DR JONATHAN, so universally admired as a wit and classical writer of the English language, was born in Dublin on November 30th 1667. His father was an attorney, and of a good family; but dying poor, the expense of his son's education was defrayed by his friends. At the age of fix young Swift was sent to the school of Kilkenny, whence he was removed in his 11th year to Trinity College, Dublin.

In his academical studies (says Dr Johnson) he was either not diligent or not happy. The truth appears to be, that he despised them as intricate and useless. He told Mr Sheridan, his last biographer, that he had made many efforts, upon his entering the college, to read some of the old treatises on logic writ by Smegleffus, Keckermannus, Burgerlicius, &c. and that he never had patience to go through three pages of any of them, he was so disgusted at the fluidity of the work. When he was urged by his tutor to make himself master of this branch, then in high estimation, and held essentially necessary to the taking of a degree, Swift asked him, What it was he was to learn from those books? His tutor told him, The art of reasoning. Swift said, That he found no want of any such art; that he could reason very well without it; and that, as far as he could observe, they who had made the greatest proficiency in logic had, instead of the art of reasoning, acquired the art of wrangling; and instead of clearing up obscurities, had learned how to perplex matters that were clear enough before. For his own part, he was contented with that portion of reason which God had given him; and he would leave it to time and experience to strengthen and direct it properly; nor would he run the risk of having it warped or falsely biafied by any system of rules laid down by such stupid writers, of the bad effects of which he had but too many examples before his eyes in those reckoned the most acute logicians. Accordingly, he made a firm resolution, that he never would read any of those books; which he so pertinaciously adhered to, that though his degree was refused him the first time of fitting for it, on account of his not answering in that branch, he went into the hall a second time as ill prepared as before; and would also have been stopped a second time, on the same account, if the interest of his friends, who well knew the inflexibility of his temper, had not flepped in, and obtained it for him; though in a manner little to his credit, as it was inserted in the College Registry, that he obtained it "speciali gratia," "by special favour;" where it remains upon record. But this circumstance is explained by others, that the favour was in consequence of Swift's distinguished talents.

"He remained in the college near three years after this, not through choice, but necessity, little known or regarded. By scholars he was reckoned a blockhead; and as the lowness of his circumstances would not permit him to keep company with persons of an equal rank with himself, upon an equal footing, he scorned to take up with those of a lower class, or to be obliged to those of a higher. He lived therefore much alone, and his time was employed in pursuing his course of reading in history and poetry, then very unfashionable studies for an academic; or in gloomy meditations on his unhappy circumstances. Yet, under this heavy prelude, the force of his genius broke out, in the first rude draught of the Tale of a Tub, written by him at the age of 19, though communicated to nobody but his chamber-fellow Mr Waring; who, after the publication of the book, made no scruple to declare, that he had read the first sketch of it in Swift's hand-writing when he was of that age."

In 1688, being, by the death of Godwin Swift his uncle, who had chiefly supported him, left without subsistence, he went to consult his mother, who then lived at Leicester, about the future course of his life; and, by her direction, solicited the advice and patronage of Sir William Temple, whose father had lived in great friendship with Godwin Swift. Temple received him with great kindness, and was so much pleased with his conversation, that he detained him two years in his house, and recommended him to King William, who offered to make him a captain of horse. This not fuiting his disposition, and Temple not having it quickly in his power to provide for him otherwise, Swift left his patron (1694) in discontent; having previously taken his master's degree at Oxford, by means of a testimonial from Dublin, in which the words of disgrace were omitted. He was resolved to enter into the church, where his first preferment was only 100l. a-year, being the prebend of Kilroot in Connor; which some time afterwards, upon Sir William Temple's earnestly inviting him back to his house at Moorpark, he resigned in favour of a clergyman far advanced in years and burdened with a numerous family. For this man he solicited the prebend, to which he himself inducted him.

In 1699 Swift lost his patron Sir William Temple, who left him a legacy in money, with the property of his manuscripts; and, on his death-bed, obtained for him a promise from the king of the first prebend that should become vacant at Westminster or Canterbury. That this promise might not be forgotten, Swift dedicated to the king the posthumous works with which he was entrusted, and for a while attended the court; but soon found his solicitations hopeless. He was then invited by the earl of Berkeley to accompany him into Ireland, where, after suffering some cruel disappointments, he obtained the livings of Laracor and Rathbeggin in the diocese of Meath; and soon afterwards invited over the unfortunate Stella, a young woman of the name of Johnson, whose life he contrived to embitter, and whose days, though he certainly loved her, we may confidently affirm, he shortened by his caprice.

This lady is generally believed to have been the daughter of Sir William Temple's steward; but her niece, a Mrs Hearne, affixed Mr Berkeley, the editor of a volume of letters entitled Literary Relics, that her father was a merchant, and the youngest brother of a good family in Nottinghamshire; that her mother was the intimate friend of Lady Gifford, Sir William's sister; and that the heiress was educated in the family with his niece, the late Mr Temple of Moorpark by * See In- Farnham *. This story would be entitled to the fullest credit, had not Mrs Hearne affirmed, in the same letter, that, before the death of Sir William Temple, Mrs Johnson's little fortune had been greatly injured by the South sea bubbles, which are known to have injured notary Re- perlon till the year 1720: (See Company, II. 1.). tter, printed When one part of a narrative is so palpably false, the remainder will always be received with hesitation. But whether Miss Johnson was the daughter of Temple's steward or of the friend of Lady Gifford, it is certain that Sir William left her 1000l.; and that, accompanied by Mrs Dingley, whose whole fortune amounted to an annuity of 27l. for life, he went, in consequence of Swift's invitation, to Laracor. With these two ladies he passed his hours of relaxation, and to them he opened his bosom; but they never resided in the same house, nor did he see either without a witness.

In 1701, Swift published A Discourse of the Contest and Diffusions in Athens and Rome. It was his first work, and indeed the only which he ever expressly ac- knowned. According to his constant practice he had concealed his name; but after its appearance, paying a visit to some Irish bishop, he was asked by him if he had read that pamphlet, and what its reputation was in London. Upon his replying, that he believed it was very well liked in London; "Very well liked!" said the bishop with some emotion. "Yes, Sir, it is one of the finest tracts that ever was written, and Bishop Burnet is one of the best writers in the world." Swift, who always hated Burnet with something more than political rancour, immediately questioned his right to the work, when he was told by the bishop that he was "a young man;" and still persisting in doubt of the justice of Burnet's claim, on account of the dissimilarity of the style of the pamphlet from that of his other works, he was told that he was "a very positive young man," as no person in England but Bishop Burnet was capable of writing it. Upon which Swift replied, with some indignation, I am to assure your lordship, however, that Bishop Burnet did not write the pamphlet, for I wrote it myself. And thus was he forced in the heat of argument to avow what otherwise he would have for ever concealed.

Early in the ensuing spring King William died; and Swift, on his next visit to London, found Queen Anne upon the throne. It was generally thought, upon this event, that the Tory party would have had the ascendant; but, contrary to all expectation, the Whigs had managed matters so well as to get entirely into the queen's confidence, and to have the whole administration of affairs in their hands. Swift's friends were now in power; and the Whigs in general, knowing him to be the author of the Discourse on the Contests, &c., which was written in defence of King William and his ministers against the violent proceedings of the house of commons, considered themselves as much obliged to him, and looked upon him as fast to their party. But Swift thought with the Whigs only in the flate; for with respect to the church his principles were always those of a Tory. He therefore declined any intimate connection with the leaders of the party, who at that time professed what was called low church principles. But what above all shocked him, says Mr Sheridan, was their inviting Deists, Freethinkers, Atheists, Jews, and Infidels, to be of their party, under pretence of moderation, and allowing a general liberty of conscience. As Swift was in his heart a man of true religion, he could not have borne, even in his private character, to have mixed with such a motley crew. But when we consider his principles in his political capacity, that he looked upon the church of England, as by law established, to be the main pillar of our newly erected constitution, he could not, consistently with the character of a good citizen, join with those who considered it more as an ornament than a support to the edifice; and could therefore look on with compunction while it was undermining, or could even open the gate to a blind multitude, to try, like Sampson, their strength against it, and consider it only as sport. With such a party, neither his religious nor political principles would suffer him to join; and with regard to the Tories, as is usual in the violence of factions, they had run into opposite extremes, equally dangerous to the state. He was therefore during the earlier part of the queen's reign of no party, but employed himself in discharging the duties of his function, and in publishing from time to time such tracts as he thought might be useful. In the year 1704 he published the Tale of a Tub, which, considered merely as a work of genius, is unquestionably the greatest which he ever produced; but the levity with which religion was thought to be there treated, raised up enemies to him among all parties, and eventually precluded him from a bishopric. From that period till the year 1708, he seems to have employed himself in literary study; but he then gave effectively to the public The Sentiments of a Church of England man, the ridicule of astrology under the name of Bickerstaff, the Argument against abolishing Christianity, and the defence of the Sacramental Test.

Soon after began the busy and important part of Swift's life. He was employed (1710) by the primate of Ireland to solicit the queen for a remission of the first fruits and twentieth parts to the Irish clergy. This introduced him to Mr Harley, afterwards earl of Oxford, who, though a Whig himself, was at the head of the Tory ministry, and in great need of an auxiliary so able as Swift, by whose pen he and the other ministers might be supported in pamphlets, poems, and periodical papers. In the year 1710 was commenced the Examiner; of which Swift wrote 33 papers, beginning his first part of it on the 10th of November 1711. The next year he published the Conduct of the Allies ten days before the parliament assembled; and soon afterwards, Reflections on the Barrier Treaty. The purpose of these pamphlets was to persuade the nation to a peace, by showing that "mines had been exhausted and millions destroyed" to secure the Dutch and aggrandize the emperor, without any advantage whatever to Great Britain. Though these two publications, together with his Remarks on the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction to the third Volume of his History of the Reformation, certainly turned the tide of popular opinion, and effectually promoted the designs of the ministry, the best preferment which his friends could venture to give him was the deanery of St Patrick's, which he accepted in 1713. In the midst of his power and his politics he kept a journal of his visits, his walks, his interviews with ministers, and quarrels with his servant, and transmitted it to Mrs Johnson and Mrs Dingley, to whom he knew that whatever befel him was interesting: but in 1714 an end was put to his power by the death of the queen, which broke down at once the whole system of Tory politics, and nothing remained for him but to withdraw from persecution to his deanery.

In the triumph of the Whigs, Swift met with every mortification that a spirit like his could possibly be exposed to. The people of Ireland were irritated against him beyond measure; and every indignity was offered him as he walked the streets of Dublin. Nor was he insulted by the rabble only; for persons of distinguished rank and character forgot the decorum of common civility to give him a personal affront. While his pride was hurt by such indignities, his more tender feelings were also often wounded by base ingratitude. In such a situation he found it in vain to struggle against the tide that opposed him. He silently yielded to it, and retired from the world to discharge his duties as a clergyman, and attend to the care of his deanery. That no part of his time might lie heavy on his hands, he employed his leisure hours on some historical attempts relating to the change of the ministers and the conduct of the ministry; and completed the history of the four last years of the queen, which had been begun in her lifetime, but which he never published. Of the work which bears that title, and is said to be his, Dr Johnson doubts the genuineness; and it certainly is not such as we should have expected from a man of Swift's sagacity and opportunities of information.

In the year 1716 he was privately married to Mrs Johnson by Dr Alfe bishop of Clogher; but the marriage made no change in their situation, and it would be difficult to prove (says Lord Orrery) that they were ever afterwards together but in the presence of a third person. The dean of St Patrick's lived in a private manner, known and regarded only by his friends, till about the year 1720 that he published his first political pamphlet relative to Ireland, intitled A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures; which so roused the indignation of the ministry that they commenced a prosecution against the printer, and thus drew the attention of the public to the pamphlet, and at once made its author popular.

Whilst he was enjoying the laurels which this work had wreathed for him, his felicity, as well as that of his wife, was interrupted by the death of Mrs Van Homrigh, and the publication of his poem called Cadmus and Venera, which brought upon him much merited obloquy. With Mrs Van Homrigh he became acquainted in London during his attendance at court; and finding her possessed of genius and fond of literature, he took delight in directing her studies, till he got intensely possession of her heart. From being proud of his praise, she grew fond of his person; and despising vulgar restraints, she made him sensible that she was ready to receive him as a husband. She had wit, youth, beauty, and a competent fortune to recommend her; and for a while Swift seems to have been undetermined whether or not he should comply with her wish. She had followed him to Ireland, where she lived in a house about twelve miles distant from Dublin; and he continued to visit her occasionally, and to direct her studies as he had done in London; but with these attentions she was not satisfied, and at last sent to him a letter written with great ardour and tenderness, insisting that he should immediately accept or refuse her as a wife. His answer, which probably contained the secret of his marriage, he carried himself; and having indignantly thrown it on the lady's table, instantly quitted the house, we believe without speaking to her, and returned to Dublin to reflect on the consequences of his own conduct. These were dreadful. Mrs Van Homrigh survived her disappointment but a few weeks; during which time she cancelled a will that she had made in his favour, and ordered the poem to be published in which Cadmus had proclaimed her excellence and confessed his love.

His patriotism again burst forth in 1724 to obstruct the currency of Wood's halfpence; and his zeal was crowned with success. Wood had obtained a patent to coin 180,000l. in halfpence and farthings for the kingdom of Ireland; and was about to turn his brafs into gold, when Swift, finding that the metal was debased to an enormous degree, wrote letters under the name of M. B. Draper to show the folly of giving gold and silver for coin not worth a third part of its nominal value. A prosecution was carried on against the printer; and Lord Carteret, then lord-lieutenant, issued a proclamation, offering 300l. for discovering the author of the fourth letter. The day after it was published there was a full levee at the castle. The lord-lieutenant was going round the circle, when Swift abruptly entered the chamber, and putting his way through the crowd, never stopped till he got within the circle; where, with marks of the highest indignation in his countenance, he addressed the lord-lieutenant with the voice of a Senator, that re-echoed through the room, "So, my lord-lieutenant, this is a glorious exploit that you performed yesterday, in issuing a proclamation against a poor shopkeeper, whose only crime is an honest endeavour to save his country from ruin. You have given a noble specimen of what this devoted nation is to hope for from your government. I suppose you expect a statue of copper will be erected to you for this service done to Wood." He then went on for a long time, inveighing in the bitterest terms against the patent, and displaying in the strongest colours all the fatal consequences of introducing that execrable coin. The whole assembly were struck mute with wonder at this unprecedented scene. For some time a profound silence ensued. When Lord Carteret, who had listened with great composure to the whole speech, made this fine reply, in a line of Virgil's:

Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt Mali.

From this time Swift was known by the name of the Dean, and was acknowledged by the populace as the champion, patron, and instructor of Ireland.

In 1727 he returned to England; where, in conjunction with Pope, he collected three volumes of miscellanies; and the same year he sent into the world his Gulliver's Travels, a production which was read by the high and the low, and filled every reader with a mingled emotion of merriment and amazement. Whilst he was enjoying the reputation of this work, he was suddenly called to a home of sorrow. Poor Stella was sinking into the grave; and after a languishing decay of about two months, died in her 44th year, on January 28, 1728. How much he wished her life is shown by his papers; nor can it be doubted that he dreaded the death of her whom he loved most, aggravated by the confidences that himself had hatched it. With her vanished all his domestic enjoyments, and of course he turned his thoughts more to public affairs; in the contemplation of which he could see nothing but what served to increase the malady. The advances of old age, with all its attendant infirmities; the death of almost all his old friends; the frequent returns of his most dispiriting maladies, deafness and giddiness; and, above all, the dreadful apprehensions that he should outlive his understanding, made life such a burden to him, that he had no hope left but a speedy dissolution, which was the object of his daily prayer to the Almighty.

The severity of his temper increasing, he drove his acquaintance from his table, and wondered why he was deserted. In 1732, he complains, in a letter to Mr Gay, that "he had a large house, and should hardly find one visiter if he was not able to hire him with a bottle of wine:" and, in another to Mr Pope, "that he was in danger of dying poor and friendless, even his female friends having forsaken him;" which, as he says, "vex- ed him most." These complaints were afterwards repeated in a strain of yet greater lentiiblity: "All my friends have forsaken me.

"Vertigineosus, inops, fardus, male gratus amicis. "Deaf, giddy, helpless, left alone, "To all my friends a burden grown."

The fits of giddiness and deafness to which he had been subjected from his boyish years, and for which he thought walking or riding the best remedy, became more frequent and violent as he grew old; and the presentiment which he had long entertained of that wretchedness which would inevitably overtake him towards the close of life, clouded his mind with melancholy and tinged every object around him. How miserable he was rendered by that gloomy prospect, we may learn from the following remarkable anecdote mentioned by Mr Faulkner in his letter to Lord Chesterfield. "One time, in a journey from Drogheda to Navan, the dean rode before the company, made a sudden stop, dismounted from his horse, fell on his knees, lifted up his hands, and prayed in the most devout manner. When his friends came up, he desired and insisted on their alighting; which they did, and asked him the meaning. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'pray join your hearts in fervent prayers with mine, that I may never be like this oak-tree, which is decayed and withered at top, while the other parts are found.' In 1736, while he was writing a satire called the Legion Club against the Irish parliament, he was seized with so dreadful a fit of his malady, that he left the poem unfinished; and never after attempted a composition that required a course of thinking. From this time his memory gradually declined, his passions perverted his understanding, and, in 1741, he became utterly incapable of conversation; and it was found necessary to appoint legal guardians to his person and his fortune. He now lost all sense of distinction. His meat was brought to him cut into mouthfuls; but he would never touch it while the servant stood; and at last, after it flood perhaps an hour, would eat it walking; for he continued his old habit, and was on his feet ten hours a day. During next year a short interval of reason ensuing, gave hopes of his recovery; but in a few days he sunk into lethargic stupidity, motionless, heedless, and speechless. After a year of total silence, however, when his housekeeper told him that the usual illuminations were preparing to celebrate his birth, he answered, 'It is all folly; they had better let it alone.' He at last sunk into a perfect silence, which continued till the 29th of October 1745, when he expired without a struggle, in his 78th year. The behaviour of the citizens on this occasion gave the strongest proof of the deep impression he had made on their minds. Though he had been so many years to all intents and purposes dead to the world, and his departure from that state seemed a thing rather to be wished than deplored, yet no sooner was his death announced, than they gathered from all quarters, and forced their way in crowds into the house, to pay the last tribute of grief to their departed benefactor. Nothing but lamentations were heard all around the quarter where he lived, as if he had been cut off in the vigour of his years. Happy were they who first got into the chamber where he lay, to procure, by bribes to the servants, locks of his hair, to be handed down as sacred relics to their posterity; and so eager were numbers to obtain at any price this precious memorial, that in less than an hour, his venerable head was entirely stripped of all its silver ornaments, so that not a hair remained. By his will, which was dated in May 1740, just before he ceased to be a reasonable being, he left about 1200l. in specific legacies; and the rest of his fortune, which amounted to about 11,000l. to erect and endow an hospital for lunatics and idiots. He was buried in the most private manner, according to directions in his will, in the great aisle of St Patrick's cathedral, and, by way of monument, a slab of black marble was placed against the wall, on which was engraved the following Latin epitaph, written by himself:

Hic depositum est corpus JONATHAN SWIFT, S. T. P. Hujus Ecclesiae Cathedralis Decani: Ubi faeva indignatio Ulterius cor lacerare nequit. Abi, viator, Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili libertatis vindicem. Obit anno (1745) Memoris (Octobris) die (29.) Aetatis anni 78.

Swift undoubtedly was a man of native genius. His fancy was inexhaustible; his conceptions were lively and comprehensive; and he had the peculiar felicity of conveying them in language equally correct, free, and perspicuous. His penetration was as quick as intuition; he was indeed the critic of nature; and no man ever wrote so much, and borrowed so little.

As his genius was of the first class, so were some of his virtues. The following anecdote will illustrate his filial piety. His mother died in 1710, as appears by a memorandum in one of the account-books which Dr Swift always made up yearly, and on each page entered minutely all his receipts and expenses in every month, beginning his year from November 1. He observed the same method all his lifetime till his last illness. At the foot of that page which includes his expenses of the month of May 1710, at the glebe house of Laracor in the county of Meath, where he was then resident, are these remarkable words, which show at the same time his filial piety, and the religious use which he thought it his duty to make of that melancholy event. "Mem. On Wednesday, between seven and eight in the evening, May 10, 1710, I received a letter in my chamber at Laracor (Mr Percival and Jo. Beaumont being by) from Mrs F—, dated May 9, with one inclosed, sent by Mrs Worral at Leicester to Mrs F—, giving an account that my dear mother, Mrs Abigail Swift, died that morning, Monday April 24, 1710, about ten o'clock, after a long sickness: being ill all winter, and lame; and extremely ill about a month or fix weeks before her death. I have now lost my barrier between me and death. God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to heaven be through piety, truth, justice, and charity, she is there. J. S." He always treated his mother, during her life, with the utmost duty and affection; and the sometimes came to Ireland to visit him after his settlement at Laracor.

The liberality of the dean hath been a topic of just encomium with all his admirers; nor could his enemies deny him this praise. In his domestic affairs, he always acted with strict economy. He kept the most regular accounts; and he seems to have done this chiefly with a view to increase his power of being useful. "His income, which was little more than 700l. per annum, he endeavoured to divide into three parts, for the following purposes. First, to live upon one-third of it. Secondly, to give another third in pensions and charities, according to the manner in which persons who received them had lived: and the other third he laid by, to build an hospital for the reception of idiots and lunatics." "What is remarkable in this generous man, is this (says Mr F.), that when he lent money upon bond or mortgage, he would not take the legal interest, but one per cent. below it."

His charity appears to have been a settled principle of duty more than an indiscriminate effort of good nature: but as it was thus founded and supported, it had extraordinary merit, and seldom failed to exert itself in a manner that contributed most to render it beneficial. He did not lavish his money on the idle and the worthless. He nicely discriminated characters, and was seldom the dupe of imposition. Hence his generosity always turned to an useful account; while it relieved distress, it encouraged industry, and rewarded virtue. We dwell with great pleasure on this truly excellent and distinguishing part of the dean's character: and for the sake of his charity we can overlook his oddities, and almost forgive his faults. He was a very peculiar man in every respect. Some have said, "What a man he would have been, had he been without those whims and infirmities which shaded both his genius and his character!" But perhaps the peculiarities complained of were inseparable from his genius. The vigour and fertility of the root could not fail now and then of throwing out superfluous suckers. What produced these, produced also the more beautiful branches, and gave the fruit all its richness.

It must be acknowledged, that the dean's fancy hurried him into great absurdities and inconsistencies, for which nothing but his extraordinary talents and noble virtues, discovered in other instances, could have atoned. The rancour he discovered on all occasions towards the dissenters is totally unjustifiable. No fact could have merited it in the degree in which he always showed it to them; for, in some instances, it bordered on downright persecution. He doubtless had his reasons for exposing their principles to ridicule, and might perhaps have sufficient grounds for some of his accusations against their principal leaders in Ireland; but nothing could justify his virulence against the whole body. In a short poem on one class of dissenters he bestowed a stricture upon Bettelworth, a lawyer eminent for his influence to the clergy, which, from a very considerable reputation, brought him into immediate and universal contempt. Bettelworth, enraged at his disgrace and loss, went to the dean, and demanded whether he was the author of that poem? "Mr Bettelworth (answered he), I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who, knowing my disposition to satire, advised me, if any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, 'Are you the author of this paper?' to tell him that I was not the author; and therefore, I tell you, Mr Bettelworth, that I am not the author of these lines."

Swift has been accused of irreligion and misanthropy, on account of his Tale of a Tub, and his Yahoos in Gulliver's Travels; but both charges seem to be ill-founded, or at least not supported by that evidence. The Tale of a Tub holds up to ridicule superstitious and fanatical absurdities; but it never attacks the essentials of religion: and in the story of the Yahoo, disgusting we confess, there appears to us as little evidence that the author hated his own species, as in the poems of Sirephon and Chloe, and the Ladies Dressing Room, that he approved of grolfines and filth in the female sex. We do not indeed, with his fondest admirers, perceive the moral tendency of the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, or consider it as a satire admirably calculated to reform mankind; but neither do we think that it can possibly corrupt them, or lead them to think meanly of their rational nature. According to Sheridan, "the design of this apologue is to place before the eyes of man a picture of the two different parts of his frame, detached from each other, in order that he may the better estimate the true value of each, and see the necessity there is that the one should have an absolute command over the other. In your merely animal capacity, says he to man, without reason to guide you, and actuated only by a blind instinct, I will shew you that you would be degraded below the beasts of the field. That very form, that very body, you are now so proud of, as giving you such a superiority over all other animals, I will show you, owe all their beauty, and all their greatest powers, to their being actuated by a rational soul. Let that be withdrawn, let the body be inhabited by the mind of a brute, let it be prone as theirs are, and suffered like theirs to take its natural course, without any assistance from art, you would in that case be the most deformed, as to your external appearance, the most detestable of all creatures. And with regard to your internal frame, filled with all the evil dispositions and malignant passions of mankind, you would be the most miserable of beings, living in a continued state of internal vexation, and of hatred and warfare with each other.

"On the other hand, I will shew another picture of an animal endowed with a rational soul, and acting uniformly up to the dictates of right reason. Here you may see collected all the virtues, all the great qualities, which dignify man's nature, and constitute the happiness of his life. What is the natural inference to be drawn from these two different representations? Is it not evidently a lesson to mankind, warning them not to suffer the animal part to be predominant in them, lest they resemble the vile Yahoo, and fall into vice and misery; but to emulate the noble and generous Houyhnhnm, by cultivating the rational faculty to the utmost; which will lead them to a life of virtue and happiness."

Such may have been the author's intention; but it is not sufficiently obvious to produce the proper effect, and is indeed hardly consistent with that incapability under which he represents the Yahoos of ever acquiring, by any culture, the virtues of the noble Houyhnhnms.

With respect to his religion, it is a fact unquestionable, that while the power of speech remained, he continued constant in the performance of his private devotions; and in proportion as his memory failed, they were gradually shortened, till at last he could only repeat the Lord's prayer, which he continued to do till the power of utterance for ever ceased. Such a habit as this could not have been formed but by a man deeply impressed with a conviction of the truth and importance of revelation.

The most inexcusable part of Swift's conduct is his treatment of Stella and Vanessa, for which no proper apology can be made, and which the vain attempts of his friends have only tended to aggravate. One attributes his singular conduct to a peculiarity in his constitution; but if he knew that he was incapable of fulfilling the duties of the married state, how came he to tie one of the ladies to himself by the marriage ceremony, and in the most explicit terms to declare his passion to the other? And what are we to think of the sensibility of a man who, strongly attached as he seems to have been to both, could, without speaking, fling a paper on the table of the one, which "proved (as our author expresses it) her death-warrant," and could throw the other, his beloved Stella, in her last illness, into unspakable agonies, and "never see her more, for only adiring him, by their friendship, to let her have the satisfaction of dying at least, though he had not lived, his acknowledged wife?" Another apologist infinuates, upon something like evidence, that Stella bore a son to Swift, and yet labours to excuse him for not declaring her his wife, because he had agreed at the marriage that it should remain a secret from all the world unless the discovery should be called for by urgent necessity; but what could be meant by the term urgent necessity, unless it alluded to the birth of children, he confesses that it would be hard to say. The truth we believe to be what has been said by Johnson, that the man whom Stella had the misfortune to love was fond of singularity, and desirous to make a mode of happiness for himself, different from the general course of things and the order of Providence; he wished for all the pleasures of perfect friendship, without the uneasiness of conjugal restraint. But with this state poor Stella was not satisfied; she never was treated as a wife, and to the world she had the appearance of a mistress. She lived fully on, hoping that in time he would own and receive her. This, we believe, he offered at last to do, but not till the change of his manners and the depravation of his mind made her tell him, that "it was too late."

The natural acrimony of Swift's temper had been increased by repeated disappointments. This gave a plethoric tincture to his writings, and amidst the duties of private and domestic life it too frequently appeared to shade the lustre of his more eminent virtues.—The dean hath been accused of avarice, but with the same truth as he hath been accused of infidelity. In detached views, no man was more liable to be mistaken. Even his genius and good sense might be questioned, if we were only to read some passages of his writings. To judge fairly and pronounce justly of him as a man and as an author, we should examine the uniform tenor of his disposition and conduct, and the general nature and design of his productions. In the latter he will appear great, and in the former good; notwithstanding the puns and puerilities of the one, and the absurdities and inconsistencies of the other.

species of swallow. See Hirundo, Ornithology Index.