would never be opened to any one more studious of the truth of history than himself, he reckoned without his host. The Papal Government subsequently allowed access to those archives, first to a French author, M. Henri de l'Epinois, who published at Paris, in 1867, in the 'Revue des questions historiques,' an essay entitled 'Galiléo, son procès, sa condamnation, d'après des documents inédits,' secondly to M. Berti, whom Father Theiner, the late learned and liberal archivist of the Vatican, allowed to consult and take copies of them. A third restorer of the text of the proceedings against Galileo is Herr von Gebler, who, like M. de l'Epinois and M. Berti, has been allowed free access to the MSS.

The three writers above cited, who have now placed before the public each his own transcript of the official records of this too famous procedure, have played the part of inquisitors over each other, in a sort of emulation of the Holy Office. M. Berti took the lead by criticising the first partial reproduction of the original documents which had been made in the earlier essay of M. de l'Epinois. M. de l'Epinois rejoined by acknowledging and accounting for the imperfections of his own previous publication, and supplying a fresh transcript of those documents, with critical comments on the errors and inaccuracies of M. Berti's edition. And Herr von Gebler brings out a third, with corrections of both the others. One result, at least, of the researches of all three critical inspectors and copyists, who have taken so much pains to be right, and to set their rivals right where wrong, will be to render impossible the exercise of any pious frauds for the future in disguising or distorting any of the main facts of the case. As to the manner in which those facts should be regarded, modern opinion has unanimously pronounced already; and M. de l'Epinois, who, following after M. Henri Martin, labours to reconcile the fair and full exposition of the case of Galileo with the vindication of the character of his Church against the attacks of ignorance,' adduces no facts or arguments of any force to alter that opinion.

69

III.

JONATHAN SWIFT.

The Life of Jonathan Swift. By John Forster. Volume the First. 1667-1711. London, 1875.1

OUR old friend Christopher North, in one of his convivial sallies, altogether disclaimed being that faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw,' and claimed, on the contrary, to be a faulty monster seen by all the world. That faulty monster Swift will now, we hope, be shown to all the world in his true dimensions, though he cannot be washed exactly white. Mr. Forster has some more than ordinary qualifications for the task he has set himself. He is not suspect' of Toryism, nor consumed with the zeal of retrospective Whiggism to the pitch of regarding apostacy from Godolphin to Harley, in the days of Queen Anne, as deserving a political auto da fe in those of Queen Victoria. He has spared neither time nor pains in research of documents and materials from all quarters; and brings in his present volume much fresh information on Swift's career and character.2 And finally, he has that 'hearty liking' and 'generous admiration' for his subject which he justly attributes to his great precursor Scott, and which are indispensably requisite to render biography a labour of love. That Swift was, in his sane and manly years, loveable, seems sufficiently proved by the fact that he was more or less loved, or liked, by every woman of intelligence and every man of genius with whom

1 From the Quarterly Review, January 1876.

2 Mr. Forster's death unfortunately followed soon after the publication of the first volume of his Life of Swift.

he came in personal contact and intercourse. He was loved in tragic earnest by poor Esther Johnson and poor Hester Vanhomrigh. He was loved by Pope, Gay, Steele, Congreve, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, Addison; and lastly, and posthumously, his memory is loved by Mr. Forster.'

Independently of evil times and evil tongues,' the sources of Swift's doubtful reputation, from his own days to ours, may be said to have been, in a manner, identical with those of his glory. His 'Tale of a Tub' was a declaration of war against half Christendom, and his Gulliver's Travels little short of an indictment against all mankind. His political trophies were the depopularisation of Marlborough, the preparation of the public mind for the Peace of Utrecht, and the exasperation of Irish patriotism against English halfpence. A new Prometheus, he must be owned to have brought upon earth more heat than light, and his final misanthropy purveyed his own vultures for his own heart in exile. It is, indeed, a passion which, if it does not begin in madness, almost certainly ends there.

The late great French critic, Sainte-Beuve, laid down, with immediate reference to Chateaubriand, the following canon of criticism, which is not less applicable to our present subject:

For me, literary production is not distinct-is, at any rate, not separable from the producer, the man himself, and his individual organisation. I may find pleasure in a work, but it is difficult for

Mr. Courtenay, in his Memoirs of Sir William Temple (vol. ii. p. 243), drew from very narrow premisses very broad conclusions as to the general unpopularity of Swift's manners with women. Of the offensive manners of Swift,' he says, and his consequent unpopularity with the ladies of the families in which he was intimate' [we will trouble any one to be intimate in families where he is unpopular with the ladies !], 'we can speak upon the authority of a daughter of his friend, the first Lord Bathurst: this lady was particularly disgusted with his habit of swearing.

The occasional brusquerie and eccentricity of Swift's manners, especially in his later years, is not denied in any quarter. He could make himself disagreeable, but he could make himself exceedingly agreeable, both to men and to women. See Mr. Forster's volume, p. 226, and in other places, for the extraordinary social charm possessed by Swift in his better years.

2 Swift always regarded his Dublin deanery as an exile, and always refused to regard Ireland as his country, merely because he was 'dropped' there.

me to pronounce a judgment on it, independently of all knowledge of the writer. I should be disposed to say-Such as the tree, such the fruit.

In order to know a man-that is to say, to know something more about him than pure spirit-one cannot go to work in too many ways, or from too many sides. Till one has asked and answered to oneself a certain number of questions about an author, one is never sure of having completely seized his character. What were his religious views? How was he affected by natural scenery? What was his behaviour towards women ?—what in money matters? Was he rich was he poor? What was his regimen, his mode of living? what was his vice or weakness? since every man has one. the answers to these questions are immaterial in forming a judgment of an author, or even of his book,—unless, indeed, that book is a treatise of pure geometry.

Finally,

None of

In no instance more distinctly than in that of our present subject is the character of the author traceable, in its main lines, to the character of the man. It might be said of Jonathan Swift as of John Bunyan-whom, by the way, he prized more highly than theologians of higher pretensions-that it was because he was such a man as he was he wrote as he did. What set the stamp of permanence on the writings of both was no study of form, no care of composition, but downright force of expression prompted by strength of purpose. Bunyan became a great author without knowing it, because he had a faith to propagate. Swift became a great author without caring about it, because he had passions to wreak, ambitions to gratify, and insights into life, character, and opinion to bring out in forms which, however fantastic, however frequently repulsive, have won for themselves a permanent place in the modern mind, which they will no more lose with any generation of intelligent readers than the world will willingly let die' Pantagruel's history, or the Pilgrim's Progress.

In applying to Swift Sainte-Beuve's personal and, as he conceived it, physiological method of criticism, it would be necessary to start with the subject from birth, or even before it. A posthumous child, born of a mother labouring under a load of anxieties, much that was otherwise inexplicably morbid in Swift may be traceable to congenital sources, and

the painfully dependent circumstances of his boyhood and youth.

His brief autobiography, reproduced in Mr. Forster's first chapter, and which stops at the epoch of Swift's final settlement in Ireland, begins by stating that the family of the Swifts are ancient in Yorkshire. After commemorating one or two notable members of that family, the writer comes to his paternal grandfather, Thomas Swift, whose services and sufferings in the cause of the First Charles obtained recognition and promise of preferment from the Second, then in exile, if ever God should restore him.' Thomas Swift's life ended, however, before Charles's exile, and 'Mr. Swift's merit,' observes his grandson, died with him.'

His father's marriage is recorded as follows by Swift, with a curious and characteristic mixture of pride in his mother's remote ancestry, and regret for his father's indiscreet' marriage :

He married Mrs. Abigail Erick, of Leicestershire, descended from the most ancient family of the Ericks, who derive their lineage from Erick the forester, a great commander, who raised an army to oppose the invasion of William the Conqueror . . . . This marriage was on both sides very indiscreet, for his wife brought her husband little or no fortune; and his death happening suddenly, before he could make a sufficient provision for his family, his son, not then born [Swift himself], has often been heard to say, that he felt the consequences of that marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greatest part of his life.

Swift's only prosperous relative settled in Ireland was an uncle, Godwin Swift, to whom, says Mr. Forster, as the acknowledged head of the family, Jonathan's [his father's] widow had turned naturally in her trouble. With exception of a small annuity of twenty pounds, which her husband had been enabled to purchase at their marriage, she was wholly dependent on this supposed wealthy relative, who took on himself the charge of the young Jonathan's schooling, and defrayed it in what seemed a niggard and grudging manner, which was never forgiven by the distinguished object of his reluctant bounty. Four marriages, however, had provided