Gay, in whom his interest was always fatherly, "and pick up languages as fast as you can, and get Aristotle upon politics, and read other books upon government, Grotius De Jure Belli et Pacis, and accounts of negotiations and treaties, etc." He writes to Bolingbroke in a letter in May, 1719, that he has observed in Cicero, that “in some of his letters, while he was in exile, there is a sort of melancholy pleasure, which is wonderfully affecting," arising from the fact, he thinks, that in those circumstances of life, "there is more leisure for friendship to operate, without any mixture of envy, interest, or ambition." Later in the same letter he urges Bolingbroke to write his memoirs, saying, "One reason why we have so few memoirs written by principal actors, is because much familiarity with great affairs makes men value them too little; yet such persons will read Tacitus and Comines with wonderful delight.”

The following bill, dated 1711, has the look of a complete equipment:

His account books record many purchases of books. At Leicester in 1709 he bought the works of Plato and Xiphilinus for £1 10s., and of the Plato he was extremely proud. It was this prize to which Sir William Fountaine refers when, in reproaching Swift for not writing to him, he says, "May the worms eat your Plato." When Swift says in a letter to the Reverend Daniel Jackson, March, 1722, "pray desire George to bring or send my Livy, for I want it much, and am going to re-read it on a particular occasion," he is alluding to his habit, when visiting Gaulstown, of reading the classics to the

family of his host, George Rochfort, Esq.; and again, in describing the ways of that household in the poem called "Country Life," he says,

At nine, grave Nim and George facetious,

Go to the Dean, to read Lucretius.

"I bought three little volumes of Lucian, in French, for our Stella and so and so," he says in The Journal to Stella; and on June 23, 1713, we find Esther Vanhomrigh writing him that she is so delighted with Fontenelle's Dialogues des morts that it is only the charm of his conversation that withholds her from disembodiment. In a letter to Pope, April 5, 1729, he gives us a little picture of his library: "In my own little library, I value the compilements of Graevius and Gronovius, which make thirty-one volumes in folio, and were given me by my Lord Bolingbroke, more than all my books besides, because whoever comes into my closet, casts his eye immediately upon them, and will not vouchsafe to look upon Plato or Xenophon." This set was evidently the Thesaurus antiquitatum graecarum et romanarum. Consider also the gravely playful, familiar and appreciative attitude towards Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hippocrates, Pausanias, Ctesias, and, above all, Herodotus, an unfailing source of fun, in A Tale of a Tub. In that work and in The Battle of the Books, Swift has gone almost as far as it is possible to go in the resuscitation of dead authors.

With Cicero Swift shows a particular intimacy. He refers to Cicero continually; at least two of the papers in The Examiner are directly modeled on Cicero's orations; there is even an unmistakable resemblance to Cicero in Swift's political and philosophic position. He compares his own letters to those of Cicero, as if Cicero were his model in epistolatory writing; but it is certainly the Cicero of the Verres, the Cataline and the Philippics

whom Bolingbroke has in mind when he says that Swift resembled Cicero. It is, however, Rabelais and Cervantes to whom he has been most often compared; but whatever kinship may be discoverable with Cervantes, his seriousness forever separates him from Rabelais. "Laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair" indeed! Swift never laughs and shakes at all.

Swift loved especially also Virgil, Aristotle, Lucretius, Horace, Lucian, Herodotus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Plato, Comines, and Juvenal. Everywhere in his works there is evidence of the widest reading. As a “devourer” of books he was like Johnson and Macaulay, but he had a power of assimilation almost unique. What an array of source material has been found for Gulliver's Travels: Philostratus, Lucian, Rabelais, Cervantes, Cyrano de Bergerac, D'Ablancourt, Tom Brown, and, probably, others; to say nothing of various classical or popular tales about pigmies, giants, and speaking beasts. The literary background of The Battle of the Books and A Tale of a Tub is simply enormous. Yet with reference to The Battle of the Books, Swift denies in the Apology affixed to the fifth edition all dependence on other works. Again, when Lord Bathurst accused him (as did with more malice Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) of having "stolen his humor from Cervantes and Rabelais, the sweetness of his numbers from Dryden and Waller and his thought from Virgil and Horace," Swift replies with mock fury that he will have it "published at the head of all the libels that have ever been writ against me." The truth of it is that, although Swift's works are permeated with allusions to all manner of authors, ancient and modern, and although he does not hesitate to borrow ideas almost word for word, his originality, like Shakespeare's, is of a bold structural type which makes the study of his sources merely a matter of general interest.

Defoe's opinion of Swift's disposition has not wanted backing, either in the furious pamphlet wars in which Swift was engaged or in the writings of modern critics. Dr. Johnson described him as "querulous and fastidious, arrogant and malignant." Macaulay thought poorly of him, as did Thackeray. Thackeray has Mr. Esmond say, "I dislike this Mr. Swift Swift that scorned all

unite in attributing to him a pride almost unequaled in the records of biography and a sense of his own power and importance which made him feel at liberty to claim homage from all the world, to trample on ceremony, to destroy reputation, and to award favors or insults without respect of persons, rank or sex. He was, they say, singularly indifferent, if not singularly callous, with reference to the feelings of others. In this I think they are mistaken, and no one in recent times, and few in his own day, have questioned his honesty, courage in his opinions, or sincerity in his friendships. In a copy of Travels in Italy, Addison wrote, "To Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, the greatest genius of his age, this work is presented by his most humble servant, the author."

Swift indeed exercised an almost magic fascination over the best minds of his age, largely, no doubt, because of his colossal gifts, his enormous intellectual power, and, probably also, because of the fundamental soundness of his character. In spite of the comparative privacy of his life, it is not unnatural to compare him with great vigorous world figures like Caesar, Bacon, and Chatham. His scope is like the scope of these men, and his importance is intrinsic. For example, although there can be no question of his pride, he does not disgust us with vanity and self-adulation; and he seems to perceive the value of his works in a calm, objective way. “The world

glutted itself with that book at first," he says of Gulliver's Travels, "and now it will go off but soberly; but I suppose it will not be soon worn out."

How much of Swift's eccentricity, his cynicism, his sudden and ungovernable passion, his humor, unearthly and unforeseen, may have been due to his lifelong malady we cannot know. His giddiness had begun in 1690, his deafness by 1694. He complains of impairment of memory in 1713, and from that time on, of a melancholy which had become a sort of dullness. From this time also, his irritability and mental depression increase. From 1736 to 1741 he was practically deaf and blind, and more and more deeply despondent. From 1741 until his death in 1745 he lost, except at intervals, the use of his mind; but it is recorded seriously that this sanest of men, usually thought insane, never uttered a foolish word. Dr. Bucknill suggests labyrinthine vertigo, dementia with aphasia, a left-side apoplexy, or cerebral softening, resulting, possibly, from a structural malformation.

Swift's life, however, in spite of extenuating circumstances (which ought to have great weight in judging him), stands out as one lived in accordance with character, training, opportunity and the temper of his age. "I never wake," he wrote Bolingbroke, "without finding life a more insignificant thing than it was the day before, which is one great advantage I get from living in this country where there is nothing I shall be sorry to lose." Life was not only a hated thing to Swift, it was also a puzzling thing, having no solution. There is scarcely a positive word in all his satire. To be sure, his great satires and polemics have sincerity as their basis, and the idea that people ought to obey the commandments and do their duty. "Whoever professes himself a member of the church of England ought to believe a God