secession of Swift from the political world excited the greatest surprise-the public wondered,'-the party writers exulted in a thousand ineffectual libels, discharged against the retreating champion of the high church,2—and his friends conjured him and one; at eight we have bread and butter, and a glass of ale, and at ten he goes to bed. Wine is a stranger, except a little I sent him, of which, one evening in two, we have a pint between us. His wife has been this month twenty miles off, at her father's, and will not return these ten days. I never saw her, and perhaps the house will be worse when she comes. I read all day, or walk, and do not speak as many words as I have now writ, in three days; so that, in short, I have a mind to steal to Ireland, unless I feel myself take more to this way of living, so different, in every circumstance, from what I left."-Swift's Works, vol. xix., p. 336.] 1 See Pope's Letter, 18th June, 1714, Swift's Works, vol. xvi., p. 121, and that of Thomas Harley, 19th June, 1714, Ibid. p. 123. One of these, which exhibits a good deal of humour, was called, A Hue and Cry after Dean Swift, containing a copy of his Diary, &c. It is reprinted in his Works, vol. xvi., p. 200. It will surprise the reader in perusing this, how closely the libeller has touched many of Swift's real habits; and the circumstance serves to show, more plainly than a thousand general allegations, that even the most private particulars concerning him, had been for some years the object of public attention. His minute register of petty expenses, and the little shifts he adopted to diminish them, are mimicked very much in the style of his own Journal, and two or three circumstances in the Diary happened to coincide whimsically enough with the actual fact. 1mo, He left Ford to settle for his handkerchiefs: Compare the Diary, ibid., vol. xvi., p. 201, Saturday, with p. 157 of the same volume. 2dly, If he did not borrow money of his bookseller, as in the Diary, (ibidem,) he seems to have made such an arrangement with Bar ber, his printer, who tells him all his bills shall be answered, p. 132. And though he did not then take exclusively to reading the civil wars of England, (ibidem,) yet, after the decline of his faculties, it was the only work he perused, and in numerous letters, to return and reassume the task of a peacemaker. This he positively declined, but he seems to have meditated the extraordinary plan of an appeal to the public, at least to the Tory part at large, against those errors on which the administration seemed splitting asunder. With this view, he composed the "Free Thoughts on the State of Public Affairs," in which it is remarkable, that, although he loved Oxford far better than Bolingbroke, and indeed better than any other man who lived, yet almost the whole censure expressed in the piece falls to the share of that statesman. His affectation of mystery, his want of confidence in his colleagues, his temporizing with the opposite party, and maintaining many of the Whigs in office, are noticed at length, and with some severity. The infatuation of the internal dissension of the ministers, compared to a ship's crew quarrelling in a storm, or when within gunshot of the enemy, is the only particular in which Bolingbroke shares the blame with Oxford. The he read it thrice over. In two particulars the Diary misrepresents his habits. Swift never appears to have smoked tobacco, and certainly never used wine, nor any liquor, to excess. The following notice of Swift occurs in a poem On the late Examiner, which appeared about this time. "O Jonathan! of merry fame, As thou would'st say, are dropp'd by God," && Political Merriment, 1714. measures recommended as a remedy for the imminent danger, are such as suited the headlong audacity of the former, rather than the slow and balancing policy of Harley. These are, 1st, to achieve a complete predominance of the Tory party, by an absolute exclusion of the dissenters, termed the open enemies of the Church of England, from every degree of power, civil or military; a disqualification to be extended likewise to all Whigs and low-church men, affirmed to be her secret adversaries, unless promotion be earned by a sincere reformation. This great work was to be accompanied by a new modelling of the army, especially of the royal guards, which are pronounced fitter, in their existing state, to guard a prince to the bar of a high-court of justice, than to secure him on the throne. 2dly, After a thorough, and doubtless a sincere disavowal, of the exiled branch of the House of Stuart, it is strongly recommended that all secret intercourse between any party in England and the court of Hanover be broken off; that the visits of the presumptive heir, and his claims to be called to Parliament, be no longer pressed upon the queen without her permission; and that the electoral prince should be required to declare his utter dislike of factious persons and principles, more especially of the party who affected to be peculiarly zealous for his rights, and to avow himself entirely satisfied with her majesty's proceedings at home and abroad. This was bold, daring, uncompromising counsel, better suited to the genius of him who gave it than to that of the British nation, and most likely, if fol lowed, might have led to civil war. The treatise was, however, sent by Swift to his friend Charles Ford, and, with great precaution, through a circuitous channel, and, under a feigned name, transmitted by him to Barber the printer. Barber, being patronized by Bolingbroke, showed the manuscript, upon his own authority, to that statesman, who lost no time in making such additions and alterations, as were calculated to render it still more unfavourable to Oxford, and more suitable to his own political intrigues. On learning that such alterations were made, Swift, whose intention it had ever been to preserve the most perfect neutrality betwixt his great friends, and, if possible, to reunite them, but by no means to assist the one to the prejudice of the other, commissioned Ford to demand back the manuscript. It was recovered from the secretary of state and the typographer after some hesitation, delay, and difficulty. And thus, the publication of this tract, which undoubtedly might have produced a great, though perhaps a dangerous effect, at that critical period, was laid entirely aside. He seems to have meditated another political pamphlet at the same time, apparently the memoirs relating to the change of ministry in 1710. But it must have been in somewhat a different form from that in which it was finally published.1 On the 14th August, 1714, Ford writes, "I suppose Barber has given you an account of Lord Bolingbroke's pamphlet," (i. e. the Free Thoughts, of which Bolingbroke had detained the manuscript.) "I long for the other."-Swift's Works, vol. xvi., p. 199; and p. 216, 14th September, Swift Meantime every post brought Swift, from various quarters, and with varying comments, accounts of the successful intrigues of Bolingbroke. It is curious to compare the differing lights in which the same facts are placed by his correspondents, as affected by their own feelings or interest. Lewis adheres to the falling fortunes of Oxford,-Ford seems half disposed to worship the apparently rising star of Bolingbroke,-Arbuthnot, like Swift, blames both, and laments the consequences of their division. Bolingbroke himself omitted no means of conciliating Swift to the revolution which he was about to accomplish in the cabinet. He wrote to the Dean in the kindest terms of friendship; and when Arbuthnot reminded him of the memorial for the post of historiographer, he exclaimed, that to have suffered Swift, who had deserved so well of them, to have the least uneasy thought about such matters, would be among the eternal scandals of their government. His good intentions, however, were in that case frustrated, as the lord-chamberlain had, three weeks before, bestowed the office upon another. But, to manifest his own zeal for Swift's interest, Bolingbroke caused an order on the treasury to be signed by the queen for the thousand pounds which Swift had in vain solicited from Oxford, and this he did during his short ministry of three days. The warrant, indeed, was rendered 1 writes to Bolingbroke, "The take this country; it has in three weeks spoiled two as good sixpenny pamphlets as ever a proclamation was issued out against." 1 Letter from Arbuthnot, Swift's Works, vol. xvi., p. 151. 2 Mr Maddox. See Ford's letter, ibid. p. 156. |