the whole town ever since. The whole impression sold in a week: anıl nothing is more diverting than to hear the different opinions people give of it; though all agree in liking it extremely. It is generally said that you are the author; but, I am told, the bookseller declares that he knows not from what hand it came. From the highest to lowest, it is universally read from the Cabinet Council to the nursery. . . . Your friend, my Lord Harcourt, commends it very much, though he thinks in some places the matter too for carried. [Sarah] the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough is in raptures at it. She says she can dream of nothing else since she read it. She declares that she hath now found out that her whole life hath been lost in caressing the worst part of mankind, and treating the best as her foes; and that if she knew Gulliver, though he had been the worst enemy she ever had, she would give up her present acquaintance for his friendship.

"You may see by this that you are not much injured by being supposed the author of this piece. If you are, you have disobliged us, and two or three of your best friends, in not giving us the least hint of it while you were with us; and, in particular, Dr. Arbuthnot, who says it is ten thousand pities he had not known it, he could have added such abundance of things upon every subject. Among lady critics, some have found out that Mr. Gulliver had a particular malice to Maids of Honour. Those of them who frequent the Church say his design is impious, and that it is depreciating the works of the Creator. Notwithstanding, I am told, the Princess hath read it with great pleasure. . . It hath passed Lords and Commons, nemine contradicente; and the whole town, men, women, and children, are quite full of it."

In the first edition the publisher, upon his own responsibility, had altered or excised several passages. Of this the author complains, ironically, in a preface to the second edition, which served to give to the Travels still further an air of reality:-" I do not in the least complain," writes Gulliver to his cousin Sympson, "of my own great want of judgment in being prevailed upon, by the entreaties and false reasonings of you and some others, very much against my own opinion, to suffer my Travels to be published. Pray, bring to mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted upon the motive of public good, that tie Yahoos were species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precepts and example. And so it has proved: for, instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect, behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn

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47

that my book has produced one single effect according to mine intentions. I desired you would let me know, by a letter, when party and faction were extinguished, judges learned and upright, pleaders honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield blazing with pyramids of law books, the young nobility's education entirely changed, the physicians banished," &c. He further demands: "Have not I the most reason to complain, when I see those very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a vehicle, as if these were brutes, and those the rational creatures?" The cause of its enduring popularity and fame is the extraordinary naturalness, and elaborate and inimitable verisimilitude of the fiction, and the universality of the satire, notwithstanding the frequent allusions to comtemporary history. The least successful part of the Travels, obviously, is the Voyage to Laputa. The irony, too little discriminating, seems to confound true and false science in one general contempt, although, it may be allowed, the science of the day too often exposed itself to deserved ridicule. In the last part, the extreme severity of the sarcasm tends, perhaps, to weaken its real force. But to represent the human species, so generally unfeeling and tyrannical towards the subject species, for once as subjected to a race of beings superior in power no less than in intelligence and morality, must be admitted to have been a happy as well as original idea. "

To add to the air of reality of his volumes, Swift inserted maps of the countries visited by his hero, as well as a portrait of him. The first edition varies from succeeding ones in certain passages-with the exception of a paragraph in the Voyage to Laputa, upon the island of Tribnia-all in the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms; and a copy of the first edition, now in the South Kensington Museum, contains the manuscript revisions of the author, who has cancelled the passages which were to be altered for the next edition. One of these alterations concerns the highly interesting interview of Gulliver with his Houyhnhnm master; where, in place of the words, "I said there was a Society of men among us, bred from their youth in the art of proving by words, multiplied for

1 How far Swift, like other great writers, lies under obligation to his predecessors-to Lucian, Rabelais, and Bergerac (Histoire Comique des Etats et des Empires de la Lune, &c.), in particular, has already been sufficiently pointed out; but a curiously close imitation, or rather transcription, in the Voyage to Brobdingnag, from a narrative of a storm at sea, found in a little known publication, the Mariners' Magazine, 1679, has been lately discovered by the writer of the article in the Quarterly Review, July, 1883. In this passage Swift adopts, through several sentences, the very words of the magazine writer.

2 The Houyhnhnmus, pronounced Whinhyms, as the author carefully informs his readers, signifies, in its etymology, the perfection of nature.

the purpose, that White is Black, and Black White," &c., as in the present text, appeared, originally, the following:-"I said that those who made profession of this science [of Law] were exceedingly multiplied, being almost equal to the caterpillars in number, that they were of diverse degrees, distinctions, and denominations. The numerousness of those that dedicated themselves to the Profession was such, that the fair and justifiable advantage, and income, of the Profession was not sufficient for the decent and handsome maintenance of multitudes of those who followed it. Hence it came to pass that it was found needful to supply that by artifice and cunning, which could not be procured by just and honest methods; the better to bring which about, very many men among us were bred up from their youth," &c.

Much has been written, and many theories have been hazarded, to explain the purpose and scope of this great Satire. Whatever may have been the purpose of particular parts, his own words plainly declare the general inspiration of it to have been the gratification of being able (as he imparts to Pope, Sept. 29, 1725) "to vex the world." "Principally," he reiterates, "I hate and detest that animal called Man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas. . . . I have got materials towards a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy (though not in Timon's manner) the whole building of my Travels is erected, and I never will have peace till all honest men are of my opinion." In a curiously interesting letter, now first printed, addressed to his publisher Motte, in December, 1727, he gives a number of hints for the illustration of his book. Motte, it seems, had suggested the advisability of thus increasing its popularity; and Swift replies, with some doubt, "You will consider how much it will raise the price of the book. The world glutted itself with that book at first, and now it will go off but soberly; but, I suppose, will not soon be worn out? The part of the Little Men will bear cuts much better than that of the Great... The Country of Horses, I think, would furnish many; Gulliver brought to be compared with the Yahoos; the family at dinner and he waiting; the Grand Council of Horses assembled sitting-one of them standing with a hoof extended, as if he were speaking," &c. Swift again visited London, and for the last time, in 1727, taking up his quarters with Pope, and with Lord Oxford at Wimpole. One of the most interesting incidents during this visit was his supplying Gay's Beggar's Opera, the idea of which he is said to have originated, with

HIS HOLYHEAD DIARY.

49

two of the songs. In ridicule and a parody of the Italian Opera, which had come into fashion at the beginning of the century, the Beggar's Opera now shared with the Travels the public favour. The death of George I. for a moment raised the hopes of the Dean of St. Patrick's, hopes that he had derived from the favour of Mrs. Howard; but, unfortunately for him, the influence of the Queen,in this exceptional instance, outweighed that of the Mistress. Disappointed in this last chance, he left England in disgust, never to return. At Holyhead bad weather detained him a week, and the dreariness of his solitude in the inn he relieved by keeping a slight journal, which has been printed, for the first time, by Mr. Craik. Its interest, curious rather than important, lies in its characteristic style, in which the diarist jots down the most trifling thoughts or occurrences as the humour strikes him, apparently with the double purpose of distracting his mind from saddening thoughts and of giving vent to his ennui.' Three months only from the date of his arrival in 1 Life at Holyhead for weather-bound travellers, in the first half of the last century, appears to have been gloomy enough at the best; but accidental circumstances aggravated for Swift the disagreeableness of the situation, e.g.:-"I dare not send my linen to be washed, for fear of being called away at half-an-hour's warning, and then I must leave them behind me, which is a serious point. I live at great expense, without one comfort. able bit or sup-I am afraid of joining with passengers, for fear of ge ting acquainted with Irish. The days are short, and I have five hours at night to spend by myself before I go to bed. I should be glad to converse with farmers or shopkeepers, but none of them speak English. A dog is better company than the Vicar; for I remember him of old. What can I do but write everything that comes into my head? Watt [his servant] is a booby of that species which I dare not suffer to be familiar with me, for he would ramp on my shoulders in half-an-hour... I am a little risky [?] from two scurvy disorders, and if I should relapse, there is not a Welsh house-cur that would not have more care taken of him than I, and whose loss would not be more lamented. I confine myself to my narrow chamber in all unwalkable hours. The master of the pacquet-boat, one Jones, hath not treated me with the least civility, although Watt gave him my name. In short, I come from being used like an Emperor to be used worse than a dog at Holyhead. Yet my hat is worn to pieces by answering the civilities of the poor inhabitants as they pass by. The women might be safe enough, who all wear hats, yet never pull them off, if the dirty streets did not foul their petticoats by courtseying so low. On my conscience, you may know a Welsh dog as well as a Welsh-man or woman by its peevish, passionate way of barking...

If the Vicar could but play at back-gammon, I were an Emperor; but I know him not, I am as insignificant here as parson Brooke is in Dublin. By my conscience, I believe Cæsar would be the same without his army at his back. Whoever would wish to live long should live here, for a day is longer than a week; and, if the weather be foul, as long as a fortnight. Yet here I could live with two or three friends, in a warm house, and good wine,-much better than being a slave in Ireland. But my misery is, that I am in the worst part of Wales, under the very worst circumstances; afraid of a relapse; in utmost solitude; impatient for the condition of our friend [Stella]; not a soul to converse with; hindered from exercise by rain; cooped up in a room not half so large as one of the Deanery closets. My room smokes into the bargain, and the other is too cold and moist to be without a fire." Prefixed to the journal are a number of verses, the most interesting part of the note-book, in which he expresses, in no complimentary terms, his bitter detestation of all parties in his native country who were everlastingly wrangling for place and power, in the midst of the general misery :-

E

Dublin, after long and painful lingering in a condition between life and death, the woman, who had sacrificed her reputation and devoted her whole life to him, at last ended her unhappy

days after how much secret suffering, who can say? How much anguish of soul he himself felt his letters sufficiently reveal. Eighteen months before the closing scene came, while still in England, news had reached him of her even then almost dying state, and he writes to Dr. Sheridan, who had sent him the melancholy report:-"I have yours just now of the 19th [July, 1726], and the account you give me is nothing but what I have some time expected with the utmost agonies, and there is one aggravation of constraint-that, where I am, I am forced to put on an easy countenance. It was, at this time, the best office your friendship could do-not to deceive me. I look upon this to be the greatest event that can ever happen to me; but all my preparations will not suffice to make me bear it like a philosopher, nor altogether like a Christian. . . Nay, if I were now near her, I would not see her. I could not behave myself tolerably, and should redouble her sorrow. Judge in what a temper of mind I write this. The very time I am writing, I conclude the fairest soul in the world has left its body."1

Such expressions of deep agony of mind serve to account for, what otherwise would be inexplicable, his shrinking from her presence during her last moments; for the story of his violent behaviour at the bed of the dying Stella is all but incredible, and happily rests upon no sure evidence. Yet, strange contradictions, difficult to reconcile, meet us on this occasion, equally as in the case of the death of Hester

Printed from MS., formerly belonging to Mr. Forster, now in the South Kensington Museum. Life of Jon. Swift, by H. Craik, 1882.

1 When we consider how much her life was bound up with his, it is strange, as Mr. Craik has pointed out, that scarcely any reference to her is found in Swift's correspondence with his friends. The only one of them that mentions her name is Lord Bolingbroke, two or three times, and then only in jest, e.g., in Sept., 1724, he invites his friend, in Horatian fashion, to mourn her absence over his wine cups :-Inter vina fugam Stellæ mærere protervæ. And, again, in the year following, he remarks: "Your Star will probably hinder you from taking the journey." Not long before her death, he sends some fans to Swift, "to dispose of to the present 'Stella,' whoever she may be," (Life of Jonathan Swift, xv.). He himself seems to mention her name (in writing) only to his most intimate friend Sheridan. She lived, for the most part, in lodgings, not far from the Deanery; and at the dinners given by Swift, at which she assisted, as Johnson says," she regulated the table, but appeared at it as a mere guest, like cther ladies."