particulars in which the age of Queen Anne on the literary side did really resemble that of Augustus. It was an age of comparative repose and contentment and prosperity after civil disquiet, and an age too in which letters were splendidly encouraged by the great. The peculiar development of literary patronage due to the Revolution has been considered on a former page, and here it will suffice to say that in no other period has English literature owed so much to the imitators of Mæcenas; so that even Pope, who thanked Homer alone for his pecuniary independence, was indebted to Harley and St John for his social position, while Addison's essays procured him a Secretaryship of State. It has to be added, however, that the end of the period saw the decline of the political patronage of letters under Walpole's unromantic régime. That shrewd opportunist was quick to perceive that the consolidation of the Whig oligarchy had made literary aid superfluous to the administration. Not clever satire or pamphleteering but crafty political management was needed to sustain the Minister's majority, and so under Walpole English literature passed into those gloomy decades through which Fielding and Johnson struggled.

The statement that the age of Queen Anne was one of comparative repose and content may seem paradoxical in face of the fact that it was occupied by a long foreign war, by constant Jacobite intrigue, and by the conflict of fierce. political factions. Yet the war, illustrated by the victories of Marlborough, was brilliantly successful, and served to overshadow the Jacobite intriguing, while the strife of Whigs and Tories, with all its bitterness, was far less violent than the civil broils of the later Stuart reigns or even of the time of William III. The great majority of the people were undoubtedly more contented with their political lot than they had been since the years immediately succeeding the Restoration. They were ruled now not by a real or suspected Papist, or a Dutch intruder, but by a native sovereign of the old line, fervently attached to the national Church. The constitution and the succession had been settled, the danger from Scotland was peacefully avoided by the Union of 1707, and every year the Tower guns were sounding the news of glorious victories over the French. It would seem that the nation was really very little troubled by fears of Jacobitism, and it is significant at least that, so far as its abiding literature gives evidence, there might almost have been no such

thing as Jacobitism at all. Of the Tory revivalpromoted largely perhaps by the publication of Lord Clarendon's great History in 1704-7— there are traces in plenty, especially in the jeux d'esprit of Arbuthnot and the voluminous pamphleteering of Swift, though even this revival has left no such mark on our literature as the terrible factions of Charles II.'s time have done in the satires of Dryden. But for Jacobitism one must turn to the subterranean literature of the time-to secret memoirs and libellous broadsheets and clandestine correspondence, or at the best to such unread tracts of Defoe as And what if the Pretender should come? or Hannibal at the Gate. England in truth was almost as hopeful and as well satisfied with herself in the reign of Queen Anne as in the reign of Queen Victoria; and although her self-consciousness did not issue, as in the case of Augustan Rome, in a great national epic or history, it is sufficiently evident in the optimism of Pope, the easy good-humour of Addison, and even the mordant activity of Swift.

Passing from these general aspects to some of the particular features of the age, one may note that in poetry it consummated the effort after orderliness and correctness which had followed as a natural reaction upon the licentious degeneracy of Elizabethan vigour. Of that consummation Pope of course was the grand agent, and his influence is seen in all the minor poets (some of them little more than his satellites) from Gay and Parnell down to Fenton and Broome. A fresh reaction against the excess of convention and correctness was of course inevitable, and the return to nature, which at first and for long was made with reverent loyalty to the authority of Pope, has been discerned by some in the poems of the Countess of Winchilsea, who would thus be a very small and early herald of Thomson. In the drama the Restoration comic model lingered on in the work of Farquhar till 1707, but was gradually supplanted by the sentimental comedy, wherein Steele, the first effective moraliser of the stage, was succeeded by Colley Cibber. Tragedy was continued mainly by Nicholas Rowe, a very much weaker and purer Otway; but the entire lack of aptitude for the poetic drama was most signally shown in Addison's Cato, the production of which, in the year of the Treaty of Utrecht, was one of its conspicuous literary events. Rowe and Addison are far more notable in other regards the one as the first critical editor of Shakespeare (fol

lowed ere long by Pope himself and Theobald), and the other as the earliest popular and sympathetic critic of Milton. English literary criticism may almost be said to begin with the Spectator, which led the way in its attempt to show and explain to intelligent men and women at large the methods and merits of a classic English writer. The age, indeed, was essentially though crudely critical, as beseemed a generation that made correctness the main poetic virtue; and its bent in this direction is to be seen in the sallies of the Scriblerus Club, the bitter war of Pope against the dunces, and the frenzies of Mr John Dennis.

Swift is the greatest name of the period in prose, and infinitely the greatest master of satire in the language. His style shows the highest reach of that essentially pamphleteering manner which in its plain directness of appeal to the multitude had always maintained a contrast to the academic manner as developed in different varieties by Bacon, Hooker, and Browne. As an influence on English prose, however, he has been second to Addison, who simplified and perfected what one may call the gentlemanly style affected by Sir William Temple. Hardly any development in English literature has been so momentous as that which was begun by the Tatler in 1709, and continued by the more famous Spectator (1711) and the Guardian (1713). Not only did these papers mark the rise of periodical writing, and give a fresh start and a new form to the English essay, but they also did more than anything else to spread a knowledge and love of literature among the middle classes, to diffuse an atmosphere of politeness and culture, and offer a model of easy and unaffected expression. At the same time the art of epistolary writing made a great advance in the hands of Pope and Swift, and above all of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the first of whose charming letters from the East was written in 1717. Soon afterwards, between 1719 and 1724, came the tales of Daniel Defoe, beginning with Robinson Crusoe, and marking a preliminary stage in the evolution of the English novel.

A few other prose-writers in different fields. deserve a word of notice. The works of Lord Bolingbroke, one of the great political figures of the age, were mostly written and published long afterwards; but his Letter to Sir William Wyndham, composed in 1717, shows his essentially oratorical style almost at its best.

In

1711 the third Lord Shaftesbury had published the Characteristics, a collection of philosophical essays in stately and somewhat too rhetorical prose. Shaftesbury has often been ranked as one of the Deists, an active and notable band of controversialists in their day, though now half-forgotten. Their leaders were such men as Toland, Tindal, Woolston, and Anthony Collins, and their attacks on revelation raised a fierce controversy, which was begun by the Nonjuror Leslie so early as 1697, and culminated perhaps in the encounter of Anthony Collins and Bentley in 1713. The polemical monuments of Deism are not of great literary interest, but the movement is noteworthy as showing the change of the ecclesiastical battleground from the old question of Papal supremacy which had occupied the attention of combatants in the century before. It is important also because of the effect it had on French speculation through the agency of Voltaire, whose memorable sojourn in England began just at the end of this period, in 1726. A loftier and rarer spirit than most of those engaged in the Deistical controversy was Bishop Berkeley, famous in metaphysics as the exponent of an extreme idealism, but mentionable here mainly for the literary grace of dialogues like Hylas and Philonous, which are the most successful adaptations in our language of the manner and method of Plato. Externally the Church was strong, prosperous, and even aggressive in the reign of Queen Anne, while among its ministers were some of the most brilliant intellects of the age-notably Atterbury and Swift. It was already, however, very largely affected by a practical if not a dogmatic rationalism, which was to prevail for more than a century, until the romantic and Tractarian movements had ended the reign of common-sense. An eccentric but not an insignificant phenomenon was the career of the wayward Whiston, who managed to combine Arianism with supernaturalism, and was in consequence deprived of the Cambridge professorship, in which he had succeeded Newton. Outside the bounds of the Establishment the same rationalising tendency is apparent; and it was in the reign of Queen Anne that the Unitarian sect in England (not then consciously rationalist) had its beginning out of the isolated congregations-many of them Presbyterianwhich in the preceding half-century had left the Anglican Church.

dissolution of the monasteries and the slow constitution of regular openings for a career in the professions, in the public service, and in business. It was certainly now in its very last stage; but it was still an existing and an understood thing. By degrees, if not at first, Swift became a sort of secretary to Temple, having opportunities (which he used) of considerably increasing an erudition which, despite his unlucky degree, was already not inconsiderable. Their connection lasted for some ten years, and Swift had the opportunity of making acquaintance with all sorts and conditions of men and women, from King William (who is said to have both offered him a cavalry commission and taught him how to cut asparagus) to a pretty child named Esther Johnson, who with her mother lived at the Temples' house on a sort of poor-relation standing even more difficult to define than Swift's own, and who became 'Stella'-the star, if not the sole star, of the sea of bitterness which was Swift's life. But the sojourn was not unbroken. It is uncertain whether the first gap was due to any quarrel, but Swift was certainly away from Temple for nearly a year and a half, from the spring of 1690 to the winter of 1691. Then he returned, and Temple soon after did him the important service of procuring for him, at the cost only of very brief residence, first an ad eundem B.A. at Oxford, and then the full M.A. degree from that university. The actual gain as a qualification was something; to Swift the washing out of the speciali gratiâ must have been almost priceless. He again left Temple in 1694, went to Ireland, took orders, and was presented to a small living at Kilroot, near Belfast, where he-it can hardly be said fell in love, but entered into a kind of courtship with a certain Miss Jane Waring-Varina'-sister of a college friend of his. The affair came to nothing-or indeed rather worse than nothing-being broken off years afterwards by a letter from Swift which from anybody else would be a piece of sheer brutality, and which can only be excused as a document of his unique and in some respects morbid or maimed temperament.

But he did not stay at this place (which was hopelessly dull and had no future in it) very long, and actually resigned the benefice a little while after he had again returned (May 1696) to Moor Park. Here he remained till Temple's death in January 1699. It is not certain whether his patron left him anything directly; but he entrusted him with the publication of his works, whence Swift derived a good deal of annoyance and perhaps a few hundred pounds of profit. Thus the death of Temple marks the end of the first stage in Swift's career. It had been a long stage and a hard one ; it had brought him little outward profit or inward pleasure; but it had 'made' him. He had accumulated much reading; and for the last ten years at least he had acquired even more knowledge of He had published practically nothing, and part of his time had been given up to the writing

men.

of pseudo-' Pindaric' odes, which had, according to legend, brought down upon him the fatal and never-forgiven judgment of Dryden 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a [Pindaric] poet.' The word ‘Pindaric' does not appear in all versions of the legend, but it suits the facts, it justifies the judgment, and, above all, it makes it more likely to have come from Dryden, who was never harsh to the young. But Swift had before Temple's death written two things, though they were not published till later, which in degree of merit only three men then living-Dryden himself, Addison, and Popehad equalled or were to equal, and which in special kind none of them had rivalled or was to rival. These were The Battle of the Books and A Tale of a Tub.

How far these were known even in MS. is a matter of guesswork; but we find with Swift (as with some, though not many, other men of letters) that a queer kind of general impression of his talents had got abroad long before he had any ostensible titles to urge. But patrons were still necessary, and not long after Temple's death Swift went back to Ireland with the Deputy Lord Berkeley as chaplain, and with definite hopes of clerical preferment as such. He seems to have enjoyed himself—as his unsleeping and unyielding pride always enabled him to do after a fashion-in the viceregal household; but he was jockeyed out of one benefice after another till he had to put up with a paltry group of small livings-Laracor the chief of them-which lay not very far from Dublin, and which brought him in some £200 a year. Before long Stella, who was in a small way an heiress through Sir William Temple's bequest, came over to Ireland with her companion, Mrs (i.e. Miss) Dingley. She was continually in Swift's neighbourhood and society, though the most elaborate precautions were taken not merely to avoid scandal, but to make any ground for it impossible. For some years Swift oscillated between Ireland and England, belonging in a rather outside manner to the Whig party when in London, associating with its wits, especially Addison and Steele, and being patronised in a distant, unpractical way by its Mæcenates, Somers and Halifax. Whatever may be thought of his religious standpoint (and an impartial examination will find it very difficult to discover anything therein incompatible with at least eighteenth-century orthodoxy), his esprit de corps was undeniable; and he was enraged at finding that the more the Whigs succeeded in edging out their Tory colleagues from the coalition government with which Queen Anne started, the less were they disposed to do anything for the Church. In particular, a suit for the remission of the Irish first-fruits, with which Swift was semi-officially charged, was continually played with and evaded by the Whigs, especially Godolphin. Meanwhile Harley, who was certainly a master of intrigue if not of statesmanship, and St John, whose brilliancy appealed to, and was

In

appealed to by, Swift, were overhauling their rivals on the very back-stairs by which those rivals had climbed to power. And at last Swift openly joined them. All talk of apostasy is here absurd, for neither of the party creeds was then formulated; and as Marlborough joined the Whigs when the Tories went against the war, so Swift joined the Tories when the Whigs would not help the Church. His aid, however, was most momentous. the troubled four last years of the queen he first fought his friends into grip of power by his masterly journalism in the Examiner; then defended them in the great pamphlets of The Conduct of the Allies (1711), the Barrier Treaty (1712), and The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714); and always was at hand to mitigate as far as possible their personal jars, to stimulate Harley's sluggishness, remedy Bolingbroke's levity, curb the rabid extremeness of the October Club, and introduce system and method and public spirit into the welter of jealousy, greed, and carelessness in which, from the Restoration downwards, both parties had wallowed. As for himself, he obtained, and just obtained, in the teeth of the scruples instilled into Anne's stupid piety by personal enemies, the sorry preferment of the Deanery of St Patrick's. And he had no sooner obtained it than Oxford and Bolingbroke became hopelessly at variance. Swift, who had gone over to take possession of his deanery, came back after much entreaty in order to mediate, but found it quite impossible, and retired to a remote village on the Berkshire Downs (Letcombe) to wait for the end. That end is matter of history, though still to some extent matter of mystery also. Swift never seems to have been a Jacobite, though his intimate friends Arbuthnot and Atterbury certainly were. The queen's personal dislike for or distrust of him would in any case have prevented his having any say in the alleged intrigues for getting her to prefer her brother to the Elector of Hanover. He was much more a friend of Oxford, who was hardly a Jacobite at all, than of Bolingbroke, who at times was as 'thorough' as he could be on that side. On the other hand, the Duke of Shrewsbury -that strange, wavering king-maker-was, though of his friends, not of his most intimate friends; and of the two dukes whose invasion of the Privy Council decided the matter, he had stood with Argyll much as he did with Shrewsbury, till the attack on Scotland in The Public Spirit of the Whigs alienated Duke John altogether; while Somerset was the husband of his bitterest and most envenomed enemy. The situation had got out of his grasp altogether; and he seems at the last to have contemplated it with a sort of cynical resignation. And though he was practically exiled (for Ireland was always a foreign country to him), though he was for a time made a target for Grub Street abuse, as was to be expected, yet the helplessness of his later days under the queen protected him from any active molestation under the Elector

king-from the immediate prison of Oxford and Prior, as from the positive exile of Bolingbroke and Ormond and later of Atterbury. So finished the second period of Swift's life, which, despite the disappointment and defeat with which it closed, was not merely by far his happiest time, but might almost be called positively happy. Just after the beginning he obtained, and just before the end he secured, that independence of fortune which, was absolutely the first of blessings to so proud a spirit. Throughout he possessed, in whatever strange conditions, the unstinted affection of Stella, the only person whom he ever really loved. And for the last year or two this affection was supplemented in a manner already somewhat embarrassing, and destined to be more so, but flattering and undoubtedly pleasant, by that of the other Esther Vanessa'-i.e. Miss Vanhomrigh, as the Cadenus' of the poem that has made her immortal is 'Decanus'-i.e. Swift. During almost the whole time he had abundance of intellectual companionship, and during the latter part of it such power and influence in the State as few men of letters have ever achieved-power, too, which was not lost by his own fault, as has usually happened in these few cases. Even up to this time he had published little, and most of that little anonymously. But his position of 'the greatest genius of the nation,' which the clear and competent judgment, even more than the not then estranged friendship, of Addison had assigned to him years before, would have been allowed, it seems, not merely by most of his friends, but by many of his enemies.

His third and last stage was a long one-longer indeed than even the first. It was free from some of the hardships which had beset that earlier time; it set him, if possible, higher-it certainly strengthened his position as a man of letters; but it lay from the first in the valley of the shadow, and the shadows deepened to their very darkest before its close. On his first return to Ireland after the downfall of the Tories and the establishment of the Hanoverian succession, Swift was extremely unpopular; and watch was laid in high quarters, though vainly, to see if he could be entangled in charges of treason. The deanery was encumbered, and the promise of a sum of money to clear off the encumbrances fell through with the Tory fall. But courage, wariness, and parsimony saw Swift through all these things. It is not long afterwards (in 1716) that tradition places his actual marriage ! with Stella, a marriage formal but in no way altering the relations between them. We have no certain evidence of this marriage, and it has been argued about with the voluminousness and the unnecessary violence which are often displayed on such things. It is sufficient to say that the quality and amount of such testimony as does exist, though it falls short of legal proof, is immensely in its favour, and would probably be regarded-in any case which did not excite partisanship one way or