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intellects cannot resist. He is in London five or six months in 1701, six or eight the next year, six or eight the next, and so on.

Swift's Politics.

He is in politics, too, which ran at high tide all through Anne's time and the previous reign; you will read no history or biography stretching into that period but you may be confounded (at least I am) with talk of Whigs and Tories; and of what Somers did, and of what Harley did, and of what Ormond might do; and it is worth sparing a few moments to say something of the great parties. In a large way Whiggism represented progress and the new impulses which had come in with William III., and Toryism represented what we call conservatism. Thus, in Old Mortality, young Henry Morton is the Whig, and her ladyship of Tillietudlem is a starched embodiment of Toryism. Those who favored the Stuart family, and made a martyr of Charles I.. - those who leaned to Romanism and rituals, or faith in tradition, were, in general, Tories; and those who brought over William of

Orange, or who were dissenters or freethinkers, were apt to be Whigs. So the scars which came of sword-cuts by Cromwellian soldiers were apt to mark an excellent Tory; and the cropped ears of Puritans, that told of the savageness of Prince Rupert's dragoons, were pretty sure to brand a man a Whig for life. But these distinctions were not steady and constant; thus, the elegant and fastidious Sir William Temple was a Whig; and old Dryden, clinking mugs with good fellows at Will's coffee-house, was a Tory. Again, the courtly and quiet Mr. Addison, with his De Coverley reverences, was a good Whig; and Pope, with his Essay on Man, and fellowship with freethinkers, was Toryish. Swift began with being a Whig, to which side his slapdash wilfulness, his fellowship with Temple, and his scorn of tradition drew him; but he ended with veering over to the Tory ranks, where his hate of Presbyterianism and his eager thrusts at canting radicals gave him credit and vogue.

Addison and others counted him a turncoat, and grew cold to him; for party hates were most hot in those days; Swift himself says—the politicians wrangle like cats. He was tired, too, of waiting on

Whig promises; perhaps he had larger hope of preferment with the Tories; Steele alleged this with bitterness; and there can be no doubt that Swift had an eye on preferment. Why not? Can he, so alert in mind, so loving of dignity, so conscious of power, see Mr. Addison coming to place as Secretary of State, and Steele with his fat commissions, without a tingling and irritating sense of dissatisfaction? Can he see good, amiable, pious dunces getting planted year after year in fat bishoprics, without a torturing remembrance of that poor little parish of Laracor, with a following so feeble that he is fain to open service some days (his factotum being the only auditor) with "My dearly beloved

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Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places"

How these contrasts must have grated on the mind of a man who looked down on all their lordships; who looked down on Steele; and who could count on his finger-ends the personages whom he scanned eye to eye- and who were upon a level with his commanding height.

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brought quick reward; but he was too strong and too proud and too independent to come by reward easily. Such a man is bowed to reverently; is invited to dine hither and yon; is flattered, is humored, is conciliated; but as for office-ah! that is another matter. He is unsafe; he will kick over the traces; he will take the bit in his mouth; he will be his own man and not our man. What court, what cabinet, what clique could trust to the moderation, to the docility, to the reticence of a person capable of writing Gulliver's Travels, and of turning all court scandals, all political intrigues, all ecclesiastic decorum, into a penny-show?

He is, indeed, urged for Bishop of Hereford — seems to have excellent chance there; but some brother Bishop (I think 'tis the Archbishop of York), who is much afraid, as he deserves to be, of The Tale of a Tub-says to the hesitating Queen, "Better inquire first if this man be really a Christian;” and this frights the good Queen and the rest. So Swift is let off with the poor sop of the Deanery of St. Patrick's.

His London Journal.

We know all about those days of his in London -days of expectancy. He has told us:

"The ministry are good hearty fellows. I use them like dogs, because I expect they will use me so. They call me nothing but Jonathan. I said I believed they would leave me Jonathan, as they found me; and that I never knew a minister do anything for those whom they make companions of their pleasures; and I believe you will find it so, but I care not."

And to whom does he talk so confidentially, and tell all the story of those days? Why, to Hester Johnson. It is all down in Stella's journal - written for her eye only; and we have it by purest accident. It was begun in 1710-he then in his forty-third year, and she in her thirtieth.

She has kept her home over in Ireland with Mrs. Dingley seeing him on every visit there, and on every day, almost, of such visits; and, as her sweetest pasturage, feeding on letters he writes other times, and lastly on this Stella journal, "for her

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