Ireland, in hopes of experiencing benefit from his native air; but finding no advantage from the change, he again returned to Moorpark, and employed in his studies the intervals which his disorder afforded. It was now that he experienced marks of confidence from Temple, who permitted him to be present at his confidential interviews with King William, when that monarch honoured Moorpark with his visits, a distinction which Temple owed to their former intimacy in Holland, and which he received with respectful ease, and repaid by sound and constitutional advice. Nay, when Sir William's gout confined him to his chamber, the duty of attending the King devolved upon Swift; and it is recorded by all the poet's biographers, that William offered him a troop of horse, and showed him how to cut asparagus the Dutch way. It would be unjust to suppress the additional advantage he acquired in learning, by the royal example, to eat the same vegetable with Dutch economy, on which subject the reader will find a lively anecdote at the bottom of the page.1 Other advantages of a more patients, they may readily be excused from assigning dishonourable causes for the disorders of the illustrious dead. This characteristic story is given on the authority of the father of my friend, Mr M. Weld Hartstonge. Alderman George Faulkner of Dublin, the well-known bookseller, happening one day to dine in company with Dr Leland, the historian, the conversation adverted to the illustrious Dean of St Patrick's. Faulkner, who was the Dean's printer and publisher on many occasions, mentioned, that one day being detained late at the Deanery-house, in correcting some proof. sheets for the press, Swift made the worthy alderman stay to dinner. Amongst other vegetables, asparagus formed one of the dishes. The Dean helped his guest, who shortly again solid nature were, however, held out to his ambition; and he was led to hope that he would be provided for in the church, to which profession he was destined, as well by inclination as by so fair a prospect of preferment.' The high trust reposed in him warranted these hopes. For he was employed by Sir William Temple to lay before King William the reasons why his Majesty ought to assent to the bill for triennial parliaments; and he strengthened Temple's opinion by several arguments drawn from English history. But the King persevered in his opposition, and the bill was thrown out by the influence of the Crown, in the House of Commons. This was the first intercourse that Swift had with courts; and he was wont to tell his friends that it helped to cure him of vanity: having probably anticipated success in his negotiation, and being mortified in proportion by its unexpected failure. In 1692, Swift went to Oxford for the purpose of taking his master's degree, to which he was admitted on the 5th July in that year.2 He seems to called upon his host to be helped a second time; when the Dean, pointing to the alderman's plate, "Sir, first finish what you have upon your plate."-" What, sir, eat my stalks!" "Ay, sir! King William always eat the stalks!"-" And George," rejoined the historian, (who was himself remarkably proud, and very pompous,)" what, were you blockhead enough to obey him?"-" Yes, doctor, and if you had dined with Dean Swift, tête-à-tête, faith, you would have been obliged to eat your stalks too!" 1 He writes to his uncle, William Swift, 29th November, 1692, "I am not to take orders till the King gives me a prebend." [Swift was admitted into Harts-hall, Oxford, the 14th June, 1692.-MASON.] 1 have been pleased with the civilities he met at Oxford, and observes, that he was ashamed to have been more obliged, in a few weeks, to strangers, than ever he was, in seven years, to Dublin college.1 The favour of Oxford necessarily implies learning and genius. In the former, Swift was now eminent, and in the latter, showed the fair promise of an active and enterprising mind. Even in 1691 he informs his friend, Mr Kendal, that he had "written, and burned, and written again upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any man in England." Amidst these miscellaneous efforts, poetry was not neglected. The Muses met him on their own sacred ground, and it is at Oxford that Swift produced his first verses, (reserving only his claim to any of those contained in the Tripos of Jones.) It is a version of Horace, book ii., ode 18: "'Tis true, my cottage, mean and low, No ivory cornices can show, Nor ceilings rough with gold displays. No cedar beams for pomp and state, Not dropt an accidental heir To some old kinless miser's means; 1 The passage reminds us of a similar expression in Dryden's pro logue to the University of Oxford. "Oxford to him a dearer name shall be Than his own mother university; Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage, He chooses Athens in his riper age." Both poets had received some censure from their Alma Mater. No wealthy vassal's gifts I wear, Rich purple vests, and sweeping trains; But virtue and a little sense, 1 Have so endeared me to the great, Blest in my little Sabine field, I'll neither gods above implore, Hang on my wealthy friends for more," &c. &c. Besides these verses, we find Swift attempting another style of poetical composition less favourable to his fame. This produced his Pindaric Odes, the only kind of writing which he seriously attempted without attaining excellence, and which must therefore be accounted among the injudicious efforts of a genius which had not yet become acquainted with its own powers. The undertaking is said to have been pressed upon him by Sir William and Lady Temple, who were admirers of Cowley. But it is reasonable enough to suppose that Swift should have turned voluntarily towards that kind of metaphysical poetry, in which wit (if wit consists in presenting unexpected and ingenious combinations) is the leading and distinguishing feature; and, after all the vituperation which has been heaped upon these odes, they are not, generally speaking, worse than the pindarics of Donne and Cowley, which, in the earlier part of the century, gained these authors unbounded applause. It is said that Swift communicated these poetical exercises to Dryden, whose concise reply, "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet," he neither forgot nor pardoned. One of the odes is inscribed to the Athenian Society, in strains of eulogy of which Swift must have been afterwards ashamed, when he recollected that the Apollo of this English Athens was no other than John Dunton the bookseller.3 With the exception of these ["The enraged wit, after he had reached the maturity of his own admirable judgment, and must have been well aware of the truth of the friendly prediction, could never forgive it. He has indulged the utmost licentiousness of personal rancour; he places Dryden by the side of the lowest of poets; he even puns miserably on his name to degrade him as the emptiest of writers; and for that spirited translation of Virgil, which was admired even by Pope, he employs the most grotesque sarcastic images to mark his diminutive genius-' for this version-maker is so lost in Virgil, that he is like the lady in a lobster; a mouse under a canopy of state; a shrivelled beau within the pent-house of a full-bottomed periwig.' He never was generous enough to contradict his opinion, and persisted to the last."-D'ISRAELI'S Quarrels of Authors, vol. iii., p. 298. 2 ["As when the deluge first began to fall, That mountain which was highest, first of all Appear'd above the universal main, To bless the primitive sailor's weary sight; And nigh to Heaven as is its name; So, after the inundation of a war, When learning's little household did embark, With her world's fruitful system, in her sacred ark, At the first ebb of noise and fears, Philosophy's exalted head appears; And the Dove-Muse will now no longer stay, Swift's Works, vol. xiv., p. 24. 3 [The autobiography of this crackbrained scribbler, entitled "The Life and Errors of John Dunton," appeared in 1705, and has been reprinted in 1818. The reader will find abundant extracts from this amusing farrago in D'Israeli's popular works, and in some articles of Blackwood's Magazine for 1818.] |