Part 14 (1/2)
'And showed by one satiric touch No nation needed it so much.'
A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice'
of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that Swift's 'philosophy of life is ign.o.ble, base, and false,' that 'his impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of our nature--revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'[47]
This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain streams--these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence.
Doubtless, as a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his language is admirably fitted for that end. What more then, it may be asked, can be needed? The reply is, that in composition, as in other things, there are different orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be a low kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and light,' to quote a phrase of his own, which distinguish our greatest prose writers. It lacks also the elevation which inspires, and the persuasiveness that convinces while it charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison, Swift, apart from his _Letters_, has none of Addison's attractiveness.
No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn and contempt; but its author cannot express, because he does not possess, the sense of beauty.
Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of letters. He wrote neither for literary fame nor for money. His ambition was to be a ruler of men, and in imperious will he was strong enough to make a second Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret, 'how I governed Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift, ”_quaesitam meritis sume superbiam_.”' As a political pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was savagely in earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant. If argument was against him he used satire; if satire failed he tried invective; his armoury was full of weapons, and there was not one of them he could not wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the ministers who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have already said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's commanding genius gives even to his most trivial productions a measure of vitality. The student of our eighteenth century literature is arrested by the man and his works, and to treat either him or them with indifference would be to neglect a significant chapter in the history of the time.
[Sidenote: John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).]
John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the Queen Anne wits, and the warm friend of Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose, in 1667. He studied medicine at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's degree at St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen, to seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published an _Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning_, and having won high reputation as a man of science, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years later he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne; and it was not long before he had as high a repute among men of letters as with men of science. He suffered frequently from illness; but no pain, it has been said, could extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had sent Gay there on one occasion, and thither in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the comfort, but even the devout a.s.surance of a Christian.'
There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only was his equal, and in cla.s.sical learning he was Swift's superior. Like Oth.e.l.lo, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a kindred spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.'
His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said he had every virtue which could make a man amiable; Berkeley wrote of him as a great philosopher who was reckoned the first mathematician of the age and had the character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and Chesterfield, who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible imagination' were at every one's service, added that 'charity, benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said and did.'
Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is to be gleaned from the correspondence of his friends, and it is only of late years that an attempt has been made to write the doctor's biography, and to collect his works.[48] To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult and a doubtful task--several of Arbuthnot's writings having been produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay. So indifferent was he to literary fame, that his children are said to have made kites of papers in which he had jotted down hints that would have furnished good matter for folios. His most famous work is _The History of John Bull_ (1713), which Macaulay considered the most humorous political satire in the language. It was designed to help the Tory party at the expense of the Duke of Marlborough, whose genius as a military leader was probably equal to that of Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke' in the virtues which form a n.o.ble character. The irony and dry humour of the satire remind one of Swift, and, like Arbuthnot's _Art of Political Lying_, is so much in Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be excused for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St.
Patrick's.
The _History of John Bull_ is not fitted to attain lasting popularity.
It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen excitement, the amus.e.m.e.nt, and the irritation caused by a brilliant satire of living men and pa.s.sing events can be but vaguely imagined by readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat, and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his neighbours to be hen-pecked, 'which was impossible by such a mild-spirited woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by such wily men of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and Lord Strutt of Spain, and also that other tradesmen should be willing to join John and Nic Frog, the linen-draper of Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and Frog, or Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was scarce possible so effectually to dim the l.u.s.tre of Marlborough's splendid achievements as by parodying them under the history of a suit conducted by a wily attorney who made every advantage gained over the defendant a reason for protracting law procedure, and enhancing the expense of his client.' In this long lawsuit everybody is represented as gaining something except _John Bull_, whose ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of _John Bull_ originated with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him is not known.
Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club, and wrote the larger portion of the _Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus_ (1741), the design of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule false tastes in learning, in the character of a man 'that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he is right; but the _Memoirs_ contain some humorous points which, if they do not create merriment, may yield some slight amus.e.m.e.nt. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.'
As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the language, that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as iota.' He also taught him as a diversion 'an odd and secret manner of stealing, according to the custom of the Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so well that he practised it till the day of his death.' Martin studies logic, philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the soul is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides in the stomach of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in the fingers of fiddlers, and in the toes of rope-dancers. His discoveries, it may be added, are made 'without the trivial help of experiments or observations.'
FOOTNOTES:
[43] _Life of Jonathan Swift_, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174.
Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume of a work to which for many years he had given 'much labour and time.'
[44] _English Men of Letters--Jonathan Swift_, by Leslie Stephen, p. 43.
[45] Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of town we dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company. The Dean of St.
Patrick's was there _in very good humour_, he calls himself ”_my master_,” and corrects me when I speak bad English or do not p.r.o.nounce my words distinctly. I wish he lived in England, I should not only have a great deal of entertainment from him, but improvement.'--_Life and Correspondence of Mrs Delany_, vol. i., p. 407.
[46] _Life of Swift_, p. 299.
[47] _Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study_, by J. Churton Collins, p. 267.
[48] See _The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot_, by George A. Aitken.
Oxford, Clarendon Press.
CHAPTER VI.