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JONATHAN SWIFT

perience of after-life tends only to darken and destroy."-SIR WALTER SCOTT.

"Most of our readers are probably familiar with De Foe's history of that great calamity (the Plague), a work in which fabulous incidents and circumstances are combined with authentic narra

tives with an art and verisimilitude which no other

writer has ever been able to communicate to fiction."-Edin. Review, xxiv. 321.

THE PLAGUE IN LONDON IN 1665.

The Plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are contiguous where it happens, can only burn a few houses; or if it begins in a single or, as we call it, a lone house, can only burn that lone house where it begins but if it begins in a close-built town, or city, and gets a-head, there its fury increases, it rages over the whole place, and consumes all it can reach.

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people within the knowledge of some of their neighbours and families yet living who shewed the contrary to an extreme. One man, a master of a family in my neighbourhood, having had the distemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor workman whom he employed, and whom he went to his house to see, or went for some work that he wanted to have finished, and he had some apprehensions even while he was at the poor workman's door, but did not discover it fully, but the next day it discovered itself, and he was taken very ill; upon which he immediately caused himself to be carried into an outbuilding which he had in his yard, and where there was a chamber over a workhouse, the man being a brazier; here he lay, and here he died, and would be tended by none of his neighbours, but by a nurse from abroad, and would not suffer his wife, nor children, nor servants to come up into the room, lest they should be infected, but sent them his blessing and prayers for them by the nurse, who spoke it to them at a dis tance, and all this for fear of giving them the distemper, and without which, he knew as they were kept up, they could not have it.

It is true, hundreds, yea thousands, of families fled away at this last Plague, but then of them many fled too late, and not only died in their flight, but carried the distemper with them into the countries where they went, and infected those whom they went among for safety; which confounded the thing, and made that be a propagation of the distemper which was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it; and that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others, say this proves that so it was; for such people infected the very towns they went through; and it was by that means that almost all the great towns in England had the distemper among them, more or less; and always they would tell you such a Londonerings and death, without pain. or such a Londoner brought it down.

It must not be omitted that, when I speak of those people who were really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their own condition; for if they really knew their circumstances to be such as indeed they were, they must have been a kind of wilful murderers, if they would have gone abroad among healthy people, and it would have verified indeed the suggestion which I mentioned above, and which I thought seemed untrue, viz., that the infected people were utterly careless as to giving the infection to others, and rather forward to do it than not; and I believe it was partly from this very thing that they raised that suggestion, which I hope was not really true in fact.

I confess no particular case is sufficient to prove a general, but I could name several

And here I must observe also, that tho Plague, as I suppose all distempers do, operated in a different manner on different constitutions: some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it came to violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains in the back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains; others with swellings and tumours in the neck or groin, or armpits, which, till they could be broke, put them into insufferable agonies and torment; while others, as I have observed, were silently infected, the fever preying upon their spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it, till they fell into swooning, and faint

A Journal of the Plague Year.

JONATHAN SWIFT, D.V., famous alike for his wit, his genius, his love affairs with Varina, Stella, and Vanessa, and his political warfare, was born in Dublin, 1667, and died in a state of mental imbecility, 1745. Among his best-known works are Tale of a Tub, with an Account of a Battle between the Ancient and Modern Books in St. James's Library, Lond., 1704, 8vo; The Conduct of the Allies, etc., Lond., 1712, 8vo; Law is a Bottomless Pit, Lond., 1712, 8vo; Drapier's Letters, 1724, with Prometheus, etc., Dubl., 1725, 8vo, Lond., 1730, 8vo; Gulliver's Travels, Lond., 172627, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d. ed., Lond., 1727, 2 vols.

Svo. There were collective editions of his Works, Lond., 1755-1779, etc., 25 vols. 8vo, and 18mo; Lond., by John Nichols, 1801, 19 vols. 8vo, and royal 8vo; again, 1803 (some 1804), 24 vols. 18mo; again, 1808, 19 vols. 8vo; New York, 1812-13, 24 vols. 12mo; Edin., by Sir Walter Scott, with Life, 1814 (some 1815), 1250 copies, 19 vols. 8vo, and royal 8vo; 2d ed., 1250 copies, 19 vols. 8vo; Lond., with Memoir by Thomas Roscoe, 1841, also 1848, 1851, 1853, 1858, 1868, each in 2 vols. demy 8vo; New York ("first complete American edition"), 1859, 6 vols. 12mo; again, Dec. 1862, 6 vols. 12mo. A new edition of Swift's Works, prefaced by a Life, Journal, and Letters, has been announced by Mr. John Murray, of London. Of his Select Works there have been a number of editions.

allows it, meriting in its vehement plainness the
praise of the most genuine eloquence. His verse
is only, apparently, distinguished by the accident
his prose, is remarkable for sense and wit."-SIR
of measure; it has no quality of poetry, and, like
JAMES MACKINTOSH: Life, ii., ch. iii. See chaps.
i., ii., vii.

REMARKS ON A PROPOSED ABOLITION OF
CHRISTIANITY.

I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at the sight of so many daggle-tail parsons, who happen to fall in their way, and offend their eyes; but, at the same time, those wise reformers do not consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to exercise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on themselves; especially when all this may be done without the least imaginable danger to their persons. And to urge another argument of a parallel nature: if Christianity were once abolished, how could the free-thinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would, therefore, be never able to shine or distinguish themselves on any other subject? We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topic we have left? Who would ever have suspected Asgill for a wit, or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials? What other subject through all art or nature exact. There seldom occurs a hard-laboured excould have produced Tindal for a profound pression, or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of good style,-they is the wise choice of the subject that alone author, or furnished him with readers? It consist of proper words in proper places."-DR. JOHNSON: Life of Swift, in Cunningham's ed. of adorneth and distinguisheth the writer. For Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, 1854, iii. had a hundred such pens as these been em190, 191, 199: q. v. (Index) for the editor's illus-ployed on the side of religion, they would trative Notes. See also Croker's Boswell's John- immediately have sunk into silence and oblivion.

"In his works he has given very different specimens both of sentiments and expressions. His Tale of a Tub' has little resemblance to his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction such as he afterwards never possessed or never exerted. It is of a mode so distinct and peculiar that it must be considered by itself; what is true of that is not true of anything else which he has written. ["What a genius I had when I wrote that book "-Swift, in old age.] In his other works is found an equable tenour of easy language, which rather trickles than flows. His delight was in simplicity. That he has in his works no metaphor, as has been said, is not true; but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice. . . . His style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtleised by nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by ambitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought learning. . . . In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gayety. They are, for the most part,

what their author intended. The diction is cor

rect, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes

son, Index.

"His style is, in its kind, one of the models of English composition: it is proper, pure, precise, perspicuous, significant, nervous, deriving a certain dignity from a masterly contempt of puerile ornaments, in which every word seems to convey the intended meaning with the decision of the writer's character; not adapted, indeed, to express nice distinctions of thought or shades of feeling, or to convey those new and large ideas which must be illustrated by imagery but qualified beyond any other to discuss the common business of life in such a manner as to convince and persuade the generality of men, and, where occasion

Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing of Christianity may, perhaps, bring the church in danger, or at least put the senate to the trouble of another securing vote. I desire I may not be misunderstood: I am far from presuming to affirm or think that the church is in danger at present, or as things now stand, but we know not how soon it may be so, when the Christian religion is repealed. As plausible as this pro

JONATHAN SWIFT.

ject seems, there may a dangerous design lurk under it. Nothing can be more notorious than that the atheists, deists, socinians, anti-trinitarians, and other subdivisions of free-thinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment. Their declared opinion is for repealing the sacramental test; they are very indifferent with regard to ceremonies; nor do they hold the jus divinum of episcopacy. Therefore this may be intended as one politic step towards altering the constitution of the church established, and setting up presbytery in its stead; which I leave to be farther considered by those at the helm.

And therefore if, notwithstanding all I have said, it shall still be thought necessary to have a bill brought in for repealing Christianity, I would humbly offer an amendment, that, instead of the word Christianity, may be put religion in general; which I conceive will much better answer all the good ends proposed by the projectors of it. For as long as we leave in being a God and his Providence, with all the necessary consequences which curious and inquisitive men will be apt to draw from such premises, we do not strike at the root of the evil, although we should ever so effectually annihilate the present scheme of the Gospel. For of what use is freedom of thought if it will not produce freedom of action, which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of all objections against Christianity? therefore the free-thinkers consider it a sort of edifice, wherein all the parts have such a mutual dependence on each other, that if you happen to pull out one single nail the whole fabric must fall to the ground.

THOUGHTS AND APHORISMS.

And

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them, as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscoat can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible and agreeing with what he fancied.

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe that the clerks in his office used a sort of ivory knife with a blunt edge to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it even, only requiring a steady hand; whereas if they

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should make use of a sharp penknife, the sharpness would make it often go out of the crease and disfigure the paper.

"He who does not provide for his own house," St. Paul says, "is worse than an infidel ;" and I think he who provides only for his own house is just equal with an infidel.

I never yet knew a wag (as the term is) who was not a dunce.

When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices. and false opinions he had contracted in the former.

Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to posterity, let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

One argument to prove that the common relations of ghosts and spectres are generally false, may be drawn from the opinion held that spirits are never seen by more than one person at a time; that is to say, it seldom happens to above one person in a company to be possessed with any high degree of spleen or melancholy.

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next: Future ages shall talk of this;" "This shall be famous to all posterity:" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

I never heard a finer piece of satire against lawyers than that of astrologers, when they pretend by rules of art to tell when a suit will end, and whether to the advantage of the plaintiff or defendant; thus making the matter depend entirely upon the influence of the stars, without the least regard to the merits of the cause.

I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others but useless to themselves: like a sundial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, &c., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

The reason why so few marriages are happy is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

The power of fortune is confessed only by

the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit. Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words: for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in; and these are always ready at the mouth: so people come faster out of church when it is almost empty than when a crowd is at the door.

WILLIAM WHISTON,

born 1667, died 1752, was author of many mathematical and theological works (some of them opposed to trinitarian views), and published a Translation of Josephus, Lond., 1737, etc., which has been, or ought to be, superseded by the translation of Rev. Dr. Robert Traill, Lond., 1846-51, 3 vols. superroyal 8vo. Among his works were: New Theory of the Earth, Lond., 1696, 8vo; Vindication of the New Theory, Lond., 1698, Svo; Short View of the Chronology of the Old Testament, and of the Harmony of the Four Evangelists, Camb., 1702, 4to, 1707, 4to; Essay on the Revelation of St. John, Camb., 1706, 4to, some large paper, 2d ed., Lond., 1744, 4to; The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies: Boyle Lecture, Camb., 1708, 8vo; Primitive Christianity Revived, Lond., 1711-12, 5 vols. 8vo; Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Philosophy Demonstrated, Lond., 1716, 8vo; Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston, Lond., 1749-50, 3 vols. 8vo.

"The Memoirs of this singular man, published by himself, contain some curious information respecting his times, and afford a view of great honesty and disinterestedness, combined with an extraordinary degree of superstition and love of the marvellous."-Orme's Bibl. Bib., 467.

"The honest, pious, visionary Whiston."-GIBBON: Decline and Fall, ch. xliii., n.

"Poor Whiston, who believed in everything but the Trinity."-LORD MACAULAY: Hist. of Eng., viii., ch. xiv., n.

ON THE EVIDENCES OF DIVINE REVELATION.

I cannot but heartily wish, for the common good of all the sceptics and unbelievers of this age, that I could imprint in their minds all that real evidence for natural and

for revealed religion that now is, or during my past inquiries has been, upon my own mind thereto relating; and that their temper of mind were such as that this evidence

might afford them as great satisfaction as it has myself. But though this entire communication of the evidence that is or has been in my own mind, for the certainty of natural religion, and of the Jewish and Christian institutions, be, in its own nature, impossible, yet I hope I may have leave to address myself to all, especially to the sceptics and unbelievers of our age; to do what I am able for them in this momentous concern; and to lay before them, as briefly and seriously as I can, a considerable number of those arguments which have the greatest weight with me, as to the hardest part of what is here desired and expected from them. I mean the belief of revealed religion, or of the Jewish and Christian institutions, as contained in the books of the Old and New Testament. But to waive farther prelimimake me believe the Bible to be true are the naries, some of the principal reasons which following:

1. The Bible lays the law of nature for

its foundation; and all along supports and assists natural religion; as every true revelation ought to do.

mathematic sciences do confirm the accounts 2. Astronomy and the rest of our certain of Scripture, so far as they are concerned.

3. The most ancient and best historical accounts now known do, generally speaking, confirm the accounts of Scripture, so far as they are concerned.

4. The more learning has increased the more certain in general do the Scripture accounts appear, and its more difficult places are more cleared thereby.

5. There are, or have been generally, standing memorials preserved of the certain truths of the principal historical facts, which were constant evidences for the certainty of them.

6. Neither the Mosaical law, nor the Christian religion, could possibly have been received and established without such miracles as the sacred history contains.

7. Although the Jews all along hated and persecuted the prophets of God, yet were they forced to believe they were true prophets, and their writings of divine inspiration.

8. The ancient and present state of the Jewish nation are strong arguments for the truth of their law, and of the Scripture prophecy relating to them.

9. The ancient and present state of the Christian church are also strong arguments for the truth of their law, and of the Scripture prophecies relating thereto.

10. The miracles whereon the Jewish and Christian religion are founded were of old owned to be true by their very enemies.

11. The sacred writers, who lived in times and places so remote from one another, do

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

yet all carry on one and the same grand design, viz., that of the salvation of mankind by the worship of and obedience to the one true God, in and through the King Messiah, which without a divine conduct could never have been done.

12. The principal doctrines of the Jewish and Christian religion are agreeable to the most ancient traditions of all other nations. 13. The difficulties relating to this religion are not such as affect the truth of the facts, but the conduct of Providence, the reasons of which the sacred writers never pretended fully to know, or to reveal to mankind.

14. Natural religion, which is yet so certain in itself, is not without such difficulties as to the conduct of Providence as are objected to revelation.

15. The sacred history has the greatest marks of truth, honesty, and impartiality of all other histories whatsoever; and withal has none of the known marks of knavery and imposture.

16. The predictions of Scripture have been still fulfilled in the several ages of the world whereto they belong.

17. No opposite systems of the universe, or schemes of divine revelation, have any tolerable pretences to be true but those of the Jews and Christians.

These are the plain and obvious arguments which persuade me of the truth of the Jewish and Christian revelations.

SIR RICHARD STEELE, the friend of Addison, born in Dublin, 1671, died 1729, was the author of The Christian Hero, Lond., 1701, 8vo, of plays, political and other treatises, and of many papers in The Tatler, The Spectator, and The Guardian. "Steele seems to have gone into his closet chiefly to set down what he observed out of doors. Addison seems to have spent most of his time in his study, and to have spun out and wire-drawn the hints which he borrowed from Steele or took from nature, to the utmost. I am far from wishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do justice to Steele, who was, I think, upon the whole, a less artificial and more original writer. The humorous descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches, or fragments of a comedy; those of Addison are rather comments, or ingenious paraphrases, on the original text."-HAZLITT: Lects on the English Comic, Lect. V. See also Lect. VIII. "The great, the appropriate praise of Steele is, to have been the first who, after the licentious age of Charles the Second, endeavoured to introduce the Virtues on the stage."-DR. DRAKE: Essays Illustrative of The Tatler, etc., 2d ed., 1814, i. 58.

ON TEARS.

"What I would have you treat of, is the cause of shedding tears. I desire you would |

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discuss it a little, with observations upon the various occasions which provoke us to that expression of our concern, &c."

To obey this complaisant gentleman, I know no way so short as examining the various touches of my own bosom, on several occurrences in a long life, to the evening of which I am arrived, after as many various incidents as anybody has met with. I have often reflected that there is a great similitude in the motions of the heart in mirth and in sorrow; and I think the usual occasion of the latter, as well as the former, is something which is sudden and unexpected. The mind has not a sufficient time to recollect its force, and immediately gushes into tears before we can utter ourselves by speech or complaint. The most notorious causes of these drops from our eyes are pity, sorrow, joy, and reconciliation.

The fair sex, who are made of man and not of earth, have a more delicate humanity than we have; and pity is the most common cause of their tears; for as we are inwardly composed of an aptitude to every circumstance of life, and everything that befalls any one person might have happened to any other of the human race, self-love, and a sense of the pain we ourselves should suffer in the circumstances of any whom we pity, is the cause of that compassion. Such a reflection in the breast of a woman immediately inclines her to tears; but in a man, it makes him think how such a one ought to act on that occasion suitably to the dignity of his nature. Thus a woman is ever moved for those whom she hears lament, and a man for those whom he observes to suffer in silence. It is a man's own behaviour in the circumstances he is under which procures him the esteem of others, and not merely the affliction itself, which demands our pity: for we never give a man that passion which he falls into for himself. He that commende himself never purchases our applause; nor he that bewails himself our pity. . . . In the tragedy of Macbeth" where Wilks acts the part of a man whose family has been murdered in his absence, the wildness of his passion, which is run over in a torrent of calamitous circumstances, does but raise my spirits, and give me the alarm; but when he skilfully seems to be out of breath, and is brought too low to say more; and upon a second reflection cries only, wiping his eyes, "What, both children! Both, both my children gone!" there is no resisting a sorrow which seems to have cast about for all the reasons possible for its consolation, but has no resource. "There is not one left; but both, both are murdered !" such sudden starts from the thread of the discourse, and a plain sentiment expressed

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