35 36 He wrote likewise this year A Vindication of Bickerstaff1, and an explanation of an Ancient Prophecy, part written after the facts, and the rest never completed, but well planned to excite amazement. Soon after began the busy and important part of Swift's life. He was employed (1710) by the primate of Ireland 3 to solicit the Queen for a remission of the First Fruits and Twentieth parts to the Irish Clergy. With this purpose he had recourse to Mr. Harley, to whom he was mentioned as a man neglected and oppressed by the last ministry, because he had refused to cooperate with some of their schemes 5. What he had refused has form 'those of higher rank. Morality and religion would soon become fashionable Court virtues.' Works, viii. p. 85. Hypocrisy would, no doubt, be increased, but 'hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice.' Ib. p. 97. He attacks the London magistrates who often enrich themselves by encouraging the grossest immoralities; to whom all the bawds of the ward pay contribution for shelter and protection from the laws.' Ib. p. 94. All taverns should be cleared at midnight; 'no woman should be suffered to enter them upon any pretence whatsoever,' and the landlords should be obliged, upon the severest penalties,' to limit the quantity of drink. Ib. p. 100. See also post, SWIFT, 138 n. Steele praised this pamphlet in The Tatler for April 21, 1709. He quoted this Tatler in his Apology occasioned by his Expulsion from the House of Commons. Parl. Hist. vi. was not altogether devoid of wit, till it was extruded from his head to make room for other men's thoughts.' Works, ix. 269. The Pope had claimed the firstfruits of all benefices,-'the first year's whole profits'—and the tenths-'the tenth part of the annual profit.' On the Reformation this revenue was annexed to the Crown. 'In Charles II's time it went chiefly among his women and his natural children.' As the valuation had not been raised, the amount paid 'was in most places not above the fifth part of the true value.' In England the whole amounted to about £16,000 a year. By statute 2 Anne, c. II, it was applied to the augmentation of poor livings, under the title of Queen Anne's Bounty. Blackstone, 1775, i. 284; Burnet's Hist. iv. 32. A like indulgence was sought for the Irish Church. The twentieth parts,' writes Swift, 'are twelve pence in the pound, paid annually out of all benefices, as they were valued at the Reformation.' The total yearly revenue paid to the Crown amounted to £3,000. Works, xv. 362. In his Change in the Queen's Ministry he says that it was 'the first fruits and tenths that he solicited.' Ib. iii. 184. In July, 1711, the twentieth parts were remitted, and the first-fruits granted for buying impropriations (church land in the hands of a layman'). Ib. xv. 437. 5 'I got myself represented as one extremely ill-used by the last ministry after some obligations, because I re never been told; what he had suffered was, I suppose, the exclusion from a bishoprick by the remonstrances of Sharpe, whom he describes as 'the harmless tool of others' hate,' and whom he represents as afterwards 'suing for pardon '.' Harley's designs and situation were such as made him glad of 37 an auxiliary so well qualified for his service; he therefore soon admitted him to familiarity, whether ever to confidence some have made a doubt 3; but it would have been difficult to excite his zeal without persuading him that he was trusted, and not very easy to delude him by false persuasions. He was certainly admitted to those meetings in which the first 38 hints and original plan of action are supposed to have been formed, and was one of the sixteen Ministers, or agents of the Ministry, who met weekly at each other's houses, and were united by the name of Brother*. Being not immediately considered as an obdurate Tory 5, he 39 conversed indiscriminately with all the wits, and was yet the friend of Steele, who in The Tatler, which began in 1710, confesses the advantages of his conversation', and mentions something contributed by him to his paper. But he was now im fused to go certain lengths they would have me. This happened to be in some sort Mr. Harley's own case.' Works, xv. 364. See also ib. ii. 29. For his gross flattery of Halifax in 1709 with a view to preferment see his two letters to him in Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 201. For Harley, Earl of Oxford, see ante, PRIOR, 21, 35; CONGREVE, 28. 'Ante, SWIFT, 26 n. 2 He told me that their great difficulty lay in the want of some good pen to keep up the spirit raised in the people.' Works, iii. 185. 3 Orrery, p. 44. Swift wrote on Nov. 11, 1710:- Mr. St. John told me that Mr. Harley complained he could keep nothing from me, I had the way so much of getting into him. I knew that was a refinement.' Works, ii. 77. (Refinement, in this sense, is defined by Johnson as 'artificial practice.') Lewis (ante, Gay, 13) wrote to Swift on Aug. 6, 1713 of Harley:-'His mind has been communicated more freely to you than any other.' Ib. xvi. 58. * Ante, PRIOR, 45. 5 In 1716 Swift wrote that he 'was always a Whig in politics.' Works, xvi. 267. He always defended the Revolution. In 1724 he wrote:-'All government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. Ib. vi. 422. See also ib. iii. 255, vii. 477, viii. 266, xvi. 345; Letters to Chetwode, p. 88; post, SWIFT, 115. "It began on April 12, 1709. 7 'A certain uncommon way of thinking, and a turn in conversation peculiar to that agreeable gentleman, rendered his company very advantageous to one whose imagination was to be continually employed upon obvious and common subjects, though at the same time obliged to treat of them in a new and unbeaten method.' The Tatler, Preface to vol. iv. Dec. 14, 1710, Swift wrote:-' The ministry hate to think that I should help Steele; ... and I frankly told them I would do it no more.' Works, ii. 107. 8 On Description of the Morning in' 40 41 merging into political controversy; for the same year produced The Examiner, of which Swift wrote thirty-three papers'. In argument he may be allowed to have the advantage; for where a wide system of conduct and the whole of a publick character is laid open to enquiry, the accuser having the choice of facts must be very unskilful if he does not prevail; but with regard to wit, I am afraid none of Swift's papers will be found equal to those by which Addison opposed him 2. Early in the next year he published A Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue, in a Letter to the Earl of Oxford3, written without much knowledge of the general nature of language, and without any accurate enquiry into the history of other tongues. The certainty and stability which, contrary to all experience, he thinks attainable, he proposes to secure by instituting an academy; the decrees of which every man would have been willing, and many would have been proud to disobey, and which, being renewed by successive elections, would in a short time have differed from itself. He wrote the same year A Letter to the October Club 5, a number of Tory gentlemen sent from the country to Parliament, who formed themselves into a club, to the number of about a hundred, Town, No. 9, and Description of a Ante, SMITH, 2 n.; KING, 13; 2 The last Whig Examiner was on Oct. 12, 1710. Addison's Works, iv. 390. Swift's first Examiner appeared on Nov. 2. 3 Ante, ROSCOMMON, 14; PRIOR, 15; Works, ix. 133. It was published, not the next year, but in 1712. In Johnson's Works, 1825, viii. 202, the mistake is corrected by a silent transposition of paragraphs. Swift wrote on May 10, 1712:-'My letter is now printing, and I suffer my name to be put at the end of it, which I never did before in my life.' Works, iii. 26. See also ib. ii. 282, 486, xv. 435, 492, xvi. 5, and post, SWIFT, 75 n. 2. 'Les membres de ce corps auraient eu un grand avantage sur les premiers qui composèrent l'Académie française. Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Addison etc. avaient fixé la langue anglaise par leurs écrits; au lieu que Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, Cotin, nos premiers académiciens, étaient l'opprobre de notre nation.' VOLTAIRE, Euvres, xxiv. 145. Dryden died twelve years before Swift published his Proposal. See also John. Misc. i. 436. 4 'Nay, it were no difficult contrivance, if the public had any regard to it, to make the English tongue immutable, unless hereafter some foreign nation shall invade and overrun us.' BENTLEY, Works, ed. 1836, ii. 13. 5 Works, iv. 79. It was published in January 1711-12. On Jan. 28 Swift wrote:-'It does not sell.... Like a true author I grow fond of it because it does not sell.' On Feb. I he added:-'It begins now to sell.' Ib. ii. 468, 471. and met to animate the zeal and raise the expectations of each other. They thought, with great reason, that the ministers were losing opportunities; that sufficient use was not made of the ardour of the nation; they called loudly for more changes and stronger efforts, and demanded the punishment of part, and the dismission of the rest, of those whom they considered as publick robbers. Their eagerness was not gratified by the Queen or by Harley. 42 The Queen was probably slow because she was afraid, and Harley was slow because he was doubtful: he was a Tory only by necessity or for convenience, and when he had power in his hands had no settled purpose for which he should employ it; forced to gratify to a certain degree the Tories who supported him, but unwilling to make his reconcilement to the Whigs utterly desperate, he corresponded at once with the two expectants of the Crown3, and kept, as has been observed, the succession undetermined. Not knowing what to do he did nothing; and with the fate of a double-dealer at last he lost his power, but kept his enemies. Swift seems to have concurred in opinion with the October 43 Club; but it was not in his power to quicken the tardiness of Harley, whom he stimulated as much as he could, but with little effects. He that knows not whither to go, is in no haste to move. Harley, who was perhaps not quick by nature, became yet more slow by irresolution, and was content to hear that Hanover.' Smollett's Hist. of Eng. ii. 289. In Article iv of his impeachment he is charged with corresponding with the Pretender's mother. Parl. Hist. vii. 120. For his correspondence with the Pretender in 1716, see Dict. Nat. Biog. xxiv. 404. Of earlier correspondence there is no mention in the article. 4 'He was a greater object of the hatred of the Whigs than all the rest of the ministry together.' SWIFT, Works, v. 259. 5 Swift mentions 'that incurable disease, either of negligence or procrastination, which influenced every action both of the Queen and the Earl of Oxford.' Ib. iii. 165. See also ib. v. 275. 44 45 46 dilatoriness lamented as natural, which he applauded in himself as politick. Without the Tories, however, nothing could be done, and as they were not to be gratified they must be appeased; and the conduct of the Minister, if it could not be vindicated, was to be plausibly excused. Swift now attained the zenith of his political importance: he published (1712) The Conduct of the Allies, ten days before the Parliament assembled. The purpose was to persuade the nation to a peace 2, and never had any writer more success. The people, who had been amused with bonfires and triumphal processions, and looked with idolatry on the General and his friends who, as they thought, had made England the arbitress of nations, were confounded between shame and rage when they found that 'mines had been exhausted and millions destroyed 3,' to secure the Dutch or aggrandize the emperor, without any advantage to ourselves *; that we had been bribing our neighbours to fight their own quarrel, and that amongst our enemies we might number our allies. That is now no longer doubted, of which the nation was then first informed, that the war was unnecessarily protracted to fill the pockets of Marlborough 5, and that it would have been continued without end if he could have continued his annual plunder. 1 Ante, PRIOR, 21; Works, iv. 291. Swift wrote on Nov. 27, 1711: The pamphlet is published.' Ib. ii. 413. Parliament met on Dec. 7. Ib. p. 423. Johnson was misled by the date on the title-page of the first edition-1712. 'On those for the three following editions it is 1711. Several editions were issued before the end of the year, and the publisher was compelled to go back on his word.' Literature, Jan. 1, 1898, p. 346. 2 6 'Oct. 26, 1711. We have no quiet with the Whigs, they are so violent against a peace; but I'll cool them with a vengeance very soon.' Works, ii. 387. 3 This quotation is not from Swift's pamphlet. It will no doubt be a mighty comfort to our grandchildren when they see a few rags hung up in Westminster Hall, which cost a hundred millions, whereof they are paying the arrears, to boast, as beggars do, that their grandfathers Swift wrote to Stella:-'Dec. 31, 1710. The Duke is as covetous as Hell, and ambitious as the prince of it; he would fain have been general for life, and has broken all endeavours for peace to keep his greatness and get money. Yet he has been a successful general, and I hope he will continue his command. ... 'Jan. 7, 1710-11. I question whether ever any wise state laid aside a general who had been successful nine years together, whom the enemy so much dreaded, and his own soldiers cannot but believe must always conquer.' Works, ii. 126, 141. ['Marlborough really desired and expected peace, but it cannot be said that he fully exerted his influence in favour of practicable terms.' LESLIE STEPHEN, Dict. Nat. Biog.x. 333. See |