Harvard Classics, Volume 28 | Page 3

him.
You know, of course, that Swift has had many biographers; his life has
been told by the kindest and most good-natured of men, Scott, who
admires but can't bring himself to love him; and by stout old Johnson,
who, forced to admit him into the company of poets, receives the
famous Irishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly
recognition, scans him from head to foot, and passes over to the other
side of the street. Dr. Wilde of Dublin, who has written a most
interesting volume on the closing years of Swift's life, calls Johnson
"the most malignant of his biographers:" it is not easy for an English
critic to please Irishmen--perhaps to try and please them. And yet
Johnson truly admires Swift: Johnson does not quarrel with Swift's
change of politics, or doubt his sincerity of religion: about the famous
Stella and Vanessa controversy the Doctor does not bear very hardly on
Swift. But he could not give the Dean that honest hand of his; the stout
old man puts it into his breast, and moves off from him.
Would we have liked to live with him? That is a question which, in
dealing with these people's works, and thinking of their lives and
peculiarities, every reader of biographies must put to himself. Would
you have liked to be a friend of the great Dean? I should like to have
been Shakspeare's shoeblack--just to have lived in his house, just to
have worshipped him--to have run on his errands, and seen that sweet
serene face. I should like, as a young man, to have lived on Fielding's
staircase in the Temple, and after helping him up to bed perhaps, and
opening his door with his latch-key, to have shaken hands with him in

the morning, and heard him talk and crack jokes over his breakfast and
his mug of small beer. Who would not give something to pass a night at
the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of
Auchinleck? The charm of Addison's companionship and conversation
has passed to us by fond tradition--but Swift? If you had been his
inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for all persons present, I
fear is only very likely), his equal in mere social station, he would have
bullied, scorned, and insulted you; if, undeterred by his great reputation,
you had met him like a man, he would have quailed before you, and not
had the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years after written a foul
epigram about you--watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail
you with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon. If you had been a lord
with a blue riband, who flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition,
he would have been the most delightful company in the world. He
would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original,
that you might think he had no object in view but the indulgence of his
humour and that he was the most reckless, simple creature in the world.
How he would have torn your enemies to pieces for you! and made fun
of the Opposition! His servility was so boisterous that it looked like
independence; he would have done your errands, but with the air of
patronizing you, and after fighting your battles, masked, in the street or
the press, would have kept on his hat before your wife and daughters in
the drawing-room, content to take that sort of pay for his tremendous
services as a bravo.
He says as much himself in one of his letters to Bolingbroke:--"All my
endeavours to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and
fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion
of my parts; whether right or wrong is no great matter. And so the
reputation of wit and great learning does the office of a blue riband or a
coach and six."
Could there be a greater candour? It is an outlaw, who says, "These are
my brains; with these I'll win titles and compete with fortune. These are
my bullets; these I'll turn into gold;" and he hears the sound of coaches
and six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and
deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord

bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue riband, and my lady's brocade
petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent
place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives them
over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come yet. The
coach with the mitre and crosier