writings on various subjects, both in verse and prose, being an evident demonstration that he was superior to any particular course of learning. He was born to be the encourager of virtue, and the terror of the wicked. He never sat musing in his elbow-chair upon new subjects for the exercise of his genius, and the advancement of his fame, but writ occasionally to please and to reform the world, as either politics or humour gave the spur to his faculties. There are but few of his poems that seem to have been the labour of more than one day, how greatly soever they might have been corrected and polished afterwards to his own liking before he transcribed them fair.

There indisputably runs a vein of satire throughout all his writings; but as he declares that no age could have more deserved it than that particular age wherein he was destined to live, he is entitled to all the praise we can bestow upon him for exerting his whole abilities in the defence of honour, virtue, and his country. In his general satire, where perhaps thousands were equally meant, he hath never once through malice inserted the name of any one person; the vice nevertheless he exposeth to contempt and ridicule; but in particular satire, when egregious monsters, traitors to the public weal, and slaves to party, are the objects of his resentment, he lashes without mercy; well knowing that infamy, which is perhaps a taste of hell, is the only punishment which in this world can be inflicted upon such rebels to society as either by craft or corruption bid defiance to the laws.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics

of Dr. Swift was a bright and a clear genius, so extremely piercing, that every the most striking circumstance, arising from any subject whatever, quickly occurred to his imagination, and these he frequently so accumulated one upon another, that perhaps, beyond all other poets of all ages and countries, he deserves in this particular to be the most universally admired. And this choice of circumstances, if any stress can be laid on the opinion of Longinus, that great director of our taste and judgment, renders a composition truly noble and sublime. The most remarkable pieces of this sort are, the Furniture of a Woman's Mind, Betty the Grizette, the Journal of a Modern Lady, his Poem on reading Dr. Young's Satires, Mordanto, the Description of a City-Shower, the Description of Quilca, the Description of the Morning, and the Place of the Damned. This power of the mind gave him also that desperate hand, as Pope terms it, in taking off all sorts of characters. To omit those of a political nature, see the Progress of Poetry, the Second Part of Traulus, the Progress of Love, the Character of Corinna, and, the Beautiful young Nymph just going to Bed; where you will find that his imagination could even dream in the character of an old battered strumpet. And from the same inexhaustible fund of wit he acquired the historic arts both of designing and colouring, either in groups or in single portraits. How exact, how lively and spirited, is that group of figures in the Journal of a Modern Lady! The passage begins thus,

and ends

But let me now awhile survey, &c.

Flew hovering o'er each female head.

And for a single portrait, if we consider the design, the attitude, the drapery, or the colouring, what is it that can excel the representation of Cassinus in the Tragical Elegy?

He seem'd as just crept out of bed, &c.

and ending thus,

On embers placed to drink it hot.

Throughout all his poetical writings, although many of them be dedicated immediately to the fair sex, there cannot be found, to the best of my recollection, one single distich addressed in the character of a lover to any one person. If he writ any poems of that sort in his younger days, they must have been destroyed, if they be not concealed. Those verses upon women, which are deemed the most satirical, were written principally with a view to correct their foibles, to improve their taste, and to make them as agreeable companions at threescore, as at the age of fiveand-twenty. By what I can hear, the most exceptionable of his poems in that way have produced some very extraordinary effects in the polite world. This was in truth the ultimate design of his writing the Lady's Dressing-room, and other pieces, which are acknowledged to be somewhat liable to censure on account of their indelicacy.

Among the admirers of Dr. Swift, many have compared him to Horace, making proper allowances for the respective ages in which they severally flourished. The resemblance however, between them is not so exceedingly strong as that a similitude and manner of writing could have ex

cited the least degree of emulation between them, farther than to be equally renowned for their peculiar excellences. Each of them had, independent of what is generally called a fine taste, a thorough knowledge of the world, superadded to an abundance of learning. Both the one and the other of these great men held the numerous tribe of poets, as well as that motley generation of men called critics, in the utmost contempt; and at the same time have manifested themselves to be incomparable judges of all that is truly excellent, whether in books or men. Neither of them had the least regard for the Stoics; and whatever may be said of their being of the Epicurean taste, (which, if rightly understood, is far from being inconsistent with the highest virtue) neither of them was attached to any particular system of philosophy. Homer was the darling author both of Horace and Swift. Horace declares, in his Epistle to Lollius, that Homer had abundantly more good sense and wisdom than all the philosophers; and Swift's opinion was, that Homer had more genius than all the rest of the world put together. Yet neither the one nor the other of them have attempted to imitate his manner, but, like heroes of a bold and true spirit, have industriously followed the bent of nature, and struck out originals of their own. But however strong may be supposed the resemblance between Horace and Swift, they were in fact, upon the whole, quite different men: their tempers, their complexions, and their fortunes, were totally unlike. Each of them had in many respects greatly the advantage of the other.

Poetry was in Horace the business of his life; every desire, every comfort, and every passion, of his mind, were centred in the Muses: he followed the example of the Greek poets, præter laudem nullius avarus. Poetry in Swift was only an appendage to his character; he wore it as an emblem of wit and spirit, which gave him an air of grandeur in the republic of letters. Horace, by diverting his thoughts from all sublunary affairs, and perpetually ranging about from flower to flower, among the gardens, and groves, and wildernesses of the Greeks, with infinite labour extracted, like an industrious bee, the quintessence of their sweets; and by frequently experimenting all the changes of harmony, is deservedly the joy and admiration of the poetical world, for the music of his lines and the variety of his numbers. His addresses to the Emperor, to Agrippa, to Pollio, and his panegyric on Drusus, are prodigiously sublime; but his Hymns to the Muses, to Mercury, to Pan, to Apollo and Diana, to Venus, to his Lyre, and to Bacchus, are absolutely raptures of poetry, even the divine spirit of that amabilis insania, that delightful madness,' which is only to be felt, impossible to be described. His verses, nevertheless, are but few in number, the whole of his works, at a random computation, amounting only to about seven thousand lines, whereof not above one half are of that species of poetry on which he desired to fix all his pretensions to fame; and it was upon these only that he bestowed the greater part of his life. Swift, on the contrary, from the age of one-and-twenty, was deeply immersed in politics during his whole life;

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