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Read Ebook: Men Women and Books by Birrell Augustine
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Ebook has 349 lines and 35287 words, and 7 pages
PAGE DEAN SWIFT 1
LORD BOLINGBROKE 16
STERNE 28
DR. JOHNSON 38
RICHARD CUMBERLAND 47
ALEXANDER KNOX AND THOMAS DE QUINCEY 58
HANNAH MORE 70
MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF 81
SIR JOHN VANBRUGH 96
JOHN GAY 109
ROGER NORTH'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 121
BOOKS OLD AND NEW 134
BOOK-BINDING 147
POETS LAUREATE 157
PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES 167
THE BON?-FIDE TRAVELLER 176
'HOURS IN A LIBRARY' 189
AMERICANISMS AND BRITICISMS 199
DEAN SWIFT.
Of writing books about Dean Swift there is no end. I make no complaint, because I find no fault; I express no wonder, for I feel none. The subject is, and must always remain, one of strange fascination. We have no author like the Dean of St. Patrick's. It has been said of Wordsworth that good-luck usually attended those who have written about him. The same thing may be said, with at least equal truth, about Swift. There are a great many books about him, and with few exceptions they are all interesting.
A man who has had his tale told both by Johnson and by Scott ought to be comprehensible. Swift has been, on the whole, lucky with his more recent biographers. Dr. Craik's is a judicious life, Mitford's an admirable sketch, Forster's a valuable fragment; Mr. Leslie Stephen never fails to get to close quarters with his subject. Then there are anecdotes without end--all bubbling with vitality--letters, and journals. And yet, when you have read all that is to be read, what are you to say--what to think?
No fouler pen than Swift's has soiled our literature. His language is horrible from first to last. He is full of odious images, of base and abominable allusions. It would be a labour of Hercules to cleanse his pages. His love-letters are defaced by his incurable coarseness. This habit of his is so inveterate that it seems a miracle he kept his sermons free from his blackguard phrases. It is a question not of morality, but of decency, whether it is becoming to sit in the same room with the works of this divine. How the good Sir Walter ever managed to see him through the press is amazing. In this matter Swift is inexcusable.
Then his unfeeling temper, his domineering brutality--the tears he drew, the discomfort he occasioned.
'Swift, dining at a house, where the part of the tablecloth which was next him happened to have a small hole, tore it as wide as he could, and ate his soup through it; his reason for such behaviour was, as he said, to mortify the lady of the house, and to teach her to pay a proper attention to housewifery.'
One is glad to know he sometimes met his match. He slept one night at an inn kept by a widow lady of very respectable family, Mrs. Seneca, of Drogheda. In the morning he made a violent complaint of the sheets being dirty.
'Dirty, indeed!' exclaimed Mrs. Seneca; 'you are the last man, doctor, that should complain of dirty sheets.'
And so, indeed, he was, for he had just published the 'Lady's Dressing-room,' a very dirty sheet indeed.
Honour to Mrs. Seneca, of Drogheda!
This side of the account needs no vouching; but there is another side.
In 1705 Addison made a present of his book of travels to Dr. Swift, in the blank leaf of which he wrote the following words:
'To Dr. Jonathan Swift, The most agreeable companion, The truest friend, And the greatest genius of his age.'
Addison was not lavish of epithets. His geese, Ambrose Philips excepted, were geese, not swans. His testimony is not to be shaken--and what a testimony it is!
Then there is Stella's Swift. As for Stella herself, I have never felt I knew enough about her to join very heartily in Thackeray's raptures: 'Who has not in his mind an image of Stella? Who does not love her? Fair and tender creature! Pure and affectionate heart.... Gentle lady! so lovely, so loving, so unhappy.... You are one of the saints of English story.' This may be so, but all I feel I know about Stella is, that Swift loved her. That is certain, at all events.
'If this be error, and upon we proved, I never writ, and no man ever loved.'
The verses to Stella are altogether lovely:
'But, Stella, say what evil tongue Reports you are no longer young, That Time sits with his scythe to mow Where erst sat Cupid with his bow, That half your locks are turned to gray I'll ne'er believe a word they say. 'Tis true, but let it not be known, My eyes are somewhat dimmish grown.'
And again:
'Oh! then, whatever Heaven intends, Take pity on your pitying friends! Nor let your ills affect your mind To fancy they can be unkind. Me, surely me, you ought to spare Who gladly would your suffering share, Or give my scrap of life to you And think it far beneath your due; You, to whose care so oft I owe That I'm alive to tell you so.'
We are all strangely woven in one piece, as Shakespeare says. These verses of Swift irresistibly remind their readers of Cowper's lines to Mrs. Unwin.
Swift's prose is famous all the world over. To say anything about it is superfluous. David Hume indeed found fault with it. Hume paid great attention to the English language, and by the time he died had come to write it with much facility and creditable accuracy; but Swift is one of the masters of English prose. But how admirable also is his poetry--easy, yet never slipshod! It lacks one quality only--imagination. There is not a fine phrase, a magical line to be found in it, such as may occasionally be found in--let us say--Butler. Yet, as a whole, Swift is a far more enjoyable poet than Butler.
Swift has unhappily written some abominable verses, which ought never to have been set up in type; but the 'Legion Club,' the verses on his own death, 'Cadenus and Vanessa,' the 'Rhapsody on Poetry,' the tremendous lines on the 'Day of Judgment,' and many others, all belong to enjoyable poetry, and can never lose their freshness, their charm, their vitality. Amongst the poets of the eighteenth century Swift sits secure, for he can never go out of fashion.
I only know one good-humoured anecdote of Swift; it is very slight, but it is fair to tell it. He dined one day in the company of the Lord Keeper, his son, and their two ladies, with Mr. Caesar, Treasurer of the Navy, at his house in the City. They happened to talk of Brutus, and Swift said something in his praise, and then, as it were, suddenly recollecting himself, said:
'Mr. Caesar, I beg your pardon.'
One can fancy this occasioning a pleasant ripple of laughter.
There is another story I cannot lay my hands on to verify, but it is to this effect: Faulkner, Swift's Dublin publisher, years after the Dean's death, was dining with some friends, who rallied him upon his odd way of eating some dish--I think, asparagus. He confessed Swift had told him it was the right way; therefore, they laughed the louder, until Faulkner, growing a little angry, exclaimed:
'I tell you what it is, gentlemen: if you had ever dined with the Dean, you would have eaten your asparagus as he bade you.'
Truly a wonderful man--imperious, masterful. Yet his state is not kingly like Johnson's--it is tyrannical, sinister, forbidding.
Nobody has brought out more effectively than Mr. Churton Collins Swift's almost ceaseless literary activity. To turn over Scott's nineteen volumes is to get some notion of it. It is not a pleasant task, for Swift was an unclean spirit; but he fascinates and makes the reader long to peep behind the veil, and penetrate the secret of this horrible, yet loveable, because beloved, man. Mr. Collins is rather short with this longing on the part of the reader. He does not believe in any secret; he would have us believe that it is all as plain as a pikestaff. Swift was never mad, and was never married. Stella was a well-regulated damsel, who, though she would have liked very much to have been Mrs. Dean, soon recognised that her friend was not a marrying man, and was, therefore, well content for the rest of her days to share his society with Mrs. Dingley. Vanessa was an ill-regulated damsel, who had not the wit to see that her lover was not a marrying man, and, in the most vulgar fashion possible, thrust herself most inconveniently upon his notice, received a snubbing, took to drink, and died of the spleen. As for the notion that Swift died mad, Mr. Collins conceives himself to get rid of that by reprinting a vague and most inconclusive letter of Dr. Bucknill's. The mystery and the misery of Swift's life have not been got rid of by Mr. Collins. He has left them where he found them--at large. He complains, perhaps justly, that Scott never took the trouble to form any clear impression of Swift's character. Yet we must say that we understand Sir Walter's Swift better than we do Mr. Collins'. Whether the Dean married Stella can never be known. For our part, we think he did not; but to assert positively that no marriage took place, as Mr. Collins does, is to carry dogmatism too far.
A good deal of fault has lately been found with Thackeray's lecture on Swift. We still think it both delightful and just. The rhapsody about Stella, as I have already hinted, is not to our mind. Rhapsodies about real women are usually out of place. Stella was no saint, but a quick-witted, sharp-tongued hussy, whose fate it was to win the love and pacify the soul of the greatest Englishman of his time--for to call Swift an Irishman is sheer folly. But, apart from this not unnatural slip, what, I wonder, is the matter with Thackeray's lecture, regarded, not as a storehouse of facts, or as an estimate of Swift's writings, but as a sketch of character? Mr. Collins says quite as harsh things about Swift as are to be found in Thackeray's lecture, but he does not attempt, as Thackeray does, to throw a strong light upon this strange and moving figure. It is a hard thing to attempt--failure in such a case is almost inevitable; but I do not think Thackeray did fail. An ounce of mother-wit is often worth a pound of clergy. Insight is not always the child of study. But here, again, the matter should be brought to the test by each reader for himself. Read Thackeray's lecture once again.
What can be happier or truer than his comparison of Swift with a highwayman disappointed of his plunder?
'The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre and crosier in it, which he intends to have for his share, has been delayed on the way from St. James's. The mails wait until nightfall, when his runners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different road and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with a curse, and rides away in his own country.'
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