himself into a fero- The same disposition is apparent in his training cious critic, and the unsuccessful belle turns de- of servants, in his dictation in regard to the housevotee. Now, the traits of humanity were in- hold arrangements of families he visited, in the complete in Swift. He possessed acuteness and oracular terms in which he pronounced upon vigor of intellect, strong will, remarkable wit and literature and character, in the overbearing confaculty of application, but he seems to have been ditions he proposed with his first offer of mardestitute of passion. It was rarely, therefore, riage, in the ceaseless exactions of his social life, that a genial, homogeneous excitement warmed and in the authoritative tone of his conversation and fused his nature. Its capabilities acted sep- and writings. To be admired, loved or feared, arately. He wanted the susceptibility and the he demanded from all but dolts; and he did this gentleness that come from an organization alive without any consideration as to his ability to reto harmonious sensations. His body and his ciprocate the more sacred feeling. Those whom soul did not thrill with the same conscious exis- he failed to bully, or lure into one of these sentitence. Life was consequently objective to a ments were thoroughly obnoxious to him. In great degree, and he sought to conquer its visible all this we see the arrogance of a passionless inobstacles rather than enrich and attune its ele- tellectuality, the unhesitating claim of pride, the ments within. He lived in a sense of intellectual domination of a will unchecked and unsoftened action inadequately combined with sentient enjoyment. What nature denied him he sought through mental expedients; and his relish of existence seems to have consisted in operating upon others a process comparatively indifferent to those who are vividly sensible of enjoyable resources. This exclusive love of power is often the heritage of disappointment, the alternative less grasp ! for sympathy-the chief resort of those cut off by asceticism, disease, or circumstances from any source of natural pleasure. We see it in women unfavorably constituted or ungenially married, in the deformed and in the gifted but low-born. They seem to desire to realize every thing through will. Their great demand from others is subserviency, and they manifest the greatest impatience at the least nonconformity with their caprices. Indeed coalition with them in thought and action is the only test of friendship or love, for the obvious reason that they are incapable of fully experiencing the delights of those sentiments which, to such as are more naturally constituted or situated, are their own exceeding reward. That Swift belonged to this order of character, is evident from every page of his biography and not a few of his writings. He was never satisfied in his political relations until he gained a personal influence with his distinguished allies. He desired to be necessary to

by any of those noble emotions or lapses of tender feeling and earnest desire, that cause a glad surrender of opinion to truth, of individuality to assimilation, of self to a thought or being more dear, yielding a joy never realized by the love of power, even when its most detested foes or sweetest victims are completely in its remorse

CASTLE BY THE SEA.

From the German of Uhland.

I.

Hast seen that castle olden,
That castle by the sea?
The purple clouds and golden,
Above it wander free.

II.

It sinks in gladness bending,
Into the flood below,
It soars in joy ascending,
Into the sunset glow.

III.

"Oft on the shore reclining,
Have I that castle seen,

be happy in it. We like to live because we like to enjoy ourselves; if we find it impossible to enjoy ourselves at any time, ever in the future, the best motive for living is gone. Men often come in this way to be disgusted with life, and yet are afraid of death. It scares them back; it does not scare me. But all this is only one selfish view of the case; I am to front death because I cannot be a happy man. There is the other and greatest reason why I should die; Miss Minny will be very much relieved by my death. Fever burn on."

And supplied with the fuel of such despairing reflections the fever did burn up anew. Tom Herries became delirious then, and raved for several days and nights. On one of these terrible days, the elder Herries and his wife were in a distant apartment, to which only the shrillest of the wild cries penetrated.

"We are ruined-lost-overwhelmed—I am one of the damned," groaned the black-browed father.

"It is a grievous trial to lose this my only son; but, husband, your despair is a more dreadful blow to me than the death of my first-born child."

"Wife, these cold-blooded Blairs have crushed us. That girl led the boy to his death. May the curse of Almighty God”—

A low tap at the door arrested the blind malediction of the thwarted and despairing man. The door opened, and Minny Blair entered. At the same time also entered one of those doleful cries of delirium which wandered about the passages, and galleries, and recoiling from the closed doors, rose to the ceilings and even to the hollows of the great roof above.

Minny

Herries shuddered; the cry went to his heart like a dagger. In the face of his wife was that dry anguish which craves tears, and sometimes becomes madness for want of them. Blair was calm, resolute, but very pale. Herries advanced to meet her, saying with an impetuous manner:

Two weeks passed away, and the day appointed for the marriage of Tom Herries and Miss Blair came. It found the bride-groom in "You are here! You are as cold as a pillar of wretched condition. A violent fever had seized salt. Are these howls, which are two-edged upon him soon after the dreadful fall; it had aba- swords to us, nothing to you? Come." He ted, leaving him very feeble and not out of dan- took the girl by the hand with a rude force and ger. So the rising sun of the wedding-day led her from the room, along the gloomy passabrought no peace or joy to John Herries. He ges straight to the chamber of his delirious son. had labored with a stern energy to have the mar- "Death is nothing," Tom Herries repeated as riage accomplished without delay. He would they came into his chamber. His mind had wanhave given Minny a dying husband; but his son dered back to the moments passed in that reswould not permit this extreme measure. Tom trained gallop up to the verge of the Deep Cut, retained something of the singular purpose which and words then spoken were now on his lips, had urged him into the Deep Cut. On the morn- broken, wanting in continuity, but full of meaning of the wedding-day he mused to the following to the pale girl who stood above him. ing effect:

"If I die now it will be all the better. If this life is worth any thing, it is only so when we can

"Death is nothing," repeated Tom. "Don't take the leap; we may get over. The white queen with a yellow crown round her head con

descends to ride with me. Her hair is like long |

"We got upon fast horses. The sun was shiwillows. Lord! how it streams in my face. It ning and the ground was all in a white blaze and blinds me. Death is nothing. Whip-spur- singing like silver under the clack of the horsehere we thunder. Screech, Major." And Tom shoes. Lord! what a gait we went at! Herries yelled. The wild Jager, who is said to traverse the German forests by night, might utter such a yell, in the closing rush of his moonlit chase.

An old servant, looking like some old noble

'He mounted himself on a coal-black steed,
And her on a freckled grey-

With a bugalet horn hung at his side-
And roundly they rode away.'

physician of Carthage or Utica, so striking was "So-so. She rides like a queen of the Tarthe fine antique dignity of his face, held poor tars when she hears her king's horn. She is Tom upon his bed. Dr. Gaunt slept in a chair in a corner of the chamber; the cries of his patient did not rouse him.

66

strait as a poplar. How her curls fly! I thought one of them was a yellow snake, and snapped at me as the wind whipped it out. But it was not "How deep her eyes are!"-the speech of so. The beautiful lady has a delicious mouth Tom Herries went wandering on. They are with scarlet lips, and eyes cut out of blue jewels. like two blue wells, with a little star glimmering Father, give me some wine. There is a little in the bottom of one of them and a horned moon stream coming down a hill-what a fresh, cool in the other. Take away your eyes-they are stream!-bring me near it, and put my mouth to distressing because they are so sad. And so you it. How careless! You have let me fall to a will ride with me, beautiful lady? Flight rushes great depth just as I meant to drink. The fall like an eagle. An eagle has a singular scream; stuns me, and I cannot look up. Ah, now I can. don't you think so? I saw one, a short time Reach out a hand, Miss Minny; Lord! what an ago, come down from the mountains on his way arm she puts out-long, and white as the wood to the sea. As the wind struck him he yelled. of a peeled maple. But it lifts me-up-upI must let you hear how he yelled." Again Tom up-to life again. You draw me up-you make uttered a cry, as shrill and defiant as the osprey's. me live-your merciful eyes give me unspeakaA mind all a-glow with the wild fires of fever ble happiness." is often raised to be of kindred with that of the rapt poet; the "vision" seems to be as palpable, and "the faculty divine" as vigorous: only as a fatal drawback, the vision of delirium goes flitting, shifting, now some bright face, presently a fanged mouth, alternately something angelic and

The last sentence was spoken calmly; the eyes of the speaker were directed full to the face of Miss Blair; the deeply-moved girl answered it as though it had been the utterance of a sane man.

Would that I could draw you up-would something demoniac; and the faculty divine of that I could make you live."

delirium, instead of persevering into fair crea- "What price would you pay for his safety ?" tions, mars its work into the same incongruities the elder Herries asked with a manner of harsh of the vision—for instance, when it would finish scrutiny.

a delicate hand to its idea of an angel, or beautiful woman, it is taken captive by a fantasy, and makes the arm stream off like a horse-tail, or end with a serpent's open mouth. Tom Herries Miss Blair passed to the chair of Dr. Gaunt, was a-glow in this way; and his stimulated wits and shook him with so much force that he preswere busy upon such wild work. He had not ently looked up with a pair of very red eyes, and been sufficiently trained in speech, or fed with said "bless me, I must have fallen into a doze."

"My life, if necessary. You have misjudged me, sir. I am not cold and indifferent to the condition of your son."

the thoughts of others, to talk the delirious eloquence of a mad scholar, but his speech was yet in its way brilliant, and ran into metaphor and simile; the fever-blaze had even brought out upon the tablets of his memory, as heat brings out characters traced in sympathetic ink, certain odds and ends of old verse. Tom certainly, in his ordinary condition of wholesome dulness, could never have recalled them.

"Doctor-are you quite awake? Is there no means of curing this terrible delirium ?"

"The delirium will go off," replied Dr. Gaunt, rubbing his eyes with the corners of his handkerchief;-" but how it will leave him is another question." Then the old gentleman blew his nose explosively; and having done so, proceeded to charge it again with an immense grasp of snuff not a pinch.

66

I cannot venture to tax the reader with the Now that you are quite awake, promise me whole of the wandering talk of this cheerless this, Doctor; stay faithfully here, and when the scene. I must hurry to the end of it. After delirium is about to subside send a fast rider for much of a like kind, Tom said—still recurring to me. Whatever the hour may be, night or day, the desperate ride: through any weather I will come at once. I have