collected into four volumes 12mo., and have gone through several impressions. The seventh and last was printed in 1771.
1745. The Biographia Britannica commenced. This work was undertaken by John Campbell, and published in weekly numbers. It was completed in seven volumes folio. In 1777 a new edition was begun under the superintendence of Dr. Andrew Kippis; it is a work of considerable magnitude, and still holds a respectable station in our national literature.
1745, Oct. 19. Died, Jonathan Swift, the celebrated dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. Of a life so various, and so full of business as Swift's we know not what part we could select consistent with the limits of this work, that would not rather excite curiosity than gratify it. Swift was born in Dublin, November 30, 1667, at No. 7, Hoey's-court. The earlier part of his life was spent chiefly in England, and in connexion with the Whigs; he afterwards became a Tory,[1] and was the friend of Pope, Bolingbroke, and other wits of that party. His works are chiefly of a political character, and were written only to serve a temporary end; yet they are such models of satirical composition, that they still continue to form a constituent portion of every good English library. They are written with great plainness, force, and intrepidity, and always advance at once to the matter in dispute. Their distinguishing feature, however, is the force and vehemence of the invective in which they abound; the copiousness, the steadiness, the perseverance, and the dexterity, with which abuse and ridicule are showered upon the adversary. This was, beyond all doubt, Swift's great talent, and the weapon by which he made himself formidable. His earliest work of importance was his Tale of a Tub, published anonymously in 1704, and designed as a burlesque of the disputes among the Catholics, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians. For some years after, he was employed entirely in political and occasional writings, the most remarkable of which was his pamphlet called The Conduct of the Allies, published in 1711, by which he disposed the nation to submit to a peace, then anxiously desired by the ministry. The displacement of his party in 1714, by George I., sent him into retirement in Ireland, and he scarcely resumed his pen till 1724, when he published a series of letters under the signature of M. B. Drapier, already alluded to. By these and other tracts, in behalf of the popular party in Ireland, he became the idol of the common people, and is said to have possessed far more real power than the highest of the constituted authorities. An archbishop, who was also a lord-justice of the kingdom, once taxed him with exasperating the mob; when Swift promptly refuted the charge by saying, "If I had lifted up my little finger they would have torn you to pieces." These writings, however, did not so much proceed from any real sympathy with the people, as from a hatred of the party who had then possession of the government. The most perfect of the larger compositions of Swift, and that by which he will probably be
longest remembered, is the extraordinary work called Gulliver's Travels,[2] which appeared in 1726, and was altogether a novelty in English literature. Its main design is, under the form of fictitious travels, to satirize mankind and the institutions of civilized countries; but the scenes and nations which it describes are so wonderful and amusing, that the book is as great a favourite with children, as with those who delight in contemplating the imperfections of human nature. The curiosity it excited at its first appearance was unbounded; it was the universal topic of discourse; prints from it filled the shopwindows; it gave denominations to fashions; and, what is a stronger proof of its popularity, it introduced words which have become a part of the English language. In the latter part of his life, he published another burlesque on the social world, under the title of Polite Conversation, being an almost exact representation of the unpremeditated talk of ordinary persons. A still more ludicrous and satirical work appeared after his death, under the title of Directions to Servants.[3] Swift also wrote many letters, which rank among the best compositions of that kind
- ↑ Hallum, in his Constitutional History, thus describes the two great parties which have so long divided the state:—"These parties differ above all in this respect, that to a tory, the constitution merely as such, is an extreme point, beyond which he never ventures to look, and from which he holds it impossible ever to depart, while a whig regards all forms of government as subordinate to the public good, and consequently subject to modification when they cease to answer their ends. Within these limits, to which he confines himself as religiously as the tory to his narrower circumspection, the whig, rejecting all useless innovations, has a natural tendency to, and the tory a marked aversion for, all political amelioration. The one insists with pleasure on the liberty and rights of the human race; the other declaims on the evils of sedition, and the rights of kings. Though both admit as a common principle the maintenance of the constitution, yet the one has particularly at heart the privileges of the people, and the other the prerogative of the crown. Accordingly it is possible that passions and events may conduct the tory to set up a despotism, and the whig to overturn the monarchy. The first is an enemy to the liberty of the press and free enquiry; the second is favourable to both. In a word, the principle of one is conservation, that of the other amelioration."
- ↑ It is said that Swift never received any money for his writings, except for Gulliver's Travels; when Pope interfered with the bookseller, and obtained ₤300 for the copy, which had been dropt from a coach window at the bookseller's door late one night.
- ↑ Printed by George Faulkner, Dublin, who, writing to Mr. W. Bowyer, says, "as you are famous for writing prefaces, pray help me to one for Advice to Servants." November, 1745. The principal interest which Faulkner could claim in the dean was his having suffered from political prosecution, a fate which, sooner or later, befell most of Swift's publishers.
person, she made her appearance on the Dublin stage in 1715. Neither in this attempt, however, nor in writing for the stage, had she any success, and, therefore, turned her attention to novel writing, in which her first productions, entitled the Court of Caramania, and the New Etopia, owing to their immorality, involved her in considerable disgrace. Her subsequent life and writings, however, amply atoned for the errors of her youth; as she became undeviatlngly correct in the former, and in the latter it was her constant aim to inculcate the purest precepts of morality and decorum. Her imagination was fertile, her industry great, and in the course of the last twelve years of her life, she produced, in all, nineteen volumes 12mo, independent of pamphlets and miscellaneous pieces. She died in 1756, in the sixty-fourth year of her age.
