minor's amendment had been carried in favour of "twe bob only, but let's take it awfully." So now Hurd well, endeavouring to make himself “awful," said: "We only want what you stole, which was two shillings. Williamson must bring it himself, not you at eight o'clock sharp not before; I've got swynk te de till then. And I think, .. yes, we have deoided, that your apology must be in writing, and signed by all your 'dor' except Dallaway... We hope he is not badly hurt."

...

A very anxious hour passed, and odds were freely laid, less freely taken, that Williamson would not come. It is to be feared that few fags knew anything about their swynk when they again gathered round the fire just before eight. Hardwell frankly said he would give little Harker tiekle-toby for giving bad advice if the enemy held out. But the school clock had only just finished striking when Williamson, looking very white, stalked in and handed over a florin and the written apology. Hurdwell read it out, looked round his company and asked, "Are you fellows satisfied?" Then, as every one said

now." He was thus able to tell Jenky at 8.30 that everything was all right now, and, "Please, 'Fags wishes to thank you most awfully." History does not record what passed at the subsequent interview between Williamson and Jenky except that a full halfhour was occupied with it.

Harker minor proposed that the filerin should be framed and hung up over Hurdwell's desk; but his major, who had uttered no word the whole time, was roused and said, "If you say another word about it, minor, I'll beat you.'

The Comforts Fund collection in "Fags" at once recovered its tone. In the ensuing summer term it passed all former records, and its glories were crowned when Miss Beatty invited the whole dormitory to tea in the nurses' dining-room on the last Saturday of the term. "You, of course, will sit on my right, Captain," said she to Hurdwell, "but who on my left?"

"Please, ma'am, that must be Harker major. I'm afraid you'll find him very shy, but he did more for the Fund this year than any one else. You mustn't ask how. But he'll eat his tea all right."

He did.

THE whole reading publie accepts without question the portrait of himself which a writer draws in his books, especially when the writer is one of those who have acquired

"The deep and bitter power to give Their images again as in a glass, And in such colours that they seem to live,"

or, in the language of prose, is a man of genius. And this is so whether the writer, as so many writers do, makes himself the hero of his stery, or whether he leaves the public themselves to piece together a portrait of him from the opinions on morals, religion, and life contained in his works. But the portrait of himself which a man of genius draws in his books is seldom acourate: it is sometimes flattering; strange to say, it is more often the reverse. Every man, and especially every man of genius, has in a corner of his brain his private lunatic asylum wherein reside his insane fancies, impulses, and frailties. The normal man keeps every cell in that asylum looked, and denies to the world, and sometimes even to himself, that such a place exists: it is only the fool and the genius who throw open the doors and invite the world to enter. The world does not trouble itself about the follies of the fool, but it is deeply interested in the follies of the

genius; and its picture of the genius depends on the extent to which that private asylum is opened for its inspection in his works. One will open

every door; another will open only one or two; a third will keep every door as carefully looked as if he were a bishop. And the world will judge each according to the number of insane fancies, impulses, and frailties of his which each displays to it, forgetting that the true character of a man is shown not by what he writes but by what he does.

These reflections have been suggested by the different portraits which the world has drawn of three great writers of the same age-Swift, Steele, and Addison. Swift is painted as a politician who was false to his party, a priest who was false to his faith, and a man whe was false to mankind. Steele, on the other hand, is regarded & maudlin drunkard, an absurd politician, and a good-humoured fool whem the virtuous Addison tried vainly to make prosperous and keep sober. As for Addison, he in popular esteem is simply the just man made perfeot. And as old Isaac D'Israeli has shrewdly pointed out, this estimate of their merits as men has affected the estimate of their merits as writers. Surely but for the view he held of Steele and Addison's characters,

as he admitted himself to be, would never have been 80 foolish as to write that Addison's worst essay in the 'Speotator' was as good as Steele's best; nor would Thackeray, but for his view of Swift's character, have committed the stupidity of taking as a heartless jest the heart-rent irony of the Modest Proposal that the landlords who had already devoured their parents should eat also the children of the starving Irish peasants.

As a very short investigation will show, these respective portraits have little or no resemblance to the real men as they displayed themselves to their contemporaries in actual life: they are simply ideal pictures of them drawn by the public from their writings. In his writings Swift opened very wide one door of his private asylum and revealed a cell in which sat his insane hatred of an abstraction which he called man; Steele in his opened every door, and pointed out to an astonished and amused world every foolish impulse or frailty which found a home in his head; and Addison in his kept every door tightly looked, and let the public see none of the frailties which possessed him, but only the wisdom and virtues which he sometimes did not possess. And the reading public, and some who should have known better, have taken in each ease the picture of the writer as he appears in his writings as a true portrait of the writer as

Let us see then what each man was in actual life.

Swift's insane hatred to man in the abstract was due primarily no doubt to the dash of madness in his blood; but it must have been aggravated by the humiliations of his youth and the disappointments of his age. He was an orphan from his birth, and a poor dependant till he was twentyeight. And those on whom he had to depend were not over-considerate. His uncle, Godwin, who was the first of them, did much for the orphan boy; but according to all accounts he never let him forget that he was doing it. The second of them was Sir William Temple, and in his relations with him, at least till Swift took Holy Orders, "like George Nathaniel Curzon, He was a very superior person.' After taking Holy Orders Swift was for some years his own master, and for several years later he was master of the Empire. Then on Queen Anne's death came 8 fall almost as great as that of Napoleon or the Kaiser—a fall which doomed him to exile, and to watch from his exile men whom he hated wielding the powers he once possessed in the State, and men whom he despised promoted over head in the Church. It is to be noted that all the works which have earned for him the character of a scoffer and misanthrope were written during the years of his early humiliations or of his late disappointments. During the

time of his triumph he was, as he more than once reminds Stella in his 'Journal' to her, a very cheerful fellow and not at all censorieus of man and his ways.

Swift, like many another man of genius, was, though not selfish, absolutely selfcentred, viewing the world always from his own standpoint and his own circumstances. Milton was the same, though Swift never went so far as the man who, when his wife ran away from him, immediately wrote a pamphlet advocating free divorce, and, when she came back to him, never again mentioned the subject. So when the world treated Swift well he was very content with the world. When it treated him badly, and especially when it treated him as he thought unjustly, he turned those clear azure eyes of his on it to discover its defects. In one man he found hypocrisy, in another falsehood, in another ignorance, in another conceit, in another envy, in another cruelty; in all selfishness. These qualities he bulked together and classed as the oharacteristics which marked an abstraction which he called man, and he hated that abstraction because of these qualities; and when the world was unkind to him, he raged against this abstraction with the fury of a madman, and said and wrote every notion, however gross and callous, that came into his inventive brain, which would shook or outrage that abstraction, and demon

strate how little he cared for it or its opinion.

The mistake his readers fall into is in taking his hatred of this abstraction and his scorn for its hypocrisies, to be hatred of the actual men about him, and scorn for their convictions. Take his attitude towards religion. He in his youth wrote The Tale of a Tub,' in which he jibes at the follies men have been guilty of in connection with the doctrines of Christianity; and the world in consequence was half convinced he himself, though a clergyman, was not a Christian. Even Johnson and Thackeray, consciously or unconsciously, agree on this point with the world; and the thought of it poisons the views they take of his character and conduot throughout life. Yet few clergymen were more whelly devoted to their faith, and especially to their Church, than Swift was. It was devotion to his Church which led to his breach with the Whigs. When they urged him to support with his pen their project of repealing the Test Aot, which he thought would be detrimentalto the Church of England, hinting that if he did so he would have his reward, he answered angrily that he was not going to make his fortune at the expense of his Church; and when they pressed him further, he replied by publishing a violent pamphlet denouncing it, which is certainly a contrast to the virtuous way of Hoadley, who bet the King's mistress £5000 he would not get a certain bishoprio, and, when she got it for him, paid up like a man.

And if he performed his own devotions privately, he performed them, and led the devotions of his flook regularly at a time when neglect of duty was rampant among the clergy. Dr Sheridan also notes that he spent more in keeping his Cathedral in repair than any previous dean, and that he never held a benefice which he did not leave in a better condition than it was when he received it.

And this enemy of man was a very kind friend of men. His remembrance of his old dependency made him often too eager to show by insolence or overbearing that he was no longer dependent. But to the people he met who were loyal to him he was not only loyal but generous. He was a considerate master, and where good service was given he gave a good return: he is, so far as I know, the only dean in the United Kingdom who has erected in his cathedral monument to a faithful valet.1 Thackeray says that sooner or later he slunk away from all his friends. That may be so, but what is mere important is that none of his friends ever slunk away from him: they remained faithful during his life to him, and after his death to his memory. Witness Dr Sheridan who, quarrelling with him when he was half mad, could not speak too lovingly of him when he was in the

grave. And what friends he
had-Pope, Arbuthnot, Con-
greve, Gay, Addison, Boling-
broke, the choicest spirits of
the age. He is said, with
reason I think, to have been
more rude and contemptuous
with women than with men,
and yet no man ever received
greater affection from women.
I do not refer merely to the
adoration of Stella and Van-
essa; but, as Lord Ossory says,
till he became hopelessly insane
his deanery was
was a regular
seraglio of virtuous women, all
delighted to serve him; and
when he became insane his
niece, Mrs Whiteway, waited
on him with the watchfulness
and affection of a devoted
daughter. Of course it is
possible that he was liked by
women not because of his good
qualities but because of his
masterful ways.

"That man he used unduly
To swagger and to bully,
And, Oh, and Oh,

The ladies loved him so !"

There is little doubt but that, from the time he obtained emancipation from his youthful servitude, he did, in his personal relations with men and women, bully and swagger a bit; but his essential aetions were directed nevertheless by a good heart and by a high principle. During the years of his greatness he was in a position, as he says, to make

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