of the Allies, had no unimportant share in bringing about the disgrace of Marlborough, and the shortlived supremacy of the Harley ministry. There is no disguising the fact that these political tracts read very ill in the present day, when we are accustomed to have our political pabulum very neatly dished up for fastidious palates. Two Examiners are given in these selections out of thirty-three that Swift wrote, and they are, I think, the most interesting, and as literature the best, of the series; but they are certainly flat. No modern leader-writer, however commonplace, would write such heavy stuff now. The explanation probably is, as Mr. Leslie Stephen remarks, that Swift's pamphlets were rather blows than words; he had serious political effects to produce, and what he had to prove must be said in plain words, for the honest Tory squire of the country party to understand,—and obey. However this may be, very few of Swift's political writings have a literary value, and too many have a vindictive tone of personal hatred, that destroys their balance and ruins their literary effect. The extract from the Conduct of the Allies, the best and most potent of all his English tracts, will serve to show Swift's manner in this species of composition, and contains as clear an epitome of his views on statesmanship as could be found in a few vigorous paragraphs. Here we see that peace policy, that denunciation of the war as the doing of a ring of Whig stock-jobbers and monied men, and that belief in the landed interest and in the Establishment, which formed the keynote to Swift's politics, and the ground of his secession to the Tories.

Of the rest of the selection little need be said. It

was decided that it must be limited to prose, since the introduction of Swift's verse would have resulted in an inadequate representation of both; and the same restrictions of space compelled the rejection of the Journals and Correspondence, which were not written for publication, and have a biographical rather than a literary value. The Essay on improving the English Tongue is inserted as the only piece that Swift ever put his name to, and also as one of the few writings of his that are not satirical, except so far as a proposal for an Academy for England must always involve some unconscious irony. The somewhat antiquated views upon the origin and the history of our language may be forgiven in consideration of the fine appeal at the end for more substantial recognition of learning at the hands of the state :-an appeal which still retains its force in our time, when the revenue of England is devoted more readily to any object than the encouragement of science and learning; in spite of the fact that "the smallest favour given by a great prince as a mark of esteem to reward the endowments of the mind never fails to be returned with praises and gratitude, and loudly celebrated to the world."

The last twenty-five years of Swift's sane life may be called his Irish period. During this time he was generally resident in Ireland, and his pen-apart from Gulliver-was almost wholly devoted to Irish concerns. He wrote about Irish trade, or no-trade; on banks, currency, agriculture, fisheries, grazing, road-making, planting, reclaiming bogs, labelling beggars, abolishing the Irish language, and utilizing infants as articles of food. In all these we find the essential virtues of Swift's style: all are treated in the inflexibly

logical fashion; objections are reduced to absurdity or laughed out of existence; arguments driven home with a sledge-hammer, accompanied by a dispersing of sharp splinters into the soft places of bystanders. Some are naturally of merely temporary interest : others contain far-reaching views on the melancholy condition of Ireland under English rule. Many notable extracts might be made in illustration of the state of the country and the corruption of the government; but for literary purposes the famous Fourth Drapier's Letter, which caused a reward to be offered for the author's detection, and the even more celebrated Modest Proposal, with the little-known but ingenious caricature of the bubbles of the period, entitled The Swearer's Bank, are probably sufficient. They show that Swift's hand had not lost its cunning; and they also show, what many would regard as contradictory in his character, that he was an earnest Irish patriot. His "perfect hatred of tyranny and oppression," which by his own account was the cause of his championship of Ireland, was entirely of a piece with the wrath against wrong that inspired the Tub and Gulliver. He defended Ireland from a sense of justice rather than love or pity; for he positively hated the land of his exile, and regarded Dublin only as a "good enough place to die in." Nor can we claim for him a wide sympathy with the Irish proper, of whom he scarcely thought, or with the Ulster Presbyterians, whom he abhorred: his voice was for the narrow Ireland of the Englishry. Nevertheless, he worked a marvellous change in the country at large. Right or wrong about Wood's halfpence and other matters, he created public opinion in a "nation of slaves," and

used it as a political force against a bad law and a vicious system of government.

Part of the Polite Conversation concludes the selection this, with the Directions to Servants, formed Swift's last prose works. The Directions are SO radically disgusting from first to last, that I cannot bring myself to stain these pages by a single extract : but the Polite Conversation shows us the now venerable Dean of St. Patrick's in a light and genial vein that leaves a pleasant taste, despite the knowledge that the sparkling string of inconsequent repartee was written by a man who had long abandoned hope.

"No English is more robust than Swift's," is the verdict of a sound critic, "no wit more scathing, no life in private and public more sad and proud, no death more pitiable." In this pithy summary a true note is touched which no student of Swift can forget. That life full of proud sadness is among the chief titles of Swift to the interest and admiration of all ages. The troubled spirit may rest,-ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit,-but the sad proud story will not be forgotten while there are ears to hear and hearts to understand. The personality of the desolate Dean stands out among his contemporaries like a riven oak amidst a forest of saplings. As we wander through the forest, we stop and admire the supple grace of the young trees, but all the while the old oak, seared with the thunder-bolt, towers above us in lonely majesty : him we dare not praise, but stand in sudden awe. So when we ramble through the wonderful correspondence that has descended to us from the library of St. Patrick's Deanery, we revel in the sparkling wit and light grace of the Popes and Gays, the Arbuthnots

and Priors, the Lady Betty Germains and Duchesses of Queensberry of the brilliant epoch; we do homage to the daring mind of Bolingbroke; and catch glimpses of Addison and Steele and Congreve in the distance but all the while we are conscious of a greater presence, of a master intellect before whom all these lesser luminaries pale and fade; a personality compared to which those others are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine."

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We see him, in his busy years in London, writing his Examiners all evening, and then in bed scribbling his "little language" to Stella, till his fingers ache with cold, or hurrying away unshorn in the early morning, after a brief postscript to his loved journal, to prepare, at the urgent entreaty of Harley, some fresh broadside in defence of the ministry. He is dining with St. John and the favoured few at the Saturday councils, or dropping in at Will's or the St. James's Coffee House, to chat with Addison, or ask for a letter from Ireland, where he left his heart. Or again he is spending long silent days with Pope at Twickenham, or enjoying stolen visits to the Vanhomrighs, or dispensing what little gaiety and sprightliness he possessed with the charming Lady Betties of the period. We follow him to the quiet and hated retreat of St. Patrick's, and see him defending, as it never before had been defended, the country of his forced adoption, passing his only hours of sympathy with that mysterious partner of his life who was ever near but never close or watch him reverently as he sets a seal on a life's strange love, in the despairing memorable words, "only a woman's hair.' We tremble at his forced gaiety with the jovial pathetic Sheridan in his