Having been patronized by the princess of Wales, afterwards queen Caroline, he had hoped, on the accession of George the Second, to receive some substantial proofs of her munificence. The expectation was fallacious: but he found a retreat in the family of the duke of Queensberry which softened his disappointment. His last popular work was his Fables. Few authors, with equal pretensions to originality, have possessed powers so versatile and so various.

Gay has never failed completely but in comedy. He could not delineate character; he could only produce caricatures. He had a rich vein of natural humour, but he wanted the fancy, taste, and judgment, essential to the dramatic writer. The merit of his songs is attested by their popularity. To please the people appears to have been his first object. He wrote not for critics: in his happiest efforts he had discovered a province peculiarly his own, and which seemed not amenable to their jurisdiction. He has contrived to render verse attractive to the ignorant and the vulgar. His Fables, in which the most artificial composition becomes susceptible of pathos and nature, are familiar to those who have never looked into any other volume: were the press suspended, these would still be preserved in the memory, not only of the instructed but the illiterate; and thus, by tradition alone, might the name and genius of their author be transmitted to posterity.

But the person who in that era of party constituted the strength of the tories, was Swift; nor is it easy to produce in competition any name that does not shrink into comparative insignificance. Swift was the Leviathan of his age. It would be difficult to analyse a mind of such various aptitudes and comprehensive faculties, and which in early life gave no intimations of future excellence. It has often been disputed," whether Swift was born in England or Ireland; but that he

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received his education in the latter country has never been disputed. He was member of Trinity College, Dublin, where he passed through the usual academical gradations, with little pleasure to himself, and no satisfaction to his instructors. This circumstance, which in such a man as Swift could only be attributed to indolence and neglect, is the more remarkable, as he fully participated in that respect for the classics which distinguished his contemporaries, and is said to have attached more value to his inferior Latin conmpositions than to all his English poetry. On his removal from Dublin he became the inmate of sir William Temple, the fine gentleman, the acute politician, and practical phile sopher of his age. During his residence at Moor Park, Swift was introduced to king William, who, in compliment to his abilities, offered him the command of a troop of horse: but Swift appears to have had no inclination for a military profession; and on the death of his patron entered the church, and commenced his litera y career. At this period his merit was little known, nor did he seem conscious of his own strength.

Like Prior, he had begun by writing ethical odes, which extorted from Dryden the severe denunciation, that he would never be a poet. One of his first acknowledged productions was A Discourse on the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons of Athens and Rome,' a grave, serious essay, which exhibits strong powers of discrimination and reflection, but is not enlivened by wit or humour. His peculiar talent was soon however exhibited in various fugitive essays and periodical papers, a new species of composition, to which Steele and Addison had given popularity. The Tale of a Tub,' though never acknowledged by him, was well known to have been one of his early productions. On the accession of the tories to power, Swift, who was already in habits of intimacy with lord Oxford and their most distinguished leaders, attached himself to their cause, and em

ployed

ployed his pen in support of their administration. For such services he naturally expected an adequate recompense: but, whether the ministers were unable or unwilling to serve him; whether from distrust or weakness in the party whose cause he had espoused, Swift was dismissed to Ireland, with the deanery of St. Patrick's; a situation attended with such painful privations, that, without having incurred disgrace, he was condemned to banishment. The demise of queen Anne terminated Swift's political existence: involved in the ruin of his party, he experienced the common fate, and only escaped persecution by submitting to obscurity. After a residence of some years in Ireland, which had hitherto repaid his contempt with hatred, he acquired great popularity by his spirited resistance to the introduction of Wood's coinage; a measure dictated by mistaken views of policy, and which was justly reprobated by Swift, as militating against the prosperity of that country. On this occasion were published those celebrated letters which procured him the honourable appellation of The Drapier. But neither his popular fame nor his unbounded influence with his compatriots could reconcile him to his estrangement from England: and he ceased not to vent his discontent in sorrows and complaints, till the progress of age and infirmity completely paralysed those mental powers, which had rendered him a bulwark to one party, and an engine of terror to the other; and which procured for him, in his private station, not only the veneration of Ireland, but the esteem of Europe.

Swift was formed for active life. In his political relations he was not, like Addison, valued merely for his pen, but for himself;-for that quickness of perception, that luminous comprehension, which fitted him for the investigation of every subject, and enabled him on every occasion to supply some valuable observations, the result of intuitive sagacity or discriminative experience. As a writer, he is distinguished by the variety of his attributes. He is at once versatile and vigorous:

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he combines facility with strength. Though not born to be a poet, he was an exquisite versifier on familiar subjects; and in some of his metrical pieces blends the terseness of Pope with the simplicity of Gay. Of this, Baucis and Philemon,' Cadenus and Vanessa,' and, the Verses on his own Death, afford sufficient examples. On political subjects he could be grave and argumentative, or humorous and satirical. Whenever he chose to be didactic, he could descend to the most minute strictures on the occurrences of daily life; yet when he had to construct a fable, he launched into the regions of imagination, and created his own visionary world. It is, however, obvious that his genius directed him to satire ; his tact was ridicule, his talent irony; in this were concentrated all his acuteness and sagacity, the sprightliness of his fancy, the poignancy of his wit, the solidity of his judgment. In this style the Tale of a Tub is his masterpiece; nor does the whole compass of English literature offer so many happy specimens in this peculiar province of composition, as were furnished by his single pen. The asperity of his sentiments has been often lamented; but it should be remembered that Swift was formed by that age which he was destined to enlighten and improve. He was not, like Addison, a moral teacher: the coldness of his character seemed inaccessible to the charms and insensible to the charities of social life. His great object was intellect; and he became the champion of reason, by maintaining a constant hostility with error and prejudice. His satire was directed to books rather than to men; and addressed not to manners, but opinions. No delusion could escape his vigilance, no absurdity elude his censure. He ridiculed affectation, caricatured arrogance, and exposed credulity. He spared neither the puerile pursuits of the learned, nor the traditional superstitions of the vulgar. He was equally ready to attack the dogmatism of Burnet and the anilities of Boyle: he rebuked the pedantry of Bentley, and chastised the conjectural vanity of Whiston. The benevolent may revolt from that

mind,

mind, of which the supreme delight appears to have been the detection or the exposition of human infirmities, but a sense of justice should impel them to acknowledge the obligations of English literature to his powerful pen: even the philosophical will not withhold praise from this adversary of philosophers, who, in dispelling those errors which obscured the judgment, accelerated the progress of real science, and contributed to the diffusion of truth.

The history of polite literature necessarily includes that of the drama. The progress of society is often more distinctly marked by the character of its amusements than by the language of those whose avowed object it is to impart instruc tion. At the æra of the Revolution a most important change is perceptible in public taste. The licentious plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, which, almost to the total exclusion of Shakespeare, had previously occupied the stage, were exploded; and in tragedy at least, decency and propriety of language were expected. The first reformer of the theatre was John Sheffield duke of Buckingham, who was himself accustomed to poetical composition, celebrated as a man of genius by his companions, and considered as a man of wit by his readers. His Essay on Poetry,' which was written under the superintendance, or, as has been suspected, with the assistance of Dryden, contains many good precepts, and exhibits with spirit and propriety the principles of taste. But his more popular work was "The Rehearsal,' a mock-heroic play, comprising a series of parodies on the extravagant parts of Dryden, Davenant, and Howard, which are exquisitely ludicrous. The duke of Buckingham had exposed the follies of the stage; it was reserved for the famous Collier to reprove its vices. Towards the close of king William's reign, he published An Essay on the Immorality of the Stage; and his arguments being combated by Congreve and other successful dramatists, he found himself involved

in