his life closed in Ireland, where he was looked upon as the foremost assertor of her wrongs. He had in his time played many parts. The fierce controversialist, the merciless satirist, the gloomy cynic, had another side to his character, which has given it an undying interest in the dramatic contrast of light and shade. To his friends he was a centre of attraction. The fierce anger of the fight could always be laid aside for the light playfulness of humour, and for the warmth of a sympathetic affection. Lonely, disappointed, weighed down by his consuming scorn for much that he saw around him, he yet clung to the love of his friends, and was almost blind to their faults. Chiefly under the influence of a self-torturing cynicism, he had darkened his own life by involving his chief affection in mystery; but to two women he had nevertheless been the very centre of their life, and to one of these he was bound by a tie of old and faithful affection which was broken only by death. Over Hester Vanhomrigh, as over Esther Johnson, he had gained an overpowering influence as guide, philosopher, and friend. But while Vanessa, as he playfully called the former, unwilling to efface herself, and mistaking their relations, became the object of Swift's anger and contempt, so Stella, accepting the mysterious limits placed upon their union by Swift, and content to live only for what love he had to give her, earned his profound respect and friendship, and by her death left him a lonely and comfortless man. His relations to his literary and political friends were the more close and cordial, because he had himself so little of those small jealousies that are apt to pervade such circles. He could bear with the petty vanity of Pope; he clung to Addison in spite of party differences; encouraged the helplessness of Gay; and condoned the ostentation and insincerity that marred the brilliancy of Bolingbroke. Imperious in his attitude towards his fellow-men, disdainful of human foibles, he yet forgot his harshness and his scorn in his love of those who were his chosen friends.

In Swift's attitude towards religion there is much that is characteristic of his age, but not a little that is peculiar to himself. In his hatred of avowed scepticism, in his intolerance of all that would lessen the influence of the established religion.

as a system of police, in his angry repudiation of all charges of freethinking, Swift was partly true to his own conviction, but partly also reflected what was one of the chief traits of the religious apathy of his time. In some respects his position, in this regard, is not very different from that assumed by those whom posterity has justly agreed to reckon as typical freethinkers-by Bolingbroke, by Pope, by Chesterfield. But Swift did not accompany it, as they did, by a dallying with tenets subversive of the fundamental positions of Christianity. The notion of his duty, as a faithful servant of his own Church, doubtless helped to maintain Swift's rigid adherence to her principles, and his conviction of the social dangers of scepticism gave sincerity to his defence of these principles: but the real motive of his refusal to admit any tampering with accepted religious tenets lay much deeper, and had its foundation in his contempt for his fellow-creatures. The narrow range of human knowledge, the scanty power of discerning truth, the slight influence which truth ever had in determining human action, or in withstanding human passions,-all these made him treat religious speculation as a species of morbid vanity, and made him find in accepted dogma, if not the real key to the problems of life, at least one which might serve the sorry crew, who were eager for any new or schismatical doctrine, as a means of satisfying their whims or flattering their self-conceit. The weapon of Swift's orthodoxy is always ridicule, never exhortation. Because the religion of our fathers is not good enough for the fools of to-day, are we to change every year or month, to suit each new caprice? This is, in effect, his argument against any scheme of Comprehension,' the watchword so dear to the latitudinarians of his day. But while in certain aspects this contemptuous and impatient dogmatism, which scorned even to listen to doubts or to waste time on speculation, brought Swift near to the affected and formal orthodoxy of those whom I have named, yet there was another side, on which his religious feeling was far different from theirs. It had the sincerity of a mind, earnest alike in its hatreds, its loves, its sympathies, and` its gloom. Only on rare occasions does he suffer it to be seen; and when, in his own life's experience, he seems to turn to it,

it is as to something which brought him no soothing or gentle influence, but rather a spirit of deepened melancholy, and a stronger sense of the mysterious sadness of that 'ridiculous tragedy,' to which he was accustomed to compare human life.

And something of this many-sidedness, and of these vivid contrasts, in personal character, appears also in the literary genius of Swift. As a literary artist, he is consummate in his skill: yet no man probably ever attended less to rules of art. His charm chiefly lies in the absolute ease with which he could create by words the very mood-humorous or grave, gay or cynical, profoundly misanthropic or playful and tender-in which he desired to place his reader. By some of the most competent of critics, his prose has been held to be the perfection of English style; not certainly because of its finish or elaboration; not because it is without inaccuracy and minor incorrectness; but because it is so absolutely clear and direct, and moves with such perfection of unstudied and inimitable ease. His works occupy a place altogether unique in our own, or any other literature. They fall into line with no one order of creative genius. But their chief literary interest lies in this, that whatever the subject of which they treat, whatever the special manner of that treatment, they all show that highest power of genius as applied to literary creation, which makes written language the absolute slave of the thought and mood that have to be conveyed, reflecting their slightest variation, and repeating, without apparent effort, the most subtle of their passing phases. To the student of literature, the gradual development of his genius, from his obscure and uncouth Pindarics, to the resistless flow of his Legion Club, and from the somewhat stilted periods of the Dissensions at Athens and Rome, to the unstudied simplicity of Gulliver, will afford, at each turn, new subject of interest, and new illustrations of the matchless power over words which Swift, in his maturity, attained.

In the following selections, therefore, the object has been not to exclude any characteristic phase of Swift's style. If we are to appreciate Swift, it is impossible to confine ourselves to those works which mark his genius at its highest, and the later ease of his style, or which deal with subjects of most enduring interest.

We must see from what that ease and flexibility, which became his characteristics, gradually emerged: we must watch him in his most careless mood, and we must observe how his genius has preserved a living interest for pamphlets of which the occasion is forgotten and uncared for. In the introductory prefaces, it is hoped that enough information is given to place the student in possession of the outlines of the subject of which each work treats, and the circumstances in which it was composed. In the notes, it has been my aim to supply some of that necessary commentary which has scarcely yet been attempted in any edition of Swift. The absence of such a commentary has certainly marred the common appreciation of his genius. Men have learned a few typical phrases from his works; they have been attracted by the more obvious bursts of satire; they have singled out the passages which appeal to all time. But they have failed to follow the course of the satire line by line; to trace its movement and advance; and to identify the special reference, to some now-forgotten incident, which gives to it appropriateness and force. So far as the specimens here given are concerned, I have sought to make their more careful reading possible to the student who may not have time or opportunity to trace such allusions for himself.

H. C.