favours might be employed with great advantage, and received with perfect independence. In 1721, however, there were no resources in the public. The number of readers was so limited, that the most incessant labour was seldom sufficient to gain a decent maintenance for writers. It was therefore with a bitter pang that they saw Sir Robert Walpole suddenly turn aside from the example of his predecessors, and resolutely shut the door of patronage in the face of genius. The twenty years of his administration were to them a bleak and barren winter. Looking as he did solely to the House of Commons and to the Court, and measuring the value of every thing by Parliamentary votes or Royal smiles, he despised a literature which the King despised, and which had no influence upon the Legislature. Books, he seems to have thought, were fit only for idle and useless men. The writers of books, therefore, he left to dig, to beg, or to starve. It is truly painful to read of the wretched privations, and still more wretched shifts, to which men of such abilities as Savage were exposed. Their books, their linen, were most frequently in pawn. To obtain a good meal was a rare and difficult achievement. They were sometimes reduced, for want of house-room, to wander all night about the streets. They had to sleep on a bulk in summer, and in winter amidst the ashes of a glass-house. "In this manner," says Johnson, "were passed those days and those nights which nature had enabled them "to have employed in elevated speculations, useful 66 studies, or pleasing conversation. On a bulk, in a "cellar, or in a glass-house, among thieves and beggars, was to be found the author of The Wanderer;' the 66 man of exalted sentiments, extensive views, and cu"rious observations; the man whose remarks on life might have assisted the statesman, and whose ideas of "virtue might have enlightened the moralist."* Johnson, who has commemorated these calamities, himself for 66 66 many years had shared them. With Savage he had rambled houseless in the streets, with Savage he had struggled against the pangs of cold and hunger. Nor * Johnson's Life of Savage. See also Chalmers' Life of Boyse. was this suffering all. Whenever it was relieved by a sudden supply of money, there commonly ensued a scene of the wildest riot and profusion. There was a constant alternation between beggary and extravagance. The half-starved poet rushed with his only guinea to the tavern, to enjoy one night of splendid luxury, while his shirt was still in pawn, and his cravat of paper; thus the subsistence for a thrifty week was lavished at a single revel; and as poverty had first produced dissipation, so did dissipation prolong and perpetuate poverty. Such, according to the testimony even of their friends, was the life of Savage and of Boyse. It may easily be supposed that the Minister who dried up the stream of patronage would be no favourite with its former objects. Nearly all the writers of any name, either from principle or resentment, joined the ranks of Opposition, and were marshalled to the onset by the superior genius of Bolingbroke and Pulteney. The motives and measures of Sir Robert were attacked without moderation, and misrepresented without shame; and, in estimating the character of that Minister, we should, therefore, never fail to allow largely for calumnious falsehoods. Nay more, it is remarkable, and highly to the honour of Walpole, that those very measures against which the loudest clamours were raised, and which were selected by his adversaries as the special ground of their invective—such as Wood's Halfpence in Ireland, the Malt Tax in Scotland, and the Excise Bill in England,-when rightly and calmly examined, appear not only free from blame, but worthy of praise. But, even in making such great deductions from the exaggerations of a party press, we must condemn Walpole for neglecting and slighting its power. He did not see the danger in time, nor provide his remedy with skill. "No man," says a contemporary, ever set the press to work "with so little judgment as he did. He looked upon "writing to be a mechanical kind of business; and he "took up with the first pen that he could find in public "offices, or whom he could oblige by private liberality."* He hired his authors as he would his ditchers, holding * Tindal's Hist., vol. viii. p. 15. VOL. II. 66 no personal communication with them, but placing them, in general, under the guidance of Paxton, solicitor to the Treasury, or of other Ministerial subalterns; persons who in general may be observed to have more ignorance of and contempt for literature, than any other class of gentlemen. How could Walpole have expected much popular effect from such mercenary drudges as his party writers? Were these the men to stem the eloquence of Bolingbroke, or retort the irony of Swift? Some pam phlets of considerable power were, indeed, contributed in defence of the administration by Lord Hervey and Sir William Yonge; but, with a few exceptions, it may be said that all the talent and ingenuity were with the Opposition writers, and that the public mind was gradually and imperceptibly won over to their sentiments. The change was slow, but complete and universal; and thus Sir Robert Walpole's neglect of the public press may be classed amongst the foremost causes of his unpopularity and fall. Queen Caroline, on the contrary, often wished to befriend learned and literary men; but being thwarted in that respect both by the King and by the Minister, her wishes were seldom effectual, except in cases of church patronage. However, as her natural sweetness of temper made her unwilling to send any one discontented from her presence, she appears sometimes to have given promises, or at least raised expectations, that were not afterwards fulfilled. Swift, especially, conceived that he had the strongest reason to complain of her and Lady Suffolk; but his accusations are, as usual, clouded with spleen and satire. He was pining in his Irish Deanery, to which neither the dignity of his station, nor the flattery of his dependants, could ever reconcile him. Every letter from his friends in England recalled a brighter scene, and kindled his dormant regret. "After "all," he writes to Gay, "this hum-drum way of life might be passable enough, if you would let me alone. "I shall not be able to relish my wine, my parsons, my "horses, nor my gardens for three months, until the "spirit you have raised shall be dispossessed."* In * Letter of January 8. 1723. 1726, he, for the first time since the death of Queen Anne, made a visit to England, apparently not unwilling to tender or accept overtures of reconciliation with the Court. He found Pope and Gay intimate with Lady Suffolk; he speedily became the friend of their friend; and this was a channel of communication with her mistress, then Princess of Wales. Yet Swift declares that, when the Princess wished to see him, she sent "at least nine times" before he would obey her summons. When at length he did come, she received him very graciously. He began the conversation by telling her, that he was informed Her Royal Highness loved to see odd persons; and that, having sent for a wild boy from Germany, she had a curiosity to see a wild Dean from Ireland.* His powers of wit fully atoned for his want of courtly manners; and, during the few months of his stay, he became no unfrequent visitor at Leicester House. With Walpole also, the Dean, by means of Lord Peterborough, obtained an interview, on the plea of laying before him the real state of Ireland.† The Minister received him with civility, heard him with attention, and asked him to dinner at Chelsea. But, if Swift expected any offers to be made for his advancement, or even any wish to be expressed for his support, he was wholly disappointed. Walpole, with his usual disregard of literary eminence, took no pains to conciliate this most powerful writer, and appears to have treated him exactly as he would any other Dean from Ireland. No wonder that Swift thought his great abilities misunderstood and slighted. He writes to Lady Suffolk, "Pray tell Sir "Robert Walpole that, if he does not use me better next summer than he did last, I will study revenge, and it "shall be VENGEANCE ECCLESIASTIQUE ;" and he kept his word! *Swift to Lady E. Germaine, January 8. 1733. The "wild boy "from Germany " was found in the woods of Hanover, in 1725, and considered a great phenomenon. See a note to Swift's Works, vol. xiii. p. 197. † Swift to Lord Peterborough, April 28. 1726. Letter of February 1. 1727. sense- SO His second, and, as it proved, his last journey to England, early next year, was heralded by the publication of his Gulliver's Travels; the most admirable satire ever conveyed in a narrative, and the most plausible disguise that fiction ever bore. So well is the style of the old English navigators copied so much does there seem of their honest simplicity and plain common consistent is every part of the story events after the first improbability, even in its wildest flights, never loses an air of real truth. "I lent the book," says Arbuthnot, "to an old gentleman, "who went immediately to his map to search for Lilli"put."* In Ireland, one Bishop sagely observed, that for his part he hardly believed a word of it! † 66 so natural all the that the fable, -- We may also observe in these Travels, as the especial talent of Swift, his manner of applying or assuming as certain the charge he wishes to convey. To give only one instance: "In Lilliput the style of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like "the Europeans; nor from the right to the left, like the "Arabians; nor from up to down, like the Chinese; but "aslant from one corner of the paper to the other, like "ladies in England!" 66 At the time of the publication, also, many strokes of satire, now no longer applicable, and therefore scarcely perceived, gave infinite delight. In the following passage, for example, he doubtless had in view the proceedings against Atterbury and Layer, and some of the Royal Speeches at that period: "It was a custom in Lilliput, that, after the Court had decreed any cruel "execution, the Emperor always made a speech to his "whole Council, expressing his great lenity and tender"ness, as qualities known and expressed by all the "world. This speech was immediately published through"out the kingdom; nor did any thing terrify the people so much as these encomiums on His Majesty's mercy; "because it was observed, that the more these praises "were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was "the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent!" 66 * Letter to Swift, November 8. 1726. |